Bloems in China

Summer Travel Highlights (Part 1: Qingdao, Xian, Yangtze Cruise)

2009-09-09T15:01:00.000+08:00

I once had a teacher in high school who said the best thing about being a teacher is June, July and August. Although the Chinese school system only has a six week break during the summer (mid-July through August), I must say that I agree. Megan and I wrapped up our teaching responsibilities in the in the first few weeks of July an eagerly awaited the arrival of my family to start our summer travels. Our plan was as follows:

July 15: Arrival of my family in Qingdao.
July 15-17: Spend in Qingdao/Huangdao (smaller town where we live) to show my family the sights.
July 17-19: Go to Xian to see the terra cotta warriors and other sights.
July 20-23: Yangtze River Cruise, the Yangtze being one of the best spots to see the total eclipse of the sun on July 21.
July 23-27: In Shanghai, see the parents off on July 24 and explore the city ourselves for a few days.
July 28-August 5: Singapore to see our old stomping grounds.
August 5 - ???: We weren’t sure where we wanted to go, how much flights would be, and how far our money would take us, so we decided to wing it. Options: Chengdu (see pandas), Kunming, and/or Hong Kong.

With that itinerary to look forward to we had trouble focusing during our last few days of exams and grading. Finally, July 15 arrived and brought with it my parents, sister Rachel, and sister’s friend Paulina.

Here are some highlights from the summer.

Qingdao/Huangdao 青岛／黄岛 (July 15-17)

The highlight of the few days in Qingdao/Huangdao was the day Megan and I showed my family around Huangdao, the place we've called home for the past 5 months. It was great to show off our classrooms, eat at the places where we typically eat, and spend some time with them in our apartment. In the morning all the girls had a local foot massage while my dad and I hit some golf balls at the nearby driving range. Even though a day was plenty of time to see the highlights of the area, I'm really glad they made the trip to China to see it.

The girls getting ready to enjoy their Chinese foot massage in Huangdao.

Eating in our own private room (read: cubicle) at one of our favorite restaurants on campus.

Dinner at our apartment.

The time spent in Qingdao was good also, however as it was peak tourism season the city was about twice as busy as usual. This put a damper on a few things, but we were still able to hit the highlights, including beer in a bag.

After polishing off a seafood lunch on Beer Street in Qingdao.

Posing in front of the famous pavilion that is on all Tsingtao beer bottles.

Xian 西安 (July 17-19)

With the maximum "Five-A" tourist attraction rating by the Chinese government, the highlight of any trip to Xian are the world-famous terra cotta warriors. Built over 2000 years ago, each of the roughly 8,000 warriors has a unique face modeled on the real faces of warriors in the Qin emperor's personal army. The scope of the project is awe inspiring, with rows and rows of warriors in formation.

The warriors were discovered in 1974 by a local farmer who was digging a well and found a terra cotta head. After reporting the discovery to the government the farmer was awarded with 20,000 RMB, roughly US$3,000, or 10 years earnings for the farmer. The farmer is still alive and every Saturday and Sunday visits the site and signs souvenir books about the warriors. We were fortunate enough to be there on a Sunday and my dad got a book signed by the guy. Very cool. I snuck a photo of the guy while he was signing it. He seems like he's enjoying himself, at the time we saw him he was enjoying a cigar at the end of a long pipe.

Xian has tons of interesting history and we saw and did a lot of other cool things. The second highlight was biking around the old city wall which surrounds the city, a must if you visit Xian.

Yangtze River Cruise 长江 (July 20-23)

If you want to enjoy the spectacular sights of the Yangtze River and the 3 gorges, the best way to do so is in a "floating, air-conditioned bubble," as my dad described our ship, the Century Sky. In a country obsessed with star ratings, the Century Sky was truly 5-star, complete with HBO in the cabins and a guys-want-to-be-him-girls-want-to-be-with-him cruise director, Leo.

The first highlight of the cruise was the total eclipse of the sun, which we were fortunate enough to be in a perfect spot to see. On our second morning on the boat we went with the other cruise passengers to the White Emperor Palace, a pretty cool old palace on an island in the Yangtze. From there, equipped with our safety glasses to avoid "eye suicide", we were able to observe the moon slowly covering the sun. As the eclipse neared total, everything gradually grew darker, as if a giant dimmer switch on the sun was slowly being turned. The phenomenon was surreal. When the sun was finally fully covered a spontaneous cheer rang out from the crowd around us and we removed our safety glasses and for a bit over 4 minutes observed a once in a lifetime sight. Just awesome.

The second highlight of the cruise was in the afternoon on the same day of the eclipse. We had an excursion into the "Little Three Gorges" on a side stream off the Yangtze. Not sure what to expect we set out on a ferry from main cruise ship down a smaller river. After an hour on the ferry we arrived at a dock with lots of small wooden boats that were rowed by local boatsmen. The boatsmen ranged from 20 to 80 in age and were all shirtless (until about 10 years ago they were completely naked). A crew of 3 or 4 boatmen would steer a boat of a dozen or so tourists through narrow streams with impressive cliff faces on either side. At a few points the water level would be too shallow and the boatsmen would pull the boat over the rocky stream bed until we reached deeper water. During the trip the boatsmen sang a local song for us, which we returned by singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat".

Lowlight of the trip: The Three Gorges Dam. If you are going to "flood the Grand Canyon" as my mom described the flooding of the Three Gorges caused by the dam, you should at least have a cooler looking dam. I had images in my mind of the Hoover Dam (though I've never been there), which looks pretty impressive with it's towering rounded face. While the Three Gorges Dam is undoubtedly a massive engineering project, it doesn't look cool. It was pretty boring to visit in fact. On the plus side, I touched it while our ship was going through the locks.

Photos aren't cooperating now. I'll try to get some up soon though. In the meantime check out Megan's photos on Facebook.

The Joys of Grading

2009-07-13T15:41:00.003+08:00

With the conclusion of Megan and my first semester of teaching rapidly approaching, we've been spending a lot of time grading the final exams of our students. With over 120 students taking writing and oral exams, this is a fairly time consuming process. I graded roughly 1,100 pages of final exams, though about half of it was just multiple choice and fill in the blank stuff. Nevertheless, this is a fairly tedious task.

Every once in a while, however, a student writes something that makes me crack up (<-- an idiom I taught my students). I thought I'd share some of those times with you.

Grading the first part of the exam while students take the second part.

The first example occurred during the paragraph writing section of the test. The question my students had to answer was, "Who is an example of a hero? What personal qualities make this person a hero?" I was pleased to see that the topic sentence of one of my students paragraphs read:

"Jordan is an example of a hero."

W0w! You know what? I am a hero! I have been underestimating my the influence of my own teaching! I suspected that I had been making an impression, but based solely on the fact that most of the students are older than me I figured that they did not look up to me as a hero. Well, I suppose they do! At this point I was feeling pretty good about myself, but I continued reading. The following sentence:

"Tough and pliable make Jordan a hero."

Okay...I suppose I'm tough and pliable, though those seem like contradicting qualities for a person to have. I marked that one down as an ESL error and continued:

"For instance, on one night, Jordan had loose bowels..."

What?!? I can't recall once discussing the specifics of my bowel movements with my students, though perhaps he's aware of the effects some Chinese food can have on a foreigner. Maybe he's just assuming I've had loose bowels. I'm still holding out hope that my loose bowels are just one of my many heroic qualities. I continued:

"...but he had a very important match on the next day. In order to pursue victory, Jordan didn't give up. He persisted playing the whole game and his team got the victory. As the example shows, Jordan is an example of a hero."

At this point, gravely disappointed, I realized that my student was making the common mistake of referring to someone famous by just their first or last name, in this case Michael Jordan. As an avid sports fan, I even remember the game he's referring to, when Michael Jordan famously had one of his best games while sick with the flu during a game of the 1997 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. Oh well, maybe next semester I'll be someone's hero.

The real Jordan with loose bowels.

A few other funny lines from my exams:

"I am an example of a hero. Honesty, kindness, and stupid make the person a hero." There was no explanation of what he meant by "stupid" being a heroic quality.
"It is usually more difficult for evil people than kind people to make friends because almost no one prefer evil people." Good to know.
In a section about customs, I had students finish this sentence, "When you greet an old friend..." My favorite response was "...its acceptable to touch his body."
In a paragraph about the benefits vs. the costs of the Beijing Olympics, a student wrote "Firstly, history have told us every great event must come from money."

With that the first semester of teaching has come to a conclusion. I have learned a lot and perhaps will post on some specific reflections at some point. Next up: traveling for 4-6 weeks!

Qingdao Weekend

2009-06-22T18:28:00.004+08:00

Sorry for the delay in posting about this. The semester is coming to an end in the next 2-3 weeks so we've been busy with schoolwork.

Thursday, May 28 was a public holiday in China for the Dragon Boat Festival and since Megan and I do not have class on Wednesday (until recently, my new class is on Wednesday afternoon), we decided to take Friday off and have a long weekend vacation. We had been planning for weeks to travel to Sanya, a popular beach destination in Hainan Province, with our friends and colleagues Kerstan and Karen but in the end we decided the cost of the flights were more than we wanted to pay (we got flights to Singapore this summer for even cheaper! Thank you Tiger Airways!). Instead, we decided to make the short trip to Qingdao and get to know the city that we technically live in.

Armed with our Lonely Planet China guide and the excitement for a long weekend, we headed into town on Wednesday morning. Naturally, our first stop was our hotel, the Beach Castle Hotel, which was some sort of repurposed old German colonial building. The rooms were great and the location was perfect, right on the water in the old part of the town.

The sign right next to our hotel, how welcoming!

Right inside the main gate, you can see the prison to the right (which we think might also have rooms now) along with the main part of the hotel to the left.

Megan standing outside of the lovely Beach Castle Hotel

Wednesday afternoon was spent wandering along the coast of Qingdao, through pleasant parks and to the nearby beach: Qingdao No. 1 Bathing Beach (not because it is the best, just because there are 6, and who needs names anyway?). We were amused to see the beach attire reversed by gender from what we're used to in the States. The men all wore Speedoes, while the women, terrified by the prospect of a tan, were fully clothed or even layered. In China, as a status symbol of sorts, women try to stay as pale as possible. Physical laborers and peasants are tan because they spend their days working outside in the summer heat, so being tan has the connotation of being poor. I suspect that I am thought to be one of the wealthiest men in China thanks to my blindingly white complexion.

One of the parks we stumbled upon while walking along the ocean.

Part of the oceanside path near the No. 1 Bathing Beach

No. 1 Bathing Beach

On Wednesday night we went searching for a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet, but we fortunately ventured a little further and stumbled upon an even better dinner spot. We wandered through some alleys that, for those who are familiar with Shanghai, reminded us of a cross between the Xin Tian Di and Tiakang Lu areas. Like Xin Tian Di, the area consisted of old buildings that had been renovated and updated into a pleasant walking area. Like Taikang Lu, the alleys weren't as polished as Xin Tian Di and the area wasn't as blatently marketed towards foriegners. We found a great restaurant that overlooked a courtyard where performers played some traditional Chinese instruments, some that I had never seen before. It turned out to be a very pleasant first evening.

This area was quite hidden, we were lucky enough to see this little alleyway from the main street and decided that alleys aren't nearly as creepy in China as they are in the states, so we ventured in. It was a fortunate find!

There were tons of these statues all over this area, I think this guy was cooking some 串 (the kabob-line things that are all over the streets here). A little further up was a statue of a man smoking opium along with a few guys playing mahjong.

This was our view of the courtyard and performers from our seats in the restaurant. There were hardly any people there when we arrived, but by the time we left it was packed.

Thursday morning we set out again full of optimisim, but our mood quickly soured when we arrived at McDonald's for breakfast at 9:45 am only to find that breakfast was no longer being served. The woman at the counter didn't even look apologetic. We ended up settling for coffee.

So, with empty stomachs and a caffine buzz, we headed out to see some of the sights. We opted to check out Xiao Qingdao (小青岛), or Little Qingdao, first. Xiao Qingdao is a pennisula that juts into the bay in Qingdao and has a nice park on it, along with a light tower. We had to pay 15 RMB to get into the park, which was well worth it to get away from the holiday crowds. The park was very green and provided an escape from the noise and bustle of the city. Due to the relative isolation of the park, we decided to relax and sun bathe for a while instead of heading to the beach, which was overrun with Chinese vacationers. Despite choosing a less busy spot, we still got numerous looks from bypassers who couldn't believe that we were, GASP, exposing our skin to direct sunlight!

On our way out to 小青岛

A little closer view of 小青岛 with the real 青岛 in the background.

There are all these awesome old fishing boats that hang out just off the coast.

Jordan at the edge of the peninsula.

There was a pleasant, uncrowded path that went all the way around the little peninsula. Every side of 小青岛 had a different and pleasant view, so the walk was quite nice.

The lighthouse in the middle of the peninsula.

There are fishermen on all sides of the peninsula, and they must be quite nimble because Jordan and I tried to walk out a little further to get a better picture, but quickly realized our lives could be jeopardized if we tried to walk too far out on the rocks.

This is near where we sat out.

After a few hours in the sun we started to feel drained, but fortunately on the way back to the hotel we encountered our first opportunity to have beer in a bag. I had heard tell of this wonderful Qingdao phenomenon, so we were glad to try it out. For a measley 5 RMB we bought a massive amount of Tsingtao draft beer from a friendly neighborhood lady with a keg. My initial concern was with how to drink it, but then the lady produced a few straws and we were good to go.

The pijiu (啤酒, beer) break gave us ample enthusiasm to continue our sightseeing. We stopped by both the old German Catholic and Protestant Chruches. We were unable to get inside the Catholic church, but it was an impressive structure nonetheless. Interestingly, in the courtyard in front of the church we counted 7 sets of brides and grooms getting wedding photos taken. It did not appear that any were actually on their wedding day, but rather getting photos taken before the big event to put on large banners at the wedding reception (an opportunity Megan and I missed).

The Protestant Church was also an interesting piece of architecture from the outside, but the Lonely Planet guide was accurate in its description of the interior of the church as "Lutheran". The sanctuary was extremely plain, but I was glad to see that there appeared to be a few locals sitting in some of the pews praying. The most interesting part of the Protestant church was the bell tower, which still had the old bells and clock built by the Germans in 1908.

Thursday night we had a craving for Western food so we searched the internet for good restaurant and settled on Cassani, an Italian restaurant. It was a great choice. The ambiance, food, and service were all great (I had lasagna YUM!). While the dinner was quite a splurge when compared to our meager salaries, we ended up getting a ton of food, including cheesecake, gelato, and a bottle of wine for only US$60. A meal of equal quality in a similar restaurant in the States would easily be double.

Friday we started the day checking out the old German governor's mansion, which was one of the highlights of the trip for me. The mansion had been a vacation spot for Mao in 1957, and many other notable Chinese leaders stayed there with him. The rooms had apparently remained as they were when Mao stayed there, so it was a neat piece of history. The best part, though, was the building itself. A very cool and huge old German building.

Friday afternoon was finally time for us to check out the famous Tsingtao Brewery tour. We arrived on Qingdao Beer Street around 1 pm so we decided to eat at a seafood restaurant across from the brewery. The "menu" was a bunch of tubs filled with water and various ocean creatures. As we were in Qingdao, we had to get the Qingdao specialty gao la, or clams. We also got some sort of prawn/crab hybrid. The choices were great and we enjoyed the food along with some fresh Tsingtao beer that made the trip across the street from the brewery.

The brew tour itself was great. Tsingtao brewery has quite an interesting history, having been established by the Germans and later controlled by the Japanese, the KMT, the Communist Party (you would be amazed by the progress made at the brewery during the glorious 9th 5 Year Plan!), and finally as a publicly traded company. The "Drunken House" was also a highlight, meant to imitate the feeling of drunkenness. The room was actually just very slanted in one direction so you were fighting gravity while walking though. All in all, the Tsingtao Brewery seemed to be a Chinese version of the Heineken Brewery I visited a few years ago in Amsterdam. That is to say: large, interesting, and everything slightly lower quality (except for the beer, which I find quite comparable to Heineken).

We wrapped up our weekend staying at the Intercontinental Hotel, which was AWESOME. We had seen our share of the sights and we're only a few hours away if we ever want to see more, so we took advantage of staying in the nice hotel by laying by the indoor pool and watching movies on an actual TV for once as we only watch movies on our tiny laptop screen here. It was awesome. While looking for a place for dinner on Saturday night we stumbled into some sort of fundraising event for the Qingdao Expat Community that was being held in one of the hotel restaurants. We just thought we were paying for a buffet dinner, but it turned out we were buying tickets to this event (if we were Chinese we probably wouldn't have been able to buy the tickets). The buffet was awesome, they had a GREAT Filipino band (as Filipino bands tend to be), and we got a lot of nice smiles from other westerners. I felt like I was at some event at TAC or the American Club in Singapore. What luck!

We definitely felt like VIP when we turned on the TV at the Intercontinental and found this! Our daily lives are not very luxurious here, so every little thing excites us!

We forgot beds this soft existed.

Spying on Jordan from the bathroom- only super nice hotels give you that luxury.

Our weekend concluded with a church service (also in the Intercontinental) on Sunday morning for the Qingdao International Christian Fellowship. The community was great and there were a few hundred people in the congregation. The music and the preaching weren't the best I've heard, but effort is what counts and the feeling of being in a church service again was great. We will be sure to attend again if we in the area on a Sunday again.

I'm having trouble uploading photos so for now check out this album on Facebook (you don't need a Facebook account to view them). Hopefully I'll be able to add photos to this later.

Not your Average Spa

2009-06-19T15:27:00.007+08:00

For my entire life I've suffered with headaches and migraines. Over the years I've tried a variety of different techniques to tackle the pain: medicine, yoga, physical therapy, chiropractic treatments, stretches, breathing techniques, special diets, you name it! While I lived in Singapore my mom and I would religiously visit our local reflexology friends at Causeway Point and get weekly foot and back massages which seemed to be helpful (plus, who doesn't like a good rub down?) So, when our new friends here in Huangdao told Jordan and I that they'd found an AMAZING place for reflexology we jumped at the opportunity to test it out. We woke up this morning pretty stoked for a 2 hour, 60RMB massage (less than $10 per person!) However, we were sorely mistaken about what this 'massage' would entail.

We began with a pleasant foot soak in tea infused water, while our feet were soaking our backs were gently rubbed by two jolly looking Chinese men. We then sat back in our soft recliners and sighed peacefully while they rubbed oil over our freshly cleaned feet. Then it began...

While punching our feet and laughing as we tightly gripped the lazy boy arms in pain, the Chinese men proved to be much stronger than their tiny physiques let off. I remember thinking the first few rounds of foot reflexology in Singapore were painful after not having been in a while, so I decided I needed to toughen up and try to enjoy this 'massage'.

After about 50 minutes of the foot massage, I had begun to unclench. We were then ushered into the next room and asked to lay face-down on the massage table. Being spoiled by the Singapore American Club and the Houstonian Spas I was slightly disappointed at the lack of pre-massage dips in the sauna, freshly cleaned long white robes, lavender and eucalyptus oils, and soothing music to accompany my full body massage, however I decided I could survive getting a back massage in my jeans with my face pressed into a questionably 'clean', mildewy scented towel. I was determined to enjoy the back massage because my headaches always seem to temporarily subside after a good massage.

While I did feel completely satisfied with the back massage portion, I became slightly nervous when I thought I was done, and then looked over at Jordan who had somehow lost his shirt and had glass cups stuck to his exposed butt. I watched for a second as Jordan's masseuse lit a fire under each cup and quickly inverted it on Jordan's back creating some sort of giant hickey. I asked Jordan how it felt and he seemed perfectly content so I decided if he could handle it, i could too.

A diagram of how cupping is performed.

The skin gets sucked about an inch into the glasses. There is a feeling of sweet relief when they are removed.

Little did I know that Jordan's circulation is much better than mine and he therefore got to skip the 'scratching' part of the experience. I was asked to take off my shirt and lay face down on the table while my sadistic masseuse used a tooth-less comb type object to literally scratch my back for 20 minutes. He smiled and told me this will make my headaches better- yeah we'll see! After the scratching came my turn for cupping. While Jordan and most other people say that cupping isn't too painful I'm going to go ahead and liken it to waxing; After the first 5 times or so it's not that bad, but the first 5 times you want to cry and slap the person inducing such pain on you. I tried to go to a happy place, and that happy place did in fact look a little bit like the Houstonian Spa, so I was a little bummed to open my eyes and find myself still in a smelly room with 10 glasses fire-sealed to my neck, back, butt and legs.

All in all, we survived and I'm going to try to keep an open mind. If I miraculously feel brand new tomorrow (which I was promised) then perhaps I'll go back, and after 5 more sessions I will be convincing all of you that scratching and cupping is the wave of the future. Otherwise, brace yourself if you ever happen upon a Chinese 'Spa'.

Notice how Jordan's marks are nicely shaped and his back only looks slightly strange?

Now, draw your attention to my back which looks a bit like I was run over by a bus.

Miscellany

2009-06-01T19:59:00.002+08:00

Before I post on some of our more recent events, I wanted to give a quick update on what we've been up to the last month or so.

New Class

For the last 3 weeks I have been teaching a new class because one of the other foreign teachers had a "disagreement" with his class. The class is an oral class and I guess all the previous teacher did was have one student per class give an oral presentation and then a few students would ask questions. The students had complained that they were only getting to practice their oral English one time in the semester, and the rest of the time they spent sitting and listening. Also, the class has a textbook the students had to pay for, but the teacher refused to use it.

After many complaints from students and many requests by the administration to change his teaching practices, the teacher still refused to make any changes. So, the class was given to me. It kind of bums me out that a foreign teacher can be so stubborn and the school can't really do anything about it. The teacher is still getting paid as much as he was before, and he has one less class. His stubbornness and refusal to cooperate actually benefitted him. Unfortunately I see many foreign teachers taking advantage of their "foreigness" in this way. Oftentimes the school will do anything to please the foreigners, even if we're being total jerks.

The students are undergraduate English majors which is quite a contrast to my post-graduate students from various majors. The English majors are significantly better at English and much more enthusiastic. It makes teaching the class a ton of fun and also much easier than my post-grad students. With the post-grad students I feel like I have to struggle to get any sort of response from them, but the English majors happily volunteer answers to questions. I'm hoping next semester I'll be able to teach some more English majors.

CUBA Game

Since it's founding in 1998, all major Chinese universities have competed in the Chinese University Basketball Association (CUBA). The CUBA is the equivalent the NCAA, but only for basketball, and Shandong University of Science and Technology is the CUBA equivalent of Kansas or Duke. Our school won a CUBA National Championship in either 2001, 2002, or 2004. When I've asked various students or other teachers I have heard all three answers. I've even had the opportunity to see the CUBA National Championship trophy, which is an awesome golden backboard and rim (think slightly larger Nerf hoop, but pure gold), but it doesn't even say the year on it. The CUBA wikipedia site says 2002, for what it's worth.

Regardless of what year they've won, SUST has won one national title (out of only 10 so far) and nearly every year they make it to at least the Elite 8 of the CUBA Tournament, usually the Final Four. They are a powerhouse. I have told my students that if they ever know of a game that I could watch they should let me know.

One evening I received an email that SUST would be playing Hunan Normal University at our school's gymnasium the following afternoon at 2:30 pm. He said that finding tickets would be difficult but he wanted to let me know anyway. Fortunately, Megan and I were able to land tickets from our well connected friends Kerstan and Karen, and we headed to the game. When we arrived, we learned from some other spectators that this game was the Quarterfinals for the national tournament, so SUST was in the Elite 8.

The gym was packed with students when we arrived and we found our seats which were in the very front row behind the visiting team's bench. Apparently the tournament is set up in a home and home format, where a game is played at each team's campus and the team with the highest aggregate score continues to the next round.

The game was a blast. The pregame and halftime festivities were half of the show. There were "Basketball Babies" (what they call cheerleaders here), mascots (a panda, a pig, and an inflated basketball-headed creature), drum and singing performances, giant flags, and traditional dancers. Also, the student section was arranged to spell "CUBA" with the colors of their shirts. While the students clearly cheered for our school to win, everything official was completely unbiased. The cheerleaders did not openly support one team or the other, the student section was comprised of students wearing both schools' colors and spelled "CUBA" rather than "SUST" and each team had an equally large flag.

The actual game was a blowout. SUST dominated the game from start to finish, winning 99-71. This was the first leg of the match, so aggregate score counted, and they had incentive to run up the score. The level of play was pretty high. The players rivaled NCAA Division 3 athletes in both physicality and skill, but the coaching left a lot to be desired. With the exception of a few inbounds plays, the game was basically unorganized streetball. There were times that some players did not even pretend to get back on defense, but their coaches did not seem to care. A well coached Division 3 team like Calvin would probably run all over these teams.

Since the game they have had the second game of the match at the other school's campus and SUST is successfully into the Final Four, so there will be another game on campus so I hope to watch it too.

Here are some photos of the game:

Cameraman for CCTV 5 (China's ESPN). This dude was texting on his cellphone before he saw me about to take a picture and pretended to be filming.

Karen, Kerstan, and Megan in our seats before the game.

The student section spelling out "CUBA"

The players from the teams threw some mini-basketballs into the crowd and I caught one!

Halftime drummers.

The inflated basketball-headed mascot with a guy inside it walking around.

Halftime dancers.

Game action from our seats. Our seats were right behind the opponent's bench.

Most of the gym.

Final score: SUST 99 - Hunan Normal University 71

Basketball Team Dinner

My weekend basketball team, Team Bangbang, recently had a team dinner after one of our games a week or so ago. We ate at an outdoor barbeque restaurant in Huangdao and it was great chance to do something social with both the American and Chinese members of the team. Almost every player on the team has a wife or girlfriend too, so all in all our group was about 12 or 14 people.

The conversation was held half in English and half in Mandarin, with the bilingual among us translating for the less lingually inclined. Those of us who knew very little English or Mandarin tried our best to keep up and pitch in with a few words of our own. Many toasts were attempted in toaster's foreign language with laughter usually following. My Mandarin toast was the embarssingly simple "我们是朋友!” (Women shi pengyou!/We are friends!).

These truly cross-cultural moments are some of my favorites in China, and make me extremely thankful that Megan and I decided to come here.

Here are a few photos:

Our table outdoors at the barbeque. A great evening.

Good food and drink.

Three of our Chinese teammates showing their strength: Jack, Li, and Gao.

An interesting insight into male/female relationships in China: Jack (left) ran home after our game to change and told us not to tell his wife that he was playing basketball because she doesn't want him to play so much. There are things that I do or don't do at Megan's request, but something healthy like basketball isn't one of them.

Team Bangbang: (top L-R) Gao, Hunter, Roland, Li (bottom L-R) Jack, Me, Kyle, Kerstan

The wives and girlfriends.

Back in Business

2009-05-31T17:30:00.003+08:00

The lack of posting here for the last month has been caused partly by being busy, partly by lack of motivation, but mostly by China. For reasons unimaginable, they have blocked blogs so I haven't been able to access the blog myself.

Well, thanks to the help of a fellow CIEE Teach in China participant from our orientation group, Peter Youngblood, I was able to get around the block. We are up and running. Expect more posting to come very soon!

Long Weekend Recap

2009-05-03T18:19:00.007+08:00

With Friday being Chinese Labor Day, Megan and I were more than happy to have another 3-day weekend to enjoy. After sleeping in on Friday I headed into Huangdao with Kerstan as he had stumbled upon some sort of basketball league with some of his other Western friends in town. Apparently last weekend they were playing at an outdoor court and were invited to play an organized game with some sort of official club team. Of course they accepted and had the chance to play a full court game with officials and a scoreboard and everything.

They were promised another game on Friday but needed more players, so I was happily recruited to play. One of the players on our team also managed to buy us uniforms for wholesale price, though they feature an image of motorcycles on the front with the words "Bangbang - Live Action Live Life" on the front. Nonetheless, we all looked "uniform" so we were ready to play. Our team features 4 American and 3 Chinese players, most of which speak pretty good English. Team Bangbang was born.

The game on Friday was a full four quarter game which our team won 87-73. It was close at the beginning, but towards the end we wore the other team down as we had 2 subs while they only had 5 guys. Also, their cigarette breaks during time outs and half time couldn't have helped. The whole thing was organized by this 50ish year old Chinese man who rolled up in a shiny new car (a clear status symbol), honked and waved to everyone on the court, and then got out and blew a whistle to signal 5 minutes till tipoff. We immediately dubbed him "the Godfather."

After the game, Kerstan, Kyle (another player and the owner of the Western bar Catch-22), and I went to a driving range nearby. For 40 RMB (US$7) we could hit about as many balls as we wanted. The driving range was placed right at the base of a few small mountains and is quite removed from the city so it was quite pretty and peaceful. Plus, I haven't hit golf balls since I've been here so I was glad to get that chance again. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera, but if I go back I'll be sure to take some photos.

Kyle has recently decided to turn his "Bar & Lounge" into a "Bar & Grill" so he has been experimenting with serving food. As he's just starting this, he offered to bring us back to the bar to have a free meal so his employees could practice serving groups of people. We met up with Megan and Karen and the five of us had a nice Western style meal. I'm pretty sure we all ordered bacon cheeseburgers, which is something I've been craving for a long time. It hit the spot, and it helped that it was on the house. Kerstan was so hungry he ordered a second bacon cheeseburger, which he intended to pay for, but it arrived without the actual burger. Kyle told Kerstan not to pay for and then explained to his cook that the whole point of a burger was to have the beef in it. Apparently it was still a pretty nice BLTish sandwich.

Saturday evening we were invited to the home of a Canadian couple who teach at the local international school (which is about 95% Korean apparently, and only has 6 or 7 kids per grade) for lasagna. This couple had been friends with Kerstan and Karen for a while and Megan and Karen had ran into them the day before which got us the invite. They have two really cute daughters who were about 6 and 8 years old and adopted from China, which is why the couple decided to come to China for a few years to teach. Also, the woman, Bernice, was first generation Dutch-Canadian, so we had quite a bit to talk about. Also, you can't go wrong with lasagna. It was a great evening, and one that made me forget for a while that we are even in China.

This afternoon we had the second game on the schedule for team Bangbang, this time against the Godfather's team. We had heard that his team is the best in Huangdao, so we were eager to play them. The game, while a lot of fun, was pretty rough from the beginning. I had flashbacks to my days playing at SAS with Chinese refs and Chinese opponents who seem to be in cahoots.

With the deck stacked against us (at least from my perspective), the game was pretty close throughout. Towards the end of the third quarter or beginning of the fourth quarter our team had built up a lead of 8 or so. Before long, however, and seemingly without a big run from the other team, the score was tied. We tried to fix the scoreboard but everyone insisted it was correct. So, we kept playing, after being told there were 6 minutes remaining in the game. We had possession and scored to take a two point lead. After a possession for each team without scoring, our opponents scored to tie the game, 53-53. We brought the ball up court like any other possession, but as soon as we crossed half court the refs blew the whistles to signal the end of the game.

Needless to say, we were pretty upset. I was probably the worst offender, shouting at the ref and signaling to the ref that we did not even have someone yell "10, 9, 8...." like at the end of every other quarter. It was so clearly rigged. We were grumbling to ourselves and one of our teammates' wives who is Chinese said "Please don't be angry, this is the way it has to be." I suppose that is true, this team was the "best" team in the area, and apparently their company sponsors the upkeep for the court that we were playing on, so they just can't lose.

We talked a bit about how in China things are significantly less democratic (obviously) than in America. Megan commented that oftentimes people don't earn things by merit as they would in the States (and how we should have by winning the game), but rather things are given to people based on status. Our opponents were captained by the Godfather and we were playing on their home court. They had the status, so we simply were not allowed to beat them. We had to maintain the natural order by ending the game in a tie. I'd rather lose than tie (still bitter).

Anyway, it was still great fun to play and there is talk of an all-city tournament with eight teams in a few weeks that we'll probably play in.

Warming up before the game. Notice the older guy in the sweater and collared shirt. No one knew who he was, but he went through our layup lines with us and seemed like a nice guy.

Game action (though you can't see me in the picture).

Drama Salon

2009-04-20T17:40:00.005+08:00

Megan and I were invited to an event on Saturday night called "Drama Salon" put on by the Foreign Languages Club at the university. While there was a distinct absence of hair cutting or styling of any kind, the event turned out to be a good time. A few groups of students put on some skits in English and Japanese, but the show could be more accurately described as a multi-lingual talent/variety/game show.

The Salon was held in a large classroom with a bit of a stage at the front, and when we arrived we found that a few seats in the front row had been saved for us. As always Megan and I, along with a Japanese professor, were the guests of honor. On this occasion, that meant that on the desk in front of our seats sat a banana, 2 oranges, a pile of sunflower seeds, a few candies and a bottle of water. Megan and I are happily growing accustomed to this this kind of hospitality everywhere we go now.

Our seats stocked with sunflower seeds and fruit!

Waiting for the show to start.

The show started with one of the emcees of the event crooning a popular Chinese ballad. The guy was an absolute lady killer. His voice was good and he had the moves to pull it off, complete with the mic cocked vertically and the classic "eyes-closed-arm-outstretched" move that R&B singers have been perfecting for decades. Years of karaoke have clearly paid off for this gentleman. There were several more songs performed throughout the drama salon and none lived up to this first song.

The star singer. This photo does not do him justice.

Two other singers who were not quite as charismatic as the first singer.

After the opening song there was a performance of a famous Japanese folk story that I'm pretty sure I read in Japanese class in college. I didn't understand it then and I didn't understand it now, but it involved a girl who has a horrible deformity on her face, which was displayed in the skit by sticking a ping pong ball to a girls face.

The girl with the ping pong ball on her face.

The Japanese skit was followed by an English skit about a guy and girl who lament to their friends that they need a significant other. Coincidentally, one of the guy's friends is the brother of one of the girl's friends, and the siblings decide to set the lonely pair up on a blind date. When the time for the date comes the boy introduces himself to the girl and declares her the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. Unfortunately, the girl was revolted by the boy and ran out on the date. The moral of the story, as recited by the entire cast at the end of the skit, was "Love should be expected, not made."

Next came the game show portion of the evening, in which volunteers from the crowd were made to play musical chairs on the stage. If a contestant was eliminated, they had to perform some sort of punishment in front of the crowd. The punishments included popping a balloon between the back of another person, making the noise of 5 different animals, or singing a song in front of the group. The winner of the game, who was quite a ham, decided he wanted to sing in front of the group as well, even though he didn't have to. He wasn't a great singer, but his song was redeemed when about 1/3 of the way through two of the hosts and the runner-up decided the urge to sing was too strong and joined the winner on stage for a spontaneous quartet. It was awesome.

Musical chairs!

One of the punishments. They're popping a balloon between them.

The spontaneous quartet. The winner of musical chairs is far right, and very into the song.

There were a few more skits and songs, but those were definitely the highlights of the night. We hope to be invited to more similar events in the future.

Hoops

2009-04-16T20:23:00.000+08:00

I've found that if I only play basketball when I am invited, I will still play at least 3 times a week. After perhaps only ping pong, basketball is the most popular sport in China. Based on the huge number of hoops on our campus that are almost always filled with students playing, I would say that that is true. So naturally my students frequently ask me to play with them and typically I accept.

I must admit that I do not have as much fun playing basketball here as I do in the US. The main reason for this is the considerably low level of competition , which results from that fact that none of the students have ever been formally coached. Instead, the students try to imitate their favorite NBA players' moves, resulting in varying levels of hilarity. Also, no one ever tries to shoot from outside the key. Generally, there are just 10 people standing in the key at one time, and no one has any space to do much of anything. Adding to the lack of space is that everyone just plays half court games. A few weeks ago I played a 6 on 6 game, half court.

Due to my height, I basically just stand under the hoop, collect missed shots, and make layups. This is a pretty boring way to play, so I try to play like Chris Webber in his heyday with the Sacramento Kings. I stand at the high post, get the ball, hold it as high as I can, and make passes to cutting teammates.

One of the most disappointing things about playing basketball here is that people rarely keep score. They just play until they don't feel like playing anymore. Today the students I played with actually kept score, and I enjoyed the game a ton more. Players were more competitive, especially when it got close to game point. Maybe it is just my capitalistic American nature, but I think sports are way more fun when you're actually, you know, competing.

Here they are asking me if "Rebound" is a verb or a noun.

English Corner

2009-04-02T17:32:00.004+08:00

Last Wednesday a few of my students invited me to attend their English Corner on Friday afternoon at 4PM. I of course accepted without hesitation because I have started to realize that every event Jordan and I are invited to seem to end up being pretty entertaining.

Jordan and I both finish classes on Friday afternoons at 4, so our usual Friday afternoon routine is to take a bus into the city after class, buy some movies, get Pizza Hut, go home, binge. Last Friday we decided to postpone our ritual and I forced Jordan to come with me to this English Corner. There were two classrooms packed with English students, and Jordan and I both entered a room full of cheering undergrads (which is basically what we have come to expect upon entering a room, so everyone prepare yourself to treat us with that kind of respect when we get home). The students had already arranged the desks into groups of about ten, so Jordan and I were both ushered to different groups. On the board, the students leading the English Corner had already written our discussion questions:

1. What is your opinion on the clone?

2. Where do you think the women should stay? At the home or at the company?

3. What do you think about the gays' marriage?

Let me tell you, it was an interesting 2 hours. I tried to correct any grammatical errors I saw in the questions, but mainly I was just interested to hear what they thought about these topics since I doubt they have many opportunities to speak freely on such "taboo" topics here. We basically touched on each question and then started talking about life in America. How do Americans feel about the clone? Jordan was apparently asked if he "was a gay marriage" (I guess they didn't realize that we were married, or perhaps they still were struggling with what exactly it meant to be gay).

I saw a bunch of my students and I was impressed with how dedicated they are to their studies. If only I had made an effort to start some sort of Chinese Corner at CU, and then actually attend it on Friday afternoon!

We have already been invited back to English Corner this Friday afternoon, and we're looking forward to seeing what questions they'll have this time.

Early Morning Madness!

2009-03-21T18:10:00.001+08:00

My favorite sporting event of the year, March Madness, is upon us and I wasn't going to let a 12 hour time difference or a lack of American TV get me down. Quite the contrary, in fact. Armed with CBS' free online live streams of every game and the company of equally enthusiastic college basketball fans, this might be my most closely watched NCAA Tournament ever. It doesn't hurt that Michigan is playing in the tournament for the first time in almost half my life.

At 4:55 am on Friday morning my alarm went off and I quietly left our apartment and jogged up three flights of stairs to our 5th floor neighbor Kerstan's apartment. When I knocked on the door he already had his laptop set up to a projector preparing for the 5:00 am start of the Washington/Mississippi St. game. With both Kerstan and Karen being Washington alums the game was of greater interest to me than it usually would have been.

The CBS online stream of the game was flawless, and we were able to watch the game at the highest quality settings. It was at least as good as watching the game on TV in the States.

Watching the first half of the Washington/Mississippi St. game projected on the wall. It was still dark outside so the picture wasn't compromised by encroaching sunlight.

Karen and Kerstan cheering on the UW Huskies with coffee in hand around 5:30 am.

Fortunately, Washington ran away with their game and were ahead by double digits for most of the second half. That game finished around 6:55 am, giving me 15 minutes until the 7:10 am tipoff of the Michigan/Clemson game. I ran back downstairs and woke up Megan to see if she was interested in watching the game. She mumbled that I should try again at halftime. Back upstairs Kerstan, Karen, and I checked through scores to see the hits our brackets had taken so far in the early stages of the tournament. Finally, Michigan and Clemson tipped off!

The tipoff of the Michigan/Clemson game! Go Blue! Despite 3 layers of curtains, the sunlight was starting to dim the picture projected on the wall.

About 15 minutes into the first half, Kerstan had to go teach his 8 a.m. class so I was sending text messages to him throughout the rest of the game updating him on the score of both the Michigan game and the American/Villanova game, where Villanova narrowly escaped an upset. He told me later that as I updated him he was writing the scores on the board for his students, who he (like me) made fill out NCAA tournament brackets.

At halftime, with Michigan leading by 3, I went downstairs and this time successfully woke up Megan. I started a pot of coffee for her and ran back upstairs so I would not miss the start of the second half. Megan followed 5 minutes later, just when halftime was wrapping up.

Megan and Karen watching the Michigan/Clemson game and the Villanova/American game. This is around 8:30 am. Notice the shorter curtain in the background - that is actually Kerstan's bedsheet that we used to try to block the light.

Around 10:15 Kerstan returned from class and I had had time to shower and change after the Michigan win and we met back in his apartment to catch the later games. We ended up watching UCLA/VCU and Illinois/W. Kentucky side by side, which both turned out to be pretty exciting, until about 12:30. With that, I went and ate lunch and prepared to teach my 2:00 pm class, my only class on Fridays. All in all, one of my most enjoyable March Madness watching experiences ever.

Watching the UCLA/VCU and Illinois/W. Kentucky games side by side on laptops with a big bag of sunflower seeds, center.

Impromptu Life

2009-03-18T17:30:00.004+08:00

In my classes I have organized an activity to improve the students' oral English by having them give impromptu speeches. I spent a lesson teaching tips and strategies for the speeches and then gave an example impromptu speech of my own by selecting a topic out of a hat and delivering a short speech for the class. Now each class 5 students give impromptu speeches of their own. I told the students that this activity will help their confidence to use their English when they do not have a lot of time to prepare; to think on their feet.

Similarly, everything in life here seems impromptu and I had a good example of that today.

Last night one of Megan's students texted her to ask if she could give a speech at the opening ceremony of a Foreign Languages Festival today. Unfortunately (or fortunately), Megan had a class at the time of the event so she had to decline. I mentioned that if they could not find anyone else, I'd offer to speak. I have Wednesdays off so I figured I should do something. The students immediately texted back and said it would be great if I could do it (they sure spent a long time looking for a replacement for Megan). They did not give much information other than that I would have to give some opening remarks for about 5 minutes to students who are interested in participating in the events of the Foreign Languages Festival. The students suggested we meet at 4:15 for the ceremony which started at 4:30.

I did not think much about the event today and I went about my normal business of lesson planning. At 4:15 I met the students and they led me over to where the opening ceremony for this festival was held. As we walked, I was told the festival held English speaking and debate contests, drama contests, and showed some English movies. Anyone could sign up for these events and my job was to encourage the students to do this and join their "English Corner" clubs.

I expected this would be a casual event, like a club fair at an American college, so I didn't really plan my speech. However, like most things since I've arrived in China my expectation did not meet reality. We walked into an auditorium with roughly 500 students sitting in the audience and a panel of ten "distinguished guests" on the stage. To the left of the panel was a podium with the university crest on it and flowers surrounding it. I saw several photographers and one guy filming the event with a large camera. The students who brought me to the event sat me down in the front row of the audience, nearest the podium, and said that two people would say some things in Chinese and then I would be the third person to speak. A REAL LIFE IMPROMPTU SPEECH!

Next to me sat an older Japanese man in a suit (thank goodness I threw on some khakis!) who was reviewing his prepared speech for the students who were studying Japanese. I said a brief "konnichiwa" and "hajimemashite" (hooray 4 years of Japanese study!) and then starting thinking about what I would say. At that time the event started and a few of the panel members spoke for about 5 minutes each and towards the end of the second speech I heard "....Jordan..." and the speaker was motioning me to the stage.

I got up there and spoke for a few minutes about the importance of learning foreign languages and how this Festival is such a good opportunity to practice and everyone who can should sign up for the events. It was a poor speech, definitely not my best.

After me the Japanese guy got up and spoke for about 10 minutes, pausing for translation to Chinese. I've rarely seen a 5'2", 120 pound Japanese man so animated. His speech reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of "The Office" where Dwight gives a speech at a sales conference and, following Jim's advice, speaks very passionately: shouting and hitting the podium in the style of history's greatest dictators. It was very intense. Of what little Japanese I could understand he was repeatedly emphasizing the importance of studying.

Once the Japanese guy was done, a few more speeches were given in Chinese for the next 15 or 20 minutes and then everyone got up to leave. On the way out I asked the students who brought me there if what I said was appropriate and if they thought everyone understood. They said that the students understood and that my speech was perfect. I'm sure they were just being polite, but I suppose an ESL audience is very forgiving.

Homework

2009-03-10T14:48:00.002+08:00

The following is a homework assignment that I have given all my classes to read between today and Thursday. I've also given a few questions for them to answer to check their comprehension. I'm using the assignment for selfish purposes: I want them all to understand March Madness so that next week I can have them all fill out brackets. The educational benefit? Minimal. Fun for me? Great.

March Madness is a phenomenon that grips American sports fans and non-fans alike from the first week of March through the first week of April. March Madness is the nickname that is given to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments. These tournaments determine the National Champions of college basketball and are more popular in America than the NBA Playoffs.

The NCAA tournaments are an American tradition that sends millions of fans into a synchronized frenzy each year. It is this craziness that gives the tournament its nickname: “March Madness.” March Madness is the excitement of 65 teams competing for college basketball's biggest prize. It's the last-second baskets, the joy of winning to play another day, and the agony of losing and going home.

In this article, we will discuss the brackets of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and look at how teams are selected and how the champions of college basketball are determined.

There are 327 college basketball teams, and each one begins every basketball season with one dream -- winning the National Championship. But before these teams can win the championship, they must qualify to be invited to the tournament. Sixty-five teams are granted invitations.

Teams for both the men's and women's tournament are chosen by a selection committee, which is made up of select university athletic directors and conference commissioners. The selection committee meets to choose the teams deserving of an invitation. Most teams have played between 30 and 35 games in the season. The results of these games are used to determine who are the best 65 teams in America. These 65 teams are selected to play in the tournament. The decisions are always announced on television on a Sunday called Selection Sunday.

The field of 65 teams is divided into four geographical regions. Each region has teams that are assigned a seed number of 1 through 16, with the best team in the region awarded the 1 seed. One region of the men's tournament actually includes 17 teams, with the two lowest-ranked teams playing an opening-round game to gain the No. 16 seed (the worst seed) in that region. The tournament is single-elimination, meaning if you lose one game, you are out of the tournament.

In the first round of the tournament, the number 1 seed plays the number 16 seed, the number 2 seed plays the number 15 seed, the number 3 seed plays the number 14 seed and so on until the number 8 seed plays the number 9 seed.

Traditionally, the highest seeds (1 through 8) have enjoyed more success than the lower seeds (9 through 16) because they are the better teams. Sometimes a lower seed (a worse team) beats a higher seed (a better team) and when that happens it is called an upset. Upsets are very exciting because a team that few people expected to win actually won. For example, if a number 12 seed beat a number 5 seed, that would be called an “upset.”

While it sounds complicated, the NCAA tournament is actually pretty simple. The tournament keeps subtracting teams until there is only one. That team is the champion of college basketball.

The NCAA tournament often displays the skills of players hoping to play in the NBA in the future. Most famous American NBA players have played in the NCAA Tournament. For example, Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, and Tim Duncan all played in March Madness.

Blueberry Lay's: Natural & Cool

2009-03-07T17:18:00.009+08:00

Last weekend Megan and I were invited by our new friends and colleagues, Kerstan and Karen, to go to a popular foreigner's bar in Huangdao called Catch 22. The bar reminded me of some bars I have been to in the States, with a pool table and foosball table, American music on the speakers, and several TVs playing sports (although the sports were usually soccer or rugby).

Kerstan is volunteering as an intern of sorts for the bar, helping with some marketing research, so we got to meet the owner Kyle. Kyle was maybe 30 years old or so and had been living in China for about 5 years. His primary business was that he owned and operated an English language school and he opened the bar about 2 years ago as a side project for fun. He was a really friendly guy, and not the type of person who you would expect to meet owning a bar in China (my stereotype for a foreign bar owner in Asia is not positive). He quasi-offered us to work at his English language school if we had some time and wanted some supplemental income. Good guy to know.

Megan and Karen at Catch 22.

Kyle (bar owner), Karen, Kerstan, me.

A bar down the road from Catch 22. This one is for all the Ron Paul fans out there.

Week 2 of teaching is in the books. We're starting to get the hang of teaching and we're finding it a bit more enjoyable now that we're getting to know the students a little bit. We still have a lot to learn, but it feels nice to be in a routine again.

The students are great, and they often write or say unintentionally hilarious comments. This might actually be my favorite part of teaching. Megan taught a class on Western wedding traditions (a natural topic since we have thousands of wedding photos to show off) and asked some of her students to compare and contrast Chinese and Western weddings. Some of the best responses:

"In China, guests ~~should~~ can drink as much as he can, if you say you can't drink too much, this will make the master unhappy."
"Chicken and ~~attack~~ cock are necessary in China. There are few animals in Western weddings."
"The bride will be droven by the car the groom arranged to the groom's, and the groom will come to welcome her. The car line is quite long, the more car means the more rich you are. Of course the car should be B.M.W. Benze and so on."

We agree there are too few animals at Western weddings. The next person who invites Megan and I to a wedding should expect that we will show up in a Benze with both a chicken and a cock. Also, we will drink as much as we can so the master will not be unhappy.

Also, I asked a student about what sports he liked and he responded: "I like all the balls, basket, volley, ping-pong." Good stuff.

Another interesting tid-bit is how much the Chinese students love the American TV show Prison Break. I have a student whose English name is "Scorfield," which I guess is the last name of the main character in the show. Another student asked me during a break in class if I knew why one of the characters in Prison Break was named "T-Bag." I didn't know (although I had some theories), but then I asked what he thought and he gave me a very sexually explicit answer. Fortunately, he is a fairly poor student most of his explanation was lost in translation.

Finally, Megan and I found blueberry flavor Lay's potato chips this week and had to give them a try. When we opened the bag it smelled of blueberry muffins. Unfortunately, the taste wasn't quite as pleasant. It was the type of food where we couldn't decide if we liked it or not. The first taste was sweet, like artificial blueberry, but once that flavor dissolved on your tongue the saltiness of a potato chips appeared. After having about 5 chips each we decided that we did not like them after all. Another culinary adventure!

Natural & Cool!

Initial excitement (followed by disappointment).

Building GA9 Apartment#202, sounds homey right?

2009-02-28T16:23:00.005+08:00

I decided it's time to put up some photos of our little apartment. Our place has two bedrooms, a pretty spacious sitting room and a tiny kitchen. We have yet to decide whether we're going to put the money and energy into buying wall decorations for the year we're here, so currently all we have up is a map of China, a LOVELY Mickey Mouse clock that we were fortunate enough to inherit from the previous tenant, and a Michigan football calendar. Apparently there is a weekly market just outside of campus that sells plants and rugs and other such items to make our apartment seem a little less stark. Our only problem is we can't seem to figure out when this alleged market is, we were told by a Chinese student that it's every six days "just like church", however it's not on the same day each week. Once we figure out this whole market business we'll probably find something to cover up our stained and scratched walls, so bear that in mind!

This is one of the apartment buildings for foreign teachers, there are 10 apartments in each building but I think ours is only about half occupied.

(our place is on the left side, second floor)

That's our door on the left side (notice- no doorknob, it's quite a task at times to get in)

The view right when you open our front door, WELCOME!

A different view of the room, I wanted everyone to see our map

Right when you come in the front door this is the view if you look to your left

This is our second bedroom, we have turned it into a study/storage/laundry room

Our tiny kitchen

The refrigerator was in the sitting room when we first got here, I'm not sure why we're the only ones who thought it was more logical in the kitchen. I suppose it does take up about 1/4 of our counter space, but it was definitely worth moving!

Since we can't drink the tap water we bought a water cooler, next to the water cooler is our washing machine. There is no dryer, and the water pipe for the washing machine needs to be attached to our sink faucet and then there is a separate pipe that empties out mid-cycle into a lower sink that is hidden to the right of the washing machine. Our first laundry attempt was quite a debacle; I didn't realize the water was constantly being emptied out of the washing machine and all of a sudden we heard a huge rush of water, I ran into the kitchen to find the entire floor covered with water. Lesson learned.

This is our 'stove', making dinner is quite the task

A closer view of the washing machine

Our bathroom

Jordan and I each have our own closet this size. We were pleasantly surprised to each have our own space, since neither of us are good packers and probably brought way too much.

The new Snuggle Cove

Weekend Update

2009-02-28T09:29:00.003+08:00

A combination of factors have affected my ability to post here over the last week or so. First, the internet in our apartment went down last week Saturday and did not start working again until Tuesday. Then, Megan and I became busy with lesson planning for our classes and doing the actual teaching. Finally, I have on 3 occasions tried to post a 2-minute video of our apartment here but even after waiting 15-20 hours for it to upload it has not worked. Unless I figure out a solution to that problem I probably won't be putting up video here anytime soon.

But now I have some time so I thought I'd update. Last week Saturday Megan and I received our schedules and they were lighter than we expected. I am teaching 12 hours and Megan is teaching 10. We both have Wednesdays off, so we can lesson plan and grade for the second half of the week at that time. So far it has gone pretty well, but it is difficult to come up with enough activities to fill 2 hours, especially when students are hesitant to participate.

My first class I decided to introduce myself to the students by playing a game. I broke the classes up into four teams and then I would show a question about myself on the powerpoint. After each team gave an answer to the question I would click to the next slide which would reveal the answer. I do not think I have ever seen such pure joy from students in a classroom than when I would reveal an answer. They loved the competition of it and also liked to learn about me (where I've lived, my family, my hobbies, etc). It was a success.

The second class I decided I should actually start teaching something. I referenced a textbook that Megan and I had bought to come up with some activities and a grammar point to teach. The activities went fairly well. I had the students prepare a dialogue using the grammar pattern I taught and then asked some of them to share their dialogues. They did pretty well, although their spoken English is still very weak and they basically had to read what they had written on their sheets verbatim.

I suspected the grammar I taught them was too easy since grammar is the one thing the students do have a very strong grasp of, yet it was impossible to tell because the students are so unresponsive to questions that I don't know if they do not understand or if they are just shy. Well, I guess they are just shy because I did get an email from a student (Subject line: "hello,my dear teacher") that said the grammar was too easy and that they needed practice speaking.

I was glad someone was brave enough to tell me this because I would have continued to do the same things I had been doing. Now I just need to figure out how to get them to speak in English.

Here are some of my students responses when I asked them to write what they liked and disliked about their English class last semester and what they think might be the most useful activities to teach them English:

"I dislike examination. It give me strain."
"The most useful activities is gives us more free time."
"The most useful activities, I think, is more choice to speak in english and debate in english. The reason is so simple that everyone knows it."
"Playing game is the most useful activities. Because I can learn English with a happy way."
"Activities: talking about something wonderful in English."
"Useful activity: Interactive teaching, because it can move our positiveness."
"I dislike exams, I think exams have no sense."

So, About This Teaching Thing...

2009-02-20T09:46:00.005+08:00

The internet at Megan and my apartment building has been down for about 48 hours, leaving all the foreign teachers who live in this building in somewhat of a panic. With class starting in about 3 days, teachers are realizing how difficult it is to lesson plan without the internet. Oh well, it is working now so everyone should be calmed down a bit.

We have learned a few things about our teaching responsibilities. Megan will be teaching undergraduates in the College of Foreign Languages and I will be teaching graduate students. From what we hear from other teachers, the students Megan will be teaching will be English majors so they will be at a higher level and will also have more interest in the subject, whereas my students will be taking English because they have to and will have a wider range of abilities. We will be teaching at most 16 hours a week, however with roughly 72 hours until we'll start teaching we do not yet have a class schedule. We were assured that we would get our schedule by Saturday, because we "need time to plan our lessons." Apparently one day will be sufficient for that. Just go with the flow.

Some other things of note since the internet broke down:

We met the other 2 teachers who are here from CIEE, Kerstan and Karen. They are a couple who are probably a year or two older than us and they are very eager to help with our teaching and show us around. They took us out to dinner and have shared a lot of teaching tips. It'll be good to have them around.
We played Scrabble at our neighbor Courtlandt's apartment and learned that "sluice" is a word. It has something to do with gold mining.
We got cell phones. 250 RMB each, which is about $35, and then we just pay for what we use. We were hesitant at first but I think they'll come in handy.
We got our Foreign Experts certification. I'm not sure what we're experts at, except maybe being foreign.

That's about it. Things have been slow but they'll pick up once we start teaching. Also, I will put up a little video of our apartment before we start teaching.

I looked out the window and two things were apparent: the students are returning and they're doing laundry. Good to know. This photo was taken from our balcony.

Trip into Town

2009-02-15T20:40:00.006+08:00

First of all, Qingdao is an awesome city. It is modern, but it has fascinating history. The roads are wide, well maintained, and clean. New buildings are sprouting up all around the downtown area. It is bustling, but not overly crowded. It even still has the glow of a city that has recently hosted the sailing events of the Olympics. Maybe it was just the sun talking (while we were walking around the city it was one of the first times we have seen the sun for an extended period of time since we've been in China), but I really enjoyed Qingdao.

While we were enjoying it, however, I had conflicting emotions. I was glad that I liked the city so much and that I wanted to spend a lot of time there. It is close enough that we could make excellent day or weekend trips there. On the other hand, I was bummed that it is just far enough away that it isn't convenient enough to go in an afternoon or just stop by for a visit. If we are going to take the trouble to go there, we would have to stay for the whole day. Megan and I kept talking about how we kind of wished we were living in town. Oh well, at least we're nearby.

All in all, it took us about an hour and a half each way from our apartment into the city. We had to take a bus (about 30-40 minutes) to a ferry terminal, buy tickets, wait for the ferry, ride the ferry (15-25 minutes) and then take a bus or a cab into town on the other side. The way home took a bit longer because the wait for the ferry was about an hour.

The ferry on the way home was a bit of a nightmare. Well, the ferry itself was fine, but the process of boarding the ferry was awful. Imagine a room about the size of a high school gymnasium filled shoulder to shoulder with people waiting to get on a ferry. Then, after an hour of waiting, imagine that when a ferry arrives all of these people bottlenecking into a space about 3 feet wide to show their tickets and get on the boat. Then, imagine that all these people have the Chinese mindset that no one matters but them and that they will get onto that boat by any means necessary. Chaos. People climbing over chairs, pushing, shoving to get in. I had to box out about 3 people at once to create space for Megan to get through. It was very unpleasant. Nevertheless, I think we'll be going to Qingdao quite a bit, especially when the weather warms up.

The back half of the room before the chaos.

People shoving through to doors to the boat. This doesn't do the situation justice.

Anyway, here are a few of our photos. Click for larger.

Qingdao.

Megan on the boardwalk thingy. Those tents behind her were all little shops.

I wish I had that stroller when I was a kid.

The "May Breeze" Statue.

May Breeze again w/ some of the skyline.

This sign says "Huge wave is dangerous. Don't be closer please."

A Michigan sweatshirt in the wrong color that we saw being sold on the side of the road.

This Campus is Large

2009-02-12T14:35:00.008+08:00

When you have 2 weeks with nothing to do before starting work days tend to seep away with nothing productive coming of them. To combat that, Megan and I have tried to have at least one goal for each day we have free before school starts. Yesterday our goal was to explore the campus of the school we're teaching at. We succeeded.

Shandong University of Science and Technology has 35,000 students, but unlike most American schools that I have visited that are about that size, this school doesn't blend into a city. There isn't a "college town" feel. The entire campus is contained within walls with gates, and there isn't much else within those walls. Roughly half the campus is dedicated to housing and half are for academic buildings. There is a road down the middle that divides these.

The campus is nice and very pretty in spots, but I got the feeling that all the buildings were thrown up in a great rush so that they could get started on the next one. Much of China feels that way in fact. Megan said that she thought that China is so busy building things that they don't have any time to maintain things. This is true of the campus. I counted about 50 basketball hoops around the campus, not one had a net (that always bugs me). That said, everything is still fairly new so nothing is in that bad of shape. Many of the buildings are extremely large and impressive from the exterior, so hopefully they're nice on the inside too.

We took a lot of photos while wandering around, so enjoy. Click on the photos to enlarge.

A pagoda on campus.

The pagoda across part of the pond.

Megan walking by some of the dorms.

Everything is closed for the holiday.

A town near the campus and some gardens.

A hoop (w/o a net!) in the shadow of the mountains outside campus.

They had a little courtyard with a bunch of statues of famous thinkers. This is Einstein. None of the statues were of Chinese people.

Megan with Newton.

Some of the dorms across a field. I think the campus will be nice in the spring.

Megan looking at the ice in the river/pond thingy.

The main gate of the campus.

My favorite building, the first one you see when you enter campus.

The foreign languages building, where we assume we'll be teaching.

A closer view.

The view right when you enter the main gate. We're not sure what the use the big screen for.

Some gate inside the campus.

Qingdao/Huangdao: First Impressions

2009-02-11T11:56:00.006+08:00

We arrived at our new home on Saturday after a short one hour flight from Shanghai to Qingdao on Shandong Airlines. The weight of our bags finally came back to bite us as we had to pay 400 RMB, about $60, because our bags were overweight. They could have charged us more, so we had to count our blessings. Also, our flight was delayed about an hour due to fog in the Qingdao area. I guess with the proximity to the sea fog is fairly common around here this time of year.

In case you can't read that, it is a sign that says the airport is certified as a "Civilized Airport."

We were met by Fan, our contact at the Foreign Affairs Office at the university, and after a quick lunch we were brought to our apartment on the campus of the university, which is about an hour outside of the city of Qingdao. The place looked like it hadn't been touched too much since the last person moved out, and as a result it was quite dirty and the furniture was not arranged to our liking. The ceilings were high and the white walls were bare. It was cold both in temperature and appearance.

There is, however, quite a bit of space and with space comes potential. We have a decent sized living/dining room, a galley kitchen, a big bathroom, and two rooms that could serve as bedrooms (although only one has a bed.) We have already been to three different department stores (2 in the downtown Huangdao area, about 15 minutes away) and one in Qingdao when we went there to get some medical tests that are needed for our Foreign Expert cards. Each time we looked ridiculous with how much stuff we were buying. We have bought some blankets and a space heater for the cold (we technically have heating but it is not very effective), some dishes and cutlery, some lamps (otherwise we just have super bright fluorescent bulbs in each room), a drinking water dispenser (can't drink the water), and countless other daily necessities. We do have a washing machine, but no dryer, so we bought a laundry rack to hang our clothes on. It has been an adjustment to wait for a day before things are dry, so we basically do one load a day. I'll post a video tour of the apartment later.

Our main living area when we arrived, it looks different now.

Making breakfast the first morning.

The school itself is big. There are around 35,000 students but all of them are on vacation now for the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival holiday, so the place feels like a ghost town. We still haven't explored most of the campus except for the area around our building. Our apartment is near the outdoor basketball courts and track, so we plan on using those quite a bit. Also, there is a long road of different shops and food stalls inside the walls of the campus that is less than a 5 minute walk away. Those are all closed with the exception of 2 small grocery stores, so we'll get a better feel for how useful those will be when the students return. Mountains surround the campus on at least two sides, and apparently there is some decent hiking we'll have to check out.

Other than that we seem kind of in the middle of nowhere. There are big roads with 3 lanes of traffic each way on all sides of the campus, but the roads are almost always empty and we barely have to look both ways before crossing. Planning for the future I suppose. One of our neighbors mentioned that it is really nice and quiet if you can stand the isolation. I definitely did not expect to feel isolated while in China, and since we have each other I don't expect we'll ever feel too lonely. Also, the pace of life can only pick up from here since no students are around.

Yesterday we ventured into the town of Huangdao for the first time, which took about 30 minutes by bus and cost us 2 RMB each, or about $.30. Not bad. We took a cab back which probably took half the time but cost 20 RMB total (about $3.00). We decided that most times we go to town we'll take the bus one way and a cab the other. I feel okay about spending less than $4.00 for both of us to get to and from town. In town there is a Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and a few KFCs, but that is about all that is familiar. There are a few good department stores though and I did see a few karaoke places we might have to try out (I'm only kind of kidding). Almost anything we would ever need we could get there.

We have yet to try to get into Qingdao on our own, but that is definitely a priority. When we were in Qingdao for our medical tests we talked about how nice it would be to live in an exciting city like that, so we'll try to visit as much as possible. School doesn't start for over a week and a half so we'll probably go into Qingdao twice, and maybe stay the night one of the times.

Anyway, those are the first impressions. Keep in touch with us! If you want to Skype my Skype name is jordan.bloem and Megan's is meganwaugh44.

Orientation Week in Shanghai (Part 2)

2009-02-10T12:41:00.006+08:00

Wednesday, February 4

After our Chinese/teaching classes in the morning, our group headed off to what the orientation schedule called "Chinese Cooking Class," which didn't really teach us how to cook. We arrived at a community center to make dumplings, but all the filling and the dough was already made and it was our job to wrap up the dumplings. This is much harder than it sounds. The women who were teaching us must have been doing this for years because their dumplings were not only aesthetically pleasing but functional. Mine were neither. Nevertheless, it was fun to mess around a bit with the whole group. Also, they cooked the dumplings and we got to eat our handiwork. They were still delicious despite being ugly.

Hard at work making dumplings.

Following the class we headed to Xin Tian Di, which literally means "New Heavenly Place," and is basically a really cool shopping/dining pedestrian area. All of the shops and restaurants are made of old Shanghai homes that were converted and refurbished. The buildings were a cool mix of European and Chinese architecture. Our guide said that to Westerners it seems very Chinese, but to Chinese it seems very Western.

Most of our group in Xin Tian Di.

Our dinner this night was at a Uighur restaurant. Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority in China who come from the far western province of Xinjiang. Their native language is similar to Turkic and they look more Middle Eastern or eastern European than Chinese. The food here was decent, but I think I prefer traditional Chinese food to Uighur food. They did do a song and dance for us, and even pulled a few of our group on stage to dance. While they were dancing the men made no expression and all I could think of is Borat. They looked very Kazakhstani.

Two of our fellow teachers, Liz and Paige, dancing with the Uighurs.

Thursday, February 5

On Thursday a bit more than half the group gave practice 20 minute teaching lessons. Megan and I did not do our lesson on the first day, but we played the part of students in the class who didn't know much English. This was particularly difficult for the teachers who would be teaching kindergarten, as we had to act both ESL and 5. I'm not sure how convincing we were as students, but it was very helpful to watch different teachers and their styles and ideas.

Following the teaching practice we took an excursion to the Shanghai World Financial Center which is the second tallest building in the world. Upon arrival, Megan looked up to the top of the building from the base and immediately became quite nervous about the prospect of going to the top. She grit her teeth and did it though, although it was pretty funny to watch her jog from one end of the observation deck to the other so she could wait for the next elevator down.

The World Financial Center from the base.

Megan not very pleased while waiting in line to get down from the observation deck.

For those of us who did take some time to look out the windows the view was impressive, but it was hurt by the haze of pollution over the city. On a clear day (if there are any), I'm sure the view is much better. I saw a sign that said that we were in the highest observation deck in the world, so even though Taipei 101 is taller, people can't get as high as we were in this building. Right now a building is being built right next to the World Financial Center which will be significantly taller. The arms race continues.

The view from the top.

We had dinner free this night so Megan and I had planned to meet with her friend from high school, Heather, who is currently living in Shanghai. Although Megan and I waited at the wrong subway station for 45 minutes angrily waiting for Heather to arrive, we eventually realized our error and took to the subway one stop down where fortunately Heather was still waiting for us.

We stopped by Heather's apartment which she shares with two other people, a Spanish guy and a Chinese girl. They weren't home but we saw the whole place which seemed pretty comfortable and in a good location. We then went out to dinner at a local restaurant and had my favorite meal of the trip so far. I kept eating even after I was full because the food was so good and Heather asked, "Have you had enough?" I had, I just couldn't stop eating. It was good to catch up and talk Singapore.

Heather by the door of her apartment.

Megan and Heather in front of Heather's pink building.

Friday, February 6

The last day of orientation started with us giving our practice lessons. I gave my lesson on transitional words and phrases (However, Additionally, On the other hand, etc). I had the students to an exercise where they had to fill in the appropriate transitional word or phrase at the start of a sentence based on the context. The lesson went pretty smoothly, but at times I became flustered by certain questions that were asked. I'll need to learn to think on my feet.

Megan gave an example of the first day of class for her lesson. She gave a brief introduction of herself and then set up an activity where the students interviewed one another and then reported back to the class about what they learned. The purpose of the lesson was to get a feel for the students' overall English ability and to get introduced to the student. We both felt that the practice lessons were valuable practice for what we'll be faced with soon. However (<-- transitional word or phrase!), I don't think we can know exactly what to expect from a class until we start.

We had the afternoon free and after a nap we went to a cool little shopping/eating area near a road called Taikang Road. We ducked back into a back alley and were immediately in a different world. There were lots of art and photography galleries, mixed in with cafes and bars. Meanwhile, there were families who lived above the shops and galleries just wandering around. We were immediately disoriented because the area was just a bunch of alleyways and nooks with cool stuff around each corner.

Part of the Taikang Rd area.

That night we met up with Heather again at a bar but called it an early evening as we had to depart our hotel at 8 am the next day to get to the airport for our flight to Qingdao! All in all it was a very useful orientation, and I feel much more prepared to teach than I did before the week. All the other new teachers were easy to get along with and we had a great group. Too bad we're all heading to different places around China.

Us with Jerry, our Chinese teacher.

Orientation Week in Shanghai (Part 1)

2009-02-08T12:47:00.007+08:00

NOTE: Unfortunately we do not have the internet working on our laptop yet, so I am posting this using the computer that was provided for us at our apartment. I don't think we're going to put photos or video on this computer, so this post won't really have any of our photos. Hopefully we'll figure it out soon and add some.

EDIT: Due to my IT expertise I was able to get the internet hooked up to the laptop. I have now added our photos and videos!

Sunday, February 1

Our flight arrived in Shanghai at about 10:30 am after almost 30 hours of travel including layovers. We were met at the airport by a CIEE employee who led us to a bus that brought us to our hotel, where we arrived around noon. Our hotel was called the Faculty Club, and was located on the campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which has a nice little campus tucked away in the middle of Shanghai.

Our room at the Faculty Club

In an attempt to stay awake for the rest of the day, Megan and I decided to explore the area surrounding our hotel after unpacking. We found the nearest subway station, some malls, and a few decent grocery stores that we used once or twice during the week to get fruit. With the aid of Xing Ba Ke, Chinese for Starbucks, we stayed up until around 8 before a jet-lag induced sleep.

Monday, February 2

SUPER BOWL MONDAY! I woke up around 5 am due to the jet-lag, but we didn't have to be anywhere until around 8, so I clicked around the internet for a while and found that the previous blog site had been blocked. I spent the next few hours trying to figure out how to make it work with no luck. When Megan woke up around 7 we flipped through the channels and found the Super Bowl being broadcast in Chinese. I couldn't understand the announcers, but on a 20 yard completion from Ben Rothlisberger to Heath Miller down the middle I heard "piao liang," which Megan said means "Beautiful!" and is frequently used during sporting events. I was able to watch about half of the first quarter before we headed down to breakfast.

Our orientation started with our first Chinese lesson. Our teacher was a student at the college who was studying to be a teacher of Chinese as a second language. Her name was Jerry, which she chose because it sounds like her Chinese name. I'm not sure if she knows it is a man's name or not. We followed that with a few lectures from a woman who has been teaching English as a second language for about 20 years. She has only been in China for a few years, but she had ton of knowledge on how to teach and manage a classroom. She basically taught us how to teach on Monday and Tuesday morning.

After lunch at the hotel we had free time until dinner. Megan and I used this time to explore the Bund, which is sometimes called "Shanghai's architectural museum." On one side of the river is a road is lined with European style buildings from the early 1900's. These were used by the European powers who had a presence in China at that time. Across the river is the modern business district with the Pearl Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center, the second tallest building in the world.

Megan and I at the Bund.

The Bund at night (I didn't take this picture).

We met back with the group for a welcome dinner at a Sichuan restaurant. Sichuan is a province in the central part of China and its cuisine is known for its spiciness. At times I was a bit spicy for me but I sucked it up and most of it was excellent.

Our Sichuanese meal.

The meal was concluded with a performance by Sichuanese face changers, which is a sort of combination of dancing and magic where the dancers instantly change their masks. Here's an example, although the guy we saw seemed more impressive than this guy:

Tuesday, February 3

Today we had more Chinese lessons and teaching classes until lunch. After lunch we took an excursion with our group to the Bund again (perhaps we should have read ahead on the schedule before going the day before) and the West Nanjing Rd shopping area. This time around we did go into some of buildings in the Bund, the coolest of which being the original HSBC Bank building, which is still a functioning bank. After working for a while at a bank I though about how cool it would be to work in a bank that basically doubled as a museum. Cool stuff.

The HSBC Bank building.

A cool lion in front of the HSBC Bank building.

The West Nanjing Rd shopping area was fairly uneventful, mostly just high end shops that no one really wanted to shop in anyway. Our Chinese orientation leader, Kelvin, said that if the girls wanted to do any "special shopping" Jerry could take them. Megan and I spent most of the rest of the time joking about what he could have meant by "special shopping" and why only the girls could go.

Dinner was at a vegetarian restaurant called Jujube. This was definitely Megan's favorite meal of the week because we did not have deal with any questionable meat. Also, I've noticed that the bits of chicken or beef in a dish in China often seem to be the bits that we would discard in the state like very cartilidge-y or boney pieces. Anyway, it was nice to avoid picked through that. The food at Jujube also imitated meat, so we had tofu Peking duck, fish, and other dishes. Delicious in my mouth.

Following dinner we went to a Chinese acrobat show, which was without a doubt the highlight of the week for me. I'll have to have a full post on this later. Just a teaser though: they had something called "The Ball of Death." No one died and it was awesome.

I'll post the second half of the week later. Megan and I are about to head out to buy some stuff to make our new apartment a bit more homey.

This is China

2009-02-03T22:52:00.003+08:00

This is China.

On Sunday night I turned a corner blinded by the scaffolding of an ongoing construction project when I was startled to see a car taking the same corner in the opposite direction on the broad sidewalk. I moved; the car was bigger than me. Apparently negotiating pedestrians on the sidewalk is easier than negotiating the traffic on the road.

While at the Bund yesterday a few middle-aged ladies approached Megan and asked to have their photo take with her. They told her she is beautiful. Their clothes were simple and plain. They seemed to be tourists from a distant western province who were visiting Shanghai during the Spring Festival. They probably hadn’t seen blonde hair before. Megan posed for three pictures with the women. We leave quickly after that as to not attract a crowd.

While riding around Shanghai our bus slides in and out of traffic, through the pillars that hold up the elevated highways above us and around the walls that outline ongoing construction projects. We are on the basement level of a city growing upwards around us. We take the ramp onto the highway and more is visible. Like the cars in the Jetson’s we soar in the midst of the skyscrapers, not below them.

At the Sichuan restaurant we sit around the table and turn the lazy Susan to observe each dish that has been served. The colors, smells, and tastes are foreign. We discuss what we might be eating: duck?, pork?, tofu?, probably all of the above. Our guide stops by the table and confirms or denies our hypotheses. Each time I look down to eat what is currently on my plate a new dish appears on the table by the time I look up. A new topic of debate. Orange slices, something we can all confidently identify, signify the end of the meal.

We are walking down the West Nanjing Road Commercial Area. “This is the most upscale shopping area of all Shanghai,” our guide says. Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci stores are all around us. Our guide darts between two such stores and within 20 meters we are in a different city at a different time. “This is how common Shanghaiese people live.” Three storey buildings line narrow alleys with clothes drying on lines out of windows. Neighbors sit in doorways and chat, one woman helps another with laundry. The alley dead ends. We turn around and return to modern Shanghai.

The host of the Shanghai acrobat show steps onto the stage in a wedding dress. “No one will ever forget the story of Rose and Jack” she recites but doesn’t understand. Megan is convinced she said “…the story of Russ and Jackie.” Two acrobats emerge and swing around a curtain hanging from the ceiling to the theme of Titanic. They swing over the crowd like a 3D movie entering the movie theater. I actually could have reached out and touched them from our front row seat. I will never forget the story of Russ and Jackie.

This is China.

And we’ve only been here 3 days.

Safe Arrival

2009-02-03T07:11:00.006+08:00

We have arrived safely in Shanghai and have been here about 2 days now. I haven't yet been able to post a real entry here yet because of the initial trouble of the Chinese government blocking the other blog site and since then just being so busy.

Our travels went about as well as could be planned. We did not have a single delay, and on the longest flight (LAX - Seoul) Megan and I slept for the majority. All in all, it took us about 29 hours door to door.

A sign in the Seoul airport near the food court.

Megan creating her most delicious happiness.

We arrived at the hotel, which is actually on a college campus, at about noon. It was a struggle to stay awake most of the day, but we explored the area around the hotel for most of the afternoon and managed to fight off the jet lag until 8:30 pm.

Orientation has been good so far, if I have some more time this afternoon I'll post more about that.

This Blog Has Moved....Back

2009-02-02T05:55:00.004+08:00

Well, we've safely arrived in China, but I soon realized that the Chinese government has some sort of block or firewall or something on Wordpress.com, so I won't be able to make any posts over there. Therefore, I'll be posting on this site.

Some people had trouble reading this site earlier, my only advice would be that if it doesn't work just try again soon. When I was posting here earlier I sometimes wasn't able to see the page either, but then if I'd hit refresh or just try again in a few minutes it usually worked fine.

I'll have some real stuff up here in a bit...

This Blog Has Moved

2009-01-08T06:17:00.002+08:00

A few people have had trouble accessing this blog, so I've moved it over to WordPress.com. I'm still playing around with the features there, but it seems to have some good potential.

The new URL is: www.bloemsinchina.wordpress.com.

Thanks for visiting; hopefully once we're in China we'll have some interesting content. (We depart on January 30).

Qingdao...it's beer! Hooray beer!

2008-12-03T11:36:00.003+08:00

This morning Megan and I received an email that we have been assigned to teach at the Shandong University of Science and Technology. We were glad to finally know where we would be placed, but before I became too pleased with our placement I realized I should learn something about the school, it's location and our specific positions. After all, I hadn't even the slightest idea where Shandong Province was.

Let's get started.

LOCATION

I was relieved to discover that Shandong University of Science and Technology is located in a town I had heard a little about over the years: Qingdao. Many readers may be more familiar with the spelling that appears on green beer bottles around the world - "Tsingtao." As well as being China's beer capital, Qingdao is a major seaport and industrial center. Qingdao also has several beaches which are very popular among Chinese tourists. Perhaps most interestingly, Qingdao boasts a strong German influence, hence the beer, as the city was a German colony in the early 20th century.

Resting at the tip of Shandong Penninsula, Qingdao experiences slightly milder winters and slightly cooler summers than inland areas. August is the warmest month average highs of 28 C and January is the coldest month with 3 C average high temperatures. It is nice to know that it won't be as cold as Michigan or Colorado (probably).

Other facts:

Etymology: "Qing" means green or lush and "dao" means island.
Qingdao is not an island; hopefully it is lush.
Qingdao is about 6 hours by high speed train to Beijing and about 10 hours to Shanghai.
Qingdao was recently named the 9th most livable city in China by China Daily.
Qingdao has a population of about 2.5 million in the urban area and 7.5 million in the greater Qingdao area.
Qingdao is nicknamed "China's Switzerland" due to the European influence.

SCHOOL & JOB

About 38,000 students attend Shandong University of Science and Technology (SUST) spread between 3 campuses, the main being in Qingdao. The school mentions how it has 8 National Teachers of Excellence, 19 Provincial Teachers of Excellence, and is known for its strength in basic and applied research. The most telling sign of their excellence, however, is the animated .gif fireworks that explode over their logo on the front page of their website.

The top academic programs at SUST are Mining Engineering, Surveying and Mapping Science and Technology, Control Theory and Control Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Mechatronic Engineering, and Mechanical Design and Theory. This is particularly well suited for Megan and I as we are both experts in Mechatronc Engineering.

We will be teaching Oral English, Business English, and Literature to primarily 19-22 year old students. We will teach 16 classroom hours a week and will also participate in the "English Corner" club.

According to the information we have, our on-campus apartment will have heating, air-conditioning, a kitchen with refrigerator, and internet access. Let's hope all that is true.

Also, SUST apparently has a pretty decent basketball team by Chinese collegiate standards.

PHOTOS OF MEGAN'S VISIT TO QINGDAO - FEB. 2007

(Scott Greene & Heather Wigmore also featured)

Posing by the sculpture "May Breeze" near the coast.

Outside the Tsingtao Brewery

After a hike up Mt. Laoshan outside Qingdao

By the beach.

China Bound!

2008-11-02T01:01:00.006+08:00

After several months of planning and applying, Megan and I finally heard the great news yesterday that we had been accepted to Teach in China with CIEE.

Megan and I elected to apply with CIEE (the Council on International Education Exchange) because Megan had studied abroad at Peking University with them in the spring of 2007. They offer a great support system, including orientation and sightseeing in Shanghai, organizing our visas and school placements, and offering medical insurance.

We are eager to find out specifically where we will be placed and what age groups we will teach. Our ideal situation would be to teach elementary or middle school students in an urban location. CIEE does not typically offer teaching placements in large international cities like Beijing or Shanghai, but there are plenty of cities in China for us to be placed.

Important Dates:

November 10: Reply form and program deposit due
December 12: Medical forms due
Novemeber - December: School placement
February 1: Arrival in Shanghai
February 2-6: Orientation
February 6: Transportation to school placement

We'll keep you updated on our progress as we sort these things out!