Half way!

Reaching the halfway make of my time in China is crazy to me! It has gone by so fast, and yet at the same time I feel so at home here in China. I know I will miss it incredibly when I’m gone. The people are always so kind and helpful. Whether it’s half a bus of them all competing to give me directions to wherever I am heading or a class of first graders constantly giving me gifts, kissing my hand, or slapping my butt, China will always be etched in my heart.

Since the last time I have done a couple pretty awesome things. I got go visit the Shaolin Temple, birth place of Kung fu!!! That was pretty awesome, at this appoint I fell it appropriate to mention that while watching the kids practice kung fu I had songs from “Mulan” most especially “Let’s get down to business to defeat the Hun’s” It was an awesome trip I went with Ben, Alyssa, Grant and Caitlin the latter 3 who came to visit our city.

I also went to a Zoo/Amusement park. The ride part of it was awesome except the part where I was almost thrown-up on by an overweight 13yr old Chinese girl who undoubtedly had indulged herself with fair food(which is way weirder in China) before taking a daring ride on the “pirate ship” opposite me. It made for an eventful trip…to be honest after I rocketed to the other side of the ship to avoid the inevitable throw up I had to get a picture of her face…priceless, like MasterCard commercial priceless…the rest of the ride I could not stop laughing, she didn’t end up sharing her previous meal, thankfully. We then went to the Zoo part of the park which was tragic…I wanted to open all the cages and let’em free. I used to love going to the Zoo, China took that from me.

Looking ahead, I start online classes in about 3 days…12 credits while teaching 19 classes…this should be a new challenge J I only hope I can give it my best shot and actually be successful. I also am counting down the days (16 to be exact) until I go to the Philippines. I am going to be spending a week on Palawan Island, I would definitely suggest google it, and possibly planning a future vacation there, cause it looks amazing!! I’ll let you know how it was in about a month. I can hopefully keep my blog pretty updated in the coming months…on the bright side I am doing much better now than when I was in Peru.

Oh how it flies!!

The days and weeks are flying! This past week I realized that the MONTH of February was gone (granted I already have strong feelings that Feb has snuck into the title of month, after they finished making all the real months they said “what do we do with all these days” and Feb was born the best of a bad situation …but this year was Leap Year, so it was almost a real month) In all this realization came the somber realization my time here in China is going fast. I have created a calendar complete with all events currently in my life from now until the end of July to help me use my time more wisely.

New this week: I started classes with my Chinese tutor (fun fact: the first time I wrote this I wrote the word Spanish because I was listening to Bachata, after proofreading realized my mistake! my head is a complete mess with the 3 languages swirling around) I was a little nervous for it because when we he told us he could teach us we were driving in his car and on our 10 minute drive he tried to teach us like 50 words…intense right!? But our Chinese class actually was a little more relaxed and fun actually so adding that to Rosetta Stone every week should help my Chinese grow exponentially.

This week I started teaching at the elementary school…Chinese Kids are so CUTE!!!!! I am teaching 3 classes of about fifty 6 year olds…basically its 3 hours of singing, funny faces, and hand gestures, with an audience that is completely and totally amazed by me, it’s my heaven! The kids all wanted to give me something, I got little origami boxes, frogs, and airplanes some of the kids even wanted to give me their snacks and if I didn’t take them they would just throw them at me and run away…problem solved, I love kids!! Seriously these are my two go-to solutions

1) Play dead

2)Throw it at them and run away

I don't really see how you could go wrong with these solutions on your side, why can't we go back to the simpler times? The time where the months have 30-31 days depending which knuckle they fall on, the time without all these complicated life problems and solutions.

You so handsome, gimme money now!

WOW!! That’s pretty much the only word I can use to describe my feelings about Xian. It was incredible. I agree with the statement “You haven’t been to China until you have been to Xian.” The weekend started out pretty much uneventfully, we took the slow train to Xian thinking it wouldn’t be too bad since the trip was only 5 hours and the train left at 1 a.m. so we figured we could sleep all the way there, that’s not a mistake I will be making a again! The seats in the train were back to back, they didn’t recline…at all… like, I’m pretty sure they learned forward to force good posture. Needless to say it was a long trip for me! We got there in the morning and it was off to the Museum to get in line for one of the 1000 free tickets they give out each day, we both got a ticket, I was amazed to see such a long line to get into a museum.

Shaanxi History Museum

This place was HUGE!! The museum occupies an area of 65,000 square meters (16 acres). It is a grand complex of buildings imitating the architecture style of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It covers the history of dynasties in China from the Qin Dynasty which started in 221 BC and ends with the Qing Dynasty which ended in 1911 with 7 dynasties in-between. We took the whole morning there learning about the fascinating history of China I am so glad I took that Chinese Culture class before coming it really helped me to better understand and grasp just how much history China has. They had a small display of the Terracotta Warriors but nothing like the actual pit…don’t worry I’ll get to that J

Muslim Market and Great Mosque

The Muslim market was the most fun place I have ever been shopping, and I hate shopping. They had all kinds of foods to try, with Chinese and Arabic notes mixed together. Before we went we decided to try as many things as we could, my favorite were these Almonds I have no idea how they were made ha! But they were amazing they had no salt on them or evidence of spice but they had the most amazing flavor! My mouth is watering now thinking about ‘em. Besides all the food there was a huge street full of almost everything you could find Target! Only it was full of people almost exclusively with people from all around the world, trying to haggle prices with the Chinese vendors, it was quite a sight to watch the vendors try and guess were people were from and yell out to them “come have look, I give you good deal, look only look” My first approach was to respond in Spanish and say I only spoke Spanish, that plan crashed and burned when they said in response “te doy muy barato, venga venga” caught me off guard! So then I took the approach of speaking Chinglish to get better deals. They funniest experience was with a woman who wanted me to buy a shirt, she started by saying “you want shirt? How much? I give you good deal you so handsome!” What I should have said was nothing, what I did say was “ How Much?” which led to a conversation that went something like this:

Vendor: normal price 300, you handsome so I give you 280, very good price, very quality, very good, you buy?

Me: “Wo bu yao mai” =I don’t want to buy

Vendor: okay better price, how much you pay?

Me: 40

Vendor: haaaaa you kidding me, too low, this good quality, you so crazy, you my brother, give me little more, last price

Me: 45

Vendor: okay I say 280 you say 45, 280-45=235(all typed on her calculator to explain the math) we both happy, come on you buy, I know you want

Me: “Bu yao, bu yao!! Choked by my laughter at her deal

Vendor: okay okay, you student I give you discount, you speak little Chinese I give you discount you my brother how about 85 best price, soo cheap so cheap

At this point I couldn’t stop laughing and started to walk away saying “bu yao, bu yao” at which point she grabs my bag out of my hand puts the shirt in it then puts it behind her back and says:

“Okay you price you price only you so handsome, you my brother gimme money now”

Me: By this time laughing hysterically, say: I don’t want it, I don’t need, I even said in Chinese I didn’t have any money.

Vendor: holding out her hand now says “ hahaha you so funny you make joke, now gimme money my brother”

Me: Okay, I guess I’m buying a shirt.

Vendor: okay you want 2?

Moral of the story, when shopping in China just walk away or act like your deaf and start signing to you friend, that was my plan B.

Terracotta Warriors

There quite honestly aren’t words to describe how it felt to walk into the giant stadium structure about the size of 3 football fields and see this immense Terracotta army still standing in place to protect Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. The soldiers’s head, arms, legs and torsos were created separately and then assembled. Studies show that eight face moulds were most likely used, and then clay was added to provide individual facial features. Once assembled, intricate features such as facial expressions were added. So just to put that into perspective current estimates are that there are over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried in the pits to protect the color, they found out when they uncovered the soldiers in a short amount of time of 5 minutes to 5 hours the paint would flake off and fade so a large portion of the soldier are still buried to protect them. It was incredible, definitely check out my pics on FB

Almost Arrested

We made it home safe on the bullet train which was fun to ride; we took a taxi back to our school which turned out to be a disaster. The taxi driver tried to over charge us and he ended up taking us to the wrong spot even, his mistake I found out not ours. So we didn’t want to pay him the 40 rmb he wanted when he wasn’t even leaving us at the right place especially when it should have only cost us 20. So I called our school liaison Kim and told her what was going on, and gave him the phone. After 20 minutes of them arguing he gave the phone back to me Kim told us to get out of the Taxi write down his plate number and not give him any money, and she said she would be there in 15 minutes to pick us up. We got out, he starts yelling at us and tells us he wants money otherwise he was gonna call the cops; we acted like we had no idea what was going on. He calls the cops. So now I’m thinking shoot this really escalated quickly for 40rmb or 7$. The cops come and they start talking to him and thankfully about that time our Liaison showed up with our school security guard and tells the cops and the driver what’s up, whew! It’s nice to have contacts in high places!

I'm fine thanks, and you?

“I’m fine thanks, and you?” has apparently become the only answer to the age old question “How are you?” or at least that’s what you’d think after you’re 14^th class in a row responded in unison those 5 words.

These first weeks have really brought a new term into my vocab, “Organized chaos” there is no other term to describe the streets and markets of the city that I am ever so slowly growing to love. The people scurry like ants to and from the varied destinations, I use the ants purposefully because that’s how I am obliged to feel. Surrounded by millions of dark haired, almond eyed, light brown ants. After two weeks the culture shock that was inhibiting my adventurous side finally wore off, that was about two days ago and now I feel like I am now able to see things in a much different light.

Class are going great, we’ve had some rough patches. I love teaching and I love getting to the point where you see it click in their eyes and they turn to their classmate to excitedly explain to their neighbor their new found treasure of knowledge. Most often this knowledge is gained not by flipping a switch and turning on the lights but in a series of short sunrises each gradually rising until the light reaches the obscurity. The Chinese people are so loving, they are always ready to help either by telling you to drink more boiled water, or give you directions or sometimes even just take you and show you what you seek since they finally realize there’s no way you’ll understand them. Good thing I left my personal bubble in America, otherwise it would have been destroyed since being here I’ve had kids: hold my hand, hug me, grab my cheeks, and been generally surrounded with at least ten kids touching me on every side….figure that one out! I hate to see what they’re like with someone they’re comfortable around!

Here I Go Again!

It's hard to believe that in a few short days I will be on a plane to Hong Kong!!! At random times throughout the day it has been hitting me, "Holy Crap, I am going to China."

For those of you who don't know or hadn't guessed by now, I will be spending the next 6 months in China teaching English. So far my trip starts with a tour of Hong Kong, then ESL training. Then it's off to the great city of Luoyang to read up on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luoyang I will be there working as a teacher until July. I can't wait to dive into the Chinese culture and language. I am so excited about the possibilities this new chapter in my life holds. I am hoping to keep my blog up to date better than when I was in Peru hopefully that happens but I guess I can't make any promises...China here I come :)

P.S. I'm not really sure how Facebook works over there so for anybody that wants keep in touch my email is ppajp06@gmail.com