Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival starts on the last day of Spring Festival. The internet says it can be traced back to 2,000 years ago, so it's been going on for awhile. Chinese people celebrate the festival differently, depending on the region. The main part is hanging and looking at Chinese lanterns. Other activities include lion dances, guessing lantern riddles, and eating yuanxiao (glutinous rice balls with filling inside, sooooooo good). 2017 is the year of the rooster, which is why there are so many chicks/roosters in the pictures below.

My Chinese tutor and her roommate invited Dan and I to Baotu Springs to see the lanterns. It was a lot of fun. I took lots of pictures. It was really crowded (although we did go on a weeknight) and really pretty. It reminded me a little of going to the German market in Chicago around Christmas (although a LOT bigger and there wasn't really any shopping, so they really weren't that similar).

I'd forgotten how weird it is to be a foreigner tourist in China. In China it's not rude to stare (which I knew so it never surprised me although it still makes me uncomfortable) but it also isn't rude for people to take pictures of you. At one point we were standing looking at a screen while our friends were trying to guess riddles and I heard someone say "you are beautiful" while walking past me. I looked out of the corner of my eye and the guy and a girl who was with him weren't walking away - they were just standing there. We left and they followed us for what might have been ten minutes saying random words in English. When we stopped the girl was trying to take selfies of herself with me in the background. I knew exactly what she was doing. It was a little frustrating and I was trying to make it as difficult as possible. It wasn't that I didn't want pictures taken of me - I would have been perfectly fine taking a picture with her - but I would have liked her to ask first, but she probably didn't think our Chinese was good enough (although we were with two Chinese people) and her English wasn't very good. Around the same time our friends asked if Dan and I would like a picture so we gave them a phone and while they were taking our picture I noticed a lot of other people decided to take our picture too. It's a really strange experience. Right after that the girl asked if she could have a picture with us so Dan and I took a picture with her (which would probably go better on her social media page than a selfie with me in the background).

It was a lot of fun. I had never heard of the Lantern Festival before and I'm glad I had the opportunity to go with Chinese people.

The Vegetable You Should Never Buy

I was thinking about posting this story awhile ago but I wasn't sure how long it would be. Oh well. We eat out twice a week. The other nights I usually make some sort of vegetable stir fry with a non-pepper vegetable and onions/garlic/ginger plus either meat or eggs (and rice/noodles) mixed with some sort of sauce concoction. Dan told me a few times I should buy vegetables I am unfamiliar with and try to cook them to vary it up a bit. I tried it a few times and it worked pretty well.

One day, I was trying to make a recipe that called for zucchini. It was a recipe from the Chinese cookbook I bought off Amazon, but for some reason it has items that are near impossible to find in China. Since I couldn't find a zucchini (some people familiar with weird vegetables might know where I'm going with this) I decided to but a vegetable that looked vaguely similar. The not smart thing I did was I didn't try to Google it or look anything up about how to prepare or cook it. I will just say that it was the worst vegetable I have ever eaten in my entire life (I guess that's not saying much because I like 99% of vegetables). It wasn't edible. At all. Dan couldn't eat it. I couldn't eat it. Even licking it was gross. We ate the meat and the rice, but not much else.

I Googled it after dinner and it's pictured below:

It's called a bitter melon (hence the taste). I read that it's considered the most bitter vegetable and when cooked its texture is similar to that of a zucchini (so at least I got that part right?). One of the main ways to tell if it's ripe is to cut it open and if it's ripe the inside will be red. The one we ate wasn't red at all. Not even a little bit. So not only did we eat the most bitter vegetable the wrong way(as in not prepared the right way) we ate an un-ripe bitter vegetable the wrong way...I don't like the idea of buying a vegetable that you have to cut open to see if it's ripe. It doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe Chinese people can tell by the color but I have no idea how to tell. I will never buy it again. I'm not sure if I've ever eaten it in a restaurant. It's something I'll have to pay more attention to.

After this experience, I have Googled all unknown vegetables BEFORE cooking. 

An Afternoon

One of the things I wanted to try doing was sitting on campus with my kindle and some milk tea (really just an excuse to buy some milk tea) and seeing if anyone would come up and try to talk to me and maybe make a friend? Or something like that? I'm not sure what I expected or hoped would happen, but I think I was hoping a girl would walk up to me. So yesterday I got some tea and walked to a sitting area and say on a giant bench (it was truly an awesome bench) and started reading.

It took about three minutes before a guy came up to me and asked if I was comfortable (interesting way to start a conversation). He asked me if I attended the university. I should have said that Dan did (which he kind of does, it's a lot easier than trying to explain to someone who doesn't speak good English why we're here). I then got asked a lot of questions like why I'm here and what I do and why did we get married so young (because, you know, it takes away your freedom) and why we didn't have kids. The last question is actually really hard to explain to someone who doesn't quite understand what trying to get your PhD means and I somehow (although I tried to correct myself which didn't work) convinced him that we didn't have time or money for kids which also means my husband doesn't have time for me (also not true). I also got asked where I live, when I eat dinner, if our apartment can hold 5-6 people at once and if I could go to his place for dinner sometime (are you freaked out yet?). Oh, and he also commented multiple times that I looked sad (which he probably attibuted to my having a husband that doesn't have time for me when in actuality I just wanted to read my book).

Disclaimer: this interaction is basically normal, although his questions were a little strange. People think that having foreigners for friends is cool and they can be a little pushy. You are also very aware that there's no way to know how many foreigners each person has come into contact with and you don't want to give them a bad view of your country or the people in it by being rude.

What happened? I realized there was no way to get him to leave so after half an hour I told him that I had to leave to got o the store (which was actually true) to buy stuff for dinner and breakfast. He told me he knew of a place that was good and had cheap food and he could take me there but I correctly understood that to be a restaurant and then had to explain to him again that I just needed fruits and vegetables. He asked for my phone number (also normal) so I friended him on wechat (basically a facebook messenger type thing) and he walked me to the gate of the university where we were going in opposite directions and he insisted that I leave first so he could make sure that I left (???). Okay so that was pretty creepy. Dan doesn't think I should talk to him again and ignore his wechat messages but there's that part of me that feels bad for doing so. But I also don't want to get roped into feeling bad and agreeing to hang out with him again because he was a little creepy.

When we were in Beijing last time there were multiple instances where I met people on the bus and they wanted to practice their English and I gave them my number and never talked to them again. I think wechat makes me feel a whole lot worse for some reason.

Jinan

Aaaaand we've headed back to China! Dan's been here for about 6 weeks. I've only been here one, so it's probably time for an update.

 First some answers to a few FAQs...

Why are you going to China again?

 The first time we went was because Dan was doing intensive language study. When he went for the summer a couple years ago he was doing preliminary research. This time he is doing more intensive research for his dissertation.

What will you be doing?

I thankfully won't be working as much as I was last time (doing some sort of work every day), but I'm crossing my fingers that I won't get too bored. I've been doing accounting/bookkeeping work over the internet for the past 3 1/2 years so I will keep doing that. I'm not allowed to work with the visa I have and Dan has a Fulbright so we don't want to do anything illegal to make the Fulbright people mad at us.

Why did Dan go to China before you?

If any of you were reading my blog the last time we went, you know that I had lots of fun getting four visas and there was lots of stress and frustration that went along with that. We were able to avoid that this time with both of us being able to get temporary residents permits which allow us to stay on one visa the entire time. I had to come in on a "spouse visa" though which involved Dan having to get his temporary resident permit first and then write a letter inviting me to join him. It took awhile (the permit itself took two weeks) because of the various things he had to do before he could apply.

 Okay. Now for the actual blog post.

 I've never traveled internationally by myself. I've flown from China to the US by myself but I don't think that's the same thing. At least then when you're jet-lagged people are speaking English. So I figured it was going to be an adventure. Or at least not boring. The flight left at 10:30, getting to Shanghai at 2 in the afternoon (1am Chicago time). I then had an 8 hour layover and flew to Jinan at 10:25pm I decided to go to bed pretty late (that ended up being 1am since I couldn't stay awake any longer) so I'd be more tired for the flight and then try not to sleep during the entire layover (since it was 1-9am Chicago time there would be no reason why I would be tired).

The plane wasn't super crowded which was nice. I was in an aisle with no one sitting next to me. I got fed a lot of food and watched all the movies I was supposed to have seen by this point in my life but haven't because I don't see the point in paying money to stare at a giant screen including: Finding Dori, Inside Out, The Shallows, most of The Jungle Book and Crazy Stupid Love (I have seen that one already but I like it). So who knows how much I actually slept.

 After getting off the plane I had to go through customs which was super easy and then I somehow ended up in the main part of the airport with all of my luggage and no idea where to go for my next flight. Thankfully it's Shanghai so the people at the airport have good English and I was told I have to go to an entirely different terminal. So I did. It took me awhile to figure out where to get my boarding pass. Then they took my suitcases and didn't give me my boarding pass and told me I had to go into a luggage inspection room. I found out this meant I went in and stood there while someone opened my suitcase and went though everything looking for the stuff that was flagged on the x-ray (yes, even for checked baggage) which ended up being a back up cell phone (maybe cause of all the exploding cell phones?) and a small metal flashlight with a missing battery (I still have no idea why I brought that). Oh well. It was a little embarrassing but I'm sure she's seen worse suitcases.

 Also, in Chicago and China I never took off shoes or laptops (or anything) out of bags or anything for security. I also got yelled at when I tried.

 My next goal was to find my gate and tell Dan that I was still alive. OH! I forgot to mention that my cell phone wasn't working. It texted me saying welcome to China (I found out I could send text messages but there's no point in doing that since everyone in Chicago was sleeping and Dan had a Chinese number so I didn't want to try to text him) but I couldn't go on the internet or any of my apps. Shanghai airport has free WiFi. The only problem was that there were only two ways to get a username and password. One was to enter your phone number and they would text you a passcode. The other was to find a machine that would print a username and password for you. You were only allowed to enter a Chinese phone number into the browser (which I didn't have) and the only machine I found wasn't working. So those were a bust. There were also computers around where you could get on the internet so I got on one of those so I could send Dan an email. This is also China so Facebook doesn't work unless you have a VPN (which random computers in an airport would not) so I couldn't just get on Facebook and tell him I was fine. Gmail also doesn't work. I decided to try my super old yahoo address. Yahoo got concerned that I was signing into my email from China and decided to send an email to my Gmail account...so that didn't work either...I then decided to try my old AOL work email because no one cares about AOL and that worked! Once I knew Dan was around I told him my idea and entered his phone number into the browser thing so I could get internet. Then I sat around for the rest of the afternoon, bought a crazy expensive coffee and tuna/corn sandwich and tried to stay awake until I got on the plane. It wasn't fun or easy (I can fall asleep while sitting straight up if I'm tired), but I did it.

I've missed China. I like it here a lot. Dan's showed me around the campus and there's a park I'm going to explore today. I think I will like it more this time since I'm not paranoid about randomly being fired from my job. Jinan is different because most people can't speak any English and there aren't many foreigners so you get stared at a lot, mostly by children.

Our apartment situation is better too. We have a three bedroom apartment (for no particular reason). It was hard to find a place that was nice enough and was ok with a short lease. So we took the first one that we could find which happened to be a three bedroom. Everything is functional, which is what we wanted. We're not super picky on how nice things look.

 There are still things I need to eat, like fried bread. I forgot that existed. And Jianbing (pictured below) which is delicious and I need to get up early enough to walk outside and get some in the morning. And more bubble tea. You can never have enough bubble tea. And all of the dinner foods. We haven't gone to an actual Chinese restaurant yet (unless you could fried chicken at a Chinese fast food place Chinese food).

10 Months and 4 Visas Later

(6 visas if you include Dan’s)

I know I haven’t written in awhile…aaannnddd this will probably be my last blog post, at least in China. I have three weeks left before I leave, which is really weird to think about. It’s hard to imagine that I’m actually going to see people that I know really soon, even if it’s not for very long. We found out that our lease starts August 10th, so we should be moving in around then.

Story:

So in China, there are lots of people who beg for money. It’s also not uncommon to see people begging on the subway. Sometimes I’ve seen a “blind” man being led by an older hunched over man, the blind man is singing as they walk through the subway cars. One day I’m waiting for a train and I see two men sprinting up an escalator and run to a corner of the wall, definitely trying not to be seen. I thought “they look kinda familiar” and get on the train when it pulls up. Sure enough, not long after the train leaves the same two men, as the blind man with a stick and the old hunched over man with a cane go very slowing through the cars begging for money and singing. I feel like if they can run up escalators faster than me there has to be something they can do besides beg for money, but oh well. I found out later they were hiding from security cameras, because their money might get confiscated when they get off the train.

I’m sad to be going home. There’s a lot I’m going to miss in China. I commute a total of three hours a day and pay less than $1 a day on travel expenses, which I think is pretty amazing. The food here is amazing, but we don’t eat a lot of Chinese food anymore. I know there’s a lot more, but I think I’ve become so used to things here, that I forget that it’s different in the U.S. It’s nice living in the city, and being able to go downstairs if I want a snack, since food is pretty cheap. And it’s nice to look out the window and watch tons of kids playing outside with their parents/grandparents. I also like how Beijing has so many parks and paths through trees and flowers that you see people walking in with their dogs (usually not on leashes, which makes it more awesome). The government (I’m assuming) tries to make Beijing look pretty by having tons of flowers and trees everywhere.

A couple things I WON’T miss is having to look for the characters red and green in random food to make sure there’s no red bean or green tea in things. It’ll also be nice to be invisible again, and not have random people say hi and/or good morning to you just because they know how, or having strangers ask for your phone number so they can practice their English. I also don’t believe people actually flush toilet paper.

Dan’s leaving on Wednesday. The day after he leaves I’m going to take a weekend trip to Xi’an, where I went two years ago. I’m extremely excited to go back, and the people there are really excited too.

Looking back, this trip was amazing. It was lots of fun to live in a completely different culture and see how other people live and survive. I think I’ve changed a lot, and have become a more independent and outspoken person, at least when it comes to working with people and interviews and stuff. I’m going to miss my students a lot, especially the two that I’ve been tutoring every weekend since October. They’re really sad that we only have two more lessons left.

My flight back will be interesting. I’m leaving at 7:30am on Saturday (my time) and getting back at noon on Saturday EST. If I stay up all night, maybe I’ll be able to sleep on the plane and kind of help get over 12 hour jetlag, but we’ll see.

Not sure how many people actually read this, but I'm glad someone is. I hope you've had fun following our adventure, and that you were at least slightly entertained along the way.

"Sunny With a High of 75"

Ok, so it's not really 75, but the weather is nice enough that I have that song stuck in my head when I walk outside. Now that it's nice out we'll probably do a lot more stuff on the weekends so I might have some pictures sometime, which might give me more of an incentive to update my blog.

Things are going well here. Dan just had a one week break before he started his last quarter and I had a nice relaxing 3 day weekend (after working 6 days in a row). 

My job is going well, I'm able to understand the teacher's personalities better (since our communication is slightly hindered) and we have fun together. I'm able to practice my Chinese a little bit, and I'm helping the teachers learn some English. The kids aren't as scared of me as they were before. Some of the youngest ones (2 year olds) wouldn't let me play with them at first, but now they like me.

I've had some interesting things happen to me the last couple days. Some random guy offered to give me a ride on the back of his bicycle. I kinda laughed at him and told him no...I'm not sure if I could actually stay on the back of a bicycle while it's moving and not fall off. It's always amazed me how Chinese people of all ages can do that.

A couple days later, I got off a subway train and was walking to the trash can to throw something away when I realized a boy's mother was helping him stand on the trashcan so he could pee into it...

I also (this isn't funny) heard a motor bike/bicycle accident today, it was almost right behind me on the street. I'm not sure if I've ever heard an accident before, but it looked like both of the people are alright. Sometimes I'm surprised there aren't more accidents.

There were other things that were a little more humorless that I thought were amusing like seeing a really old volkswagan police car, I think it looked like this. Or random Chinese people being completely amused by me and asking me if I like what I'm eating and if they have it in America and just kept smiling and laughing (there aren't that many foreigners around where I work if you can't tell).

I almost had to go to Hong Kong to get a new visa, but, thankfully, I was able to get out of it. I now have a new visa that will last me until I need to leave.

Here's some pictures of the outside view of our apartment:

That is a Christmas tree down there and it says Merry Christmas on it and still gets lit up every night.

We have a faster internet speed, so I can upload our Spring Festival firework videos:

Over Halfway

I knew I would eventually start updating about once a month, my break has been pretty uneventful.

I started my now job today. I'm teaching 5 classes Monday through Friday from 9-12. The ages of the children are 2-6, but each class only varies by a year. My first day went pretty well, I'm exhausted though. The place is in the middle of nowhere, it's outside the city. The only reason why I'm doing it is cause I'm done at noon so I can get back by 1:40, which is a lot earlier than my other job when I got back at 6 sometimes. I really hope it works out, the people there are all really nice. There's a lady from Kentucky and I talked to her a lot today. The lady (I can't for the life of me remember her name) told me the school might be finished in early July, and she's not sure if I would have to stay that long. She's not in charge though, and the school made it sound like they want me to stay as long as possible. So we'll see.

Since I wrote a blog post about weird things about China, I'll say some things about what I like or things I might miss.

One of the awesome things about China is the street food. Besides the normal fruit, the more common things are charcoal cooked sweet potatoes, fruit on a stick covered in hard sugar, and roasted chestnuts. There are also random breakfast things that I've never tried, and I've also seen people make sushi on the street. I don't usually eat street food, but I like the fact that I could if I wanted. The potatoes and chestnuts smell amazing too.

Another thing that's fun in China is the people who sell things on the street. There are a lot of different things from mugs to books to toilet brushes to bunny rabbits (they're so tiny!). The best part is when a cop drives up and all the people scatter (they don't have licenses to sell things) on their bicycle carts, but they're laughing the entire time that they're pedaling away from the cops. I've only witnessed it a couple times, but it's really funny.

We have Netflix again...probably not a good idea...

We will probably be in California in the fall. I get excited thinking about the awesome weather...and blue sky...

Skyping with people since my last blog post has been fun :):):)

And for those of you who've said we need to skype soon...3 months ago...we should probably do that sometime.

Not sure what else to say...enjoy the snow hahaha :)