Friday:
Have you ever had that dream when you dream of home? You walk in the front door and see your family, and your dogs are hopping up and down and everyone is happy? Yet something feels off.... you can't put your finger on it. Then you wake up and you're in China! This morning kinda felt like that.
6:40 am I opened my eyes and was wide awake. Good thing, too, cuz hot water is from 6:30 to 7:30, and breakfast is from 7:00 to 7:40. So I laid in bed taking in my surroundings and rolled over to see Bruce was already awake. We hopped out of bed and got dressed. Bruce was faster than me so he left with the two other boys for breakfast. 45 minutes later I was ready. I grabbed 2 other girls to get some breakfast but when we got there at 7:44 all the food was gone! We had missed breakfast by 4 minutes!! Feeling sorry for us, one of the Chinese principals took me back into the kitchen and gave us 6 hard boiled eggs and 3 packets of noodles. The girls and I ended up eating an egg each. Needless to say, we were on time for the other 2 meals that day.
Kelly, our foreign affairs officer (Chines representative), showed us around our school. We unpacked and got the internet set up. Minnie, another Chinese teacher who speaks English, took us to the Bank of China to exchange our US dollars for yaun. Then we went to a Walmart-like market to buy some essentials. The most venturous part of the trip was our ride back to the school. We paid a crazy china man 4 yaun (about 50 cents in US money) to drive us home in a 3-wheeled car called a "rabbit". It's like a stick-shift lawn mower with a roof. We can't wait to start teaching.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Dough shao chien?
Shopping is good, especially when all your money is worth seven times more! Can you guess what we did today? That's right, shopping!! Love, or Charie- an American teacher, took us to the city center to check out some of the vendors. We took the #38 Green bus through the main part of town. We started with a small underground market. Bruce and I felt adventurous and bought some pastries from a Chinese bakery. It paid off cuz they were yummy! Walking down the streets is almost like walking down the streets of San Francisco, well it would be if they sold squid on a stick and puppies. There were people with bicycle-drawn carts that carried roasted nuts and fruit and vegetables and even a few live chickens! But the most exciting and overwhelming emporium was the three-story shopping building that resembled the scene in Labarynth when Sara meets the Junk Lady. You could buy ANYTHING there! Hats, purses, shoes, pots and pans, jewelry, bedding, make-up, knives, books, toys, you name it- they had it! Bruce and I looked for almost two hours. As tempted as I was, I didn't buy anything. I've decided to wait and see what else is out there. Although I would have bought a pair of cute brown Puma shoes if they had my size... After that we went to Jia Jia Yue- Walmart, for more food. We made it back to the school just in time for dinner.
As we walked up the steps to dinner the familiar scent of playdough and seafood filled our noses. When we walked in, no one was there- not a good sign. We grabbed our trays and headed for the service. Chris- another teacher from the states- stopped us. He said that dinner tonight consisted of bones in a brown sauce and fish skins over rice. Sound appetizing? That's what we thought, too. Luckily, Chris and Charie and another American guy invited us out to dinner. We walked into town and ate at a little hole in the wall restaraunt. It was the best meal we had had! One dish even tasted like Orange Chicken! My favorite dish consisted of peanuts, vinegar, green pepper, and onion. They ordered about 12 dishes which we all shared. Its really cool how they eat. We all sit around a table and the meal is served on a lazy suzann the size of most of the table. We use chop sticks to grab what we want and put it on our small plate. We went home full and happy.
As we walked up the steps to dinner the familiar scent of playdough and seafood filled our noses. When we walked in, no one was there- not a good sign. We grabbed our trays and headed for the service. Chris- another teacher from the states- stopped us. He said that dinner tonight consisted of bones in a brown sauce and fish skins over rice. Sound appetizing? That's what we thought, too. Luckily, Chris and Charie and another American guy invited us out to dinner. We walked into town and ate at a little hole in the wall restaraunt. It was the best meal we had had! One dish even tasted like Orange Chicken! My favorite dish consisted of peanuts, vinegar, green pepper, and onion. They ordered about 12 dishes which we all shared. Its really cool how they eat. We all sit around a table and the meal is served on a lazy suzann the size of most of the table. We use chop sticks to grab what we want and put it on our small plate. We went home full and happy.
Friday, February 26, 2010
China!
The airplane that took us from Beijing to Weihai in China. I thought the chinese on the side was cool. They served a rice ball, bean curds (tofu?), and beef and noodles. Katie let Bruce eat hers.
Bruce in front of the Chinese KFC inside the Beijing International Airport. Notice the signs- Old KFC guy and Chinese.
Our bedroom. I couldn't get a great angle with the camera, but we have a double bed pushed together. Its as hard as a rock, but we sleep like babies on it. Our computer now works with their plugs.
Katie outside the Weihai local airport. We got on this bus with our group and suitcases, and they took us to the school. It has a huge campus. We'll take pics and send them later.Time Travel is Possible
So, on Tuesday, February 23, around dinner time, we got a ride to the San Francisco airport with Katie's sister, Hillary. We flew to Los Angeles and met up with the other volunteers in our ILP group. Our next flight took off just past midnight, at 12:10 am (on Feb. 24). The flight lasted about 12 hours, and we landed in Seoul, Korea around 12 noon... California time. But in Korea, the local time was about 6 hours earlier than in California, so the clocks read 6 am. BUT since we crossed the international dateline in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, we did not land at 6 am on February 24. We landed at 6 am on February 25. So what happened to the time between Midnight on Tueday and 6am on Thursday? 30 hours got condensed into a single 12 hour flight. Bruce, the scientist of the family, does not approve.
The plane rides were fun. We got food, and watched movies, and our bums got numb, and we got 4 hours of sleep. From Korea we flew to Beijing, China, and arrived on Thursday at 12 noon. Representatives from our school were there to meet us, and they fed us KFC in the airport. We then flew with them on our 4th flight from Beijing to our school in Weihai, which we just learned means, "strong (wei) ocean (hai)."
It was dark and cold, and we were tired. The six principals of the school treated us to a special dinner to welcome us. Shrimp, with their heads and eyes and everything; cow stomach strips with vinegar; vegetables (my favorite); and something that looked like beef with pineapple. I got excited for the pineapple. When I took a bite, it wasn't pineapple. It was a sweet potato, but it was very tasty! So I took 3 more. Second one- very good. Third one- very good. Fourth one- not a sweet potato. As I chewed it in my mouth, I determined that it was a golf ball sized piece of ginger. No, it did not taste like a gingerbread cookie. Imagine eating a lettuce leaf, and while you're chewing squirt 10 or 12 packets of Taco Bell hot sauce in your mouth, and rub onions in your eyes. You just ate ginger. But generally, the food was good. They had steamed rolls (instead of baked... weird), and sticky rice. We had to use chop sticks. One of the principals complimented Bruce on how well he used the chop sticks. Katie didn't do it "correctly," but somehow got the food from her plate into her mouth using only the chopsticks.
The principals were very nice, and did many toasts for us (cheers!). We hit our pillows around 9:30 pm, and even though our beds were rock hard (actually wood hard), we slept like babies.
The plane rides were fun. We got food, and watched movies, and our bums got numb, and we got 4 hours of sleep. From Korea we flew to Beijing, China, and arrived on Thursday at 12 noon. Representatives from our school were there to meet us, and they fed us KFC in the airport. We then flew with them on our 4th flight from Beijing to our school in Weihai, which we just learned means, "strong (wei) ocean (hai)."
It was dark and cold, and we were tired. The six principals of the school treated us to a special dinner to welcome us. Shrimp, with their heads and eyes and everything; cow stomach strips with vinegar; vegetables (my favorite); and something that looked like beef with pineapple. I got excited for the pineapple. When I took a bite, it wasn't pineapple. It was a sweet potato, but it was very tasty! So I took 3 more. Second one- very good. Third one- very good. Fourth one- not a sweet potato. As I chewed it in my mouth, I determined that it was a golf ball sized piece of ginger. No, it did not taste like a gingerbread cookie. Imagine eating a lettuce leaf, and while you're chewing squirt 10 or 12 packets of Taco Bell hot sauce in your mouth, and rub onions in your eyes. You just ate ginger. But generally, the food was good. They had steamed rolls (instead of baked... weird), and sticky rice. We had to use chop sticks. One of the principals complimented Bruce on how well he used the chop sticks. Katie didn't do it "correctly," but somehow got the food from her plate into her mouth using only the chopsticks.
The principals were very nice, and did many toasts for us (cheers!). We hit our pillows around 9:30 pm, and even though our beds were rock hard (actually wood hard), we slept like babies.
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