Surprises

I love to eat cereal for breakfast. Before I came to China I was concerned whether or not I'd be able to find American style food for breakfast. But! One day I found Honey Bunches of Oats in the school store. Not my most favorite cereal, and it was way too expensive, but I bought it anyway because I wanted cereal. I thought my worries were over until I realized I needed milk. It's not hard to buy milk, right? WRONG. I haven't bought normal milk yet and every time I go to the store I look carefully at each package and try something new. I've tried the boxed stuff, the canned stuff, and the bagged stuff. It's not milk. Soon I may give up and just buy the soy milk in the school store, but I'm not a huge fan of soy milk. The last "milk" I bought was in a bag. I was told by experienced buyers that it was milk. I opened it up, poured it in the cereal, then stared at it for a while when I saw what it was. Once again, it was yogurt. Yogurt here is drinkable, so I easily mistook the squishy bag as liquid milk. Some day I will find milk. Some day. It may be the last day I'm here, but I will find it.

I used to go to a little restaurant near my school for dumplings. A couple owned it and it was always quite busy. The reason I say I used to go to this place is because this is what we found one day when we were heading over there for lunch...

It's completely gone. My heart broke as we saw the owners of the dumpling place and other vendors digging through the mess to take whatever they could. We don't know when or why this happened.

I went to a market a few days ago with some of my other classmates. This is an indoor market and pretty much a tourist attraction. I walked around with Linden and we thought we made a pretty good team! We quickly found out that they hate it when you try to talk with your friend - they'd much rather have it be just you - which makes sense. So Linden and I would use this to our advantage and have mini conversations during the negotiation process. We'd always mention how it was too expensive and we really didn't need whatever it was. I had heard before I came that if the people started insulting you that meant you were actually getting a decent price(they'll be super nice the whole time if they're getting a big profit out of you). I wasn't exactly sure what they had meant by that because I couldn't imagine someone trying to sell me something insulting me. And I was also told that they will not sell to you if they are not getting a profit, so do not believe them when they try to get you to raise your price by guilt tripping you. But I quickly found out what these insults are...and boy, are they insults.

I was told that I am a mean girl when I bought a sweatshirt from a lady. She also told me during the negotiation that she didn't want to waste her time on me and that my price was so ridiculous. She laughed at me - a lot. Yet she still sold it to me...huh. Must not have been that bad of a price for her.

I was looking at some purses and mentioned what I thought was a pretty low price to a lady and she came back with a price only a bit higher so I knew instantly that my price was too high. We went back and forth a bit, but by that time I didn't even want the purse so I told her I didn't want it. She took that as a negotiating strategy and tried to get me back. I told her I really, truly, did not want it and it seemed like she was about to lose it. I just kind of scooted away as she was yelling at me " Is this the American way?! Is this what you do?! You are so rude!"

The best was when Linden and I each found a pair of athletic shoes we wanted. We tried our best to buy our items together because the more you buy the cheaper you can get them. We told the lady that together we'd pay 120rmb (about $20) for both of them. They're clearly knock off Nike's and we both have no desire to pay a large amount for shoes we probably won't even bring back. She wanted us to pay around 650 rmb ($120ish). We refused to listen to her as she told us she'd give us a discount because we're friends, so we could pay 350 rmb, then she said that because I spoke Chinese so well she'd give us a discount, so we'd pay like 320rmb. This whole time I never raised my price from 60 rmb per shoe. She kept begging for me to raise it higher. Multiple times I said, okay, fine, we will not pay your price, I'm sorry, we are leaving now. I'd turn to leave (there was an escalator right by this spot) and she would grab my arm and turn me around. Eventually I really did start to get sick of it because neither of us were moving with our price. I basically ran onto the escalator with Linden so she couldn't grab my arm. That's when she yelled "HEY! COME BACK HERE!" I couldn't believe it. There were tons of people between us and she is just shouting at me. She told us she'd do 60 rmb per shoe! So once we got to the top, we went back down to talk with her. Once down, she tried to raise her price. I had none of it and turned right back around. She (expectantly) grabbed my arm and said she'd take our price. She then shoved the shoes in bags and took our money. I thanked her as she had her head down putting our money away. What she did next surprised me more than anything else I experienced that day. She looked up at us with the biggest smile on her face and told us "You girls are really tough. I like you." 

Thursday we went to The Temple of Heaven. This is where the Emperor would go to pray to heaven each year. It's a really gorgeous place with garden surrounding each of the historical spots. It's kind of like a hang out place for older people. They play chess, have dance lessons, and do taiji in the park.

This is the main attraction. The inside is really pretty, but the lighting was bad so it was too dark for a picture.

Look at how high this guy has his leg! I was quite impressed.

Yes, I do realize that I'm being just like the people that sneak pictures of me.

He is way more fit than I'll ever be.

This was the echoing wall. We didn't actually go up to it because this sea of blue school age kids basically took up the whole place. 

Wednesday my teacher was late 20 minutes. While we were waiting for her to come I told my classmates that if a teacher is late 10 minutes in America that we can leave. They were all in shock that you could do that! So we all stared at the clock until she was late ten minutes and then joked about leaving. When she finally did come she was so happy to still see us there! She bought each of us half a sandwich as a sort of apology. We got lucky with that one because I heard that when another class's teacher was late that teacher said they had to stay extra to make up for the time missed. Makes me appreciate my teacher even more!

What I Miss

I haven’t written much about homesickness or how I’m feeling in general, so I’ve decided to make a list of what I miss on basically a daily basis. Don’t mistake this post thinking I’m unhappy, because I most definitely am happy, but there are times when I'd like to just hop on a plane and go home.

What I miss:

1. My Mom still insisting on good-night hugs when I go to bed.

2. My Dad's jokes.

3. Rachel calling me up randomly to just talk with me.

4. Nathan showing me what's new with Andrew.

5. Andrew running to give me a hug when he sees me.

6. Joel being able to fist bump me when we see each other.

7. Marie talking with me about girl things.

8. Lydia asking me to read her a book.

9. Abi giving me a smile when no one is looking.

10. My Opa and Oma giving me dark chocolate whenever I see them.

11. Dan texting me randomly to hang out.

12. Beth coming over and going to Hager Park.

13. Bryant trying to scare me.

14. Dicta laughing.

15. Dette listening for hours to me while we work.

16. Krystal inviting me over to her house whenever - even last minute.

17. Tim letting me sit in the sound booth even though I don't work it anymore.

18. Laurie and I eating Chinese (AMERICAN Chinese).

19. The comfort/safety/trust of these people.

20. Seeing the smiles from the people I love most in this world.

I Love Children

The more children I see here the more I want to babysit all of them! Every single one of them are so cute and precious in their own way. They remind me of my nephew and nieces and it makes me miss them more and more! I went to a little shop across the street from our campus to get a drink (drinks cost around 2 kuai there...5 kuai in the school store. I think the walk is worth it) and there was the most adorable baby just hanging out in its baby seat. I couldn't help myself and did the whole high-pitch-voice-because-I'm-talking-to-a-child thing and he absolutely loved it! He basically started jumping up and down with excitement. The lady that was watching him started laughing and saying "阿姨/ayi/aunt" over and over since he couldn't talk.  Eventually I decided I should probably leave, but we all know I would have stayed there until they kicked me out.

Friday Linden and I were woken up to the sound of what seemed like hundreds of children outside. I grabbed my glasses and threw open the curtains. There were tons of kids with their parents on the steps outside our window! They were probably elementary school age, and what they were doing at our school we have no idea. A lot of events seem to go on here and we never know what they are. Sometimes there's adorable children, sometimes there's older people dressed in suites and dresses. Once I even saw someone doing some sort of recording that could have been for a News Channel.

Our bathroom "rained" friday. I took a video of it because I couldn't get the water that was dripping and running down on our walls with just a picture. Sorry for the bad angles - I tend to forget when taking videos that you can't simply rotate them later to fix it. I had to upload it Youtube because for some reason it wasn't uploading with Blogger. So here's the link!

My Bathroom Is Raining

I've been regularly going to a Bible study Monday night. It's an English focused Bible study so the whole thing is in English and the purpose is to study the Bible but also improve English for the Chinese people. It is completely legal, as is the church I went to that one Sunday, as is the public worship service we put together ourselves during our Beidai weekend. I would love for everyone to be able to come to China and experience the religious side of it because it is nothing like I thought. During orientation we were told that evangelizing is illegal, and that is very much true, but being a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, etc, is not. Everyone just goes to their respected registered areas when they would like to worship. During dinner we pray together - out loud - in public areas.

Thursday we went to The National Museum. It's located right across from Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City - two places I have been to before, but I never noticed the museum right by it. It's HUGE and free!

Too many people...

I took a picture of this because these are closer to the original Chinese characters and are more pictorial.

I wish I could paint like that.

I'll admit that I didn't get very good pictures of The Forbidden City (above) or Tiananmen Square (below) because I had been there before and already have pictures, so I didn't really try for good ones again, sorry.

Remember me mentioning how I usually eat street food and how cheap it is? Well I learned an interesting fact about my beloved vendors.... they're illegal. I was told by our professor that selling anything on the street is illegal. Now it makes so much sense why people put all their items on blankets. They can just pick it up and run! There's a whole separate official group that goes after street vendors. The other day I was with a friend getting some food from a vendor we regularly go to when he received a phone call. He quickly finished, handed me my food, called to the vendor next to us, said sorry to my friend, packed up, got on his bike, and took off! The other vendor did the same and they were both off in less than a minute! We just stood on the sidewalk and watched as they seemed to vanish into thin air. A few of our other classmates said that one time they had paid for their food when their vendor heard that these officials were coming and just took off with their food. This happened to be a dumpling lady, and her dumplings were still frying and bounced along and she quickly rode to the safety of the other side of the street. Our classmates said they wanted their paid for lunch so they ran right along with her and got their food once she stopped. Life here is interesting! 

One night we made a trip out to the night markets. We knew it was going to be packed, but not this packed! I have a fairly large bubble space so having people constantly touching me as I was walking was not my favorite. 

These were the real reason we went to the night market - Micah wanted to try a scorpion. Because it's a picture you can't tell that the scorpions are still alive. Their little legs sure were moving before put on the fryer. He tried one and said it tasted like a potato chip... I told him I'd take his word for it. There were also silk worms and other insects you could choose to fry. Don't worry Mom, I didn't and do not plan on trying any of this. I stuck to eating something like a vegetable egg roll that night.

On our way out Linden got a coconut to drink the juice out of. It was good, odd, but good. 

This week was the Mid Autumn Festival. This holiday is celebrated, but isn't a huge deal. Mainly people give each other moon cakes, and then people regift the moon cakes, and regift them again. My friend Susie (she's from Beijing) texted me saying that she had a ton of moon cakes her friends had given her and she wanted to give me some of them. I readily agreed and we met up. I was expecting a few moon cakes in a bag. Nope, she came carrying this ... 

Just like Pizza hut pizza sizes are not the same as America, KFC sandwiches are not the same. Linden ordered a chicken sandwich one day and this is what she got.

Chicken pot pie sandwich maybe? It had peas and carrots in the patty. We all laughed for quite awhile at her misfortune. I was forewarned by Susie not to eat meat at an American style fast food place so I didn't order anything but fries. My classmates then learned of my love of ketchup. It's kind of funny because had we been in America they would have known how much ketchup I use, but since we're in China we haven't had anything to use ketchup with! 

We went to a place our professor knew of that had pizza American style. I was a bit iffy as to whether or not this was true based off of our past experience, but he was right! The pizza was also MASSIVE! We ordered two of these! We couldn't put our plates on the table because the pizza took up the whole space. Our group of eight finished all but one piece. 

This upcoming week is going to be quite busy. It's the week before our National Holiday week break, so we have midterms in our language classes and finals in culture class. With any college course the first exam is always learning the teacher's style, so it makes me nervous for what a Chinese teacher's style is like. I'll be doing plenty of studying this week that's for sure! 

Beidai Weekend

Last weekend we took the train to Beidai for the weekend! It's actually more of a Russian resort town, but the reason we went was because it's where the Great Wall meets the sea. So now I've seen the Great Wall toward the end of the Silk Road in the desert, in the middle by Beijing, and now at the end at the sea!

There wasn't a sign describing what this is...so I'm assuming it's a jade dragon of some sort meant to bring luck? It was in a glass case, but it was cracked so people had shoved money inside.

I almost walked right past this door without noticing the man.

There was this awesome maze in the fort area. I'm sure it doesn't have a historical meaning behind it, but it sure was fun! And a bit more difficult than it looks. We spent a good 45 minutes or so in it...

This is the building at the top that overlooks the sea (picture after next)

In order to take this picture we stopped people from going to the top for about 20 minutes, but they didn't seem to mind because they were curious as to what we were doing. I cropped the picture, but on the left side there was a guy on the stairs with a camera. He was taking a picture of me as I was posing, awkward, right? At first I noticed he was pointed in my direction so I looked at him, he noticed me looking and put his camera down. I looked back to Julie (girl taking this picture) and out of the corner of my eye watched him put his camera up again and slowly move in my direction. I wasn't in the mood that day so I just stared him down as he took my picture.

This is supposed to be the dragon head at the end of the wall. It was kind of funny because we were told that at the sea there was a dragon drinking water...we got to the end and were like "Where's the dragon head?!" We had to have someone explain to us that it wasn't a literal dragon head, but was figuratively speaking. I was looking forward to seeing some elaborate dragon too...

I had to take a picture of this.

And this. A three wheeled car. It's smaller than a smart car.

On the left is our hotel. And it is the place where retired communist party officials stay.

This is the beach right across from our hotel. The place was absolutely gorgeous and wonderful! It felt so good to be by water and fresh air for awhile. We spent some time just walking along the shore and collecting shells and watching the local people fish. Like I mentioned in the beginning this was a Russian resort area, so the stores and menus were all in Russian. There were countless times that people came up to us speaking in full Russian expecting us to respond. We just looked at them with wide eyes and responded in English. 

I always feel like I have to have some great ending to my posts - I literally spend more time thinking of how to end a post than writing the actual post - So I'm just going to end this one by saying Beidai was awesome and I want to go back! 

Apple Pie

This post is titled apple pie because WE MADE APPLE PIE ON SATURDAY! Me and two other girls went to my professor's house (about a hour away by subway) for the afternoon/evening to help Lynn with the apple pie. It was so delicious that we all had two pieces for dessert after dinner with ice cream. Apple pie isn't something that I thought I'd crave or miss, but I guess I just want any kind of American food at this point.

Tuesday was Lynn's birthday! Wayne told us in class on Monday that it was her birthday Tuesday and that he was going to be gone the whole day, so she'd be by herself. Therefore, being the loving students that we are, we planned a surprise party. We ordered a cake from the bakery nearby and told Lynn that we had some questions so we wanted to go to her house. She replied saying that she'd rather just come to the school, which was perfect for us! Asian cakes usually have a lot of fruit on them and are absolutely gorgeous!

The cake came in this giant container. People here sure do know how to make things fancy!

I think the most exciting thing that has happened so far this week is that I am now apart of the CNU ping pong club! Me and a few friends went to go play ping pong for a little bit and during one of our games had a few Chinese students come and ask us to join their club. Me and Jeongsoo (he's from Korea) agreed and right away they wanted to film us saying "Ping pong qiu shi huan ying ni!/乒乓求社欢迎你" Meaning: Ping pong club welcomes you! They were going to show their other Chinese classmates so that more people would join the club. We're meeting every Thursday and Sunday night from 6:30 - 8:30 and I couldn't be more excited!

Today we went to a Daoist temple called White Cloud. This is the only temple that has not been destroyed/parts of it destroyed through the changes in government. It is still functioning - we saw some people worshipping there while we were visiting today.

This is where monks or people waiting to be ordained stay. Rooms like this are lined all along the sides of the middle buildings.

Candles and incense were being burned outside the temple buildings. 

People were rubbing the dragon heads on this as they walked through the temple - probably for good luck.

Bad English is my favorite.

This is in a gift shop...why people are putting money on statues in here I have no idea. It makes sense for people to be doing it in the worship/venerating buildings, but the gift shop? We said that if we bought one we'd pick the statue with the most money on it.

Today was a smoggy day. Can you see the sun in this picture? It's there, I promise.

This is one of my favorite places here - Mumu! It's really close to our school and has the best smoothies, coffee, and just drinks in general. It is a bit pricey, but it's a nice place to go to just sip on something and use their excellent wifi. It's rustic looking inside and has cow decorations everywhere. It's just plain adorable.

This weekend we're going to Beidai - a resort city by the sea! We were told that if same resort as last time is reserved that we'll be staying at a place that is actually for retired communist party officials. Needless to say we're all super excited to go!