Well, folks, a LOT has happened since my last blog post. An overwhelming mixture of remorse, excitement, guilt, and a strong desire to put off my lesson planning has led to this: my first post in weeks!
Yes, I am still alive and well. Classes have been going smoothly despite the odd absence from some of my students who have been cajoled into volunteering for the "3rd World WuShu Championships". I know... some friends of ours tried to tell them to put "3rd International", but what can you do? My missing students, however, have been replaced by the 2 or 3 random visitors per class that come in just to observe a foreign teacher...all the while messing up my beautiful seating charts! They have now begun to put in requests ahead of time and usually insist on participating in class discussion/homework etc. Such is China.
It is starting to get a little chilly here in Shiyan, so I have been trying my best to take advantage of the dwindling opportunity for outdoor activity. Yesterday, a group of us Americans went hiking up by the lake. Jessica and Trent somehow ended up taking a free boat ride around the lake with some Chinese strangers while the rest of us took a refreshing (and sometimes muddy) hike along the mountains. It was simply beautiful, and a nice change of pace from the busyness of city life.
And now for something completely different
Shortly after our return from October holiday, my friend Trent and I were asked a strange favor by one of our Chinese friends. They wanted us to be in a Chinese commercial...for a gas station. I know, I know, props to China for having an eye for excellent acting talent...err white people. So the next day, we are picked up in a car and driven to the office of this China Petrol place. They drove us out to their gas station and gave us a 30-second explanation (through a translator) of the commercial plot. We were to drive the Boss's car up to the pump, converse with the friendly gas station attendant, go inside to pay, and then drive off. Asking us whether we could legally drive in China, I shrugged and showed my Alabama driver's license. Apparently this was enough because they began to usher us to the car (after a round of rock-paper-scissors between Trent and me to decide who the driver would be). And then....the unthinkable happened.
As we are walking to the car, a van comes out of nowhere and nearly careens into a couple in matching jackets that is walking along the sidewalk. Thinking of it as no more than a drastic driving error (they are common in China), I was waiting for the expected apology and parting of ways. No such luck. After a seemingly endless stare-down between the driver and pedestrians, I watched in disbelief as the driver slowly disembarked and marched toward the male half of the couple. The next five minutes of my life were probably some of the stranger ones in my experience. The driver attacked the guy who had been happily strolling along just 30 seconds before. Props to the pedestrian, though for keeping his head down and trying to minimize the situation...not that there was anything minimal to the jumping-karate-kick to the back that he recieved. The girl (who was clearly previously involved with the crazed driver), tried to restrain said driver and put him back in the van....bad idea. Just as I thought he would start his van and be on his way, the driver throws it in reverse and BACKS INTO the girl, knocking her to the ground (no injury apparent thankfully). He gets back out of the car, begins shouting at the girl and shaking her, and then picks up a large rock to go after the other guy with. To this point, the 7 or 8 men in their 20's and 30's who were standing around the area had done nothing but watch. Trent decides that he has had enough, and throws down his umbrella to walk toward the driver. In retrospect it was probably not a GREAT idea seeing as he spoke no Chinese and was likely to recieve a rock to the face, but it was at least enough to spur our onlooking hosts into action as they managed to get the driver to leave the station with his ex/present girlfriend/sister/whatever she was.
Yeah...woah. Imagine if an American guy had dared assault a girl in the presence of 7 or 8 bigger guys in public. I've never seen it happen, but I'm reasonably certain that a severe beatdown would have ensued.
So, naturally, we proceeded with the commercial as if nothing had happened. So with no script, and my commercial director and his translator in the backseat, I got in the car, pulled up to the pump, and the gas station attendant asked me in perfect english "Hello, welcome to China Petrol. How many Liters do you want?" LITERS!? After a millisecond-long flashback to high school Chemistry conversions, and a subsequent millisecond-long deliberation on the fuel capacity of the Honda crossover prototype, my brilliant mind landed on "Fill 'er up." Thankfully, the attendant nodded, and directed me inside; cameras in hot pursuit. I approached the counter and was faced with episode two of my conversion nightmare. "How many liters did you purchase?" I kept my cool long enough to muster a random guess: "13?"
"OK" she says, "That will be 100 Yuan".
I opened my wallet to reveal the 60 yuan inside. I sheepishly offered it to the lady with a whispered apology, but she seemed to indicate that this was acceptable. I turned to leave the room and walked until the camera went off, then turned back quickly to retrieve my 60 yuan (they had promised to give me money to use in the commercial so I was surely not going to let them keep mine).
"Oh well" I thought to myself, "we'll get it right on the second take."
there are apparently no second takes in China (sorry, but I'm going to ignore a possibly brilliant segway to something deeper here), so we went on our way and had some lunch.
The answer to your question? Yes, they are supposed to send me a tape, and no, you can not put it on YouTube.
In addition to relaxing hikes and crazy commercials, we have enjoyed some American comforts as of late. Thanks to our AWESOME grandparents, the Breland crew was able to host an Alabama Football party last night. After recieving the Bama-Georgia game in the mail on Friday, we quickly invited all of our American friends to come and enjoy Fajitas and Football (kinda catchy come to think of it). All went well until some imposters posing as our real friends pulled out handmade Georgia signs late into the 3rd Quarter (the first time UGA scored a touchdown) and began to wave them around and dance. I have since forgiven the heinous act, but have resolved to confiscate any Anti-Alabama materials upon the next football watching ;-)
So thanks to our stateside friends and family for the WONDERFUL packages, and thanks to our American friends here for keeping the SEC rivalry feeling alive and kicking.
I suppose thats enough for tonight. I still have to come up with a lesson plan about Halloween and its getting late. We have an exciting week coming up with 2 birthdays, Halloween, and the promise of KTV. So maybe I will have more to blog about in a week or so.
Take it easy back there in the states. Take some time out of your election-season fervor to remember your friends here in China. And remember that whether your party wins or loses this year, we are called to a higher Kingdom defined not by our differences but our love for one another. There's your mushy thought of the week.
Peace,
Finn
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Qingdao-No Plan
This was our motto for the second half of the trip. After spending many wonderful hours at the Temple of Heaven, Great Wall, Behei Gardens, and Tienanmen square, our intrepid band of travellers was ready for some rest once we hit the city of Qingdao.
Qingdao is definitely one of the coolest cities I have ever been to. Basically, one half of the city somewhat resembles a European city on the Mediterranean coast. Perhaps a seaside city in southern Spain. The architechture is actually Germanic from what I gather because of a prior occupation in the 1800's. The other half of the city just looks like a bright, clean Chinese city. The combination made for some wonderful town wandering and even some visits to some awesome westernized places. We caught a live classic rock cover band at the Lennon Bar (yes, as in John Lennon). Any time that you can catch the full solo in Free Bird while in China....you've found something special.
There are many beaches in Qingdao, but I don't think the Chinese quite understand what a beach is supposed to look like, or what they're supposed to do there. For the most part, these beaches were a smelly combination of jagged rock and tidepools. The chinese would walk around with long sleeved shirts and pants rolled up to look for crabs or other small creatures. I don't think they particularly enjoyed this, I think they just guessed that you are supposed to hang out at the beach, and hunting crabs seems to be the logical thing to do in a rocky/dirty area.
Thankfully, our crew made the long trek out to a beach that us Americans could feel comfortable at. With a long shoreline of sticky, but otherwise pretty sand, the beach we visited was a welcome reprieve from the chaos that is the Chinese lifestyle. We waded into the water, layed out on the sand, and read our books. It was well worth the 2 hours of travel time that it took to get there.
Those of you who know me very well know that I am not one for seafood. Having mentally prepared myself for the coastal city fare of fresh seafood, I felt like I would be OK. I was wrong. What, might you ask, is the favorite street food of the Qingdao resident??? Skewered Squid. Now I'm not talking about slices of squid meat...I'm talking about floppy tentacles and all, thrust onto a stick and barbequed over a coal pit. Thankfully, Qingdao has other forms of good barbeque skewers. The pork was especially tasty.
I am sad to say that I left Qingdao without taking one picture there. Having used all of my cheesy tourist powers on Beijing, I was quite sick of my camera by the latter half of the week. I will toss up some Great Wall pictures on the next post, but if you just can't wait, check out my facebook page for some cool photos.
I hope you are all doing well stateside! Classes are going well, and I am enjoying life in China. I would like to take this conclusion to give another shout out to the Alabama Football Team. Thank you for waiting until I leave the country to start kicking some tail! Keep posting those comments and let me know what you want me to blog about!
Peace
-Finn
Qingdao is definitely one of the coolest cities I have ever been to. Basically, one half of the city somewhat resembles a European city on the Mediterranean coast. Perhaps a seaside city in southern Spain. The architechture is actually Germanic from what I gather because of a prior occupation in the 1800's. The other half of the city just looks like a bright, clean Chinese city. The combination made for some wonderful town wandering and even some visits to some awesome westernized places. We caught a live classic rock cover band at the Lennon Bar (yes, as in John Lennon). Any time that you can catch the full solo in Free Bird while in China....you've found something special.
There are many beaches in Qingdao, but I don't think the Chinese quite understand what a beach is supposed to look like, or what they're supposed to do there. For the most part, these beaches were a smelly combination of jagged rock and tidepools. The chinese would walk around with long sleeved shirts and pants rolled up to look for crabs or other small creatures. I don't think they particularly enjoyed this, I think they just guessed that you are supposed to hang out at the beach, and hunting crabs seems to be the logical thing to do in a rocky/dirty area.
Thankfully, our crew made the long trek out to a beach that us Americans could feel comfortable at. With a long shoreline of sticky, but otherwise pretty sand, the beach we visited was a welcome reprieve from the chaos that is the Chinese lifestyle. We waded into the water, layed out on the sand, and read our books. It was well worth the 2 hours of travel time that it took to get there.
Those of you who know me very well know that I am not one for seafood. Having mentally prepared myself for the coastal city fare of fresh seafood, I felt like I would be OK. I was wrong. What, might you ask, is the favorite street food of the Qingdao resident??? Skewered Squid. Now I'm not talking about slices of squid meat...I'm talking about floppy tentacles and all, thrust onto a stick and barbequed over a coal pit. Thankfully, Qingdao has other forms of good barbeque skewers. The pork was especially tasty.
I am sad to say that I left Qingdao without taking one picture there. Having used all of my cheesy tourist powers on Beijing, I was quite sick of my camera by the latter half of the week. I will toss up some Great Wall pictures on the next post, but if you just can't wait, check out my facebook page for some cool photos.
I hope you are all doing well stateside! Classes are going well, and I am enjoying life in China. I would like to take this conclusion to give another shout out to the Alabama Football Team. Thank you for waiting until I leave the country to start kicking some tail! Keep posting those comments and let me know what you want me to blog about!
Peace
-Finn
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Best Week of my Life? (If not, its definitely top 3)
So, this past week, myself and various others from the Shiyan crew embarked upon some wonderful travels. I can't imagine fitting all of the stories and photos into one post, so I will try to give the summary here, and perhaps include some photos in later posts.
Last Friday, Trent, Angelyn, Jessica, John, Megan, and I boarded a train to Beijing. If you have never travelled by train, it is an interesting experience. Since we had hard sleeper tickets, we had a relatively comfortable ride that included some friendly hangout time as well as the Name-that-state-capitol game (thanks for the road map cards Darla!). Soon after the commencement of our railway shenanigans, we were interrupted by close to 30 Eastern Europeans who entered our sleeper car. While we were rather excited to see other people who looked like us, they were clearly not as excited to see us. One woman approached us (six of us were sitting on two bottom bunks that we had tickets for). The interchange went something like that.
Hungarian Lady: "Excuse me, are your tickets valid here?"
Americans look at eachother with confused expressions
Hungarian Lady: "Do you speak English?"
More confused expressions: of course we spoke English...we were white and in China!
Megan: "Umm....yes"
Hungarian Lady: with apparent irritation "Well could you all go back to where you belong? We need room because we have many luggages"
more confusion
Unless the lady had wanted to leave all of her luggages in my bed, there was nothing more we could really do. She got the picture and left flustered. From then on, American/Hungarian relations were strained to say the least.
We survived the rest of the trip and arrived safely in Beijing the next day. Blessed with a blue sky and armed with a copy of John's trusty Lonely Planet book, we made it to the hostel and unloaded. After an ill-fated dining choice by a part of the team that included myself and therefore will not merit explanation in this blog, we met up at Silk market.
You may think that you have bargained before....in fact you may have done better than me, but the atmoshpere in this multi-tiered/multi-boothed bargaining behemoth of a market defies description to the average western audience. From shirts and North Face Jackets to pearl necklaces, to pipes to video games, there was plenty of opportunity to come away from beijing with some serious souvenierage. Regretfully, I was travelling with naught but a large backpack, so my purchasing options were limited. I could not, however, resist the prospect of a good poker set with clay chips for 90 Yuan (originally priced at 700 Yuan). which comes to about 13 U.S. dollars. Good deal if you ask me. After splitting up to seek out our bargains, we ate a glorious dinner at Subway and headed over to check out Mao's portrait and some other famous landmarks for the evening.
The Great Wall!!!!
The next day, we headed for the centerpiece of our majestic vacation: camping on the Great Wall of China. Our bus/car ride to Mutainyu (a section of the wall that is nice but not too tourist-infested) took us to the bottom of the mountain which was crested by the Wall. After lingering at some of the shops near the trailhead, our intrepid band of backpack clad Americans began ascending at a vigorous pace. 30 minutes later, we were catching our breath at the top of the first staircase which read (450 meters to the Wall). Having skipped the cable car in favor of hiking up the mountain, we soon realized that our ambitions were larger than our quadriceps.
Nevertheless, we reached the top of the mountain and walked the glorious few steps to mount the Great Wall.
Nothing can prepare you for an experience like the great wall of China (except maybe 3 hours a day on a stairmaster). But seriously, it is breathtaking. We tooked countless pictures atop the Wall and could barely contain our excitement. We walked around the wall for awhile, waiting for nightfall. While we planned to sleep on the wall, we weren't sure how technically legal it was. After most of the tourists left, we set up our 3 tents on top of the western-most tower that allowed foot-traffic. After a light dinner and some wonderful singing, we settled down for a rather chilly night atop the Great Wall.
The next morning, John and I hiked up a RIDICULOUSLY sloped section of the wall to a tower overlooking our campsite in hopes of catching the sunrise over the mountains. Although the dense fog left no sunrise to speak of, we got some cool foggy shots. Nothing quite like waking up before sunrise on an ancient monument like the Great Wall! After breaking camp, we walked down to the far end of Mutainyu, where there is a LUGE track you can take to the bottom of the wall. The 40 quai was well worth it. At the bottom, us boys chowed down on some amazingly delicious banana chocolate pancakes while the girls sought out a cafe for some much-needed caffiene.
While in Beijing I also visited the Temple of Heaven and Behei gardens. Both of which were absolutely incredible. I'll leave it to the photo installment, however, and let the pictures speak for themselves. I have plenty more stories to come, especially from the second half of our trip, but I fear that I must go and plan a lesson for my class tomorrow. I promise I will blog again soon, and hopefully get some pictures up. In the meantime, take care back home and I will talk to you all soon!
-Finn
Last Friday, Trent, Angelyn, Jessica, John, Megan, and I boarded a train to Beijing. If you have never travelled by train, it is an interesting experience. Since we had hard sleeper tickets, we had a relatively comfortable ride that included some friendly hangout time as well as the Name-that-state-capitol game (thanks for the road map cards Darla!). Soon after the commencement of our railway shenanigans, we were interrupted by close to 30 Eastern Europeans who entered our sleeper car. While we were rather excited to see other people who looked like us, they were clearly not as excited to see us. One woman approached us (six of us were sitting on two bottom bunks that we had tickets for). The interchange went something like that.
Hungarian Lady: "Excuse me, are your tickets valid here?"
Americans look at eachother with confused expressions
Hungarian Lady: "Do you speak English?"
More confused expressions: of course we spoke English...we were white and in China!
Megan: "Umm....yes"
Hungarian Lady: with apparent irritation "Well could you all go back to where you belong? We need room because we have many luggages"
more confusion
Unless the lady had wanted to leave all of her luggages in my bed, there was nothing more we could really do. She got the picture and left flustered. From then on, American/Hungarian relations were strained to say the least.
We survived the rest of the trip and arrived safely in Beijing the next day. Blessed with a blue sky and armed with a copy of John's trusty Lonely Planet book, we made it to the hostel and unloaded. After an ill-fated dining choice by a part of the team that included myself and therefore will not merit explanation in this blog, we met up at Silk market.
You may think that you have bargained before....in fact you may have done better than me, but the atmoshpere in this multi-tiered/multi-boothed bargaining behemoth of a market defies description to the average western audience. From shirts and North Face Jackets to pearl necklaces, to pipes to video games, there was plenty of opportunity to come away from beijing with some serious souvenierage. Regretfully, I was travelling with naught but a large backpack, so my purchasing options were limited. I could not, however, resist the prospect of a good poker set with clay chips for 90 Yuan (originally priced at 700 Yuan). which comes to about 13 U.S. dollars. Good deal if you ask me. After splitting up to seek out our bargains, we ate a glorious dinner at Subway and headed over to check out Mao's portrait and some other famous landmarks for the evening.
The Great Wall!!!!
The next day, we headed for the centerpiece of our majestic vacation: camping on the Great Wall of China. Our bus/car ride to Mutainyu (a section of the wall that is nice but not too tourist-infested) took us to the bottom of the mountain which was crested by the Wall. After lingering at some of the shops near the trailhead, our intrepid band of backpack clad Americans began ascending at a vigorous pace. 30 minutes later, we were catching our breath at the top of the first staircase which read (450 meters to the Wall). Having skipped the cable car in favor of hiking up the mountain, we soon realized that our ambitions were larger than our quadriceps.
Nevertheless, we reached the top of the mountain and walked the glorious few steps to mount the Great Wall.
Nothing can prepare you for an experience like the great wall of China (except maybe 3 hours a day on a stairmaster). But seriously, it is breathtaking. We tooked countless pictures atop the Wall and could barely contain our excitement. We walked around the wall for awhile, waiting for nightfall. While we planned to sleep on the wall, we weren't sure how technically legal it was. After most of the tourists left, we set up our 3 tents on top of the western-most tower that allowed foot-traffic. After a light dinner and some wonderful singing, we settled down for a rather chilly night atop the Great Wall.
The next morning, John and I hiked up a RIDICULOUSLY sloped section of the wall to a tower overlooking our campsite in hopes of catching the sunrise over the mountains. Although the dense fog left no sunrise to speak of, we got some cool foggy shots. Nothing quite like waking up before sunrise on an ancient monument like the Great Wall! After breaking camp, we walked down to the far end of Mutainyu, where there is a LUGE track you can take to the bottom of the wall. The 40 quai was well worth it. At the bottom, us boys chowed down on some amazingly delicious banana chocolate pancakes while the girls sought out a cafe for some much-needed caffiene.
While in Beijing I also visited the Temple of Heaven and Behei gardens. Both of which were absolutely incredible. I'll leave it to the photo installment, however, and let the pictures speak for themselves. I have plenty more stories to come, especially from the second half of our trip, but I fear that I must go and plan a lesson for my class tomorrow. I promise I will blog again soon, and hopefully get some pictures up. In the meantime, take care back home and I will talk to you all soon!
-Finn
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