Naked in the streets in China...

"Ni Hau" Family and Friends!

How do you say hair stylist in Chinese?

Laughing is the universal language!

We've received several emails over the last week asking if we are okay because we have not been communicating as often as usual. And, this being China(!), we are touched at your concern and want you all to know that things are going fantastic - much better than we ever expected over here in the Middle Kingdom. We are feeling better this week, although Jenn has a nasty cold now, but we are both over our food poisoning (we both lost some weight!) and we did bring a huge stock of medicines with us so we feel confident we can tackle just about anything medical-wise.

The school has been wonderful, albeit insanely slow compared to western expectations, but we now have our Foreign Expert Teaching Certificates and our passports now contain resident visas so we are here legally for the entire year. This is comforting.

Life these days consists of preparing for classes, traveling to and from classes, negotiating meals, and getting out into the city for shopping and to explore our new home. To get anywhere in this city of 3 million, and we have only seen a small section of our city, we are riding the bikes our school gave us. The weather has been cold (30 - 45), wet, foggy, with occasional sunshine in the afternoons. Our evenings are typically spent inside but we have pushed ourselves to get out and explore, shop, when we can - but it takes physical, intellectual, and emotional work to do even the smallest things here in China.

It's hard to describe what it's like to step outside into the China world (and it's not a negative thing) but it can be quite stressful because it is so challenging.

You know that dream everyone has where they are walking down the street and everyone is stopping and staring, pointing anxiously, giggling nervously and sometimes moving their children away from you? Cars honk, conversations stop, even stray dogs come out to sniff you as you walk by...suddenly you have become an alien...but why? How? Then you look down and realize that you are naked?!

THAT is what it is like to be a foreigner in China!

I have traveled around the world twice but have never experienced the effects of shock and awe I am having on my hosts here in DanYang, in fact all of China - everywhere we go. And it's not a bad feeling to constantly be the center of attention everywhere you go; what is stressful is that we can not share our appreciation or surprise or astonishment with our hosts because 1) we don't speak Mandarin at all yet, and 2) social customs do not allow it here...I can't laugh and pat a stranger on the shoulder or point to my Chicago University shirt and point to a home far away and make an airplane with my hands, or poke my finger playfully into the tummy of a little child who literally is frozen as solid as a statue while staring at my bald, white head. It's this inability to make these human connections with strangers that makes this type of complete immersion stressful.

But it is still very exciting and more enjoyable than we ever imagined.

When we smile everyone smiles back. When we spit a few words we do know we are greeted with laughter and smiles and the one or two English words they do know in return. And we are amazed everyday at how much we manage to get done simply from using physical gestures, facial expressions, and hand signals.

We operate everyday here on caveman communication but we are getting good at it.

And as a result, we are settling into our new lives. Our apartment is feeling more and more like home everyday. We have a luxurious kitchen by Chinese standards and we are slowly stocking it with foods (we have to bike to and from the markets so we can only carry so much at one time!). We have more than enough living space, really.

We have a dining room that we use for company and/or meals when we want to break out the China!:) We have a den which has a queen size bed instead of a sofa(!) and a television and although we do not have any channels yet (the cable box broke our first day), we do have another dvd player (the first one broke last night) and we figured out how to work it in Chinese (I used to write computer manuals and could not decipher it but Jenn is amazing when it comes to anything and everything engineering-related). Jenn's computer and desk are also in this room so we brainstorm in here too for class ideas. There is even a small balcony for some fresh air and in the summer we are looking forward to opening it up and catching some rays.

Our bedroom is cozy. It has bookshelves that we are using for closets and we found a nice, fluffy comforter for our bed (after two tries because the measurements are all in metric here) and an additional sleeping pad (half the thickness of a futon mattress) that makes the bed more comfortable. This room also has my computer and desk so I end up spending the occasional "just leave me alone for awhile" time in here. There is even a door separating the two but we have yet to close it...:)

We are so grateful we found this school and these jobs. The V.P. of my school, Victor, is our main contact and has handled everything from our visas to fixing the cable box to getting a good deal on badminton rackets (I'm playing every night now with the teachers). Jennifer's host, Cynthia, has been a fountain of information about all things Chinese like where can we get music our students like, what is a KTV bar?, and her English is excellent too so she is helping with the critical stuff like where Jenn can get her hair done in our city...:)

Overall, we are loving it here and trying everyday to be better English teachers for these students - they work hard and they deserve it! My school is starting an English Club for the top two students from each of the 16 classes and the kick-off ceremony is next week. Again, the television crew and newspaper journalists will be there, along with dignitaries from schools around the province and I (and Jenn too when she can) am expected to provide exciting English lessons for the club (an hour and a half) every week!

I better get going on my lesson plans - be back soon with more updates.

Love to you all!

The new DanYang, China diet...

I am sure that Sean wished that he had made a bet on who got sick first instead of who got hit by the first vehicle. We have a 100rmb note ($14.00) that the other will get tagged first by a moving vehicle. Anyway, this would have been a bet I would have happily lost.

It was last Monday (yes it took me a week to be able to write about it) that Sean had prepared us another wonderful Chinese meal. Tired from my day at work, I was not around while Sean was cooking which meant that I did not get a chance to smell the meat. He still swears, with tears in his eyes, that it smelled and looked okay.

That being said, it was around 10pm that my stomach decided it did not want any food in it at all. I finally was able to sleep and on Tuesday, I just was not feeling right all day. By Wednesday, I was as sick as a dog, could barely run to the bathroom fast enough and I was running a fever of 100. As Sean held my hair back and massaged my aching head, I emptied my stomach of everything, including the lining.

As Sean puts it, I was violently ill. I now know what projectile vomiting means. I could not stop. He said he had never seen anyone get that sick. At one point, I just put the basin next to the bed and just leaned over and dry heaved, over and over again while sweat trickled down my face and neck. And it was not just the nausea - the stomach pains were deadly but I was so sick to my stomach that I could not take anything to make myself feel better (Pharmacist that I am). We did not sleep most of Wednesday night. I sacked up and taught my classes on Thursday and by the end of the day, I was feeling a little more human. By Thursday night I was finally eating rice and keeping it down.

I'm not saying it was justice or anything, irony definitely, but just two days later Sean got the same pack of weasels in his gut that I did, although his only lasted a mere twelve hours compared to my three days. He also didn't throw up his internal organs, but hey, I have a great story to tell my class now and I lost ten pounds in three days...

P.S. Mom, I love you and I'm feeling fine now..:)

Our Valentine's Day Adventure

Ciao Italia, Nanjing, China for Valentine's Day dinner. Click for more pics...

Sean and I wanted to make our day special so we decided to go to a local city, Nanjing, for our Valentine’s Day dinner. After doing some internet research I found that there is a very good Italian Restaurant, Ciao Italia, right next to the Sheraton Hotel in town. The chef’s name was Giuseppe so I knew it had to be great! I was so excited about having something other than Chinese food for dinner. Another plus was that the Sheraton had the only Irish pub in town, Danny’s, and since we have not found anything that resembles a bar in our hometown, this was a special treat. I'm not kidding - we have not seen one bar in our city of 3 million people!

Sean and I rode our bikes down to the train station early in the afternoon and did our normal song and dance for our train tickets for later that evening. We dressed up and hailed a cab to the train station to catch the 5pm train to Nanjing. Amongst the regular day to day travelers, we tried but failed to blend in. It was obvious, though, that some other couples had the same idea as us.

We arrived in Nanjing at about 5:45 and proceeded to look for the 317 bus. This bus takes us right to the Sheraton hotel. Unfortunately, the internet is not always correct and there was no bus 317. We hopped over to the closest hotel and had them write down “the Sheraton” for us in Chinese so that we could now hail a taxi. Again, you can’t imagine the difficulty of just trying to get around at times. We have also learned that the worst place to flag down a taxi is in front of the railway station because they are only supposed to pick you up at the taxi stand which is back inside the station and on the bottom floor. So there we went and waited in the very long line for a taxi but finally around 7 we were headed to dinner.

One of the exciting things about going to a bigger town is the chance to run into some foreigners that speak English. So it was no surprise that in the lobby of the Sheraton we came across some nice gentlemen from Europe. They had been living in Nanjing for awhile so they knew where our restaurant was and actually escorted us there!

We had a wonderful bottle of wine and two great dishes. I was even impressed with the bread, oil and vinegar. Again, it had been a long time since I had eaten something other than Chinese food so I savored every mouthful! I even ordered the Cappuccino Gelato and Cappuccino coffee for dessert…hey we were celebrating.

After dinner we headed back to the Sheraton and the Irish pub. We met the manager, Ben, who is a young man interning after graduating from a college up in Vancouver, Canada. It was fun to talk with him about his adventures of working in an Irish pub in China. They had a band… not so good, but still fun and different. It does amaze me what I will find fun now! We had to keep our eye on the clock because our train to go home was leaving at 12:45am. We would have stayed in Nanjing but the school still has our passports (they are getting our working visa) and you have to use your passport if you are a foreigner.

Headed to the train at about 1:00am...Click for more pics

We did make it back to the station and boarded our train only to find that they had overbooked it by double! We paid to have our own beds but that was not happening. Tired and a bit cranky with no ability to change the situation, I went from car to car to find two vacant seats and tried to doze off for the longer trip home. We pulled into the station about 30 minutes later than expected, hailed a cab to the school and were dropped off in front in the middle of the night.

Now normally, there is a security guard on duty to let us in the gate. It is now 2:30am and the officer was nowhere to be found. Sean and I assessed the situation and decided the climb over the iron gate on the side was easier than to attempt to hurl ourselves over the moving gate in the front driveway. I insisted that he go first. I laughed as he stretched and contorted his body over the metal spikes and made the leap to the ground. Now it is my turn. I handed my purse and coat over to him. I thought this could not be hard; I climbed trees as a child! Well I am now 41 and this was no tree. As I sat on the top of the gate with the metal poking every body part, I told Sean that I just could not do it!

This is the fortress we climbed over...Click for more pics

As I sat there in my dress pants and dress boots, I knew I could not just stay there - not to mention it was freezing. It took a few minutes but I did manage to get myself over without ripping my clothes or breaking a heel. It was not without a great deal of laughter on both our parts. We hobbled home and laughed about what a great Valentine’s Day.

Funny things about living here...

These happy little guys are just so damn cute I had to show you...they are the mascots for the company, Haier, that makes both our washing machine and our heater. Click to see more pics...

Just finished up our first week of teaching 1,000 high school kids and it was quite a week! We were on Chinese television for a Valentine's Day special to show how we do it in the states, and that put us in the VDay mood so we biked down to the train station (always a dangerous choice) and grabbed tickets for a fast train Friday night to the closest big city, Nanjing, for a nice Italian dinner at Ciao Italia.

Jenn is blogging our evening in Nanjing here...

At about 4.30am that morning I woke up in a sweat from a dream where I was swimming and sharks were eating my stomach! What the hell?? As I doubled over in pain it didn't take long to realize that I had my first case of food poisoning (and I wish I could say it's my last but I know that's not the case).

I've had this happen to me a few times in my life (once I accidentally drank water from a cooler that was full of raw chicken juice on a camping trip and we were too far away to medivac me out...three days of doubled-over sickness while my buddies laughed their asses off) and it is a pain you can't imagine until you get it. And it apparently happens a lot over here in China for obvious reasons...

So I spent all day yesterday watching dvd's and holding my stomach and intestines, wrenching in pain that felt like a dozen Mongoose trying to rip their way out. We don't know how or why, but it's a fact of life over here and it reminds me to not be so experimental with street food (although if you can't trust a restaurant meal we are in real trouble!) and to wash my hands at least 100 times a day, or more.

This is our stove...funny thing is, you can cook almost anything on this baby (except a turkey or a birthday cake perhaps) but this puppy ignites at the flick of a switch and launches a flame powerful enough to use for hot air balloons. Click to see more pics...

While I was an invalid and stuck grimacing through a haze of pain for 12 hours, I thought about all the funny things about living here and wanted to share a few with you. I'm about 65% as I write this, just got back from teaching my last class for the day, and I'm trying hard to remind myself that it's all part of the adventure...

Like Jenn said as we toasted each other for Valentine's Day - "We are going to be very different people after spending a year over here!"...I'm pretty sure she meant that in a good way. ;)