Dawn's Blog

This is what I did this weekend:

• hung out with a Bethel friend
• got a massage
• played nertz while eating desserts
• attended a Chinese wedding
• played soccer for 3 hours
• went to Chinese church 
• toured The Forbidden City

It was awesome. 

So much has happened in the last 48 hours, I don't even know where to begin. How about the beginning?

On Friday I learned that I will be getting a new roommate. She's only going to be living with us for a couple weeks until they can get another apartment ready for her. The awesome part about this is that she is super nice and she's Chinese. She came to the school about a week ago to volunteer with us and has been translating for the beginner class. I don't know a whole lot about her but she seems to be pretty awesome and I'm excited to get to know her.

Yesterday (Saturday) my day looked something like this:

1. Wake up. Eat breakfast. 
2. Meet Shi and Leslie. Ride bikes 10 miles to the "suburbs" of Beijing. 
3. Stumble upon a park. Eat picnic lunch there. Do a photo shoot.
4. Go to Dairy Queen. Eat a Blizzard. 
5. Do a little shopping. 
6. Ride 10 miles home.

And then things got interesting.  One of the families that has been here this semester decided that China wasn't for them and they were preparing to leave. Well, they had a cat. They could not take this cat with them, but had called the store where they bought it and the store was willing to take it back. But they didn't have time to take him back. Well, you can probably see where this is going - I now have temporary custody of an enormous orange and white male cat. Wish me luck.

So, as of tomorrow, my apartment will be home to one fish, one cat, one British woman, one Chinese woman, and myself. Gotta love diversity.

In other exciting news, I saw the new (as in the one that came out in December) Harry Potter last night. It was good, but (of course) not as good as the book. And I learned how to say "Harry Potter" in Chinese (HaLi BoTe).

For anyone who didn't already know this, I am leaving this weekend to go home for a few weeks over Chinese New Year. I'm pumped. Hopefully I'll see some snow this winter.

Anyway, on an unrelated topic, here's some of the stuff I've been doing the past week.

Teaching Chinese children. Usually I teach college-aged and older students, but we're doing a special Winter Camp for kids. They're really cute. Maybe a little bit completely out of control, but they're cute. 

Teaching Chinese children to rap and beat box (or trying to). The rapping was part of the phonics lesson I was supposed to teach. The beat boxing was just something I added to spice things up. It turned out to be an utter failure. But I'm still glad I tried it.

Exploring on the subway. They built a new subway line that ends about ten miles from our village, so my friend Shi and I decided to go exploring on it one day. We got on the subway, picked a stop that had a name we liked, and got off the subway there. Our first try was a dud. Nothing but construction. So we got back on the subway. We picked out a random person and decided we would just get off wherever he did, or after 4 stops, whichever came first. This time we had success. We ended up at the "Pearl Market" (a giant tourist shopping center with hundreds of stalls that all sell the same things, the sales clerks try to convince you everything is "real leather", and where bargaining skills are crucial), bought a few gifts to take home, and even ran into some friends.

Playing volleyball. Yes, I know it is January. Yes, we play outside. Volleyball is not normally a popular sport in China, but it is here. Almost every day, sometimes more than once a day, regardless of the temperature, you can find people playing volleyball in the back yard.  Its almost an obsession. This is one of my favorite things about living here. I even find myself making clothing choices based on how conducive they are to playing volleyball. For example, I never leave home without at least two pairs of gloves: a big pair to wear while I'm riding my bike, and a smaller pair for playing volleyball.


Getting ready to come home! I haven't actually packed yet. But I did get some snacks to eat on the plane, and I wrapped everyone's Christmas gifts.

The last few weeks here have been quite a roller coaster for me. Lots of really good stuff has happened, but a lot of pretty bad things have, too. For example, Lydia and I have a new roommate. That's a good thing. She's a lovely young lady from England and we are very glad to have her. But we now have problems (well, maybe just one) that we didn't have before. As I was getting ready to write this blog, I flipped a light switch, and, for the second time this week, our circuit breaker flipped and our power went out. Apparently our electricity can't handle having all three of our heaters on at one time.


Anyway, I'll try to give you a summary of what's been going on. I always prefer to get the bad news first, so then I can look forward to the good news. If, however, you prefer the good news first, skip down to the GOOD NEWS section.

BAD NEWS

1. Stress. My job title has recently been switched from just "Teacher" to "Teacher" and "Part-Time Activities Director." As in, planning and executing fun/educational activities for the students. This is normally not a huge deal, and I love thinking of fun things that we can do with the students. However, the Winter Intensive Program (or WIP, as we like to call it) that we are doing is just that - intensive. Our schedules have been changing on almost a daily basis, causing us to redo our lesson plans and causing me to be responsible for even more activites.

 2. My wallet got stolen.  Yup. Today. I went with some of the students to the outdoor market this morning, and somewhere between the trinkets and the cabbages my wallet got snatched out of my backpack. The good news about this was that my passport was not in my wallet, nor were my credit cards, and I had less than $50 in cash in it. The worst part was that it was a new wallet that Julie sent me for Christmas and I loved it. And my drivers' license was in it. And my Chinese bank card. Instead of using my day to get ready for the rest of the week, I spent an hour and a half waiting in line at the bank to cancel my bank card and get a new one, hoping that the thieves were not out spending my money while I was standing in line, cold and hungry.

GOOD NEWS

1. I have a new flatmate. Her name is Arwen. She's from London. She's an intern at the foster home, and she's been here for a couple months already.  She's going to Malaysia over break and when she returns, her old roommates will be gone, so she wanted to move in with us to be with some people she knows. I hope to start using words like "loo" and "flat".

2. I went ice skating. I love ice skating. I only fell twice.

3.  I'm coming home in two weeks.

4. Tonight I watched Legally Blond while eating chocolates and strawberries with my roommates.

5. I bought strawberries at the market today before my wallet was stolen. I feel very good now about the purchases I have made in the last few days. If I had not spent that money, it would have just been stolen and be gone anyway. Riches are so fleeting.

6. I hope to have a summer break. The school has changed their schedule, and has offered the teachers the option of ending our contract at the end of June instead of the end of July. I plan to do this and then take a couple weeks to travel down to south China to Guilin and maybe some other places. After that, I will go home and spend some time with my family. I am extremely excited about this.

I've been having a lot of 'firsts' the past few months, and you would think that it is because I'm in China; but mostly, its not.  I've been to Ikea for the first time, saw The Nutcracker for the first time, saw Fiddler on the Roof for the first time.

Yesterday I went snowboarding for the first time.  When we got to the ski resort (I'm not sure if you could call it a 'resort', but that's the only word I could come up with) I still wasn't sure if I wanted to stick with my usual skiing or try snowboarding. So my friend Corrie and I came up with a plan; I would get skis, she would get a snowboard, and then we could trade halfway through the day.

Skiing was great. I only fell once. And that was about 30 seconds after I put my skis on for the first time, when I was on my way to the first tow rope. Awesome.

And then I tried snowboarding. People always look so cool when they snowboard. I was hoping that by the end of the day I'd be doing some jumps, maybe even some flips. I decided that I could be the female version of Shaun White.

That didn't happen. I fell. A lot. A funny thing happens when both of your feet are attached to a board; when you fall, the only thing to catch yourself with is your butt or your knees. Needless to say, I did not look cool. I probably looked tired, and wet. I get stared at enough here because I'm, well, not Chinese; falling all over the bunny hill definitely did not help that situation. I did get a little better, and I managed to make it down the bunny hill without falling (my new goal for the day) one time.

Today I woke up a little sore. And after staying up  past midnight (Happy New Year!) last night I was still tired. Which was fine, because I had absolutely no obligations for the day. So I was lying in bed being thankful for my warm bed and the fact that I could stay in it for as long as I wanted, when I got Jack Johnson's song Banana Pancakes stuck in my head, and then a craving for pancakes. I was a little disappointed when I remembered that I'm in China and they don't really have pancakes here, but I could settle for a good bowl of Apple Rings and milk.

Miracles do happen. About ten minutes after I finally dragged myself out of bed, a friend called to invite me over for a pancake lunch. Yup, true story. They had bought a box of mix and wanted to share. I told them I'd bring some bananas.

 All in all, a great New Years holiday. I hope yours was just as good. Xin nian kuaile! (Happy New Year!)

'Twas three days before Christmas and here in my room
I was learning to write the Chinese word for "food"

When out on our door we heard a faint knock
And voices so many it must be a flock.

English we heard so we had no fear
We opened the door to the holiday cheer.

And what, to our wondering ears should we hear
but a choir of carolers, but sadly, no reindeer.

A jolly good bunch, they were all very cute
Of various ages and languages too!

We dressed in a hurry, I put on my hat
to go with the group to another friend's flat.


We sang there and then we went on to another
and stopped where fudge had been made by a mother.

This poem has no reason, except to tell
that Christmas is great no matter where you dwell.

My rhyming is slowing; oh, look! there's an isthmus!
I hope you all have an incredible Christmas!

First, I would like to send a Happy Birthday to my sister Julie. She's an awesome sister and she deserves a good birthday. 

Besides being Julie's birthday, December 18th marks another important event: Christmas is exactly one week away. And things are beginning to look a lot like Christmas, even in China. I went to our village grocery store yesterday and was shocked/immensely pleased to see all of the employees wearing red and white Santa hats. Judging by their facial expressions, I would say that I was much more excited about it than they were. I even got the courage to try out my Chinese and told one of the girls that I liked her hat.

Our Christmas Tree! (with fake presents)

In other Christmas events, the school had a Christmas program this past week, where I participated in my first real choir. And it was a lot of fun. The choir was made up of teachers, students, some people who work with the foster home, and pretty much anyone who was willing to join (which is why they accepted me). We sang Jingle Bells, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night, and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. And despite having me in the choir, I think we sounded pretty good.

I think the students are enjoying the Christmas festivities. Most of the classes have decorated their classrooms, and the teachers have been showing Christmas movies (in English, of course) and talking about Christmas traditions and what they mean. I have been incorporating Christmas song lyrics into my phonics classes ("Let's find all the short vowels in Jingle Bells!") and I plan to watch Charlie Brown's Christmas with them as a treat after they take their final tests next week.

I think that is enough for today's edition of Dawn's Blog. More Christmas news to come in the future. I hope you are all having a lovely Advent season!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I felt like this was a good time to write a blog.  It feels a bit strange to celebrate a holiday without most of the traditions that I have associated with it for the past 24 years. But the good thing is that I have some new and different activities to take their place and good friends to celebrate it with. 

I continued our family tradition of holiday running by doing a 5K this morning. Not a real one, just one I mapped out on Google maps. The 25 degree weather made it quite refreshing.

Tomorrow the school is having our Thanksgiving Dinner, and we are doing our best to make it a genuine American Thanksgiving Dinner.  We are feeding not only the students, but all of the other foreigners here as well, so its quite a task. Some of the teachers are making multiple pumpkin pies, and I am in charge of the 150 deviled eggs. We hard-boiled them today and will have the students help us finish them in the morning. I really really hope they turn out well. We're going to have a lot of disappointed people if they don't.

One great thing about Thanksgiving is that the most important part of it doesn't depend on where you are or who you are with. I don't even need to put a tree in my house or hide fake eggs to celebrate (although I do plan to trace my hand and make it into a turkey).  So, in true Thanksgiving tradition, I would like to share a few of the things that I am thankful for this year.

Things I am seriously thankful for:

God's love that never gives up on me
My family who have always been there for me
My friends back home and here in China
The beauty of creation
Being financially stable
The opportunity to be here
My health
And about 1000 other things

Things that are not as serious but I am no less thankful for:

My warm, cozy bed (I can't believe I once thought it was uncomfortable!)
Heat in my apartment
Peanut Butter
Good books (for that matter, anything written in English)
My bike
Jenny Lou's (A grocery store in Beijing that sells all the Western foods we can't get anywhere else (like cheese and cereal))

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Goodness, it has been a long time since I blogged. I've been busy lately and there hasn't been a whole lot to blog about. Last week was our halloween party/talent show. I was a penguin. A couple of my friends here rewrote the words to Miley Cyrus' song "Party in the USA" so that it reflected our experiences coming to China, and we sang that.

I'm actually becoming quite the musical performer here. I have also joined the Christmas choir (I was informed that I should sing soprano) and our first practice is this week. Also, I have recently volunteered to teach the students how to square dance. I plan on this being awesome. Who knew my square dancing skills would actually be useful? And to top it all off, I spent a lot of time today thinking of and singing songs with the word "mountain" in them, which brings me to my next story.

Last night I decided last minute to go with some people today to go hiking around a mountain. It was a good decision. It was a beautiful, warm day. I knew that China had some beautiful land, but I hadn't seen that yet. We had a nicely diverse group - five Americans and four Chinese. We did some hiking, did some climbing stairs, had a picnic lunch, did some people watching, did some more hiking, took a lot of pictures, hit a dead end and had to hike back the way we came, fell asleep as soon as we got back in the van, and had Korean barbecue on the way home.

While we were hiking, we heard a man singing some traditional chinese music, I mean really belting it. So we asked our Chinese friends what he was singing, and apparently it was a traditional mountain song. So this got me to thinking about our "mountain" songs, which brings me back to what I was saying before (please see poll to vote on your favorite mountain song!)






At one point during our hike we heard some small dogs barking and looked up and there were three poodles barking at a woman's feet. She was wearing exteremely furry boots which apparently looked like animals to the poodles.  It might have been one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Every time this poor woman started to walk away from them, the dogs would run and bark at her boots, and the dogs' owner couldn't do anything to stop them.

Yesterday was my birthday. If you missed it, then you should feel bad. But don't worry, I'm still accepting gifts.

My 24th birthday turned out to be a very good one. Mostly because Chinese birthday cakes are delicious. Also because I have awesome family and friends.

 I started off the day with a 12 mile (each way) bike ride to the nearest Dairy Queen (not kidding). One of the guys here was also celebrating his 17th birthday on the same day and had been wanting to take this trip for a while, so he had planned to do it with his dad, brother, and friend, and they graciously invited me as well to celebrate my birthday with them. We got lost a few times, but the oreo cheesecake blizzard was totally worth it. Also, my bike is a piece of junk, and with about 3 miles left in the trip, one of my pedals fell completely off. But we all made it back ok.

No horses, tractors, or bugles allowed!

Then I came home to a lunch of fajitas made by my wonderful roommate, Lydia.

In the afternoon, I went on a little trip with my friend Jan (who is fluent in Chinese) to get my bike fixed and get a shampoo/scalp massage in the village. I've never had a scalp massage before and it was actually kind of funny more than anything.

After we had finished dinner (which consisted of PB & J and Easy Mac, thanks Julie), my roommate informed me that all of our friends where coming over for my birthday party in 20 minutes. We had a grand time of Chinese checkers and speed scrabble and card games of various types.

This is a picture of the front of my fridge. This is the logo of Haier brand, which makes the "high-quality" home appliances here in China. It makes me chuckle just a bit every time I see it.  I really wish I could have been at the marketing meeting where they came up with this logo.  It has the trademarks of most marketing strategies: smiling people, bright colors, ice cream, and a lack of clothing. But what exactly is this picture trying to convey?  Maybe a poll is in order.

Last week I found out that I'm going to be teaching phonics.  Which basically means I'll be trying to get the students to properly pronounce short "i"s (they tend to say "eets" instead of "its") and teaching things like the 8 vowel rules. Doesn't sound that interesting, but I'm actually quite excited. I've been learning a lot about linguistics, which I really didn't know much about before. I know about all kinds of stuff now like the International Phonetic Alphabet, voiced and unvoiced phonemes, and the history of the cot-caught merger.

The students are arriving today and tomorrow and we have opening ceremonies on Wednesday. I'm pretty excited to finally have students and feel like I'm accomplishing something after 2 weeks of training.

In other news, things are generally going great. This weekend I took a trip into Beijing to do some shopping (needed some more teachery clothes) and made cookies with my roommate. Baking has been a bit of a difficulty because we generally can't read the labels on things at the store and some things (like butter) they just plain don't have around here.

Also, I've been working on my Chinese, which is fun.

Here's some of the pictures I have taken thus far.
This one is at the Beijing airport.

Our kitchen

Our dining area (yes, that is a bowl of fruit)

My bedroom

The view out my living room window. Looks like Indiana.

I'm here! I'm in China!

Sorry I'm a little late on the update, I've been here for almost a week now. I arrived last Thursday afternoon (early morning for most of you) without my luggage. The trip here was quite eventful. My flight from Dayton took off about 10 minutes late, which made my 45 minute layover in DC even shorter. By the time I got off the plane in DC my flight to Beijing was already boarding. I had to take the underground shuttle and by the time I got to the right terminal they were paging me, so I literally ran to the gate and was the very last person to board the plane. But I made it :) And I needed the exercise.

My luggage was not so lucky. As I had suspected might happen, it did not make it on the plane but the airline brought it to my apartment the next day.

Things are going well. We've been doing a lot of teacher training and yesterday I got to present a lesson plan to the other teachers, which went pretty well. I got a cell phone and was given a bike whose tires I plan to inflate by the end of the day.  The other teachers (foreign and chinese) are all really nice and I think we will all get along beautifully.

I plan to put up some pictures of my apartment and neighborhood in my next post, so get excited.

Yup, that's right. I'm leaving tomorrow, and I should be in China by Thursday. My last few days at home have been great, and I'm really wishing I had a bit more time to spend with my family and friends here. Highlights of my time at home include:

• Several hours of six-handed Euchre
• Touring Sechler's Pickle Plant with with my parents (complete with pickled peppers, pickle products, and pickle paraphernalia)
• Hanging out with my cousins
• Last-minute luggage shopping
• Volleyball/swimming/eating pandas with the Decatur crew
• Eating imaginary food made by Taylor (my 3-year-old niece)

Anyway, I will miss you all very much. For reals. Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive of me and helped me get ready for my next adventure. Just to name a few . . . Mom and Dad, Julie & family, Kevin (you're going to get me a really nice birthday gift), Ashley, Laura, Ashleigh, Hank, Andrew, all my Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, the ACTS! small group (you guys are awesome) , the youth group at DFUMC (thanks for the cake!), all of my Americorps friends, and a whole bunch of other people who are too numerous to mention.  Its good to know that I have so many people supporting me.