Dawn's Blog

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.

After 10 long months, my AmeriCorps term is coming to an end. We have one final week to finish up paperwork, clean and pack, and go on a short camping trip. At the end of the week I will be driving home to spend a few days (not nearly long enough) with my family and friends, and then I am off to Beijing! 


Yesterday afternoon our AmeriCorps team went out the high ropes course we have here on campus and did the Dream Catcher. The goal of the Dream Catcher is to climb a 30 foot pole and then jump off and try to catch your "dreams" ( a piece of pvc pipe) that are hanging several feet out from the pole.  It was a lot of fun.