Feels Like October in July Today

It's cloudy today, which is a bit unusual for this time of year, but we're unlikely to get much rain.  The dry season is well underway now, despite today's clouds.  The cornfield across from my house is drying in the field.  Here, corn is mostly used to grind into meal for making ugali, so it's usually left to dry in the field for as long as possible before harvesting.  

Below: the road in front of my house.

The cloudy weather today and the drying corn stalks and sunflowers gave the day an autumnal feel, which I enjoyed since we don't really have the four seasons here.  This is our winter, the coldest time of year, but it's in the 70s most days. 

Above: we have a lot of sunflowers around here, too; there were some planted along the edge of the corn field that I enjoyed seeing this year.  Below: even the sticker weeds can be beautiful sometimes! 

I took these photos while I was out in front of my house, because the mobile signal is a bit better outside than in my house.  I was talking over whatsapp with my mom and grandmother; Nanny was in the hospital after heart surgery and Mom was staying with her.  It was three in the morning there, but Nanny's internal clock was off kilter after so many days in the hospital.  It was her 83rd birthday.  We've celebrated her birthday on July 19th all her life, but when she turned 70 and started looking into Medicaid and such, her original birth record was pulled and it turns out that the date on it was actually July 16th, so since then she's sort of had two birthdays.  

As it turned out, it was the last time I ever talked to her, as she passed the next week.  She was my last living grandparent, and she and I had always been very close.  Losing her is hard.

 

And I'm Off!

And I’m off!  

I wonder if my parents ever realized how much trouble their children would still be even in their thirties...my flight this morning was at six am, meaning I needed to be at the airport around four, which meant leaving the house around three, which meant waking up around two...and yet they still volunteered to take me to the airport.

I flew to Newark, where I had an eight-hour layover (I don’t mind layovers, really; I like airports), which was just annoying because of how early I had to fly out to get there.  Surely there’s another flight to Newark later in the day?? From Newark, I took an overnight flight to Lisbon, Portugal. Well, I say ‘overnight’ as it was nearly six am when we landed, but with the time difference, it was more like arriving around midnight.  I did manage to get some sleep on the flight though. From Lisbon, I will take a flight to Venice and then the train to Milan, where I’ll stop for a few days to visit the church where I worked previously for a few days before continuing on to Tanzania.

Thanksgiving in August

Since I won’t be home for the holidays this year, my mom decided to have Thanksgiving dinner the Saturday before my flight.  My brother came down from Nashville, and we made all of our favorites: besides the turkey, we had sweet potato casserole (my specialty), broccoli salad (which everyone in the family is addicted to), baked potato casserole (not something I’m particularly interested in, but my mom and brother love it), and rolls.  And one of the great thing about all of these dishes is that the leftovers are just as good.

Sunday with the Family 2

Although the church has such a good system of translation set up, we didn't need it for the sermon.  There was a visiting preacher that day-a man who works with the South Pacific Bible College in New Zealand, David Nelson.  The regular preacher, Glome, translated into Thai.  His English is very good.  The Somprasong church is making use of technology, so you can even see a video of the service here.

http://m.ustream.tv/recorded/37372967?rmalang=en_SG

In fact, there were people from all over there. I met a family who are refugees from Pakistan, an American who's lived in Thailand for twenty years, people from Nigeria,Kenya, and Malawi, and a nice preacher and his wife from the Philippines.  And of course, several friendly Thai people. 

After the service, there was a short ceremony to give roses to all the mothers, since mother's day was the next day here (always held on the Queen's birthday). Then, Bible class; there are enough foreigners that they have one class in English. 

Finally, we went out onto the covered patio for lunch.  They may Sunday dinner together every week, and nearly everyone stays.  Usually after that they have various things going on in the afternoon which some stay for, too, but those were cancelled that day because the teachers were among those gone to the retreat. 

I spent lunch-which was a typical Thai meal of rice, with a spicy vegetable soup to pour over it, along with marinated boiled eggs-getting to know a Wichitra.  We got along quite well as we had several things in common to talk about; she is a retired English professor.  She taught for many years at one of the universities in Bangkok.  Now she teaches a Bible class for the children at church, and does the church's facebook page, and generally keeps up with everyone. That's her with me in the picture below. 

It was so nice to be part of such a big gathering.  It's the largest I've seen in over a year.  It was nice, too, to be with a mature congregation, with elders and all.  Trust me, I didn't appreciate what a blessing good elders can be until I no longer had them.  This congregation was even getting their teams ready for Bible Bowl!

Sunday with the Family

One thing that is often difficult or impossible to find while travelling is a church to meet with on Sunday. Since so many people have been gone from Wuhan over the summer, there wasn't even anyone to meet with these on the Sundays I was home. 

However, I was talking to a friend who traveled extensively in southeast Asia, and he gave me directions and information about the Somprasong congregation in Bangkok. 

I knew the service began at nine, and I didn't know how long the taxi would take, so I left the hostel about ten till eight.  You know I was excited if I got moving that early! I shouldn't have worried, though.  I was there by eight fifteen, and had to wait around a while for others to show up.

The Somprasong congregation has about 150 members, although some were gone to a family retreat that weekend, and some were traveling since it was Mother's Day weekend here in Thailand (held on the Queen's birthday, which was Monday).  They were very friendly, and were used to having foreign visitors. 

They put the words to songs on the overhead in both Thai and English, although the singing was lead all in Thai.  They had headphone jacks on the backs of the pews on the right side of the auditorium, and they provided headphones for all those who don't speak Thai, both travelers as well as a few members there who are new to Thailand. The daughter of one of the elders, who speaks excellent English and works for an international company, sits in the sound booth and translates everything.  

Volare! Flying Out!

And I'm off!  I'm leaving in about an hour for my brothers' house in Nashville, and I'll go to the airport (in the middle of the night) from there.  I can't believe the day I've waited on for so many months is here!  And everything I even thought of taking fit into my suitcases with no problem--but, I am the Packing Queen. :) 

Darn, I wish I'd loaded Volare (classic Italian song; Volare means 'to fly') onto my mp3 player!  Maybe I'll remember to do that while I'm at my brothers' tonight. 

The Great Hot Pot Experiment

When I lived in Jingzhou, we got very attached to our local Hot Pot restaurant.  I’d never heard of hot pot before Janice, one of our waiban (Foreign Affairs Office employee whose job it is to deal with foreign teachers), took us there, but after that we hardly went a week without going back.  I’ve talked about hot pot in this post.  

Just before I left China, Jordan, one of my Chinese friends, helped me find some packages mix to make the boiling spicy soup to do hot pot at home; I intended to have a party once I got back to the states for my family and friends to try it.  However, I couldn’t find lotus root, bean sprouts, mahua, rice cakes, or the right kind of mushrooms in my home town (not exactly a world-culture sort of place); I’d have to go to one of the international stores in Nashville.  Every time I was in Nashville, it was too late at night, or I was too busy, and I didn’t want to spend the gas just for that, and you know how it goes…a year and a half later, the mix is still in a bag in my closet, and I’m a week away from going back to China.  It was now or never.  

Mom and I made a trip up to Nashville to a place on Charlotte Pike after work one day; we picked Hayden up on the way.  I figured I might find one or two of the things I wanted, but to my surprise I found all of them quickly.  Saturday night, Doug and Sue came over, and I tried my best to recreate the hot pot restaurant experience.  

 

We used a fry cooker and an electric skillet to get the soup boiling on the table; Mom and I spent half the morning chopping things to go in it.  We fixed everything I could remember liking in it, just to try it all: potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, lotus root, bean sprouts, mushrooms, rice cakes (not the crunchy kind health nuts like; these are more like little round rubbery pasta), chicken, beef, shrimp, and mahua (twisted crackers).  We completely covered the table, even though it was extended with a leaf.  

I was so afraid that it wouldn’t taste the same, and that we would waste all that food, and that no one would like it even if it did taste right.  I’d waited a year and a half for this, and talked it up for so long—I didn’t want to be disappointed.  Fortunately, the Chinese seem to be quite adept as packaging food in plastic—it was just as I’d remembered it.  Hot enough that I drank two cans of Pepsi during the meal, and with that unique flavor I’ve never found anywhere else.  Mom and Dad and Doug and Sue got into it, and learned quickly to just keep dumping things in.  While I don’t believe it will become their new favorite meal out as it was for me, as Sue said, it was “a meal I won’t forget.” I’m glad I got to share a little bit of my China experience with them.  

For a full slideshow of the pictures, go to my photo blog, Foreverfreebird Fotografia.  

Sand, Shrimp, and Summer

My mother’s goal in life seems to be to have all four of us in the same room at the same time, which has become increasingly challenging as my brother and I are now adults, and I have this little quirk of moving off to other continents.  So, one last time before I move back to China, she organized a little weekend family trip.

The closest place from middle Tennessee to see sand and waves is the gulf shore of Florida, so we started out at the crack of dawn (or, a little before that, really) Saturday morning for Navarre.  Along the bay, there are several little camping area; the one we stayed at (Navarre Beach Campground)  offered little cabins—there were beds for four, a kitchenette, a bathroom, an a screened in porch with rocking chairs, all just a couple hundred yards from the water.  You can’t beat that for $99 a night! 

The campground was just a little ways down the road from the bridge over to Santa Rosa Island; Santa Rosa is a barrier island that runs for miles along the coast, from Pensacola to Destin. The section of the island at Navarre is dedicated to public beaches (including bath houses, lifeguards, a fishing pier, and lots of Florida’s famous white sand).  The western end of the island is preserved from development as the Gulf Islands National Seashore.  Driving through the state park was probably my favorite part of the trip—white dunes and sea grass on both sides of the car, on a brilliantly sunny day with white fluffy clouds, turquoise waves rolling in from the gulf on one side, and the calmer waters of the bay on the other.  Now and then the dunes are interrupted by scrubby trees and driftwood; we saw a huge heron standing by its nest in the top of a dead tree. 

At the very point of the island is Fort Pickens, which was built in the 1800s to defend the bay at Pensacola.  There’s an eight-dollar-per-car fee to get into the park (good for a week), and once inside you can walk the ramparts and pose for photos with the old cannons.  A museum has been built in the old caretakers’ home.  Fort Pickens was sometimes used to house prisoners; its most famous inmate was the Apache warrior Geronimo, who was held there for a time before being moved permanently to Oklahoma. 

When you’re at the ocean, you have to have seafood; we splurged by going to Flounders’ in Pensacola.  We sat out on the covered deck; although it was a hot day, it was fairly pleasant in the shade with a light breeze coming off of the water.  A live musician was singing mellow classics; everyone clapped the hardest, of course, for anything by Jimmy Buffet.  The deck ended on the sand, where a beach volleyball game was halfheartedly going on, and the bay was just a few steps beyond that.  The fried fish I got was honestly the best fish I’ve ever had, and if I ever go back, I’ll probably get a shrimp basket like my mothers—I tried various things off of it, and particularly enjoyed the grilled shrimp and bell peppers. 

Now, I’m not enough of a beach person to enjoy staying at the coast for a whole week like most of my friends like to do (I get tired of sand in everything very, very quickly), but after a long weekend in the sun I feel like I’ve really had summer. 

The Traveler that Went Back in Time (ITC Week 25)

If you could travel anywhere in the world, in any era, where would you go? Where is that place that has always fascinated you and you’ve always asked yourself how it would have looked like ages ago?
 

As if there wasn’t enough to explore in this world as it is right now, let’s throw in time travel—don’t just settle for Florida, lay on the beaches of Atlantis.  Already seen the pyramids?  Go take a look at the Colossus of Rhodes.  Have dinner in the city of Maccu Picchu, buy souvenirs in the marketplace in Athens and watch to see if Aristotle walks by, stroll through an Angkor Wat teeming with monks.  Or go the other direction: take a shuttle up to the mining operations on the moon; celebrate as Tokyo reaches a population of fifty million; take a road trip on the TransAfrica interstate system. 

With not only space but all of time thrown in, where would I go first?  Of course, as a Christian, first-century Palestine would be high on my list; I’d like to witness the miracles of Jesus, and sing praises with the church in Antioch.  The tabernacle in the desert God instructed Moses to build, the tower of Babel going up, the construction of the arc, and the flowers in the Garden would all be wonderful sights.

Outside of Biblical places and events, I became an English major because of Beowulf; I’d like to see what life was like in the ‘Dark Ages’.  The treasure of Hutton Soo must have been spectacular before it was buried.  I doubt castle life was as romantic as we make it out to be, but I’d still like to explore one that doesn’t have a gift shop. 

My next stop would probably be tea with Jane, or maybe Charlotte: would regency fashion look good on me?  Could I attract the attention of a rich gentleman?  I think I’d enjoy teaching in a Belgian boarding school and trips to Bath, at least for a while. Too bad Mr. Darcy is fictional. 

I’d love to know my ancestors; time travel would give me the chance to watch the seasons change with my Native American ancestors, and learn how to live off the land—I’d finally find out what tribe Lizzie was from in Illinois.  I could step off the Anne to join the Plymouth colony with Edward Bumpass, or build a home in Jamestown with the Clayes.  I could ask Mexico’s mother where she got that name, and try to convince the Castlemans not to sell Lot #5 in the brand-new settlement of Nashville; it would be worth a lot of money if they’d keep it in the family and pass it down to me!  I’d go give Priscilla Mobley a hand with the cooking as she raised seven boys alone, and find the Dortch’s village in England. 

After I’ve finished exploring several thousand years of recorded history, visiting fictional places would be the next great frontier.  I guess Hogwarts would be overrun with gawkers if we could do that, though. 

October 12th: Walmart Weirdness 4 or 5 (at least)

Aaaaand I'm back, with another installment of your favorite blog feature, Wal-mart Weirdness!

I know that some may think that if we have a Wal-mart here, things can't be all that different. And yet I think you can see from the following pictures that that's not quite the case...I never go to Wal-mart without a camera, because there's always some new oddity to enjoy.

First of all, the Chinese people have a slightly different sense of what produce would make a good juice than we do...today I found both corn juice and pumpkin juice. Now, I've seen corn juice around before--they also have corn candy and such; they seem to treat it as a fruit quite frequently. Pumpkin juice was a new one, though. It was relatively expensive, so that's my excuse for not buying some to try.

Another totally normal food here that we Americans never quite get used to is Chicken feet. I just don't see the big deal, as there's not much meat to eat, but they're as hot as chicken wings around here. They are added to soups, spiced and packaged as snacks, and available at every corner market.

This trip to Wal-mart was on a rainy Tuesday night; Season, Rebecca, Janice, and I had went out for supper and stopped by Wal-mart on our way home. Oddities in Wal-mart are even more fun when you have a friend along to point them out to.

Wal-mart is still Wal-mart, though. There's the same old neighborly announcement by the register with a picture and phone number for the manager. I find it interesting that they use his English name, Johnny, since 99% of the people shopping there are Chinese. Seriously, there's maybe twenty foreigners who even know that Wal-mart exists.

October 12th: Hot Pot Heaven

China is a big place (very close in size to the United States; some sources say one is bigger, some the other, depending on if you count the surface area of the Great Lakes or not), and so, like the U.S., different regions have different traditions and different tastes in food. Up north around Beijing, they eat a lot of breads and noodles and dumplings. Along the coast and south-east, seafood is naturally a bigger part of the diet. Hubei Province, where I live, fits in the Central-Southwest culturally and gastronomically. The locals aren't shy about putting the red chili peppers into anything and everything; one phrase we foreigners learn fast is "Bu la!" Not hot! Every one of us has had that moment when we realize we accidentally got a piece of pepper. First your mouth goes numb, and then you find yourself shoveling in rice and scrambling for whatever drinks are available (which often isn't too much, as the Chinese people don't tend to drink with food).

As hot as the local food can get if you aren't careful, the real center for spicy is Sichuan Province. The capital, Chongqing, is Hot Pot central. Sichuanese food may make most people sweat, but if you avoid the pepper flakes it's great. 

Janice, a Chinese friend and one of our FAO 'overseers', had introduced Season and Rebecca to a great hot pot place down by Walmart. They were dying to go again and I'd never been, so on a miserably rainy and muddy Tuesday night we took the bus down for supper. We ducked into a nondescript store front that in fact was under construction and picked our way around the buckets of dry wall mud to the elevator. When we stepped out onto the third floor I knew we were in a special kind of place: the inner wall of the restaurant is a cave with undulating stalactites and stalagmites. We walked by a maple tree with brilliant orange leaves and then under and around eight-foot-tall orange mushrooms to get to our table.

In this place, there is a burner in the middle of the table. On this is placed a divided bowl with two different kinds of soup bubbling away; the white soup is fairly mild while the red soup is full of spices. Then, there is a whole paper full of options; Janice check-marked all the possibilities we were interested in. It sounded like way too much food to me--she must have checked twenty things--but the others assured me that the plates were small.

They brought all of the plates to our table on a huge tray and arranged them on a shelf at the end of the table. One by one, Janice would dump the ingredients off into the soup to cook. Some were ready immediately and some needed to bubble a bit. She would add two or three things at a time and we would all share them before dumping in fresh plates of other things. We had all sorts of things: chicken, beef, tofu, two or three types of mushrooms (Rebecca's favorite), carrots, sweet potato, regular potato, bean sprouts, twisted hard cracker like things, cabbage, greens, seaweed, dumplings, a type of noodle, and plenty of other things. We all ate until were were stuffed--we probably could have done without the last couple of dishes. It wasn't unbearably hot, but we did finish off a two-liter of Pepsi during the meal.

Actually, for me, I ate slowly rather because the food was temperature-hot (fresh out of the boiling soup) rather than spicy-hot. The steam coming off of the soup filled the air like fog; Janice and Season teased each other by blowing it into the other's face. Anyhow, the point is that I understood Rebecca and Season's immediate obsession with the place.  My mouth is starting to water sitting here writing about the meal; I can't wait to be there again. Janice is supposed to translate the menu for us so we can go without the help of a Chinese friend sometimes.

October 11th: Psychological Monsters

I just counted it up...we're now in week 8 (out of 17) of the semester.  It seems like we just got started--I'm starting to get overwhelmed with all of the stuff I have to do!  I'm going to have to buckle down and stay organized and try to beat my personal besetting sin--procrastination.  Besides teaching my four writing classes every week (and all the piles of grading that come from them! This is a major area where procrastination can be deadly), I also have women's study group meetings Monday and Wednesday. On Wednesday, I am the teacher, so there's quite a bit of preparation there, as well as house cleaning and fixing a meal for twenty.  Friday nights I've been taking turns attending "religious discussions" on the east (my) campus and the west campus with Lee.  Sundays are an all-day time of great fellowship--meeting at Ron and Evelyn's on the south campus (although sometimes I visit Dale and Lisa on the central campus), then lunch with whoever can stay (often ten to twelve people), a couple of hours to crash in an unavoidable Sunday afternoon nap, then meeting at Colonel and Kelly's at five, then back to the south campus to Ron and Evelyn's for dinner (she usually makes some sort of soup and sandwiches--last night was beef and noodle soup, yum!) and one or two intense rounds of Settlers of Catan. 

And now I've accepted teaching one more class a week, an evening course in oral English for local middle school teachers that should last for ten weeks (the rest of the semester).  It does mean an increase in pay for the overtime hours, which was one motivation, but also it sounds like an interesting opportunity to teach a totally new demographic--teachers instead of students, who I would likely otherwise never meet.  I'm looking forward to using many of the oral English lesson plans I've come across but never been able to use in my writing classes, so it's a fun professional challenge as well.  I've always been a teacher, and it's a bit hard to imagine myself not doing something related to teaching or education; I've tried to steer away from teaching at a few points in my life but I keep coming back to it.  Being a teacher is just part of who I am.  And then, there's also the summer vacations...that doesn't hurt my love for the teaching profession at all, either.

The last two weeks we've been discussing descriptive writing in class, which I find is a lot of fun to teach. Today we began with talking about vocabulary for describing people and personalities--I introduced them to terms such as introvert/extrovert and open-minded/close-minded. Those of you who know me well know my fascination with psychology and psychological testing (I have a minor in psychology), so I took the opportunity to use a simple personality test with my students. There are ten horizontal rows of four adjectives, and you must choose which of the four words describes you the best. Afterwards, you tally up how many you chose in the A, B, C, and D column. A majority of A's mean that the person is a Controller, for B's, a Motivator, for C's, a Developer, and for D's a Stabilizer. Here are the descriptions:

Then, for their in-class journal assignment, the students answered the following questions:
1. According to the Personality Survey, are you a controller, a motivator, a developer, or a stabilizer?

2. Do you agree with your results from the survey? Why or why not? If not, which personality type do you think best describes you?

3. What do you think the world would be like if everyone was a controller? How about if everyone was a motivator? What if everyone was a developer? And what if everyone was a stabilizer?

4. How do you think you and your classmates can benefit from the variety of personality types in your class?

I've used others personality surveys before that I like much better and that I feel are more accurate (but then again, how much accuracy do you expect in ten questions?), but I had worksheets for this one and it fit the time constraints of the class perfectly. I may see if I can make some modifications or find a similar test that I like better before class tomorrow. I need to make more copies, anyhow. By the way, I was a controller. This assessment does fit my in-class personality as a teacher, but not my personality as a whole, as I am definitely an introvert. I'm not too concerned if the survey isn't terribly accurate; probably all the better, as it gives the students more fuel for thought to write about if they don't agree with it and go on to explain how they really are. 

After I gave them time to think over these questions and write in their journals, I got the chance to try a description activity that I've never had the chance to use before: monster art! I gave each students two pieces of paper. First, they had five minutes (okay, closer to ten...I have a lot of perfectionists) to draw a monster. Monsters work well for open-ended activities because there is no one way to draw a monster--it could be something with fur, or feathers, or scales; it could have two eyes or three ears or five feet or seven antennae; it could have wings or paws or hands or flippers. A monster could be a cute fuzzy thing from Sesame Street, or could be a shadow with flashing teeth from a Halloween thriller. After everyone had drawn a monster, I took them up, shuffled them, and then passed them back out face-down. Now, the students had to work in pairs. One partner would look at their monster, but keep it hidden from the other. Then they would describe it while the partner followed the description to draw it on the second sheet of paper. After they finished, then they could compare the original and the copy to see how well their description had enabled the partner to draw it. It was a good way to illustrate through experience how we can give someone else a mental picture through our descriptions. There were some very cute and creative monsters! I think the activity went well, and I think I'll keep it in my repertoire.

October 3rd: Fish for Sunday Dinner

 The long-awaited fall cool-down came to us over a week ago, but we haven't been able to enjoy it too much as it brought with it a solid week of drippy drizzling.  Today, however, was one of those crisp, clear, brilliantly sunny perfect fall days.  I wished I was hiking in the woods; the urge to be outdoors was nearly irresistible.

It was a good Sunday, following the normal pattern: in the morning, Rebecca, Season, and I headed over to Ron and Evelyn's house on the south campus for a morning meeting.  After the meeting, most weeks we all go out to eat together.  Eleven people gathered around two pushed-together tables in the small back room of a restaurant across from the south campus.  It was crowded, but the more the merrier when we can share good food with good friends.  The main dish was grilled fish.  We Americans tend to have quite a disconnect between animals and food--we buy our meat clean and packaged in plastic from Kroger's; it's easy to disassociate it from the animal it used to be a part of.  No such thing  here.  Just inside the doorway of the restaurant there was a tub of water with a board over top of it.  Jordan, one of the Chinese brothers, translated Ron's request for fish.  The restaurant owner lifted up the piece of plywood and plunged his hands into the murky tub, and came up with a squirming ten-pound fish.  "Bigger!"  So he dropped the first fish unceremoniously back into the water and scrambled for another.  The third pick met the requirements, so he tossed it over his shoulder onto the sidewalk by the door.  It gasped in the sun as we filed past to find a table.  The owner's daughter squeezed past us with a meat cleaver in hand.  Twenty minutes later, we had a perfectly grilled fish, with a marinade of onions and spices, in the center of our table. 

As everyone else settled in at the tables, Ron, Jordan, and I held a conference in the kitchen with the owner.  Jordan is Chinese, so he could write our order down for us--here, generally you write your own order on the pad of paper instead of the waitress doing it.  Ron has the idea that I'm good at ordering food, so I have now been promoted to the ordering committee at most meals.  My Chinese is still on a just-getting-by level, but I have learned how to say several of the normal dishes.  Today was a wonderful meal: besides the fish, we had a plate of sweet and sour pork, two plates each of eggplant and cabbage, potatoes and onions, scrambled eggs and tomatoes, lotus root, and a super-spicy version of chicken and peanuts.

Another Sunday dinner, a couple of weeks later than the one I'm talking about.  Of course, I should have got the shot before we ate all the food...

I spent the afternoon doing some stuff for BW's birthday, and then we had a meeting at Colonel and Kelly's at five.  The singing seemed especially wonderful today--several of my favorite songs.

September 1st: New Teacher Banquet

We are always happy to have our recruiters, Ed and Pam Mosby, visit Jingzhou during their travels in China. Of course it's nice to catch up, and I appreciate their encouragement in our work here. It's through them that I've been able to send a couple of newsletters back to all of you.

Another reason, however, why their visits are so popular is that the Foreign Affairs Office (my bosses) always organize the teacher banquets to coincide with Ed and Pam's visits. A dinner out with friends is always fun, but this is something special--we go to the King Kowloon Hotel, once of the fanciest in Jingzhou, for a special banquet.

We had quite a crowd this time--most of the returning English and Japanese foreign teachers were able to come, and Barry, the head of the department, introduced the newly arrived teachers. There are four new English teachers at Yangtze University this fall: Olivia, from Indiana; Paul, from somewhere up north, Connecticut, maybe?; Rebecca, from near Little Rock; and Season, from Jackson, Tennessee. These last two I look forward to getting to know especially as we have a Mutual Friend, and I'm looking forward to introducing them to the work here. There is also a new Japanese teacher as well as a new Korean teacher, Sunny.

Besides the good company, the banquets are a fun introduction to the kind of Chinese food we don't see every day. There are all sorts of wonderful dishes--a sweet fritter that somebody said has eggplant in it; a barbecue pork dish; spicy fried ou (lotus root) sandwiches; steamed bread with bacon fat filling; crispy fried chicken strips, and many other special treats. This is the third banquet, I think, that I've been to, and we usually have these same foods, but I've never seen them anywhere but at the King Kowloon. Writing this post is making me hungry; I think it's time to go in search of dinner!

August 30th: Back to Work

After one short weekend to recuperate, it's back to class today! I don't mind getting started, though. I've got a lot of plans for this semester, and I'm ready to get started! Like last semester, I'm teaching a Writing course for sophomore English majors. I have four classes a week: Monday at 8 AM (ick, too early--I am not a morning person!), Tuesday at 2 PM, Wednesday at 2 PM, and Friday morning at 8 AM again. My first reaction is to complain loudly that I have TWO classes at eight in the morning...but then when I think about it I realize I should be grateful. When I was teaching at a high school in the states last winter, I had to be at the school at seven, which meant getting up around 5:30 and leaving the house around 6:30, though I often
annoyed my mother, with whom I carpooled, by not getting going until more like 6:45. And that was every day...so two mornings with a class at eight, when I just have a ten minute walk to arrive, should be wonderful. But I'm whining anyhow... :)

This week in my classes I'm introducing myself and the course, and then I'm getting groans from the students on the first day by making them play the Name Game. You know, the game where the first person says their name and something they like to do (or whatever piece of trivia you ask for). Then the second person introduces themselves, "Hi, I'm Lucy," and also the first person, "...and this is Sally." The third person introduces themselves and the other two, "I'm Lucky, and they are Lucy and Sally." And so on, until the person at the end (me) has to remember all of them. I made them play for my own benefit, as I knew it would be a big jump start to me in learning their names--I used it in my geometry classes in the states, too. However, I found that this is my students' first semester together as a class--from here on out, they will be with this same group of students for all of their core classes for the next three years. They were still getting to know each other even in Chinese; they certainly hadn't learned each others' English names yet, so I think the game helped for them to start getting used to the English names as well.

As usual, I have plenty of students with the names that are popular choices among the Chinese students: Lucy, Linda, Jane, Rita, Jack, Tina, Sophia, Jenny, Sandy, etc. There's always a few interesting stories thrown in, though--I'm still trying to figure out Crab, Maple, Djinn, Lemon, YoYo, Bruce Lee, Witch, Sweety, and my personal favorite, Mes Zeathal. I've asked twice and still haven't quite figured out how to remember to pronounce that last one. It has all sorts of meaning built into it, I remember, but I doubt anyone but her will ever fathom it.

It's something we English teachers talk about among ourselves every semester--how should we approach bizarre names? On one side, your name is your name. It's their choice, and I should call them as they request. On the other hand, should we intervene in the case of offbeat names? After all, if this person continues to use their English name after they get out of college, either with their foreign friends or even with foreign business colleagues, it would be to their benefit to not be called Lemon. It just doesn't convey a very competent vibe...or, in the case of Witch, could even be offensive or embarrassing to some. Already I can see that I probably won't be a hurry to call on her in class, because I'm a bit uncomfortable calling this beautiful young girl "Witch." Hey, maybe she's on to something... One way to get out of class participation! But it is a bit of a question to consider--my student Timmy last year consistently spelled his name Timy. Should I respect that he spells his name as he wishes (as we do in the United States--we have many ways to spell the same name)? Does he spell it that way as a way to personalize it, or does he just really not know how to spell it (I suspect the latter)? Sometimes I do try to point out spellings like his that are likely to result in mispronunciation--an American reading Timy would likely say Time-y, not Timmy.

All of my classes seem to be well-mannered and friendly so far--I was surprised by their willingness to overcome their shyness and take advantage of the time I opened up for questions. Most of their questions made for good discussion: Why did you decide to move to Jingzhou? Have you had any culture shock yet? What did you do over the summer vacation? There's always a few that dare to get a bit more personal, though: "Tell us about your boyfriend!" I'm glad they seem to be willing to talk, at least!

July 22nd: The overadvertised EXPO

After all of the hype and advertising and talk, I still wasn't quite sure what to expect from the expo.  I had seen online some of the fantastic architecture that showed each country's creativity, but I didn't have any idea what was inside, really, or what else there was.  I did know that there are normally long lines to find out what's inside. 

Common logic might suggest that I should have gotten up early and arrived as it opened to beat the crowd, but I didn't.  I stayed up late last night fighting with the piece of junk computers at the hostel, and then this morning I needed to do laundry (really--couldn't wait, unless I want to wear these pants for the fourth or so time tomorrow).  I just wasn't in the mood to be rushed.  I finally made it out of the hostel just in time for lunch, and wandered next door to an Italian restaurant.  I'll write about my memory trip to Italy in another post.  I really only had a vague idea as to wear the expo even was; I had glanced at a map yesterday, and it seemed that line 8 of the metro might get me close.  Line 8 crossed People's Square; I could walk halfway and then take a metro one stop to there and change, or I could just walk the whole way, which probably wouldn't be any further by the time you take into account all of the stairs and passageways in the cavernous metro stations. 

I did get distracted a bit on the way, but it was a distraction of the best kind.  I knew that somewhere along the road there was an international bookstore, and I stumbled upon it on my way.  I couldn't resist spending awhile just browsing and reading the back covers, and feasting my eyes on all of the old favorites and future reads and classics...it's the little things in life that matter sometimes, and it's been a long time since I've seen an English bookstore.  The only way to get English books in Jingzhou is to order them off of Ebay out of Hong Kong or abroad.  They had a whole section of discount books for 15-18 yuan each--about two and a half dollars.  Coincidentally, I finished the one book I brought with me this morning, and I have several long bus rides, train rides, quiet evenings in hostels, etc. to go, so I bought a few that seemed fairly lightweight: a book of ancient  Chinese poetry that is part of the basis of Taoism (I might as well learn more about Chinese culture as I'm experiencing it; that was the topic of my last book, too), Pilgrim's Progress (one of those classics that, as an English major, I shouldn't admit that I've never read--I find that long trips such as this are a wonderful catalyst to reading those rather ponderous works that I get distracted from normally), Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (same principle as the second book; also, the title seems appropriate in light of the daily frustration of being one of 1.3 billion), and one just for the pleasure of it, Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone.  My enjoyment of nineteenth century British literature comes through again!

Finally I proceeded to the expo.  It turns out my instincts are quite good; the metro station I guessed as being in the general vicinity turned me out right next to a ticket booth.  I bought a ticket (no lines, walked right up--so far, not the madhouse I was envisioning) and entered.  There weren't too many people in this part of the expo.  I think I had the right idea, coming at three in the afternoon: it doesn't close until midnight, so I've still got hours to explore, but the eager beavers who showed up early have gotten overheated and wandered off by now.  And it was hot--the beautiful clear weather continues, rather miraculously for China, but the sun beats down with an undiluted intensity.  So bright, and my sunglasses are broken. 

I was in the boring part of the expo, the pavilions run by various corporations.  The best part was across the river, so I had to make my way to one of the ferries to go across.  It was a long hard walk--not unreasonably far, really, and I shouldn't have been tired, just starting out--but my heel spur has been getting progressively worse the past few days.  It had improved a lot, but today I wondered if I was really going to be able to walk around this thing--just getting to the ferry felt like walking on knives. 

Anyhow, I did make to the ferry, and across the Huangpo river, and the first pavilion I came to (I planned this) was Italy.  There was quite a line, but this was one I didn't want to miss, so I joined the queue.  Good thing I didn't realize just how long it was at that point, but it moved fairly quickly, although I probably waited for forty minutes or so.  Don't get me started on waiting in lines with Chinese people; I might say something unkind.  Speaking of Chinese, there were a lot fewer foreigners than I had imagined; I often found myself surrounded by only Chinese people.  I finally made it inside, and there were displays of things Made in Italy: a ferrari, a vespa, high-fashion shoes, fancy dresses, super modern chairs and lamps (a mobile of each was hanging from the ceililng).  Above the escalator, there was a cross section model of the Florence duomo.  On the second floor there was a restaurant, but it was a bit expensive and besides I'd already eaten Italian today.  I did get a small glass of limoncello, though, for old time's sake.  I sat down to rest while I drank it; there was no where else to sit in there, and the pain in my foot was to the point that I nearly felt sick.

The late afternoon light was perfect as I left, so I decided to stay outside for a bit and take pictures of the amazing pavilions each country had constructed--really, the adventurous architecture was the highlight.  I know you'll agree once you see the pictures.  Across the way was Russia, Croatia, Slovenia.  I went into Croatia because the line was short, but even a short line was a bit of a waste of time as there were mostly just pictures being flashed around, which I could have seen from the door. 

To be continued...

 *The pictures are of one of the main buildings, which looked like a flying saucer; the UK pavilion; and obviously, the Croatia pavilion