Training

Hey, everyone.  Now I never said I was going to be good at this whole blogging thing so you can't hold anything against me for my lapse in posting.  But in reality, there hasn't been too much going on other than training.  Granted, this post will sure make it seem like a lot has happened, but compared to the first few weeks things have settled down quite a bit.  So I'll try to give you as much of a rundown as I can.

On Monday (the 14th) I started my official TEFL teacher training.  It was 2 hours in the morning (10-noon) and 2 in the afternoon (2-4), sometimes with a chinese lesson during lunch.  It has been nice getting into a daily routine.  The training sessions were classroom lessons taught by Isabella.  It really opened my eyes to how much we take for granted with our native language.  I have never learned all the subtypes of verbs, adverbs, pronouns etc. But these are things that foreign language speakers have to learn.  So yeah, training really not that exciting, not too much more to talk about.

So now I'm going to skip to Thursday, because Thursday was pretty significant.  On thursday was the Lantern Festival, Aka. the end of Chinese New Year.  So we only had half a day of training and spent the rest of the day walking around the city watching the preparations for the festival.  We wen't to the big park in Yangshuo and they had all of these chinese lanterns hanging from the trees and light posts.  I got a bunch of pictures so you'll see what I mean when I post them (i'm low on HD space so I need to figure out what to do).  It was interesting because most of the shops were closed and the streets were relatively quiet.  So after walking around for a few hours Isabella took the 4 of us out to dinner with the family.  It was a very nice dinner and we ate most of the typical local fare, beer fish, pineapple chicken, egg plant, etc (yes you read that correctly fish, Mom you will have to at least try some).  Anyways after dinner is when things got really interesting.  So just like chinese new year the local government set up a station where people could make the sweet dumplings (i forgot the chinese name).  Of course they take all of the westerners and put them front and center so the chinese media, can take pictures of westerners doing chinese things.  For a few hours I felt like I was some sort of celebrity because I couldn't walk 5 feet without some chinese person wanting to take a picture of me.  Anyways, I got to make about 20 dumplings which was fun.  After we finished making dumplings we slowly walked back to the park.  This was pretty difficult because for lantern festival it is considered good luck to walk about the streets.  Once we finally got to the park, Isabella told us that we needed to do a one of the several thousand chinese riddles hanging about the park.  Of course these riddles were all in chinese and I had no idea what the answers were.  So, Isabella figured out two of them for us and then informed the local TV station that we had "solved" the riddle.  So they filmed Amelia and me walking up, acting like we knew the answer and then taking our solved riddle to the prize distribution point (don't worry the reporters were all in on our scheme).  So once we got to the prize booth we waited our turn to collect our winnings.  I told the lady my answer, which was Cheng Du,  and then handed me my prize... six tubes of toothpaste.  Of course, the typical chinese person would have only received one.  So if anyone needs some Crest.  I got you covered.  Shortly afterwards Isabella's friend comes up to us with even more prizes which were laundry powder and bars of soap.  AWESOME prizes!  So we were walking back through the park and every chinese person had to tell us how impressed they were...  So finally to end the night we walked back down west street to watch the fireworks show.

Okay, so thats all for now. I have to go back to school and pack for Liuzhou because I'm moving TOMORROW!!!! AGHHH I promise I'll get caught up on this ASAP.

Oil Tea

Okay, last night, on my way back to school I remembered that I completely forgot to talk about one of the most notable things we did in Fengyang.  Oil tea.  For the three nights we were there Isabella had us go out to three different villagers homes to drink oil tea with them.  We did this as a cultural exchange kind of experience and it was quite enjoyable.... well.... kind of...  At each house the drink of choice is a concauction called "You Cha" (pronounces yo cha, for those not familiar with chinese pinyin).  You cha means "Oil Tea", and is probably the most bitter thing I have ever consumed.  To make oil tea you get green tea, ginger and garlic, cut them up into bits and sauté them in a wok.  After they have been cooking for a while you hammer the ingredients with a wooden hammer and then place everything in a sieve and run hot water through it.  Out comes a coffee and cream looking liquid which then is served in a bowl with puffed rice on top.  The flavor when it first hits your tongue isn't that bad, but once it hits the bitter zone in the back your taste buds explode with the most intense bitter taste ever.  I generally like bitter beers, IPA's and the lot, bit this is close to unbearable.  Needless to say I think its an acquired taste.  So I got to sample three different varieties of oil tea because I went to three different houses and everyone makes it a little differently.  The first house is what I'm basing everything off of and it was quite bitter but the middle of the three.  The second was the most palatable, not too bitter.  The third house was very bitter and pretty rough. Oddly, the third place is the only house where I had more than one bowl.  This could be due to the fact that the third house was a larger family and there were three chinese guys that were quite entertaining and quite hospitable.  By in large, the chinese people know that we don't like oil tea.  I think they understand that its not an insult to them at all but this stuff is really hard to drink if you have not acquired the taste for it.  In the third house I the three guys picked this up and offered us some Li Qian beer (coming in at a whopping 3.6% alcohol).  So most of us took them up on the offer.  Then shortly later they pulled out Chinese rice wine.  This is another one of those acquired taste things.  The rice wine we had essentially tasted like straight vodka, quite noxious.   Luckily they gave us only little bits at a time so it wasn't too hard to put down.

So yeah! there is my forgotten post.  And for those who are concerned, today started my official teacher training so that took the whole day, and now we're going to town to go out to eat because its Jarone, and Wies' last night in Yangshuo :(

Hope you're having a good morning america!

Fengyan village and climbing and more!!!

Whoa, its been a while.  Sorry about that.  I know people, (particularly you, Dad) have been itching for me to update my blog.  So now I finally have found the time, and motivation to make a post, emphasis on the latter.  So for this post I'm not going to do a day by day rundown of everything I've done but just get the highlights, as a consolation though I'll try to keep events in chronological order!

So a few days, after the Chinese new year, I saw the departure of all three brits, Isaac, Holly and Lucy :'(.  But Wies and Jarone are still here and they have been keeping me company!  So,  the day that Holly left, Jarone and I went with Isabella and the family to another town about an hour away to visit a government official that allowed Isabella to start her business.  The main purpose of the visit was to wish the official's family a happy new year.  We ate some hot pot and Jarone and I did our best to converse with them because they didn't speak a word of english.  It was a little strange because shortly after we sat down to eat our hosts got up and went outside.  I don't know what they were doing but just me, Jarone and the family were there eating.   A funny side story is when we were just sitting down, Yan Yan, Isabellas 3 year old son was playing with a spoon of hot chilis (mind you this isn't just crushed red peppers, a tea spoon of these things will make you crumble) and he eventually dumped an entire spoonful into the pot, needless to say we had some very spicy hot pot.

So the next day was Super Bowl MONDAY!  Since the Internet went out at the school I had to go into town to go to Mimosa's cafe, to use their wifi. I was upstairs by myself watching the game on the slingbox.  The chinese owners were probably pretty confused by this random american yelling at his computer as the game ebbed and flowed.  Regardless the Packers WON! and I was happy!!!! other than that it was a slow day, I went running and Tina (Isabella's 21 year old niece) gave me and Jarone a Chinese lesson.

On Tuesday a new guy arrived, an Italian named Fredrico!  So Wies and I went with the family to Guilin for the day, and to pick up Fredrico.  Guilin was pretty interesting. It was nice to go to a bigger city and experience the craziness that is Chinese city life.  We started off getting lunch at a noodle shop.  I got some Hunan noodles, which are different than Guilin noodles?  I don't know how they are they taste pretty similar to me.  After that Mr and Mrs Meng, took Yan Yan to the park and Isabella, Wies, Tina and I went to this massive shopping mall in the center of Guilin.  It was interesting because the mall was like one massive department store.  Each brand had their little section, and when you wanted to buy something you went to the sales person told them you wanted to buy something and then they wrote a receipt for you which you took to the cashier to pay.  Just one of those interesting differences that you'd never think of.  After the mall, we went to this large pedestrian street that had tons of different shops, some selling legit stuff and then the usual knockoffs.  Then to end the day in Guilin we walked over to a large park that had two pagodas in the middle of a lake.  One pagoda was the "moon pagoda" the other the "sun pagoda".  Finally, on the way to the car we walked through the people's square of Guilin.  It was cool to see because they had a massive map of the world imprinted out of granite on it.  We walked over North America and I showed Isabella where I was from.  (to my frustration the Twin Cities was omitted on this map when other cities of similar size were included).   Then we went off to the airport to pick up Fredrico.

Next day, pretty much everyone involved with China Greenway (the program on the Chinese side that I'm in) went off to Fengyan Village in rural China.  Fengyan is a very interesting place.  It is a very traditional Chinese village that has really held on to historical practices.  I don't really know where to start because there is a lot to talk about.... Well I'll start with the house.  The house we stayed in was built over 100 years ago, in the classical chinese style.  It is a courtyard style house.  So, when you walk in the front door there is a large room with a pool of water in the middle, and above that pool there is a hole in the roof, so when it rains the rain water falls into the pool.  I don't know why but I didn't take many pictures of the house but hopefully I can get some from the others in the group.  I did get some good shots of the town so thats good.  So adventures in Fengyan village.  On thursday morning, everyone (everyone as in all participants, Tina and her friend Hannah)  went on a "walk".  Our walk started out as a regular walk through the hills but then all of a sudden our two track trail degraded to a single track, and then further degraded to rock scrambles  and some pretty intense hiking.  Mind you, nobody is dressed for this, we're just wearing casual clothes.  Of course I go to the front to see how far I get as the trail conditions get worse and worse.  Kim (german foreign exchange student) and I do a pretty good job of finding the trail and making sure everyone follows us.  Finally after crawling under some brush and seeing a wall of vegetation that is pretty impassable, we decide to turn around.  We thought going up was quite the adventure, but it was going down that proved to be a real challenge.  Typical of this region of China it was misty and all the rock scrambles we went up were quite slippery on the way down.  It took a great deal of teamwork to get everyone down safely.  I fell into a bush once, but we don't have to talk about that.

New paragraph, that one was getting too long.  Next day, we go for another walk.  But this time we went walking along the road.  We were going to Lin hua?  Not sure on the name but regardless, Isabella told us it was a "model socialist town".  This place was 7km away, about 4.5 miles. The weather wasn't too bad at the start but it got progressively worse as we went.  So we stopped about 1k away from the town and Tina called Mr. Meng (her dad) to come pick us up and take us the rest of the way.  When we got there we walked around for a bit and then went on a short river raft ride.  Not too exciting.  I don't think our guide was too happy because she had to stand out in the rain while we were under the little cabana.  After that the town had built steps to the top of a karst formation, 518 steps to be exact.  We went to the top and got a really good view.  I got some good pictures up here.  After 10 minutes at the top we went down and walked through town.  It wasn't too remarkable other than the fact that the houses were pretty nice.  My theory is that the chinese government made this "ideal" place to create a tourist attraction to create something called revenue....? hmmmmmm and this is model socialism?  On top of that the locals were out selling little trinkets, even though we were the only outsiders there.

Saturday, we drove home met a new guy, Brit named Tom.  Nice guy.  I also met up fellow Minnetonka'n Alex Messanger!  He has been in Yangshuo for a few days so little sense in showing him the town, but he came out to Stone Rose with the crew.  Enjoyed the free beer at the price of getting your ears blasted out by the insanely loud music.  

TODAY TODAY TODAY!!  Today Alex and I went climbing, which was AWESOME!!!!!!  For 180 Kuai (27 dollars and 29 cents to be exact) we got four hours of climbing in, pretty good deal if you ask me.  I got to do 5 routes, ranging from 5.6 to 5.10a for those who know what I'm talking about.  I got some good pictures, alex got a lot better ones (he's a much more serious photographer than I am). One thing I learned today about myself is that running is not really good training for climbing.  My arms are completely dead, my legs are fine.  A strange thing about climbing in china is that most of the routes here are controlled by a single climbing "club" which our guide told us was a cover for the mafia.  There were signs saying "climbing prohibited without permission".  And today we were lucky enough to get a visit from the mafia!  Luckily nothing too much came of this, the guides paid them 10 kuai ($1.50) and they were off.  I don't know how they make any real money.....

Okay,  Its 9pm and soon we're getting a new person!  A girl form england, so I have to go meet her!   Finally one last note.  For those who are interested, my running has been going pretty well.  I've been pretty busy but I get out running about 5x a week so not too bad.  I don't feel totally settled with routes and everything so I have yet to go out for a really long run.  I've been topping out at like 50 minutes.  Still pretty solid.

Happy New Year!

Hello everyone and 新年快乐!  (happy new year!)  Anyways to my Dad's request here is a new blog post, and the first from China!  So recap of everything since Seoul.  Flight to seoul was uneventful, very empty plane, nice to be able to spread out after a very full trans-pacific flight.  I arrived to Yangshuo around 1am and none of my roommates that they told me about where not there.  So I just looked around a bit in the building and just as I was about to head to sleep I heard some voices and so I went to the common room.  There I met two girls that were staying there; Lucy from Wales and Weis from Holland.  I chatted with them for a bit and apparently they were told I was from the UK.  Anyways, the others were still out in town so I went to sleep.  Next day I met the rest of the crew, Holly from London, Jarone form Holland and Isaac from Wales.  Nice group of people.  After breakfast we headed to town.  I had images of Yangshuo being this really tiny place, but its a lot bigger than I thought.  And, those hills that you see pictures of in the city? They're literally in the middle of the city.  So on tuesday everyone was saying that we were going to eat dinner with the local government, but nobody really knew what that meant.  So after a day of touring around the city we all met back at the school to head to dinner.  So we went to the middle of town and saw a small banquet area outside this building on western street (the main pedestrian street).  We sat down and shortly one of the coordinators was trying to get us to do all of these activities, like dragon dancing, dancing with children, playing these flutes and playing dumplings.  We all were quite reluctant to d any of these things but a few of us eventually gave in.  I did the dragon dancing, which actually turned out to us putting the dragon mask on and then all these chinese reporters would take pictures of us.  So basically, they just wanted westerners to do all these things so they could take pictures of us. After all that settled down we ate a large dinner of all the local foods and watched the program they had put on for us.  Then towards the end they had everyone go on stage and they started doing a countdown (mind you its like 9:30) and then they shot off confetti everywhere.  So apparently this whole program was being filmed to be on chinese TV on the actual new years eve.

Next day, so on the actual Chinese new year we went to town and walked around some checking out everyones preparations for the festival later that night.  To prepare for new years the chinese put these red lanterns everywhere and light off firecrackers.  Now, chinese firecrackers are no black cats that we have at home.  They come in massive rolls about the size of a car tire and the firecracker itself is about the size of a AA battery.  When these things go off the sound is deafening.  People here also have little regard to when and where they light these off.  They just go outside of their house and look for a clearing in traffic and just throw them out into the road.  Then for dinner we ate a nice dinner with the coordinators and their family.  After that we went to town for the evening to watch fireworks and celebrate the new year with all the chinese.

New years day!  Yesterday a Holly, Isaac and myself went to town to scope the scene.  We thought it would be rather slow because everyone would be at home with their families, but actually the streets were packed and we saw this carnival  in the park, full with rides and chinese fair food.  I got some pictures of this I will post them soon.  After walking about, we met the rest of the crew and walked down west street and saw the dragon dancers going to every business, blessing them for the coming year.  On our way home we passed a fireworks stand and we bought some fireworks.  I lit some of my bottle rockets off when we got back but saved the rest for the evening.  Then last night we went to the schools basketball courts to watch a fireworks display.  Which they were lighting off like 50 yards from us.  I've never been so close to fireworks as they were being set off and it was weird actually hearing the explosion and then the lights not the other way around.  After that we set off our fireworks and went to town for a bit.