Trial Run

We are preparing for our first independent trip here in China. We're heading to Qingdao, the site of the yachting events for the Olympics. Our plans are to go and check it out and return before the students all head home. They are just finishing their school year and will head home next weekend. In the same way that the whole country of China is on the move during Chinese New Year, all the students head home for the summer holidays. We don't want to get stuck in the crush.

With William's help yesterday, we got our train tickets. We opted for the fast train that will get us there in half the time (two and a half hours). We will attempt this all on our own even though he offered to take us to the train station tomorrow. It may not sound like much but since we've found the language barrier much more of a factor here than in Mexico, it's a bit daunting.

So we're packing up all of our travel guides and phrase books. Funny enough, while we had them in Mexico, we rarely needed them as much as we will here. I am all ready to write out Chinese characters too, in case our pronunciation is impenetrable. I'll have little slips of paper made up for the taxi driver with "train station" written out in Chinese. Along with the books, we will definitely be bringing along the electronic dictionary / translator. I have deciphered enough of the instructions to figure out how to get it to say phrases I enter. So if necessary, IT can tell the ticket agent we want to buy tickets. Then as the last resort, we'll have our students on speedcall!

We've booked a room online at a nice hostel so we know we have a place to stay. The town, because of the Olympics, will be a nice, safe place to start getting our feet wet... should be enough English spoken there. At the very least, they won't be staring at Don as much. I know he'll enjoy that for a change. I've already located Starbucks (plural!!) there. Get me in there and I'll be pointing and grunting for a tall Americano!

Stay tuned for more. J

Real Chinese Food

Yeah, a big surprise that I would be documenting our food here :)



Here are some of the goodies we got from everyone for the Dragon Boat Festival - zhongzi and hard boiled eggs.


Street Food

Here is a candid pic of my favourite breakfast ladies that I snapped with my cell phone . They are there to make me food almost every day. While I may not be their only customer, I am certainly one of their most dedicated. On the first day that I realized that they did actually take a day off, I was left spinning. Who would feed us now? Luckily, there’s another cart like theirs just behind them and they've made a pact that one of them will always be there to feed me.

One of the advantages of being a regular is that I only need to say yi ge or liang ge to tell them whether I need one or two sandwiches today. It really makes everything a bit less of a challenge. Besides, they get to laugh at my attempts at counting in Mandarin. Thankfully, I don't have to count beyond 6 in the transaction.

Here’s the rest of the process. First, I have to get over being Canadian. Here, if you wait patiently for your turn, like a polite Canadian, you starve. People are budinskis here. If you are new to the crowd already waiting, the Chinese way is to walk right up to the front and order. Never mind that I’ve been waiting patiently to be acknowledged so I can give my order. I have often been left with my mouth gaping because I don't believe that someone just cut in on me. How rude! The ladies are so busy, they just hunker down and make the sandwiches so they can’t do crowd control too. Luckily, they found out that I’m a teacher and who’s kidding who, I’m an oddity here because I look Chinese but can’t speak it. With my special status, they usually notice when I get there. But sometimes, like this morning, I had to just speak up and fight the "I'll-just-wait-here-quietly-till-you-have-time-to-take-my-order" urge.

Here is the production process. The lady on the right (with the purple apron) stands there cracking eggs and cooking the small pieces of pink “meat” on the griddle. She puts it off to the side of the surface when the food is cooked and goes on to make the next batch. The lady of the left reaches into the tan cooler box (a white Styrofoam cooler that has been “reinforced” with packing tape) for a freshly baked bun. Once, I witnessed some anxious moments when they ran out of buns and had to wait for a guy to ride his bike from down the street to deliver a new batch of fresh buns.

The buns are filled with the fried egg, some pink meat and fresh veggies that she grabs from the white trays in the cart. There’s sliced tomatoe, cucumber and lettuce. She also paints on some sauces and shakes some spices (dispensed from drink bottles with holes drilled in the caps). It’s quite a production line. There are lots of hungry students to feed so they rarely get a break. There is a white bucket in the foreground that you drop your money into to pay. If you need change, you help yourself from the bucket. This makes it more hygienic presumably so the ladies don’t have to be touching the money.

Here are a few other food options from the street right in front of our apartment complex:

These are some watermelons and unknown fruits from our fruit lady.

Then there are these noodles. In front of this couple are individual cooking elements for each order of noodles.

On a totally unrelated but funny topic, boyfriends / husbands often carry their loved one’s purses. Such gallantry! I haven’t quite convinced Don to carry mine yet. Nor have I been able to get him to agree to matching t-shirts. Another sign of love in this country.

A Day In Our Lives

We live in the foreign teachers' building in a complex of short apartment buildings. Across the way, a woman is cooking dinner in her kitchen. Yes, we're close enough to see. Their cooking area is right at the window. Often, the man in the apartment cooks without a shirt. It's hot here in Jinan. We understand that it hasn't quite made it up to the top 3 "ovens" of China yet but it's a close 4th. Thank goodness for a/c!

Our apartment complex is located on the same street as the south entrance to the university so we don't have to walk far to get to school. It's a bit of a walk to the teaching buildings though, about 15-20 minutes to get there across campus. All along the streets, there are vendors for household items, fruits and veggies and most importantly, there are food carts.

This morning, we woke up, downloaded some episodes of our favourite tv shows from the Internet and then went out on the street to forage for breakfast. We bought breakfast sandwiches from the ladies near the campus gate (about a 3 minute walk). On the way back up the street, we stopped at our favourite fruit vendor. We try to stop there as often as we can. During pineapple season, we often got big slices on a stick from her. She is our favourite because she goes out of her way to pick us the best of what she has to offer and she always greets us with a smile. Today, we picked up grape tomatoes (they are REALLY popular here), some logan fruit and some cherries. Lately, we've noticed that her family seems to have pitched a tent behind their stall on the sidewalk and are sleeping there because she is there from day to night.

We came back to the apt and watched some tv while we ate our breakfast. Instant coffee is also big in this country (it was in Mexico as well) so we've given up any pretenses and are enjoying it. We're even lazier though cause we're buying these little packets of pre-measured coffee with sugar and creamer. We only have to microwave some water. Y voila! Then we went to work marking. Ok, Don did. I watched tv. I'm slightly addicted to Gossip Girl.

When I got hungry for lunch, I went back out on the street and bought us these great wrapped sandwiches filled with cooked shredded carrots, cabbage, potatoes and spices. The nice man just cooks it on a flat round surface placed on a stack over a block of hot charcoal. Lunch cost less than $1, just like breakfast.

Now we're getting ready to go have dinner with a couple of students. It's become a bit of a regular thing these past Sunday evenings. These 2 boys, Jerry and William, are among the most eager English learners on campus. Jerry is a Japanese major who loves speaking English and William is one of Don's students. They take every opportunity to practice and we're happy to help. Bye for now. J

p.s. Just got back from our first hot pot in China. I'm stuffed!!

Dragon Boat Festival and Other Important Days

Dragon Boat Festival

We're off today to continue celebrating Dragon Boat Festival. The students have been bringing us treats of zongzi (sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves and shaped like pyramids) and boiled eggs. Carol just came from visiting her hometown and the sweet girl lugged home a bag of food for us. This on top of the food she brought for her roommates. Yesterday, we were invited to Cruise's home here in Jinan and his mother made us a feast for lunch. His family welcomed us into their home and fed us till we couldn't eat another bite. We felt honoured to be there enjoying the meal and the company. She even sent us off with a care package of food. Her dishes were similar to the style of food that my parents make. While it made Don & I feel quite at home, it made me a bit more homesick.


High School Exam

Saturday was a big day in China. All the high school students started a two and a half day university entrance exam. They have been studying for this exam for an entire year. Every waking moment has been dedicated to cramming knowledge in so that they can access it in order to do well for this exam. Their results will determine their future and ensure that they get into a good university and therefore a better job prospect. No pressure, huh?

I have been hearing such stories about the rigors of studying, like getting up at 5 in the morning and studying well into the evening. To make sure that their children are physically well, I've heard how some parents would never serve new food to their child in the 6 months before the exam for fear of making them ill. If you are unable to write the national exam for some reason, you have to wait for the next year. In one city, there was police presence at the school cafeteria to make sure that nobody tampered with the students' food. You see, there is great competition for the relatively few spots in the universities. When you have a population as numerous as this, you never have enough room for everyone who wants a university education.


June 1

China uses a staggering number of plastic shopping bags. So, in order to encourage people to reduce their usage, from June 1 onwards businesses are required to charge their customers for the plastic bags they use for their purchases. I paid 5 cents the other day for one bag because I didn't have my shopping bag with me. I think that it's a very environmentally responsible step and again, due to the size of the population here, a small thing like this will likely make a huge difference.


School Year

We found out late last week that the school year is being shortened by 2 weeks. It may or may not have something to do with the Olympics. We were planning to give our final exams in the last week of June, but we're now getting ready to finish the semester in the next 2 weeks. I am finished at the end of the coming week. Don will teach one more week after that. We're happy to have summer vacation start earlier but are a bit worried that we'll be aimless. We've now started to think about where we might travel to this summer and are excitedly looking at the possibilities. We'll definitely have to narrow down the list of places we want to see though. Stay tuned for those adventures.

J xoxo