Qufu - A Second Time

We went to Qufu again with the other foreign teachers on Saturday. The school arranges this every year. We went again because it’s an effortless day of sightseeing. We are driven there in a small tour bus, toured around and lunch is thrown in. We can't resist a free lunch!










Qufu is a town that centers around tourism. Since many of the sites are far apart and large, one can get a bit tired. Here is one of the ways tourists who get tired of walking can get around town.

We enjoyed a sunny warm day out with all of the Russian teachers, a Japanese teacher and a Swedish exchange student. At lunch, Don said it was like being at the UN. There was Chinese, English, Russian and French being spoken at the table simultaneously. I got to practice my French with one of the Russian teachers who feels more comfortable talking to me in French than English. Funny that Spanish now pops out of my mouth. Betty V. in Mexico, if you are reading this, you will find it hilarious since I complained that when I was trying to speak Spanish, French came out.

We were surrounded by tour groups. This time around, my Qufu pics (like many of my China travel pics) were of the crowds. Tours distinguish themselves with lovely hats or caps. They trail behind their guides who wear cheap portable loudspeakers giving them tidbits about Confucius. They had to have been straining to hear what the guide was saying though because everyone else’s guides were yelling through their headsets too.

My memory of the day will be of our Russian friends. They love to take photos! They posed at every opportunity and if there was a particularly scenic spot, there was a frenzy. Each of them would need the same photo. Then there were the shopping frenzies. They are leaving after this term so were stocking up on souvenirs. Don spent much of the time making sure that they were not too far from the rest of the pack.



At the temple, Sam told me something that gave me a deeper appreciation of the culture here. Many people were worshiping by bowing in front of the altar. The man who worked there (he's the guy on the left in the photo with the suit on) was saying something each of the three times the worshipers bowed.

You have to keep this in mind first, the university entrance exams are one of the important milestones of life here. Much of the last year of high school is devoted to studying for the exam in June. Many students study every waking moment. The future of your family rests with your exam results. If you do well, then you get into a good university, then you get a good job, then you can support your family.

So back to the praying. I forget what the other two bows were for exactly but the second bow is to pray that your child does well in their entrance exam. That certainly gave me perspective. Hey Glen, aren't you glad we didn't grow up in China :) I sure am! The pressure on the young people here is unimaginable for us. Can you imagine growing up knowing that you'll be expected to, along with your spouse, take of your parents, grandparents, parents-in-law and grandparents-in-law?

Teaching Jokes

Yeah, I've been saving all this up. It's feast or famine huh?

The other day for a fun activity, at least for me, I taught some of my more advanced students some jokes. Since I don't tell jokes well and to keep things nice and simple, I chose one liners, knock knock jokes and doctor doctor jokes. Oh, and I also told them the classic "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

This is really a great way to teach a bit of culture. Of course, I had a lot of 'xplainin to do. I taught them the routine of the knock knock joke. Then gave them a few examples then quickly followed up with the word "groan" in case they hadn't heard of it. See what you just did? That's called a groan. Ha ha!

Then I handed out different "Doctor Doctor" jokes to each of them. I was kept busy for the next few minutes explaining WHY they were supposed to be funny. Get it? Get it? I kept repeating. Some of them were so cute because they were caught up on the literal meaning of the words. They asked me "But why?" a lot. "But why didn't the patient just explain why he was feeling bad?" "But why would he say he felt like a roll of film?" "What kind of doctor would say that?" Oh dear. Then I explained that understanding humour in another language is a very hard thing. THAT was the real lesson. Oh well, at least they know how to respond to "knock knock"! :)

What Begins and Ends with a Car Accident?

Answer: Our Beijing weekend.

Our first accident happened on the way to the train station. It’s nearby but because of construction, the driver had to take a detour. We weren’t in a hurry because we left early but I wish I could say the same for our taxi driver. He dodged in and out of traffic like a maniac and drove on a sidewalk because the traffic on the road had stopped. This was fine if I closed my eyes until he tried to move ahead in stopped traffic. He tried to squeeze into an opening at the same time as another taxi and ended up losing his passenger side mirror. Still ok until he turned off the engine. Here we were, stopped in an unfamiliar area of town and quickly running out of time to meet the train. Luckily, we knew we were near and he motioned the direction we should walk. We also had my flashcard from the last time we took the train so Don showed it along the way to make sure we were heading in the right direction. It was a short walk to the familiar train station and we got on the train as soon as we walked in. In retrospect, it was actually good that he got into the accident. With the traffic jam, had we not walked, we might have missed the train even though we were only a few minutes from the train station.

We took the fast train to Beijing and enjoyed first class comfort. This sounds better than it actually was. The train tickets were about $30 each and only slightly more than the 2^nd class option. The only difference is wider seats and a little bit more attention from the attendants. We arrived in just over 3 hours.

The next part of our adventure was making our way to the hotel. But first, we had to buy our return tickets since the system is such that you can only buy the return ticket when you get to your destination. I have yet to find a good reason for this and it makes things challenging to say the least. We managed to do it with a bit of frustration and then we found our way to the taxi stand, here is what we were met with.

It was intimidating to see the long lineup but I guess they are very used to it because there was a very efficient process in place. There were people orchestrating the orderly taxi dance. A large group of taxis would drive up very quickly, passengers would hop in, the taxis would take off and then the scene would be replayed. The lineup moved quickly and we were in a taxi in no time.

I had come prepared with the Chinese characters for the hotel and the address so we were on our way into Beijing quickly. Our first view of Beijing was in the late evening and the large brightly lit buildings were impressive. Our taxi driver got us to the general vicinity of our hotel and then was a bit lost. He stopped on a quiet street just off the main road to recheck our directions. Fortunately, I had studied the hotel name and actually saw it across the street from where we stopped. He couldn’t see it cause the sign wasn’t lit up. Mental note: learn to give directions to taxi drivers, at least “go straight”, “turn left / right” and “stop here”.

We went to Beijing to attend a foreigner job fair. We had planned to go a month ago and then in the meantime we were offered jobs in two different cities. We decided to go as planned as an excuse to go to Beijing and to see if we might see other opportunities.

Here is an idea of what a job fair might look like for our students and here was ours.

It was more packed than this but I took this with my cellphone during lunch. There weren’t that many employers really but the event was held in a relatively small room so it made it feel busy. The lanes where we walked were close together and so were the booths for the employers.

Sam, our friend from the school, was also there to try to recruit replacements for us. The booth was decorated with some nice big photos of the foreign teachers. We noticed pictures of Don and I as well as a really large photo of Don’s teaching award.

After talking to a few potential employers, we went back at lunch to check on Sam and that was the last I saw of Don for the day. He started talking to interested applicants and soon became a recruiter. To keep myself busy, I wandered around and met some Mexican Spanish teachers. I had met one of them earlier and when I saw a group of them talking I couldn’t resist joining them just to listen. Spanish is music to my ears! It turns out that I hadn’t forgotten as much as I thought since I could still follow the conversation. They were frustrated at the lack of opportunities to teach Spanish here and that many employers want native speakers. After that, I went to chat with a Chinese language school to see what my options were to learn quickly. I picked up some English publications aimed at foreigners living in Beijing. It was such a pleasure to talk English to everyone and anyone. Since the job fair was held at a 5 star hotel, all of the staff spoke English.

We left the job fair a bit early to take a tour of the school that had offered us a job. They sent a car to pick us up and after a 40 minute drive, we were given a tour of the city and the school. We were treated to dinner with the boss and one of the teachers and had a very pleasant visit.

Day 2 in Beijing – A whirlwind tour

After a fantastic Dim Sum breakfast where we got to meet the head chef from Hong Kong , we started at the geographic centre of Beijing, Tiananmen Square. We met an “art student” who wanted to practice his English and to show us his work at an exhibition right next to the Forbidden City. Sounds good. I say “art student” because we’re still not sure if it was a well-known scam. Of course, we didn’t read about it till after we came home. Never mind, it makes for a good story. Here he is at work making us a piece of art. He is writing the Chinese character for “love” and writing our names in Chinese under it. Small price to pay for this souvenir.

We also got in some shopping. The photo of me at the beginning shows that we visited a famous shopping street. Well, window shopping really. We ended up at a Western style mall with designer brands so all I could do was window shop while Don took it easy at a café. It’s strangely comforting to see familiar brands.

The other nice thing is that it smelled nice. Wearing fragrance is not yet popular in Jinan but walking through the mall I realized that people were wearing fragrance. Now you might not think this to be a big deal but you really have to live the toilet experience in China to appreciate places that smell nice. Enough said. Sadly, I have yet to tap into affordable shopping here. I need to come back.

We arrived back in Jinan late and had the most frustrating experience with the taxi driver so far in our entire time in China. Coming in late, after the buses have stopped running, is apparently just begging to be ripped off – Chinese and foreigners alike. The driver refused to put the meter on and asked for a higher price than it should be. Even though we were on our way, we demanded to be let out. I was really angry but had no Chinese to express it so I ended up channeling my anger into simple English words he might understand. I called him a “bad man” as I got out of his cab! We finally got into a cab that agreed to use the meter. Unfortunately, we were rear ended by another cab before he delivered us to the wrong gate despite our very clear instructions, which were backed up by our address in Chinese. I am grateful that the other cab was not going fast since there was just a light tap. I was not a joy to be around that evening though, ask Don. I am happy to report though that our taxi experiences have taken a more humourous tinge now since I’ve told this story numerous times to amused students.

Remembrance

I am listening to my new Tibetan music cd in the background. I have enjoyed this style of music from the first moment I heard it, was it in Qingdao at the tv station tower gift shop? I heard it again in Hong Kong but finally bought some cds yesterday in Qufu. It’s Buddhist chanting in Tibetan or Sanskrit accompanied by beautiful music and is very soothing.

I am hoping the chanting will help me find some balance today. My heart is filled with sadness for a friend from Ottawa who just passed away. He would have approved. I am overwhelmed by his loss and how it is affecting his wife and our other friends. We had lost touch in the years since I left that company but had reconnected recently. I am grateful for that. I will remember Kevin for his smile, his understated ways and his kind heart.

Living abroad has been hard in some ways. Dealing with loss from so far away is one of them.

What I bought for 18 cents Canadian

It's easy to get blasé about everyday life here. You get used to things. You don't notice the little things anymore. From time to time, it hits me that I'm living in China! Holy s_ _ _! It's hard to describe the moment of realization. You'd think that being surrounded by Chinese people speaking Chinese and looking at Chinese characters would do the trick. But no, as I've found out these last couple of years, it's easy to take things for granted. So when these moments come along, I really want to live them.

That's why when I was walking home with my little bag of greens, I decided to take a photo of them and to share this little slice of life with you (and document it for us to remember).

It takes about a 1 minute to walk to the gate of our little neighbourhood. At the gate, there is usually a vegetable lady who sells the basics like onion, garlic, tofu in all shapes and sizes, cucumbers, tomatoes, garlic chives, eggplants, etc. She also lives in the complex so she is a neighbour and we try to give her as much of our business as possible. We've found that it's easier and more pleasant going back to the same businesses. She sets up early in the morning and is there till well after supper time (around 6 p.m. here). So it is very convenient to pick up our daily veggies on our way home from classes or to just run out if we need anything. Today, I saw little bags of green jelly-like ??? I poked at it like it would give me a clue as to what to do with it. Unfortunately, I can't ask. I picked up the greens you see above for our instant noodles. I will also be cooking up some frozen dumplings to go with our lunch. This is a quick and easy lunch for us.

Breakfast earlier consisted of me running out to the street vendors and buying a breakfast sandwich (36 cents) for me and a spicy fried flatbread (18 cents) for Don. Dinner will be cafeteria food for a change (at most $3) . There, our day's menu is taken care :) J

Easter Without the germs!

Hopefully!!!!! For those of you who have been following this blog you will remember the disaster of the Christmas Party at the language school. It was bad enough to be asked to dress up like Santa but to be surrounded but hundreds of children was not my cup of tea. When we finished we thought that the worst was over but we were wrong. The plague these little infection machines gave us lasted for weeks. I have to report that this time so far so good.

When I was asked to return for the Easter celebration I was a little worried. Is it possible that they found an Easter Bunny outfit that large in Jinan. Delightfully the answer was no. I actually did some teaching and singing and dancing with the kids. No costumes were used during this class. Next I had to take part in Easter Egg decorating. I am not kidding but for the students who didn't have eggs, including me, we decorated ping pong balls. The little kids were wonderful and the new school was very nice. All in all I had a great time. It is off to Beijing this weekend in search of the answer of where next?
Hope you all had a great Easter.

PS Thanks to everyone told us about their Easter dinners with ham, Turkey, and Pumpkin Pie. In China we had fried egg sandwiches. I had a great Easter dinner with June on the couch watching Doctor Who.

Strawberry Fields

Don and I were invited by a group of students to go strawberry picking yesterday. We jumped at the chance to spend a day in the country with them. Funny thing is that we never did this in Canada. We always thought that it was much easier to buy a basket from the roadside.

Great thing about doing anything with students here, they take care of all the details. They heard about this place on the news and thought that it would be a nice outing during this long weekend and it would be less crowded. They looked it up on the Internet and planned how we could get there. Since it would have taken us hours and 3 bus transfer to get out to the strawberry fields, they hired a couple of taxis and negotiated a price. We arrived comfortably in an hour.

Here's an aside. I think Chinese friendships are enviable. Often they make lifelong friendships early, maybe grade school even. School friends are very precious here and they actually keep in contact. The girls we hung out with yesterday are roommates. In university, roommates tend to spend a lot of time together and grow close. Guess if you have to go to ALL of your classes together for four years and you live together, you bond. We spent the day with Alice, Valeria, Addy, Martha and Christina. Unfortunately Sally had to work. Don taught these girls for a year and now I'm teaching them.

Back to our day, we were a bit nervous when we found out that they really didn't know exactly where we were heading. No matter, as long as the taxi driver knew, right? In the cab, we found out he also didn't quite know exactly where the strawberry fields were so he stopped periodically in the villages to ask the locals for directions. As we got closer, we saw the signs so we felt a bit more confident. A guy on a bike finally offered to bring us so we followed him.

When we got out of the taxi, we were greeted with the smell of manure. Ah, brings back memories of Barrhaven (we used to live in a suburb that enjoyed this smell regularly because of the farms nearby). We were led into a greenhouse (1 mud/brick wall enclosed with plastic in a curved shape). Inside, we found rows of strawberry plants. We found out from the farmer that the strawberries were not that big yet because this was a second crop. The first had been harvested during Spring Festival in January / February. We sampled a few anyway and found them sweet. Unfortunately, we had to leave because the girls suspected something was off and found out that this was not where they had intended to go. Apparently, the boy who led us there was trying to intercept unknowing visitors to get some business for these farmers because they were located far from the main area which was still half an hour's walk away. Thankfully, the taxi drivers had parked a little ways off to wait for us so we got back in and drove.

When we finally arrived, there were many similar greenhouses lined up along the road. We walked a bit to visit a few to find one where we wanted to pick. It was a nice warm day (around 20C) so the greenhouses were quite warm inside. We only lasted about half an hour in one building and only picked a small quantity. As we walked along to find another patch, we found a man who was selling strawberry at the side of the road. We decided that, since it was the same price anyway, that we would "pick" his strawberries instead of going inside another greenhouse. So we walked away from his stand with a box each with a lot less work.

After that we headed off to find something for lunch. There were, as far as we could tell, only two options. The first restaurant was unanimously pooh-poohed so we wandered around looking for the second. While we were wandering, we happened across an elderly lady sitting in her doorway. It was a moment begging to be captured. Don, through the girls, asked permission to take a photo of her. They had to yell cause she was hard of hearing, being 91 years old. He took a couple of spectacular images that will definitely grace our wall one day.

After that, we wandered a bit farther down the street and found the other restaurant. Even though the village was small, we still had to ask for directions from the locals. Sure, there was only one main road but there were a few side roads so directions were good. When we arrived at the restaurant, we gladly sat down and enjoyed a delicious lunch. After that, we called for the taxis to return for us. While we waited, we walked around a bit more.

Till then and quite surprisingly, Don did not generate as much interest as I would have guessed. He got a lot of attention during lunch from some little girls in the village but not much before that. However, during our walk after lunch, an older gentleman came walking towards him with an open note pad and asked for his autograph. (See pic below.) He told Don he was welcomed back to the village and even tried to invite us into his home for some water. We politely declined.

Then, a bit later, we were met by a woman who stopped Don to ask "How much?" and motioned towards his box of strawberries. Ha ha! That started a little negotiation and Don had to call on his knowledge of Mandarin numbers to manage. It was hilarious!

We arrived back at school late in the afternoon, exhausted but happy. We had had such a great day in the country with great company. We did have a daunting task ahead though because we had to eat all of the strawberries quickly as they were getting mushy. Guess being bounced around in those boxes all day in the sun is not the best way to transport them. I can imagine the smell of 6 boxes of strawberries in the girls' small dorm room last night and without a refrigerator!

We enjoyed French toast this morning with strawberries. Yum!

A few more of June's pics:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=73374&id=571108357&l=b6a0f1a3a1

Stay tuned for Don's!