Cynthia's Friend

Since the Georgia travel group, that I was planning on meeting, was off touring on Saturday we each took a nice long hot shower in our shiny tub with great water pressure and really big towels to dry off with. (The shower alone was worth their nightly hotel rate) Then we had rice noodles for breakfast and caught the metro to a station on the outskirts of the Pudong district. There we met an old college roommate of Cynthia’s. Sunny & Bob (their English names) picked us up in their new Buick and drove us to their flat.

Side Note: Driving and owning a car is starting to become more popular with the middle class families, especially if you live outside the big (Atlanta sized or larger) cities. Cars, licenses, tags and gas are much more expensive here than in the US.

The flat was a modern 3 bedroom, 2 bath downstairs apartment about the size of my home 100 sq meters (about 1100 sq ft). One bedroom was for the husband’s parents who are the main caregivers of their new baby boy. As is normal in China, both parents work with all childcare being done by the grandparents. Bob and his mother did most of the cooking for our lunch of duck soup (yes, with all parts of the duck), chicken wings (hard to eat with chopsticks), scrambled egg and tomato, qing cai (dk green leafy vegetable – I don’t know the English name because it’s nothing I recognize, but I like it) and of course rice. They were so nice to me even though they had never laid eyes on me before. It still amazes me how hospitable the Chinese are.

When we got back to Shanghai we walked to the Magnificant Hotel where the Georgia group was staying, unfortunately the receptionist said they wouldn’t be back from their tour till after 9. So we had bowl of noodles for dinner and a McDonalds ice cream for dessert. The best of both worlds.

A Ningbo (Hotel?)

No they are not my dishtowels, mine look better than that. They are the bath towels that were included in our Ningbo hotel room. Granted the room only cost 15 dollars, but the night before when we stayed in a very similar and even smaller room close to Ningbo University, and they actually provided us with three regular and sort of thick-ish hand towels. I have to add that I was pleasantly pleased because both hotel rooms had a “throne” toilet instead of a “squatty potty”. And I have to add that the owners of this first hotel were really nice and even made Penny a nice ginger tea for her nervous tummy (she was taking her big English test that morning)

Saturday night we planned on staying in the center of Ningbo and I had assumed that once we got closer to the big city of Ningbo that we would be in a hotel that at least slightly resembled a western style hotel. Never assume….. Obviously we didn’t take a shower (both of the hotels had a bathroom that doubled as the shower) and I used my dirty shirt to wash my face – it looked cleaner.

Ningbo

When I was researching the possibility of working in China one of my choices was a college in Ningbo. Ningbo is located couple hours east of here by bus. After spending a couple of days there I have decided that I was lucky because I made the right choice and chose Hangzhou. Granted ZUFE is located an hour away from Hangzhou and the sky is not as blue and they don’t have fried bananas (another story) but there seems to be so much more history and culture in this area. I think we visited most of the important sites during our 2 days of walking around the city. Also one of the things that Ningbo is famous for is 4 special types of food. All of ripened tofu dishes have names that start with the word that means stinky and boy do they live up to their name. They say it tastes a little like blue cheese, which I like, but I have never been able to get the stuff past my nose to try it. So every once in while you would get a whiff of that strong stinky smell as you walked around town. Also Ningbo had way more beggars, Hangzhou has some but usually I only give away 5-10 yuan here on Yan'an Rd., but in Ningbo I went thru at least 30 yuan (in coins) for the beggars there. (I have been so blessed to be able to travel and teach over here, I feel like I need to share a little- plus they always beg harder when there are foreigners around because we are such an easy touch- me included)

So Hangzhou was a good choice because even after spending 2006 in Hangzhou I still have places I want to visit here – but not next weekend because I am heading off to Shanghai to meet some other adventurous travelers from Glynn County that are touring China. Their first stop is Shanghai and I intend to abduct a couple of them on their day off and lead them astray into the den of temptation known as Lisa’s Pearls. Many of my friends have bolstered the Chinese/Shanghai economy at least a couple of percentage points by the amount spent here.
Click here to see more pictures of Ningbo

A Chinese Fried Banana

Looks can be deceiving. This actually tasted good. But not as good as the chocolate covered frozen bananas you can get at Disney World.

Penny bought us these fried banana treats in Ningbo. Penny had asked me to accompany her to Ningbo for the weekend because she was taking an English test that was offered at Ningbo University. If she gets a good score she can apply to an American University for a graduate degree. So keep your fingers crossed for her. She is not an English Major so she has had to study English in her spare time. It just amazes me how hard some of these students work, especially like Penny or the ones that have 2 majors (they go to school on Saturday and Sunday)

In Love With an Inanimate Object

We had heard rumors but yesterday, Ben our foreign affairs office savior, showed me the real thing. A building that had a room full of Deluxe Massage Chairs just for teachers. Forget the Brookstone/Sharper Image chairs you try out at the airports and the Jax Town Center these are way better. 20 minutes of thumping, rolling, squeezing, and shaking. Pure Heaven! Kris, Jim and I let the massage chairs embrace us after a great dinner in a Xiasha restaurant that had a picture menu! – no surprises! What a way to end the day.

By the way, I have gotten an email from our Foreign Affairs office saying they needed some more American teachers for next year. All you need is a college degree and an adventurous spirit…and you will get to use the chair too…. Want to join me? Great food (if you can figure out what you are ordering or they actually understand what you are asking for), great students and with all the walking it is almost guaranteed that you will lose weight!

The Olympic Mascots

The first year I was here I had trouble explaining what a “mascot” was. I had a picture of my college mascot “The Fighting Blue Hen” (University of Delaware) but it just didn’t click until this year when I associated my UofDel chicken with their Beijing Olympic Mascots. They were originally called “Friendlies” but for some reason they changed it to “Fuwa”. Fuwa means, roughly, “wishing good fortune to the young people” or more efficiently said “good luck dolls”.

If you put the names of the mascots together it says in Chinese “Beijing (Bei Bei & Jing Jing) Welcomes (Huan Huan &Ying Ying) You (Ni Ni)” It is common to hear Chinese names, especially childrens’ doubled up like this. And it definitely fits into China’s cutesy theme that they have for most of their everyday outfits.

I only found a couple of web sites that were informative about the mascots and I was sort of looking for some coloring pages of the mascots online – but I haven’t been successful in that search – anyone else know of a good young student friendly web site for my Frederica Academy Lower School students?
Here is the official Beijing Olympic Web site.
http://en.beijing2008.cn/spirit/beijing2008/graphic/n214068254.shtml
and here is one about some of the other Olympic mascots
http://www.mapsofworld.com/olympic-trivia/olympic-mascot.html

Side note: I forgot to give credit to the Ya Yas and Dottie for my amazing language barrier breakthrough for drilling me using the crude Chinese word flashcards I had made. Dottie did it many days during our lunch break and I made all the ya yas do it during our weekend retreat at Margie’s. Many xie xie’s

Language Barrier Breakthrough

I had a really leaky shower and asked for it to be repaired. Two Chinese workmen came this morning and caulked the bottom for me. As they finished they shot off a lot of Chinese words that of course made no sense. BUT I did manage to recognize one word. I heard MING TIAN and I actually understood it. It means "tomorrow". I grabbed my calendar so I could point to "today's date" and the shower and say BU (means no) and OK for tomorrow. And they acted satisfied that I understood that I wasn’t supposed to use the shower until tomorrow. I felt so clever. I know my Chinese colors and my numbers – does that mean I can get into Chinese kindergarten? (probably not) BUT I can now order about 10 different dishes, get a taxi driver to turn left or right, order a bottle of water for my apartment, say where I live and work, say “I can’t understand”, say the word “pain” (for when I get a massage), along with maybe about 100 more single words and about 3 more complete sentences. Maybe listening to all those Mandarin podcasts, and Pimsleur lessons as I went to sleep every night last year worked "yi dian" (a little bit). Wonder if when I get back in ’09 I will be able to get to sleep without them?

Side Note – I also told them about my faulty washing machine and they traded it out with another from one of the empty apartments AND IT IS BIGGER (Kris and Jim are jealous)! And works just fine…so far….BUT my lint removers I brought from the US are still my most favorite and useful items I included from my “What I am missing list (2006)”

Side Note – the many, many ZUFE gardeners have been doing their best to rush spring along with planting lots of tulips, unwrapping the bushes and trees and fertilizing. The azaleas look like they are getting ready to pop. I promise I will climb up to the top of the library to take a picture of the colorful scene when it really arrives.