Culture Shock!

I could eat noodles, dumplings, and rice 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year! They just hit the sweet spot in me! They're so good! Especially the ones here that are so fresh and homemade. Plus each restaurant cooks them differently and have their own specialty sauces. And bonus vinegar and garlic is usually on the tables to add a little extra flavor. It's fantastic! The best part is I actually could find an open restaurant serving fresh noodles, dumplings and rice any time of the day!

Today after class a friend took us to a dumpling restaurant for lunch. We ordered two big plates of fried dumplings, one meat and one vegetable. They were wonderful! As I was leaving the restaurant, I peeked into the kitchen where I saw a big group of ladies chatting as they were preparing trays and trays of dumplings (see picture above). What a wonderful sight, so many dumplings soon to be enjoyed!

There is a large American community here, that we have slowly been making friends with, as the community is pretty tight. It has been such a help and very fun to be able to hang out with them, as they all are always ready to lend us a hand or share their lessons learned with us. But 'my side of the story' is that it's been hard to relate on the level of food.

I can't understand why the Americans here are not as excited about noodles, dumplings, and rice, as I am! What's the deal with craving bread, cheese, soups, milk, and stews, when we are in the land of amazing noodles and rice dishes???

To add to my shock, I just learned that even my dear ole husband agrees with our new friends about their food choice! It's such a delight to my husband's stomach when we get invited over to our new friend's apartments and they graciously share their short supply of homemade breads and other American treats with us.

This is one form of 'culture shock' that I have been experiencing. I owe it to my dad for giving me my Asian stomach. =) Thanks Dad, come join me for a big plate of dumplings!

A Change in Schedule

We have class this Saturday and Sunday, in order to get a week off for holiday. October 1st is "National Day". Typically this is a week long vacation, where most people travel back to their home in order to spend this week with their families. Since October 1st falls on a Wednesday, the whole country gets off from school and work Wednesday, October 1st through Sunday, October 5th. In order accommodate people and give them the flexibility to travel home, it is acceptable to work on Saturday and Sunday in order to get Monday and Tuesday off. Thus we have class on Saturday and Sunday, but have a week of vacation!

Sick Day

Today I woke up with an awful head cold. I spent the day in bed sleeping and in the kitchen making chicken broth. It's been raining just about every day here. Hot in the afternoons. Cold in the morning and evenings. I missed out on a good lunch and a day of fun with friends (see Ben's blog for more details about "fun").

Only big and exciting news for today is I was able to spend the day with my new blanket. The popular place to get household items is Ikea in Beijing (cheap and good quality). Ben's friend made a run out there last week and brought us back a warm blanket. It came at the perfect time as it is getting pretty cold at night here.

Nothing exciting today...see Ben's blog for interesting stories.

Updates

1. In my previous posting, it said I had Seaweed soup, but I learned it was actually Fungus soup. There is some sort of mushroom fungus that looks like seaweed. Either way it still tasted good.

2. To add to my previous Toilet Seat posting, the local market was having a clearance sale on toilet seat covers (not toilet lid covers, but actual seat covers). They seemed popular, so I thought it would be a good cultural experience to try one out too. I now have a fluorescent blue seat cover that not only keeps my seat warm in the mornings, but the bright color wakes me up just looking at it.

3. There is another option for my Long Road Home hill! I just learned that the guys with the motorcycle sitting at the bottom of the hill will drive you all the way up to your door.

4. See the pictures from my previous posting about my backyard. Turns out there are goats that live back there, they graze along the grassy hill outside my window.

5. The trash truck here plays music to let people know it is coming down the street. Funny thing is it's the same music the ice cream truck plays back home!

Shopping

Ben and I went to the market this weekend to get a few items. We found this section of the market that had dried fruits, nuts, and candy. The picture to the right shows me buying a little bag of dried bananas.

This market is great because they sell all sorts of household items. But the catch is in order to get a good price, each item must be bargained for. This day Ben and I did a good job at tag teaming the clerks, as we walked away victorious at bargaining!

Tongue Twister

The hardest part in learning Chinese is the tones in which to say each word. There are 4 possible tones to say each word in. If you mess up the tones then nobody will understand you.

For example: Mei can either mean 'to buy' or 'to sell'. If you say 'Mei' with the tone of your voice going down an octave then back up an octave (in two syllables), that means to buy. If you say "Mei" by quickly going down one octave (in one syllable), that means to sell. (There are other meanings to the word Mei, but I haven't learned them yet.)

Today my teacher gave us some extra challenging homework. We have a Chinese tongue twister to learn by Monday. The easy part is pronouncing Si and Shi. "Si" is pronounced "suh". "Shi" is pronounced "shure". The hard part is trying to say in the correct down or up tone.

Practice the following and see if your local Chinese-take-out restaurant can understand you:

Mid Autumn Festival

Sunday (9/14) and Monday (9/15) was a national holiday here, in order to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival. All schools and shops had the day off. Maybe in the states we know this day more as the Fall Equinox.

From what I've seen the holiday is celebrated by eating Moon cakes. I bought one as I wanted to taste this holiday first hand, and it was delicious, but I am still not sure what was in the middle of my moon cake.

Also last night the whole city was lit up with various colored lights and lanterns, including sky lanterns being launched up. We couldn't get a close enough look to see exactly what type of material the sky lanterns were being made out of, but we did see it was some sort of brown bag with an open candle stick attached below. Ben called it a home-made hot air balloon. It was quite exciting to watch...I just wondered if the candle would burn out before landing?

Living Room Window

The following two pictures are what I see when I look out my back window. Our apartment building is located on the edge of town and makes us feel as if we have escaped the downtown city.

Tofu

I learned of a new market down the street from my house. I wish I had my camera with me, as this market was pretty neat. It was one HUGE room with big built in tables in the middle and shops on the outsides. It was almost similar to an indoor farmers market...sorta reminded me of the one that I went to in Lynchburg, VA.

Today I was in search of tofu, as I heard that was the place to go. I found about 4 different sellers with tofu out on their tables. But I passed them all up to buy from the guy that just pulled out a fresh batch of tofu and was cutting it up and putting out to sell. Oh it was beautiful, the smell and sight of fresh tofu being cut! I decided to splurge a little and get a huge bag of fresh tofu for $1, plus a little bag of fresh soy milk!

Ben and I fried up the tofu Korean style and boiled the soy milk to have a nice hot soy snack. It was amazing! It was some of the best tofu and soy milk that I ever had.

Day Off

My class was so hard yesterday. We got a new teacher who only speaks Chinese to us. It's tough. This teacher lectures about Chinese grammar in Chinese, then asks us questions about it! One guy got a question wrong and he had to sing a song to the class as punishment....he sang Happy Birthday To You, lol. She keeps us on our toes! I have a list of 39 vocab words that I have to learn by Thursday. We are required to learn the Chinese character, English meaning, and be able to pronounce the word correctly. We were told there would be punishment if we didn't do our homework....maybe I should practice singing a song just in case. One really nice thing about this course is that there are no tests, quizzes or grades at the end. It really takes off the pressure of performing and allows me to be self motivated and learn my hardest. I'm the only student in my class that has never studied Chinese before. But surprisingly I'm able to hold my own in the class...hopefully that will last.

Today I didn't have any classes, which was really nice as it gave me time to clean house and cook dinner. Buying vegetables is fun here. Outside our front gate there is a little shop that only sells whatever vegetable is in season. I pick them out of the bags and the clerk weighs them and tells me how much it is. You know it's fresh because the dirt is still on the potatoes. Today I got 3 potatoes, zucchini, and peppers all for about 50 cents. They were so tasty.

All this good food makes studying so much better!

First Day of School

I started school today. My class is eight people large, including myself. For two hours we read two pages of dialogue from our text book. Over and over and over we repeated the same words. Some of them actually stuck! The funny part is our book uses formal language instead of the common street, less formal language. So at lunch I was trying to practice what I learned and was asking people what their "honorable sir name" was. Most people looked at me and laughed, I mean I would laugh too if somebody asked me in english what my honorable sir name was. But one lady did answer me, so I knew I was at least asking the question correctly. [For those of you that speak chinese I was saying "Xiansheng, nin guixing".] Ben is in my class too, he sat next to me and whispered the answers to me when I was stuck. It was pretty fun but I have to study a LOT in order to keep up with Ben and the rest of my class!

Frogger

Let me explain HOW TO CROSS THE STREET because I could not take a picture that would clearly illustrate this process.

You would cross this six lane road just like you would play the old school game of Frogger -- that is one lane at a time. You would never be able to cross if you wait for a clear path, so you have to stand on the lines in the middle of the road until the next lane is clear.

I still haven't gotten the hang of crossing the street. If I'm alone, I actually wait for another person to cross the street and walk beside them. (I heard this is a pretty common way to learn how to cross the street.) If Ben is with me, I make him hold my hand while we cross the street together -- or else Ben makes it across the street and I'm still stuck on the other side looking both ways, lol. It is a very interesting part of every day life here.

The long road home

This is the uphill street that leads from the main road up to my apartment building. The bus only goes as far as the main road, so I often have to make this 10 minute walk home.

These two men are pulling a common type of bicycle cart while chatting. Often along the side of this street there are street vendors selling whatever crop is in season. Yesterday we saw a guy with a propane tank and a huge pot of cooking oil, deep frying whole chickens....it actually looked really good.



Also along this street are shops selling, food, groceries, household stuff, as well as a post office, phone store, and bank. All of the shops are smaller. The next two pictures show either side of the street. Maybe in a few months I will actually be able to tell you what these shop signs say, but for now your guess is as good as mine.





Did I mention that it's up hill ALL the way home? Even when I'm carrying groceries, it's still up hill. And when it rains all of the muddy water runs down the hill, creating a nice slip-n-slide. But I love it anyways!

Picture Descriptions

The picture on the top bar is of the city. It's a big thriving city located in a valley. The population is about 2 million people. It takes about one hour by bus to get from one side of the city to the other going east to west. Going north to south probably would only take 15 mins driving.

The picture on the left side bar is of me in front of my apartment building. The complex that I live in is gated and has 8 building each 6 stories high -- there are 3 stairwells in each building with two apartments on each floor -- so 288 apartments in my gated community. I live on the edge of town, so out my back window I see mountains and grass (i'll take a picture of this next time).

Home Cookin'

A friend and I were once talking about the point at which a person feels settled into a new home, and how it various from person to person. For me it's when I can grocery shop and prepare a meal for my family completely on my own. Tonight I walked 30 mins to the grocery store and vegetable market to purchase the ingredients to make 'Dak Jim' (Korean chicken stew) with kimchee, rice, and miso soup. Such a good feeling to finally be able to cook in my own home after weeks of eating out.

Toilet Seat

Went in search of a new toilet seat today. I went to a few different markets that had hundreds of little stalls selling just about everything. There were stalls containing meats, vegetables, fruits, mops, brooms, towels, bags, toys, clothes, shoes......etc. My favorite were the stalls with all shapes and colors of dried fruits and nuts (around 1 - 2 dollars per pound). Also my favorite was the whole floor containing stalls of office / school supplies. My least favorite were the stalls with meat....my stomach couldn't take much of looking at various animal part strung up on the walls. I eventually found a whole section filled with large bathroom items such as tubs, toilets, sinks, along with the all of the other necessary parts like toilet seats. I visited four different stalls listening to each seller explain why their toilet seat was the best and bargaining for the best price. I never knew toilet seats were so complex. I finally was sold on a seat that didn't slam shut, but rather glided down nice and slowly with a flick of the finger. It's just beautiful!

English School

I spent most of last week helping out at an english school. My job was to give the oral exam to each new student and place them in correct class. I had a blast chatting with the students and learning about their culture. The exam questions were things like where are you from, describe your family, how many siblings do you have, what is your favorite color...etc. Some higher level students had better grammar than I do! It was impressive.

Seaweed Soup

Saturday I took the bus across the city for the first time. It was great being able to reach all of the hand rails. Explored the markets a little bit, had lunch with a friend, then headed home. We stopped for dinner and had the best sweet and sour chicken. And they served us a complimentary bowl of seaweed soup! For the past few days I've been craving seaweed soup, as that's my idea of "comfort food". It was so amazing that they brought it to us because I had no idea it was a chinese dish. The weather here is so nice, feels like the beginning of fall, nice cool days. Everybody speaks to me in chinese. Nobody quite believes me that I have absolutely no clue what they are saying to me. I can't wait to learn the language. It's nice to blend in here, it helps it make it feel more like home.

We Made it

After a 30 hour flight, we finally arrived safe and sound. The people and food are great! Everybody is about my height. I fit right in here.