Easter and More Random Things About China

My home group with their Easter eggs. So cute! 

Hey everyone! It's been a couple of weeks since we got back from vacation. Not much has happened, other than Easter, so I decided to talk about some interesting/random things I've noticed about China and my city.

Okay, let's talk about Easter. We celebrated Easter on Thursday with the kids. They colored pictures and got to decorate hard-boiled eggs. Then we played Easter games with them and had an Easter egg hunt. It was fun to see the kids go crazy over the eggs.

Food
It's true that the Chinese eat rice for pretty much every meal. My coordinator even said that she didn't feel full unless she ate some rice with her meal, which I think is kind of funny. I think it's like how some people are with bread. Believe it or not, I'm not sick of rice yet. The Chinese also like to cook all of their vegetables, including lettuce and cucumbers. They basically consider uncooked vegetables to be goat food. It was weird to eat lettuce that way, but I've gotten used to it.

The whole chicken, including the head

As far as weird foods go, I've eaten pig skin, some weird organ thing that I think belonged to a pig or a chicken, squid, various mushrooms, lotus root, octopus, cow ears, corn juice, various forms of tofu, and meat cakes. So they're not incredibly strange things to eat (besides the pigskin and organs) but it's definitely different. I know that some girls in my group got to try duck blood, which is probably the weirdest thing we've come across so far. We do have to deal with a lot of bones, since most of the time when we eat chicken or fish we get the bones as well. I've also eaten sugar cane which is really good.


Crazy Stuff
So here are some crazy things I've seen: dead rats in the street, be they drowned, squashed, or a
week-old flattened roadkill. I've seen children peeing on the side of the road, and people driving what look like tractors down the middle of a busy highway. I've seen said tractors pulling huge loads of anything from bamboo to water jugs, piled so high that I thought they would fall over for sure. I've also seen cockroaches on the street and in my house (just one in the house thankfully). It's at the point now that if I see anything weird, I just shrug my shoulders and say "China."

Me with my adorable students! 

But hey, despite the strange quirks and differences, I don't mind living in China. It's definitely a different experience that took some getting used to, and I still have moments that throw me off. But now I generally go through my day with the same normalcy I'd have if I were back in the U.S. It's kind of cool to reach that point. I'm having an awesome experience and part of the experience is to be a part of the strangeness that is China. It's also worth it when the kids come up to you and give you big hugs, just saying. Well that's it for now. Until later, folks!

Yangshuo: The Beautiful Surprise in the Mountains

Hey everyone! So I just got back from my vacation in Yangshuo, and I have to say that it was pretty awesome. I saw gorgeous views, tasted some great food, bought awesome souvenirs and had some fun conversations with other travelers. All in all, a successful vacation.

Aren't these mountains just incredible? 

Yangshuo is where the Dr Suess Mountains are located. I thought that it would be like Zhangjiajie,
where you go to a national park and then you're in the mountains. But Yangshuo is practically in the middle of the mountains. You look around and you're surrounded by these mountains on every end, and there are even a couple of large hills within the town. It's really cool! The hostel that I was staying in had a roof that you could go on and look out over the city. It was really amazing to see it at night, with some lights and the mountains in the background made it look especially beautiful.

Yangshuo is kind of a tourist town. We did go there on a holiday, so there were a ton of people. We saw a lot more foreigners (meaning white people), which was a nice change. But we still got asked to be in pictures. It was fun to do a bunch of touristy things because when I'm in Zhongshan, I don't feel like a tourist, especially since I've been living there for almost two months. But when I'm on vacation, I'm totally a tourist and it's a blast to walk around and take pictures of everything.

Me eating a sweet potato cake thingy. So good! 

So, food. Yangshuo had a lot of Chinese restaurants of course, but there were a lot of other options as well. We saw a bunch of western style restaurants, some of them even being run by Americans. We even met a guy from Missouri who co-owned a restaurant with his Chinese friend. He comes out to China on the holidays and sells hotdogs. It's kind of a genius idea because it appeals to the westerners for something familiar and to the Asian tourists for something different. My favorite things to eat actually came from vendors. I ate this Taiwanese burrito that tasted fantastic. I also had this strange sweet potato cake thing on a stick from another vendor that was surprisingly good. My favorite restaurant was this Indian restaurant that had amazing curry.

On Friday, I drove around on a moped throughout town and through the mountains. I got to see the mountains and the outskirts of town, which was interesting. Riding the moped was both fun and terrifying since the thing was pretty big and a little hard to maneuver, but I got the hang of it after a while. I can now say that I've driven in Chinese traffic and survived.

Mud Caves!! 

Saturday, we went on a bamboo raft down part of the Yulong river. It was pretty fun and the guy let us have a turn at steering the raft, though it probably worked in his favor since he got a break. It was harder than you'd think, but we got pretty good at it. After the river, we went up to this cave that had some pretty cool rock formations. The cave was pretty old since a lot of the stalactites and stalagmites had reached each other into one big column. At the end of the cave there was this thing called a mud bath, where you could go and basically swim around in this giant mud puddle. It was the coolest thing! We got covered, especially when we got into a mud fight with this other group of Chinese people. After the mud bath, we rinsed off and went into these hot springs which felt wonderful.

On Sunday, we went to Xin Ping, which is this little village about 45 minutes away from Yangshuo. It's by the Li River. Now this river is huge and even had a large island in the middle of it. We walked along the river and got some beautiful pictures. We got to see the mountains that are drawn on the 20 kwai bill, which was pretty cool.

Me out on Walking Street

Besides all of the sightseeing, another fun thing about Yangshuo is the shopping and the bargaining. They have an entire street called Walking Street that's full of vendors trying to get you to buy their stuff, and they have everything from clothes to jewelry to food to tea to little wire figurines. It's also very fun to bargain with people. Bargaining is very much a part of Chinese culture, so they kind of expect it, though they get surprised when Americans can bargain. There was this one point when I was eyeing this gorgeous little vase. The guy and I started bargaining, using what little English he knew and what little Chinese I knew. After a bit, more people started to gather around me as I'm working out a price with this guy. I think they were surprised that a foreign white girl knew how to bargain. It was pretty funny.

So yes, If you're ever in China, I do recommend going to Yangshuo. There's something there for everybody and I guarantee that you'll have a blast. I know I did. Well that's it for now. Until later, folks!

A Few Thoughts on China

Hey guys, this post is a bit short, since not too much has happened since our vacation. We've just been teaching the kids and developing our teaching more. We just had a visit from a higher-up from ILP, to check and see how we're doing. According to him and our principals, we're doing well in teaching, which is good to know. So now, I'm going to talk about some things I noticed about China.

Traffic in China is pretty crazy. No one really pays attention to traffic rules, and yet there aren't
many crashes or accidents. That's mainly because even though people don't really follow traffic rules, they're hyper aware of everything that's going on around them. So if a car suddenly pulls in front of truck, the truck can usually avoid a collision because the driver is aware of the car and has quick reflexes. Also pedestrians will just walk everywhere and anytime. I've become an expert jaywalker. It seems like the only traffic rule they follow are the traffic lights. But they don't have stop signs and people just honk whenever they're turning or if someone's in the way. It's crazy.

Biking! 

Last weekend, we went biking with some teachers in these gorgeous hills. The trails were really fun and it was great to spend some time with our fellow teachers. It was also full of people riding bikes. The Chinese ride bikes more or less like they drive: you stay aware of everyone around you, and you keep moving forward, which are about the only two rules. So yeah, pretty crazy. It was still a lot of fun and, of course, people wanted pictures with us.

Something that I've been thinking about is that despite the fact that I'm in a very different part of the world with a culture very different from my own, I can't help but notice the normalness of it. Even though these people do things differently from me, they're still people with their own likes, dislikes and quirks. I mean, I've had some hilarious conversations about boys and dating with some native teachers. Even though we come from completely different places, we can still bond and have fun.

Our little get-together for Women's Day back in March

I think that sometimes we get hung up on the whole "cultural differences" thing and we don't really appreciate the fact that we're not so different. We still laugh at funny situations, we get embarrassed, we feel awkward sometimes, and we go through our lives hoping that we can contribute something to this world. Forgive me for sounding sappy but I think if we remembered that more and focused less on the things that are different, we could solve a lot of potential problems. I'm not saying that we should be ignorant of cultural differences (it's good to know about them to avoid potential misunderstandings); I just think that's not the only thing we should focus on when living in a different country. We should be seeing how we are similar to people in different countries, and how we can relate to them.

Well, that's all I've got at the moment. We're leaving for vacation in Yangshuo this week, which should be really fun. Until later, folks!