Key Selling Points for My Bike Poncho

Watch Out, Hollywood!

One of Matt's classmates is a Russian actor living in China and making movies here. Apparently, foreigners can do fairly well here with this sort of thing--especially with a little Chinese language. In any case, yesterday in class, he offered Matt the opportunity be in a movie with him. (To the Chinese, Matt does have the classic American look with his height and blue eyes; a lot of them think he looks like Michael Scofield in Prison Break... must be the hair.) They needed an extra foreigner to play a military leader in a movie set in Shanghai before the war. Shooting would have only been one day, and Matt wouldn't have had a speaking part but would have gotten paid for it. He turned it down, not knowing the plot of the movie and not wanting to feed into any anti-American sentiment. Even so, pretty exciting to be asked! Maybe next time.

Not Likely to Be Seen in Western Universities...

At Chinese universities, freshmen students arrive a couple of weeks later than the upperclassmen. Before ever taking their first class or even buying their first textbook, they are issued military uniforms. All university freshmen are required to take part in a week-long military training. Basically, this entails a lot of parading around, shouting and saluting. No guns, no basic training drills. Even so, it's an interesting thing to see. Apparently, all citizens age 18-22 are bound to serve up to 2 years for their country, but because of the vast amounts of peasant young men in that age group willing to volunteer, it's not really enforced to its fullest. This week-long training is supposed to invoke an awareness and basic knowledge of national pride and defense.

Cooking Lessons

I had some of my favorite students over tonight to catch up. They insisted on teaching me how to make Chinese dumplings and egg/tomato soup. In return, I taught them how to make sugar cookies. A good time was had by all, and yes, when we return to America next time, I will finally be capable of making some Chinese food!

Making dumplings:
Doing sugar cookies (they were very excited about this!):

Zzzzz...

Between catching up with old friends and making new ones, this studying and homework stuff is exhausting for folks in the 30-and-over crowd.

Bobbing for Apples

We had some friends over last night to hang out and play some games... one of which was bobbing for apples. Very funny, especially for our Chinese friends who had never seen such a thing and many of whom are afraid of water.

No More Exotic Flavor

Since I do only have a couple of classes until October 6, I have had some time to hang out with friends and also to get some things done in the apartment. When we first moved in, I posted some pictures of the new place, but I said that the living room needed some definite work.

I wish I had some before and after pictures... Imagine, if you will, a three-toned couch (black, white and red). The red cushions were filthy, faded, and had the words "Exotic Flavor" imprinted on them. Trust me, the reality is even worse than the image in your mind. That is what we began with... We feel much more at home now that I have had time to go to the fabric market and get seat cushions made to replace the red. (The green couch came with us from the old place.)

Back in the Swing of Things...

We're finding our way around our new community pretty well now--frequenting the veggie and fruit markets, figuring out the less-crowded streets for biking, and scoping out the milk tea options. We love living out here; it is so nice having a two-minute walk to class for me and a 10-minute ride to school for Matt. And we like the smaller town feel, as opposed to the city. There's less craziness, and the local people are even nicer! The older folks selling goods at the veggie market are super friendly and fun to practice Chinese with.

My students (at least the 40 I've met so far) are really great this year. Good English and a lot of fun. We're thinking of hosting a Mid-Autumn Festival party for them at our place next Saturday. We'd probably do a little of their culture and a little of ours... bobbing for apples (if we can find a tub big enough), baking cookies, etc. It'd be a great way to get to know some of them better, begin forming relationships, and even let them practice their English some.

Learning Chinese

While Amy has been reveling in her one-day workweek (all but two of her classes are comprised of freshman, who do not begin classes until October), I have completed my first week of classes. I receive twenty hours of instruction a week in Listening, Intensive Reading, Oral Chinese, and Characters. Most of this week has been spent repeating the various sounds of the language and practicing tones. For those of you who do not know, Chinese has several tones that change the meaning of a word depending on the tone used. For example, the word ma can mean horse, mother, linen among other alternate meanings depending upon the tone used. It is a tricky business. But I do enjoy the experience-my teachers are great, and my class resembles the UN General Assembly, with American, German, Russian, Swiss and Korean students.

My favorite class is Chinese characters. While the class's application may be more limited than my speaking and listening classes, I figure that a working knowledge of characters relating to food will at least reduce the likelihood of further culinary suprises while eating out. In addition, I find character writing to be extremely relaxing (it also happens to be an area of study where I can measure my progress a little more tangibly). There is one problem--Chinese characters were designed to be written by right-handers, and poor handwriting is deemed to be a sign of a morally deficient character.

The character above is wo, and means "I" or "me." Seems awfully complicated for such a common word, doesn't it? Believe it or not, there is a system. Strokes are written from left to right, top to bottom, with specifically prescribed number and order of strokes. In the absence of an alphabet, characters are organized in dictionaries by the number and types of strokes used in making the characters. Presently, I estimate that I can read approximately 100-120 characters, allowing me to read the average newspaper after I have acquired mastery another 2900. As you can see, there is some work to be done.

Amy will shortly be able to resume her normal posting when her life slows down a bit. Hehe.

Back in China

We had a great time at home this summer with our families. We spent the majority of our time eating, followed closely by just hanging out. Over the summer, we also became first-time aunt and uncle to our sweet nephew Levi! We are happy to be back and were excited to share our flight over with the very friendly and excited Brazilian paralympic team. We were sitting next to the soccer guys; best of luck to our friend Marco and the rest of their team!

We made it back to our apartment around 11 pm last night; and after about 3 hours of sleep, Matt headed off to his first day as a student in China. I will begin teaching classes on Wednesday--six freshmen classes and two sophomore classes. My jet-lagged brain is very happy that my freshmen have military training for the first month and do not begin classes until October.