Well, my time in America is almost over. Colorado has been unusually snowy--it has snowed every weekend I have been here with the exception of this last weekend. The time has gone unbelievably fast. I go back and forth between dreading my return to China and looking forward to it. It's been great to be at home and be taken care of, but I'm ready to be a big girl again and live in my own apartment with my own (sort of) furniture and my dozens of movies and tv shows :)
During my time in the States, I have eaten, spent some quality time at the doctor's office, eaten, lazed around the house, eaten, spent time with friends and family, and eaten. Life in America is so much easier than life in China, but life in China is definitely more adventurous. I miss buying movies for $1 and walking around town. I miss seeing water buffalo and, oddly enough, I really miss the food. Who knew?
I will leave Denver Thursday evening. After 15 hours of flying, I will arrive in Beijing and spend four days there. After that, we will hopefully be able to buy train tickets back to Guiyang before Chinese New Year. If we can't get on the train before the new year which is February 18, we'll probably be stuck in Beijing an extra 5 or 6 days, which isn't exactly what I'm hoping for. If we do make the train, it'll be 29 hours, hopefully in a sleeper car, a 2-hour bus ride, and then a taxi back to school. I'm quite sure it'll be an experience if nothing else! School begins March 5, so I will use my two weeks of down time to try to form some idea of what the heck I'll be teaching this semester, and hopefully I'll be able to track down the textbook for the literature class that I'll be teaching. I'll also spend a lot of time cleaning my house, since I didn't exactly do a stellar job before I left.
I am now going to attempt to contribute to the economy now by buying pants that fit. Wish me luck!
I made it home. I'm not exactly sure how, but I did it. Liz and I left the school at 7:45 Thursday morning. We took a bus to the bus station, a bus to Guiyang, and a taxi to the airport. We got to the airport around 10, and my flight didn't leave until 12:50. Since I didn't have enough time to get my luggage and go through customs and make my flight to Denver, I only took carry-on luggage. I bought a (fake) Coach shoulder bag for 20 kuai, which is a pretty good indication that the quality is...awful. One of the handles broke right after I made it through security. I had to go through security twice, actually, because I forgot that I'd need a boarding pass. I made it to Beijing and hung around for four hours. They have a lot of duty-free shops, but even so, things are ridiculously expensive. You know it's bad when the prices are only in US dollars.
Over the course of my 3 flights and 17 hours of flying, I ate three airplane meals. In fact, that's pretty much all I ate yesterday. Two of them were beef with rice which was passable. One was a "Western" breakfast--scrambled eggs, something that I think was supposed to pass as hashbrowns, some suspicious-looking white sausage, and one broccoli floret. However, on my way to China, we had club sandwiches with ham and tuna and turkey and a Hershey's bar, so I guess I can't really complain.
Once I arrived in LA, I had an hour and a half to get through customs and make my connection. We arrived at the same time as 2 other 747's, so the line was long. Two of the people from my flight knew I had to hurry, so they helped me scoot forward in the line. I don't think I would've made it without them. I got through customs with half an hour to get on my flight. I had to change terminals, and the security lady told me to wait for the shuttle. After 10 minutes, the shuttle still hadn't come by, so I went over to ask if it would be faster to walk. She yelled at me to get back under the shuttle sign and I'd make it, but another guy told me I'd better walk. I sped walked to terminal 7. I got in trouble for trying to cross the street without the "walk" sign--a clear indication of my status in China--but I made it with 15 minutes to go. I made a record-breaking bathroom trip and flew through the gate in a sweaty, panting state of glory. Oh, I also sacrificed a belt I bought in Paris to LAX security. They made me take it off and it didn't go in the bin with the rest of my stuff, so in my frantic state, I forgot about it. However, it was worth giving up a 5 euro belt to be home.
I've gotta run because I'm making my family re-do Thanksgiving dinner, and then I get to open Christmas presents that are in my stocking! It's all the holidays rolled into one! More later on my experience in the States...
Hello! I've been out of touch due to the earthquake in Taiwan. Our internet and phone lines were down for almost a week, but things are back to semi-functioning now. I gave my last two final exams yesterday. So far, I've only caught one case of cheating out of 200 students, so things are going pretty well. I will be leaving for the States in 8 days. Here is how my day of traveling will go:
7:45 a.m. (Jan. 11) take a bus to the bus station
8:15 take a bus to Guiyang
10:00 arrive in Guiyang
10:15 take a taxi to airport
10:45 arrive at airport
12:50 p.m. take a flight to Beijing
3:40 arrive in Beijing
8:15 take a flight to LA
4:15 p.m. (still Jan. 11) arrive in LA
6:00 take a flight to Denver
9:30 arrive in Denver
...at least in theory. I have recently been told that I don't have enough time in LA to go through customs and make the connecting flight, so I might be getting in as late as 9:30 a.m. Jan. 12. Because of the time change, in Mountain Standard Time (or whatever time zone CO is in), I leave at 4:45 p.m. on Jan. 10 and arrive hopefully at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 11. Thirty hours of traveling! Whew! It's good I'm traveling alone, because I'll probably be pretty cranky by the time it's over. Traveling for a long time has a way of doing that to me. It makes my sister cranky too--that's why we're great traveling buddies :)
Anyway, before I leave, I have to grade my exams and turn in the grades. There are very specific instructions for this. I must grade in red and record the grades in blue, unless a student fails, and then the grade must be recorded in red. I have to give the participation grade, exam grade, total grade, number of students who passed, number of students who failed, and number of students who didn't take the test. Furthermore, if a student fails the class, I have to give him or her a make-up exam. I have one student who is definitely failing, and beyond that, I'm not sure. The student who is failing is a freshman who has been absent for 7 of the 13 classes, including the review for the final exam. Oops. Better luck next semester, dude...
You know how certain people can always make you feel like you are in trouble and put a damper on your day? That drives me crazy!
The water in my washing machine after my clothes have been rinsed TWICE. Gross, huh?
A waterfall at Longgong
I am currently writing this blog while I am listening to the tv show "24." I can't actually watch the show because I get too scared watching it at night by myself. But I also can't turn it off--since Thursday, I've watched probably close to 15 hours' worth. I know, I know--I'm a sick, sick woman and I need help.
Today, we went spelunking. For those of you who get "spelunking" confused with "skinny dipping"--it's not even remotely close to being the same thing. You know who you are :) This adventure started at 7:20 Saturday morning. Let me just tell you how excited I was about that. Let me also tell you a little bit about 7:20 a.m. in China. It's still pitch dark outside. It's really really cold. Nobody else is out and about. Basically, it's an unholy time to be up and about on the weekend. We met the car (we have chauffers who work for the school) and ate beef noodles for breakfast. Think Ramen Noodles with slices of beef and cilantro and onions. Isn't that what you eat for breakfast? It's almost as good as waffles!
Anyway, despite our early start, we had a fun day at Longgong. It's called the Dragon Palace in English. It is currently a 4A tourist attraction, and they want to make it a 5A attraction. The inspectors (or whomever) were there today to judge it, so that's why they called in the laowais (foreigners). It looks good if there are foreigners visiting. We were an attraction ourselves. The Chinese tourists (who, by the way, are every bit the stereotypical Asians with cameras) took pictures with us. Kelsey told one guy that he could take our picture if he paid us 3 yuan. She told the next guy that it would cost 5 mao (half a yuan). When they asked why it was cheaper, Kelsey said, "He is more handsome." If they're gonna stare at us, we might as well entertain ourselves :)
We also took a boat ride through an amazing cave. The top of the cave was probably 600 feet up from the surface of the lake. It had amazing formations and great acoustics. Then we had to fill out a survey rating Longgong. On the first one I filled out, I gave the signs a rating of "fair" because one of them said "Hurl the telephone," which is actually supposed to say something to the effect of "For complaints, call this number." Apparently they shredded that one because I had to fill out another one, and I gave everything a "very satisfactory" rating. It's a very Chinese thing to do. For whatever reason, they gave us free purses after we filled out the surveys with a deck of cards in them.
We went to the restaurant and waited for an hour and a half for lunch to come. We were starving! Considering that it was fancy food to impress us, it was a really good lunch. The fancy food is actually way worse than the cheap food. However, there was no turtle floating in the soup, which is always a pretty good possibility, so that was nice. There were chicken livers which we skipped, but there was smoked beef, some sort of greens, wassun (like a cross between pea pods and cucumber), cabbage, cold noodles, cashews, fish, 2 kinds of soup, dumplings, sweet rolls, rice (of course)...I think there was more stuff, but that's all I can remember. I had my first bite of fish in China. It takes a little getting used to. They serve the whole fish, head and eye and skin and everything, and you pick pieces off with your chopsticks. The fish was actually really good despite its grotesque appearance.
After lunch, we went to another cave called Buddha Palace, except the sign said Duddha palace, but they tried. Again, the top of the cave was probably at least 600 feet high, and there were golden Buddhas that had to be at least 50 feet tall. It was sort of surreal. The cave was so beautiful, and the Buddhas were so gaudy. It was really sad to see. People came and paid the monks to bow to Buddha and throw coins in the lucky dragon pool. There are so many superstitions here, and it's so empty.
This is Liz and me at the Christmas banquet for foreigners in Guiyang. Just so you know, my head isn't actually that much bigger than hers--it's just a bad angle, but you've gotta take what you can get when you are doing self-portraits.
Anyway, Liz and I went to Guiyang Saturday afternoon and came back Sunday afternoon. On our bus ride there, we almost killed about 20 construction workers. We'd speed up, almost hit one, slam on the brakes, then speed up again. The bus driver also thought it'd be fun to weave in and out of the cones on the highway. When we got into town, there was traffic like crazy. We finally got to the bus station and tried to remember which bus to take to Wal-Mart where we were meeting Kara. We were pretty sure it was bus 24, but we weren't sure which direction to take it.
We decided to take a taxi. That was a fabulous idea. We got in and told the driver "Wal-Mart." We drove for awhile and he kept pointing out the window, but there were two buses next to us. We couldn't figure out if he was pointing to the ad for baby formula on the side of the bus or what. Did they sell that baby formula at Walmart? We finally figured out that he was actually pointing to Walmart, but it was the wrong one. We told him we didn't want that one and that we needed to go to the other one. The whole way to the other Walmart, the taxi driver sang, "Walmart, Walmart, Walmart, Walmart," except it was more like, "Warmart, Warmart, Warmart, Warmart." We gave that taxi driver a whole extra yuan for the entertainment.
Walmart was totally packed. It was way worse than Walmarts in the States. We bought our tuna, peanut butter, and Ritz crackers and left asap.
Sunday morning, we went to the Christmas service and then ate lunch at the hotel. It was a buffet and we had a salad bar and forks and everything! Salad in China is pretty much unheard of, so that was exciting.
Also on the exciting news front, I found Pringles at the Wang Ke Long yesterday! They're kind of expensive (13 yuan) but not prohibitively so. I have Pringles, this is the last week of classes before finasl...it's gonna be a good week.
