i guess this has a little about med school in it too because for anyone curious that has not yet heard, i have been accepted to the DMU class of 2012- this girl's goin to MED SCHOOL when she gets home!!!
(just a side note, sidebar for zach, i had actually considered staying in china or even going to another country to teach if the med school thing didnt work out this year- thats how much i enjoy this!)

so, the bus...nothing too exciting happens on the bus around here, normally. i would say that it is pretty comparable to any old public bus system in the united states- well minus the fact that i have no clue what the bus driver says half of the time and i cant read the bus maps inside the bus here (slight difference ). when jenna and sherly came to visit us from the shiz a few weekends ago, they did say that our buses are a lot less crowded than theirs. generally, if its not morning or evening rush hour, or the weird lunch period for students, then the buses are not too bad here. we normally get seats, etc. ANYWAYS, there must be a reason i decided to write about these buses right? there was an event today that triggered a few other bus memories for me.
like i said, there have rarely any exciting bus-capades but memory 1 i have of a bus fiasco is probably my favorite. nothing actually happened on the bus except that it changed its route. see in chengde, you learn the bus routes quite quickly...the new number 10 goes to school, old number 10 to the mountains, number 6 is local, blah blah blah. so we always take the number 10 to school. so this is like week two of jeremy and i being here (dont tell him i wrote this and him and i are still riding the bus together frequently until we get the hang of our classes. so, we're sitting there on the number 10 bus whose route only ends at our campus- this is its final destination- and the bus turns down a different road. jeremy near about peed himself i think. he starts going "should we get off? i think we should get off? maybe we should call maggie....should we get off???" i told him to cool out and said that if we ended up somewhere else we'd just call someone but i was sure it was just taking a detour. the bus ended up going to our school, but some bridge had been out. thank goodness too because it saved jeremy from a heart attack.
so then there's today...i walked to the end of my road because i had an 8am class and i wanted to go get a snickers before class (weird craving). there is only one store i know of that is open before 8am and its in the opposite direction of my bus stop so i walk down there and caught the #10 at an earlier bus stop. as everyone is getting ready to board the bus, the bus driver starts yelling something, and all but 3 of us decide not to get on the bus. i think to myself, this is strange, but we'll see what happens. so we hit 3 more stops and the bus driver is still yelling at everyone and no one else is boarding. i finally get worried and realize that i am one of 2 people left on the bus. i approach the bus driver and try to ask him if he is going to my school. now, keep in mind that the only chinese i can use applicable to this situation involves the name of my school, "have we arrived yet," and violent gesturing. this did not go well. see, most of the time when i deal with people who speak only chinese, i am in a situation where there is time and patience to speak slowly, act out motions, etc. mr bus driver was in quite the hurry. he did the thing where he started yelling chinese at me louder and louder thinking it would make me understand and finally, he actually threw his hands in the air and cupped his head in his hands shaking it in disgust!! i thought this would be a good time to leave the bus . i caught the next #10 which i think was a good idea because i recognized some other teachers on there, but i definitely ended up in front of a man with a glorious cold who insisted on sneezing and coughing down my neck the rest of the trip. not a successful day on the bus.
my experience today brings me to my favorite tidbit story ever! about 2 or 3 weeks ago, i was sitting on a very not-crowded bus on the way back from campus when a girl my age and her elderly mother boarded the bus. the girl comes over and grabs the pole next to me and her mother proceeds to pop a squat...ON MY KNEE. i swear there were other seats open...i swear. and one thing i really like about the chinese culture is their willingness to give up seats for older people and all that, but really?? sitting on me? i kind of tried wriggling around, clearing my throat, doing anything subtle to get her off. nothing worked. i didnt know how to tell her to get off politely in chinese so i finally moved my leg rather dramatically. the look that woman gave me at that moment would have scared the bravest of men. it definitely said "how dare you!??!" along with many other things. i decided to just let her sit there for the rest of the trip....i mean really....what else could i do??

until next time....ohhhhh china.

wow! this is so strange that I am finally able to access and edit my blog! just fyi for everyone reading this, my blog site has been officially flagged and blocked and can now only be accessed through a special program i have installed on my computer. the program only works if the moon is just right therefore, if posts are less frequent, everyone knows why!

anywho...most of you that know me decently well know that i have been gone this past week traveling to good ol' Shanghai. there are tons of holidays here in china, and last week was just an example of one of the few random weeks i get off for said holidays. i did not have to teach the whole week, which was amazing in itself, and i got to meet up with fellow drake-ites to travel china. the members of our traveling party included myself, jeremy, CJ, aleks, erin (from handan), jenna, sherly, caroline (all from the shiz), and nate (who randomly showed up on our train platform in shanghai...).

--> just a little side note, i had spent the weekend before this in the shiz with all of these people for just a fun little visit. we had a crazy time that weekend (to say the least) and saw everyone else from drake that resides in that very lovely, yet very polluted, city. we saw a museum and a few others sites in the shiz, but mostly just enjoyed the fact that we all got to see each other...we also used this time to plan our shanghai trip.

so back to shanghai: first off, CJ and i actually traveled to beijing saturday and sunday before we left for shanghai on monday. i have to admit, the fun we had in beijing rivals the fun we had on the whole trip to shanghai. cj and i traveled by bus to beijing on saturday morning with our friend corwin (he is a foreign teacher from south africa that lives in chengde with us). our bus took longer than it was supposed to and then traveling to our hostel took longer than it was supposed to. then, poor cj forgot her passport (she was told she wouldnt be needing it) so we couldnt check into a hostel after all! luckily, we know people with a place in beijing (josh lives there and he dates andrea who lives here in chengde...) so we ended up having a place to crash. another blessing was the fact that aleks was still here in chengde so he was able to break in to cj's apartment (with help from a key man) and retrieve her passport so that it could come with us to the hostel in shanghai. so basically our saturday in beijing ended with us staying in an apartment with no one that we knew (josh and andrea did not get in to beijing until late saturday night so we stayed with his random roommates until then) and us going out with corwin and corwin's boss. now corwin's is gay so we spent our night bar-hopping to only gay bars . it was probably one of the most fun nights i have had in a long time.
sunday was spent with andrea and josh. they took us to buy train tickets to meet everyone in the shiz, then took us to silk street to shop and helped us see the big tourist sites. we had another great day and spent the night again. we left beijing in the am (after missing our first train and running through a train station with my HUGE backpack on...most strenuous workout i have ever done) and made it to the shiz only an hour before our train left again for shanghai it was a tight squeeze but thank god josh was with us to help us through buying new tickets and all...and everything worked out, and thats all that mattered! oh, and cj and i had our first experience with standing-room-only tickets on our train from beijing to the shiz. we bought little folding chair things and fought people for room, but we survived!

actual shanghai began tuesday morning. our train left monday during the day and arrived 18 hours later. we had hard seats on the train (this means they are bench-like bus seats in a way...not actually 'hard' but you cannot lay day or recline and you are crammed in a booth with 3 people facing 3 others or 2 facing 2) so we did not sleep much of course. once in shanghai we had to buy our tickets home immediately. you cannot just reserve tickets for anywhere in china. normally, unless you are traveling from one huge city to the next, you must buy tickets out of a city once you are actually there. so unless we knew someone in shanghai to buy us the tickets, we had to wait till we got there. because of the traveling craziness that is the october holiday, our only options to get home were either to leave thursday night or to stay until sunday or later (this latter option meant we would all miss some of our classes at the beginning of the week). thus, we had to buy the thursday tickets. this meant we had tues, wed, and thurs to cram in everything we wanted to see. this realization led to some of the most jam-packed sightseeing i have ever experienced. tuesday we all went and saw the shanghai musuem then walked along the promenade. wednesday we went on a Huangpu river cruise and then traveled to the top of Jin Mao tower (i think its the fourth tallest in the world now). then thursday we saw the Yu Gardens (i think thats what theyre called) and walked around the bizarre there. we also saw the temple of the city god in that area. all of the sites were amazing and i was very impressed that we figured out how to maneuver via subway so we never had to spend money on taxis. we walked more than i have ever walked in china thus far and our feet killed, but it was worth it. we had to cram things in the way we did due to our short stay, and if we hadnt done so, we would have regretted it- at least i would have. looking back at the trip, i wont remember how tired i was, but i will remember the experience and what i saw.

lets see, high points of the trip that arent just a list of sites....
i would have to say that our hostel was pretty awesome. it was like a hotel, just as nice as such, except that we stayed in rooms with four people apiece. the hostel even served breakfast and other food...beer of course and there were some really nice people that we met at the hostel too, even two other teachers. i would definitely have to say that the most awesome part of the trip was the realization that we all came to that we actually lived in china. all of us speak at least a little chinese at this point. we have all dealt with chinese people, we know how to interact, we can barter and bargain, etc. now throw us into a city FULL to the brim of other foreigners traveling...we were first delighted to see other people that spoke english and all that jazz, but the edge that we had on the other foreigners was really neat (yes, i said neat) to notice. people selling things on the street would blatantly tell someone in english next to us that their prices were 'fixed' then they would turn to us, barter with us in chinese, and sell us something for a third of the price or lower. it shocked the pants off some people to even hear chinese words coming out of our mouth! the first night we were there, we wanted to buy beer. we knew that the best and cheapest way to do this is to find a barbecue or vendor on the road to buy one (bars and supermarkets charge way too much) so we approached a woman and began talking to her in chinese. we poorly asked for 9 bottles of beer and were making hand gestures and this and that when she looked at us and, in perfect english, replies, "ok, so you want nine chilled beers correct?" we were like holy crap we dont have to speak chinese everywhere here! we were so taken aback that we continued stuttering at her in chinese because the situation hadnt hit us yet...made me laugh.
my other favorite moment of the trip really pulled my heart threads. while jenna, erin, sherly, cj, and myself were wandering around the bizarre, this little child went sprinting past our legs crying hysterically. now keep in mind that the streets are more crowded than the malls at christmastime. the kid is blond-haired and blue-eyed and jsut frantically looking around and running. jenna takes off after the kid with erin and i at her heels. we chase him all the way into the gardens before we can get him to stop for a second. we tried asking if he had lost his mom and then realized that he might not speak english. we proceeded to pathetically ask questions in spanish, chinese, english, and finally french before the kid showed signs that he comprehended. once we settled on french, this older couple came walking up behind us and conveyed to us that they were french. then their friends arrived, and all 4 of their children. ok, so erin is holding this lost sobbing child and we now have all 5 of us girls, 8 french people, and we manage to recruit 2 chinese guards and 1 english-chinese translator. our entire huge party finally (through a huge mess of translating) manages to tell each other that, yes, this child has lost its mother and brother, and he lives in shanghai because his father's business has just moved there. we all weave our way back through the bizarre to the information desk where the older french woman makes an announcement over the intercom about the lost child. we still have everyone standing in a massive herd around this little boy whose name, by the way, ended up being Clemont (i think thats how it is spelled) when his mother comes bombarding through the crowd teary-eyed and just as scared as poor clemont. at that one single moment, i have never seen so many people of so many ethnicities cry and communicate the way we did. everyone hugged and thanked everyone and it was a real touching moment. it was just awesome to me that all of these people, no one really able to communicate with the person directly to their right, came together to help this little boy. i know its mushy, but it made my heart just that much warmer, and i just pray to God that if i ever have children and something like this happens to me, that there is someone in this world like jenna out there.

so, yes, that was shanghai. all in all, it was a wonderful trip. cj, aleks, nate, jeremy, and myself traveled home on thursday night only to get home 24 hours later. we were exhausted and completely money-less, but, like i said, it was worth it. we brought back many memories, souvenirs, and pictures. the best part of being home was definitely being back to chinese food though. its funny how used to it i have become and how much i crave it. we ate lots of western food in shanghai, and it was good, but it was better knowing we only had to eat it for a week i shall write more the next time the internet allows it!

oh WOW...if everyone could only witness the state that my apartment has become...i have almost succeeded in completely flooding the entire kitchen! why you may ask? this is all the doing of the evil washing machine! as i speak, i have the hoses of the machine hooked to my faucet (im almost positive this is what i am supposed to do) and water is spewing EVERYWHERE except into the machine. ok, i lie, i think some is getting into the machine because odds would say that it just has to. and yes, ive just left it running like this and have given up to write in my blog. i figure that my kitchen is already completely under water and if i flood the whole floor...well maybe some cleaning will be accomplished. i want everyone to know that i sat and tinkered with how to put all the hoses and everything together too for a good hour. i refused to call jeremy and ask for help. i was bound and determined to figure everything out on my own and this is where i ended up. i can see now why the chinese wear the same outfit for an entire week before changing- they realize how labor-intensive laundry here is!

time out.

ok, so my washing machine has started to do something new! its shaking violently (i am just going to assume this means it's cleaning?) and beeping at me with blinking lights. i would read what is under the blinking lights if only it werent in chinese! one of two things could happen here, it may blow up or it may get the job done. ill keep typing and pray for the latter.

a more positive note...
CJ and Aleks arrived this week in Chengde! We first saw them on Wed for dinner and it was absolutely amazing to see and talk to someone in the same position as us! when we go out for dinner and thnigs now, its somehow easier to be confused and bad at chinese with the four of us versus the two. CJ and Aleks also know some other foreign teachers from their school and others that hunted them down when they came into town...this means a whole group of us! jeremy and i have yet to meet the other teachers because we just saw aleks and CJ for dinner on Wed then dinner and hanging out on Fri. Ive been so freaking busy prepping for my biochem classes that I had to limit how much free time i had this week. Im hoping that as i get into the groove of things, it will take me less time to prep and maybe i can get some done on the weekend days. its so different have to actually prep for such a content-filled class when everyone else gets to play games and watch movies and just talk with their students...stupid biochem.
ANYWAYS...! so yes, jeremy and i plan to meet some of the other teachers and finally go out a little tonight we think (thank goodness for the weekend!). last night though, after dinner, CJ, Aleks, Jeremy, and I did have some time to venture to the city square (i think thats what it could be called). the 'square' is a big park in the middle of Chengde and it has fountains during the day, festivals are held there, and lots of people go there to hang out after dark. the most popular event during these hangouts would be Shuttle Cock. ok, i think that's what it is called- its what Aleks called it. its basically a game of hackie sack, but with feathers on the thing you are kicking! we attempted although aleks is really the only one that even succeeds at kicking anything but air. it was fun too because chinese teenagers came over and played with us! it amazes me at how much can be communicated without language. we had so much fun with them and we barely talked at all. there was mainly just motioning lots of laughing. after that fun little get together, we called it an early night because CJ and Aleks had to leave for school this morning at 6:45. all in all though, still a hella fun time.

oh yeah, mini-sidebar: the food here is AMAZING for anyone that is wondering. jeremy and i try to do a lot of cooking at home to save money and to avoid sickness. We have really only gone out to eat a few times with our wai ban. But with CJ and Aleks here now, we have tried a few more places, and we are successful almost every time. I am going to be so sad when I come back to the states and they dont have real chinese food and oh yeah! not being able to order in chinese can make you end up with some pretty strange dishes which means im being very adventurous! even things i would never eat at home are turning out to taste pretty yummy.

alright, well im off to check on the washer again...

After mulling around Chengde now for approximately 10 days, Jeremy and I have concluded that there are a few things a person must do in order to fit in around here:

1. one must, if female, wear ankle-high nude stockings with ALL shoes
2. one must, if a male of the chubby variety, roll his shirt up over
his belly and tuck it into his collar so that his stomach is exposed
when he hot
3. one must, when driving a car, use the horn at least every 10 seconds
and even for no apparent reason at all
4. also if driving, one must have a complete disregard for all traffic
lights, signs, people on bikes, and for all markings on street
pavement
5. therefore; one must always be on one's guard when walking on
sidewalks due to the fact that a car could appear anywhere and at
any time
6. one must always keep handy a large plastic bowl filled with dirty
water for cleaning random items
7. on must also keep on hand at all times, a broom poorly made of thin
twigs and weeds that performs inefficiently
8. one must constantly clear his/her throat as loud as possible, cough
up phlegm, and then proceed to spit on the ground as often as
possible
9. one must litter often
10. lastly, one must be completely naive of the fact that there is such
thing as noise pollution and should be as loud as humanly possible
in any way possible whenever performing any task

I am sure there are many things that I am forgetting, BUT these are my top ten

so there's a man selling puppies and rabbits on the side of the road on the way to our supermarket (oh, ps, EVERYONE sells EVERYTHING on the side of the road here so this sight is not an odd one). anyways, his puppies are getting to me. everyone said all dogs in china are mangey and gross and stray, but there are actually lots of people walking dogs as pets. every time i walk by this guy, i have to pet the puppies and its got me to thinking...why not? i mean, i dont know who will watch it if i go on vacation or how i will get it back into the States, but those are minor details right? just no one be surprised if i end up with a puppy with a chinese name!

on a more practical note, I BARTERED BY MYSELF TODAY FOR THE FIRST TIME! granted, jeremy and i have attempted bartering while maggie is around. this usually ends in the chinese laughing at us and calling me 'beautiful' which we have decided is their coy way of really just making fun of us. anyways, today, without maggie, i needed to buy a pair of sunglasses and tried to do such outside of the supermarket. using poor chinese and hand signals, i only got the price down 8 yuan, but i did it! after i made the sale, one of the other workers at the store walked up behind me and goes, "Welcome to China," in very good english. perfect ending...

upon checking the calendar about 2 seconds ago, i realized that i have, indeed, been in china now for a week. considering i feel like there have been enough experiences to constitute about a month, this entry may be long, but i will try not to bore anyone. i can basically break my china stay into two main events (if i must), one being our arrival (and the 2 abandonments) and the other being our trip to the Shiz...so here goes...

1) arrival: fortunately jeremy and i had a relatively safe and smooth travel to our city of Chengde. our screen went out on the plane so we had no movies, but there was no lost luggage, someone was at the airport to pick us up, etc, etc. when we finally arrived in Chengde after a 3 hour drive from Beijing, there were a few instances where jeremy and i would look at each other and jokingly say we would never want to stay in some of the apartments that we were passing...we should have kept our mouths shut. you know the crazy asian markets in movies? with the dilapidated apartments in the background that look like no one lives in them? we live in those. there some perks, i suppose. jeremy has a living room (sort of) and i have an office (barely), but we do both have computers with internet! although...jeremy's internet doesnt work right now so we have one computer with internet. this brings me to the day after arrival. along with jeremy's internet not working, his toilet didnt either at first. day 1 after arrival: i break my key off trying to get into my apartment and leave us stranded in jeremy's apartment with no internet or toilet. as soon as i get a new key from our wai ban, jeremy locks his key in his apartment and we are now stranded in mine. oh! and i forgot to mention that this day began with abandonment #1 by Maggie, our wai ban's assistant. she took us to some police station thing to register for...something...and then left us on the street corner completely lost so she could go to work! we tried shopping at the supermarket at that street corner only to be swarmed by the 2485728490750 employees they have working- all of whom talked to us incessantly in chinese even though we apparently had no clue what anyone was saying. i did buy a pink umbrella on this day and it brightened my mood for a good 12 hours...mark one up for being easily entertained.

2)trip to the Shiz: after putzing for a day or two, taking a bus by ourselves to the new medical campus, interacting with the repair men that neither spoke english nor successfully repaired jeremy's toilet (j fixed it himself finally), and encountering many things im probably forgetting to write about, Jeremy and I were informed we had to travel to the Shiz (capital of our province) to redo our physical. Mind you, this had already been completed in the US. Maggie came to our apartments around 9pm on Wed evening to take us on the sleeper train that would take us 10 hours to the Shiz. we arrived at the train station and Maggie left us to wait while she went and found some train 'director' that she obviously had some connection with to get us on the train. (she had to find him because they wouldnt let us through the gates originally due to the fact that we are scary foreigners.) this 'director' that maggie mysteriously found then took us through some shady back passageway onto a really nice area of the train. he then gave us fruit...'hospitality' as maggie called it. like i said, we dont know how maggie knew this guy or how he was hooking us up, but ill take it i guess. we rode to the Shiz, did the physical which was more of an assembly line down a hall of different rooms, showered in maggie's hotel room, shopped, and ate. while shopping, my two favorite occurrences of the trip occurred. first, jeremy was followed by a homeless man wanting money for a good 30 meters through crowds. he had maggie laughing so hard she was cryng, and she doesnt laugh like that! secondly, i knocked over some guys sign on the sidewalk (shocker) and about got beat up until the guys figured out i was american. they started to tell me that everything was ok (in chinese of course) when i decided to brilliantly respond 'youre welcome, youre welcome!' to them in chinese when i meant to say i was sorry. jeremy thought it was histerical, i felt like a huge jackass, but what can you do? after all this, we were back at the train station. this is where abandonment #2 occurred. Maggie put us on the train home BY OURSELVES! we proceeded to be harassed by a lady that kept touching me and showing me to her friends. after restlessly sleeping in the obnoxiously small bunks, we were then coaxed off the train at our stop by some lady that refused to believe we lived in Chengde and wanted us to stay at her hotel. finally, a taxi driver successfully- shockingly- took us from our train station to our apartments when we showed him our address. he charged us too much for the cab fare, but at that point, we could care less.

Who would have thought that one wouldnt be able to start a blog in China because there are no websites in English??? This has been a slight problem until now when Jeremy and I finally found a british site to blog on...now we're good and i have lots to recount...coming soon...