Writer. Traveler. Tea Drinker.

The paper the students use for class is very low quality. It is more akin to newsprint then actual paper and is quite see-through and rips easily. (In fact, all the students use tape as white-out. Because the paper is so cheap the tape pulls off the top layer which gives them a reasonably clean space to re-write the word.) But there is one pad of paper that I think is brilliant.

It is a blank pad (with the school name on top) but instead of just being all blank, it has tiny lines pressed into it so you can write in a straight line. I have the hardest time writing in a straight line on blank paper so I really appreciate the lines. What’s even better is a new pad of paper costs about .30 cents so we have a bunch of them scattered throughout the house.

Maybe I’m just impressed easily, but this is by far one of the smartest things I’ve seen in awhile!

I was recently reading this blog entry about a very embarrassing travel moment. If you have traveled anywhere you have one (or many) of these. In fact, we all have embarrassing moments in our lives, but somehow doing something stupid in another country is even worse because you know you aren’t just that dummy who walked into the glass door, you are the foreign dummy who did it. The spectators will never forget it and for the rest of their days every time the subject of foreigners comes up you know they are going to tell all their friends about your stupidity.

So I’ll bite and share my most embarrassing moment. It was in Indonesia. We had just gotten off the plane and I was tired, hot, sweaty and sticky. I had just used my first squat toilet, waited in a huge customs line, and wrestled with a baggage handler over my backpack (if they get their hands on it before you, you have to pay them for their “help.”).

Ryan and I were standing outside at the taxi line. You had to tell the man behind the counter where you wanted to go, pay him, get a ticket and the taxi would take you. It’s hot, humid and I am sweaty. There are a lot of noises, smells and people pressed around us.

I had my trusty backpack on and it was not only huge, but pretty full and heavy since we were carrying all our winter clothes. We get up to the counter, tell him where we are going, and I got out some money to pay. The bills fall out and flutter to the ground. I can’t lean over, because of my backpack, so I bent my knees to lower myself, grabbed the money, and stood back up.

Almost.

This wouldn’t be my most embarrassing travel moment if all went well. I lost my balance trying to stand up and the weight of the backpack was enough to topple me over. I fell on my back and was unable to get up. I basically looked like an overturned beetle with my legs and arms flailing about but doing no good. There were dozens of people standing around roaring with laughter. One of these people happened to be my husband who let me lay there like an idiot a little too long for my taste. I needed his help to lift me (and my backpack) off the ground.

Luckily my face was red with humidity because it covered my blushing. I tried to play it cool, but really how does one recover from that?! Luckily, we paid and jumped in a cab leaving all the giggling bystanders behind. But I know somewhere there is an Indonesian cabbie who still thinks about me squirming on the ground every time he sees a blond girl with a big backpack.

So what’s your most embarrassing moment from traveling (or otherwise?) Spill it for all to laugh at enjoy in the comments field!

Have I said yet how nice my students are? They have just returned after a month and a half long break and many have brought us presents. Of course this being China the gifts are not what you might expect. No paperweights or apple magnets with a little cute saying. No, they come bearing Chinese gifts.

One student brought us sesame snacks/candies that are local from her area, another student brought us 18 eggs laid by her grandmothers’ chicken. Another student brought a plastic bag filled with fried shrimp. Her father had fried them up in the morning!

One student took me out to eat. We have gone out to eat before and the first time she paid, despite my objections (“I’m your teacher,” I said. “I can’t let you pay.” “It is because you are my teacher that I must pay,” she said.) Before we even finished ordering she told me that she was going to pay. Again, we argued.

“No,” I said. “I asked you to lunch, therefore by Chinese rules I pay.”

“No, no,” she insisted. “My mother said that I should have invited you to my house over the holiday and I didn’t so I must buy the lunch.”

I was certainly unconventional logic, but I relented at that point. (We’ll go out again over the upcoming weeks and I’ll pay.)

What I like about these gifts is that the students are showing me a bit of their culture. It’s not just junky crap to kiss the teachers ass, but mementos from their life at home. Those eggs were laid in her family house, and the shrimp was cooked especially for me by her father. (Or maybe he cooked them especially for her, but she was thoughtful enough to give them to me, either way is very sweet.) It’s like they get to show off a piece of their family life and culture and I really appreciate the little glimpse.

This is one of the main advantages to going to a new country and staying for more than a few days. You not only get to see how the culture works, but you get to live in, and partake in it. You find yourself included in things and it makes the whole experience that much more amazing.

China is known as a non-religious country but it is home to many amazing Buddhist temples. While traveling we got to see these temples and learn about Arhats.

What’s an Arhat you ask? Well allow me….

According to Buddhism an Arhat is a person who has reached enlightenment (nirvana) and is lifted out of the cycle of reincarnation, thus not being reborn again. It sounds like what a Buddha is, but an Arhat does it through learning from others where a Buddha does it by himself. (It is interesting to note that the original Buddha, Siddhartha, is considered both a Buddha and an Arhat. Man, is there nothing this guy hasn’t done?)

Some say the Arhat is the selfish form of the Buddha. They want to reach nirvana for personal gain where a Buddha tries to share his enlightenment with others. Also, an Arhat doesn’t achieve a high a level of enlightenment as a Buddha, but high enough to enter nirvana so it is a little easier to obtain. If you are interested in reading about the four stages of becoming an Arhat you can check that out here.

It takes a few lifetimes to achieve so if you’re interested you might want to get a start now.

Arhats are also the perfect excuse for an artist to go wild and crazy. Many sculptures and carvings in a Buddhist temple are similar. Fearsome guardians, serene Buddha’s, blooming lotus flowers, they have a similar look to them no matter where they are.

But the Arhats I saw were completely different. They weren’t just different in facial structure and clothing, they had bulges on their heads, arms 8 feet long, and hearts shooting out of their chests. (In one temple, which we were not allowed to photograph, Arhat’s were riding dolphins, tigers and white elephants along a wall of water.)

In the Wuyou Temple near the Giant Buddha in Leshan they had a whole section dedicated to 1000 life-sized Arhats. It was surreal to walk around this giant dusty chamber of bizarre looking statues. At some points I felt like a defendant at a trial and other times I felt like I was watching the audience at a Jerry Springer show.

At the bamboo Temple outside of Kunming the Arhats are sadly hidden away in a dark chamber so we couldn’t get too close a look. They were older, and not painted as brightly, but they had many similar features of the others such a bulging heads, long eyebrows, and things coming out of their chests.

The head artist of these sculptures got a lot of flack from his fellow artists at the time for being so zany that as soon as he finished he packed his bags and disappeared, never to sculpt again.  Well, he got the last laugh anyway as travelers from all over go to the temple precisely because his sculptures are so odd.

We have now officially been here for six-month and it feels equal part much longer and much shorter. In a short half a year period I have taught my first semester of school ever, traveled hundreds of miles all over China and managed to feel comfortable in a culture which is completely different from my own.

At our three-month anniversary I wrote a long blog post about all the things I missed or didn’t miss from America. (It never made it to the site so don’t bother looking for it.) It included things like cheese, dryers and sandwiches. I was planning on polishing it up, making the appropriate changes and put it up now.

The only thing is I realized that I’ve changed, and the 3-month old post doesn’t fit me anymore. The longer I am here, the less I miss things from home.

Don’t get me wrong, I still ask my parents to mail me some Trident gum every few months (not a fan of the stuff here) and I would kill for some modern English books that don’t cost an arm and a leg, but overall the urges, the cravings and the “must-haves” of the past are less and less. I now crave certain types of Chinese food, or want stuff I know the local Chinese stores carry.

We’ve also grown more confident which is beginning to open new experiences for us. A few months ago we wouldn’t step foot in a Chinese restaurant by ourselves because we didn’t know how to read a menu or order food. Now we know enough to venture out and try new places without getting too worried.

Many people have already guessed but I might as well announce that we are likely going to stay here for another year. The first semester went by so quickly, as I’m sure the second semester will, that we just can’t imagine leaving in July when our contract is up. (If we stay for a year we are planning to visit America over the summer which I’ll talk about later.)

It’s funny because originally we planned to only go away for 6-months. We signed a 6-month contract; we looked for a renter for 6-months. But at some point the 6-months turned into a year. Now the year has turned into two years. What will happen after that?

Who knows?

Last week, I broke a tooth. Not just a tiny bit, but the entire back half of my back bottom tooth. I’m all for going “native” when it comes to food, clothes and other things but dentists? Get me a western trained English speaker fast.

I found a Westernized clinic in Hangzhou recommended by some ex-pats. The place was clean, the tools were sterilized and she definitely knew her stuff. The only problem was she wasn’t as fluent in English as the literature led me to believe. After she explained that I was going to need a filling (the tooth broke because of decay) I asked about Novocain. She looked at me blankly.

“You know, Novocain?” I motioned to my jaw. She shook her head.

“It makes me not feel anything?” She still didn’t understand.

“It numbs my mouth,” still nothing. “Umm, tooth medicine?”

This is how I speak every day. I use the normal words first and then slowly regress until the listener knows what I’m talking about.

“Ah yes, you want tooth medicine?” she asked surprised.

“Is it a small cavity?” I asked.

“No, it is very deep, right next to the nerve.”

“Yes, I want tooth medicine.”

Turns out she basically gave me gum numbing goo and the drilling was actually pretty painful. I made her stop halfway through to give me some more ‘tooth medicine’ and while we were waiting for it to kick in I asked if Chinese people ever ask for it. She said never.

“Chinese people have less sensitive nerves I think,” she said.

“Really?” I said. “How can that be possible?”

“Or maybe they have higher pain tolerance,” she shrugged.

“Or we Westerners have a low pain tolerance,” I said. She laughed.

It turns out that she called Novocain “deep numbing” and she only uses it for serious procedures like root canals. The whole thing took about half an hour and cost $60 (It would have cost $45 if I had gone sans medicine).

While I’m happy that I don’t have a Chinese dentist horror story under my belt, I did have a small moment of humiliation. When I first sat down and opened my mouth for her to look she gasp in exclamation.

“So many fillings,” she said half laughing, half in awe.

I mean, sure I don’t have the best teeth but really, she’s a dentist for chrissake, hasn’t she seen a mouth full of metal before?!

I have been constantly blogging now for about 9 months, 6 of which were from China. I’ve started blogs before and by the 6-month mark most were dead. It was a mix of things, lack of willpower, interest, stamina.

Clearly something has changed in me as I am just as eager to write blog posts now as I was the first day. I have a bunch of entries ready to go, and a pile of ideas for the future.

So if I want to keep this going, and I do, I realize that I have to get a bit more serious. While blogging may look easy and casual there is actually a lot of “behind-the-scenes” stuff that goes on. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately to figure out exactly what that “stuff” is.

Subtle Changes

Over the next few weeks I’ll be making some subtle changes to the site. I’ll actually add some FAQ’s to the FAQ section (or maybe I’ll just merge it with the About Me section. Either way I won’t keep an empty page around).

I’ll also be changing the ‘About Me’ section so if you want to see my house and my cats, make sure to check it out now as it will be gone soon. I’m also going to change my avatar from the picture of my cat to a picture of me. This is going to be a real chore as I am infamous for taking bad photographs. And I’m not just being modest. I blink, sneeze, look away, roll my eyes and contort my face in strange ways. I don’t do it on purpose! I can stand perfectly still with a big smile on my face and not move until the camera has been lowered and somehow my face ends up freakish. It is my odd super power and it makes finding pictures of me very difficult.

Blog Schedule

You come onto this site everyday and sometimes there is a post, sometimes there isn’t. I think it is time to create a more standard schedule for flow. I’m going to plan on at least 3 posts a week on Tuesday, Thursday and the weekend. This might be a challenge for me but I tend to work better under deadlines and will ensure there is new stuff to read every week.

Content Change

I’ll be slowly shifting my content away from “Hey, look at me!” to more informational type articles about being an English teacher in China, Chinese culture and travel. Of course I’m going to continue with the personal posts but I want to open this blog to more people, not just my friends, and no one else besides my parents really care what my apartment looks like, ya know?

If there is something you want me to write about specifically, just let me know!

There Might be Ads

I just want to warn you now. While no one makes millions from a blog you can make small amounts of money doing this. Right now all my book recommendations link to Amazon and if anyone ever bought one through my website I would make something like .003 cents. I might play with Google ads, I might not. I haven’t decided yet and really it is a little too premature to plan specifics, but advertising and selling e-books is on my radar screen. Don’t say you haven’t been warned (and don’t call me a sell-out when you see an ad.)

These are just some of the things I have been thinking about lately and I’m sure there will be more in the future. I don’t want to just throw things up here and see what sticks, instead I prefer to plan, to think, to try to meet your needs and create a bigger community. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know either by e-mail or from the comment field. Thank you!

These are some funny English signs that we saw on our trip that didn’t really fit into any category so I’m putting them all together here for your comedy pleasure.

This was on a sign out front of a camera shop. All the other wording was misspelled or awkward but they at least made a little sense. I have no idea what camera service they are trying to offer here.

When we first walked by, and took this picture, the restaurant was closed. I expected it was going to be run by some nerdy ex-pat and all the dishes would have Hitchhikers themed names and such. Turns out just a couple of regular old Chinese people ran it and it served regular cheap dishes. I would love to know the story on how they ended up with this sign.

This isn't chinglish, it just gets points for being clever. It was at an Indian food restaurant with a low clearance stairwell.

Why waste all your money on the iphone when you can get an O phone for half the price?! Or who knows, maybe Oprah is breaking into the telecommunications industry and she's testing the Asian markets first.

You might notice a new little orange circle on the upper right-hand corner of the screen. That is an RSS feed. I consider myself fairly technically savvy yet RSS feeds are something I never looked much into. Turns out it’s pretty important to have. It took me an incredibly frustrating afternoon to figure it out, and I’m not really sure I understand it even now, but I got it to work and you can now subscribe to my site!

Basically, the RSS feed helps gather all the blogs you read in one spot. You need a “reader” that displays the blogs. I use Google reader. That way, I don’t have to go look at every blog everyday to see if/what they have written. Instead, I subscribe to my favorite blogs (by hitting the RSS button) and when I open my Google reader and it shows the latest blog posts. I check about 8-10 blogs regularly so it saves a lot of time.

The downside is that it isn’t as pretty as going to the site. The reader shows the pictures that are in the blog entry, but other than that the formatting and layout is pretty plain. Luckily, if there is an entry that I want to look at on the site I can just click through.

The way I see it is if you are the type of person that likes to go out to the store every day to get your newspaper you don’t have to worry about RSS. You probably like going to all your favorite blogs regardless of the extra time it takes. But, if you are a person who likes to get your paper delivered to your doorstep then RSS is right up your alley. It can be delivered to your Google reader everyday, all day long so you don’t have any extra websites to check.

I also have an email feed available. If you choose that option all you have to do is enter your email address and my new blog posts will be delivered to your inbox. You won’t have to worry about figuring out the RSS feed if you choose this because it is very simple and just shows up like a regular email.

I’m going to be making some more technical changes throughout the upcoming weeks to optimize the site and make it easier and more useful for you, dear reader. If there is anything you suggest I do, please let me know and I will see if I can do it!

Hi Y’all,

Ni Hao. I want to start off by saying I really, really like this town. You’re all so friendly, the scenery is gorgeous and those little potato things that are a local dish are absolutely delicious. That being said, there is something I would like to discuss. It has to do with fireworks.

Now before you start jumping down my throat for being a pushy foreigner hear me out. Chinese New Year was awesome. You guys put together an unbelievable firework display from sunset to sunrise. You never stopped, never faltered, just kept hammering away all night long. I expected that. I even said here on my blog that I was planning on not being able to get much sleep. You did not disappoint.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the two following nights. There was the odd *boom* but you guys were so quiet. I was beginning to think there was an unspoken rule about letting everyone sleep or something. Nice job.

But then you all freaked out again two nights ago. What was that about? I was thinking it was another special day, especially as so many people were lighting them off at midnight. But I checked. It was just a regular night! What got into you?

But the last straw was last night. I mean, really? Fireworks starting at midnight and ending at 9 am? Do you know how annoying it is to sleep fitfully all night long only to finally get out of bed right as the fireworks stop?! I mean, it’s light after 7 am anyway, so why not just give it a rest and shoot them off at noon. And don’t tell me you have to go to work. I’ve been downtown and seen nothing open (except the firework shops) so I know your not working.

If you won’t stop for me, think of the children. They need their sleep. They should be lulled to sleep by the sweet song of their mother, not the sonic boom of hundreds of fireworks.

Or if you don’t have kids, think of your parents. Do you not respect them? They are elderly, they need to sleep! Keeping them up all night with that infernal racket just isn’t respectful.

I know you are scaring the ghosts away, or bringing good luck or whatever it is that fireworks symbolizes. But enough is enough. If the ghosts aren’t scared away by now, they ain’t gonna be and I think your luck-o-meter is full by this point.

So give it a rest so I can get some rest.

Thank you for your time.

Your pal,

Becky