This week's adventures

Once upon a time Ressa didn’t know how to begin a blog post so we’re just going to skip that part. 

Last Friday was dinner night with the foreigners and it turned out to be quite an event.  There is a rich man in the city who likes to treat the foreign teachers to a special dinner every semester.  I still wasn’t feeling super awesome, but we decided to go since it was free (good) food and we wanted to get out.  The dinner was in a very fancy hotel with beautiful chandeliers and furniture.  They brought us to a large private room with a beautiful revolving table set up with fancy dishes and glasses.  We were so excited!  The dishes started coming to the table one by one and I don’t know if I’ve talked about how restaurants in China work, but they are genius.  The center of the table revolves (usually manually, but this one did it on its own) and the dishes are put on so that everyone grabs a small portion with their chopsticks as it passes them.  This way you can eat a lot of what you like and don’t have to touch what you don’t like….You also get to try a lot of weird foods.  We started out with snails and peaches, which I am happy to say that I tried the snail.  It wasn’t too bad, but apparently, it was also smothered in wasabi (spicy!) so I couldn’t really taste it.  They also served cow tongue, the dangly red thing on top of a chicken’s head (no, we did NOT try either of these), lamb (really yummy with the spices they put on), tons of fish (also did not eat), goose (pretty good), very tender beef (super good), sea cucumber soup (I really liked it, but it didn’t have much flavor so Jason didn’t see a point in eating it), our favorite – caramelized sweet potatoes, a strange pastry, bok choy (not too bad), tofu (it’s growing on us), and more but those were the foods that stood out most. We also had a never-ending supply of Sprite.  Since we don’t drink alcohol or caffeine we’ve just been opting for the complimentary hot water at our dinners while everyone around us drinks beer and Coke.  When the servers asked what drinks we wanted we were prepared to just say water, but Serena (my new Chinese friend) told us we were at a fancy restaurant and were not allowed to just drink water, ha :) All in all we had a great time and I didn’t even feel congested like I had been all day! 

Pretty nice, right?

These really fancy looking chandeliers were everywhere in this building. We were all really impressed with how clean and sparkly they were since everything here is coated in a layer of dirt.

Monday we were back into classes.  Most of the classes are going well, but we’re still having a bit of a rough time getting the students to respect us like they do their Chinese teachers.  It’s hard because I love kids (especially Chinese), but I literally have to  yell and get mad sometimes in order for them to pay any sort of attention to me.  I hate doing that.  It’s getting easier not to take their disrespect personally, but when I stand in front of a class for forty minutes and for the life of me cannot get a single student to look at the chalkboard and participate I can’t help  feeling like we are doing absolutely no good.

 However, those experiences are happening less often and the rewarding experiences more.  I love love when I’m struggling to explain what I want my students to do or how they should answer a question and then one of them finally gets it!  I probably make a fool of myself because I get so excited, but at least they know I appreciate their effort and now everyone else can understand the lesson much better.  For example, this week we were learning letter sounds.  To get my point across I would say familiar words for every letter of the alphabet (A – apple, etc.) and the best part was when a couple students quickly understood what I was doing so they started coming up with words before I even could and then most of the class joined in!

Another one of my favorite things about teaching is when we’re at the store and all of a sudden we hear a quiet voice say, “Mama, Laoshi (teacher)!” just to turn around and recognize one of my students shyly smiling at me as they hide behind their mom's leg.  It’s so cute and the parents are always excited to see us which is nice because we don’t see too many friendly faces when we’re out.

Tuesday, Serena and I went to the plant market with another American girl.  I was a little apprehensive about leaving Jason for the first time this trip to be with girls I barely knew, but I'm so glad I did.  It was nice to just be with other girls and see all the different kinds of plants and flowers.  I'm pretty sure flowers are happiness growing right from the ground. If  you have spent much time with me in any kind of garden or nursery you know I get just a little excited about plants :)

These flowers are like colorful bubbles growing on stems

This is Serena holding a very strong lemon "tree." We were amazed it wasn't even bending from the weight of that big lemon!

The green things are several bamboo shoots tied together. The orange fruit things above it are so neat!  They look like a mixture between a small squash and a big cherry tomato, but they feel kind of like the plastic balls in a ball pit.

  Everything was so inexpensive and I just had to get something to brighten up our apartment.  Sadly, the dirt here is terrible and the flower is struggling, but I'm holding out hope it'll last for three more months.   The bear thing was given to us for free just because we asked a nice lady what it was! It's supposed to be like a Chia pet where the grass grows out of it's head - we really hope it works.

We had such a good time at the plant market that we decided to go to the spice market yesterday.  This time our husbands came which made it even more fun.  The spice market was more like a typical market that goes down a street with stands and small shops on both sides.  We saw lots of different spices, but there were also shops with fresh meat (as in, it's still squawking or swimming), skinned and gutted meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts, dried foods, and barbeque supplies (summer's coming!).  Ooh, and we found baking powder for super cheap which means we can make pancakes!! Now if we can only find some measuring cups they might turn out alright.

Gross. Gross.  Nasty looking shrimp and cicadas in the boxes.  Apparently bugs are really good barbequed and everyone tells me I need to try it - yeah right!

Unfortunately, they are not sleeping. 

At the end of the market is a cross street that just so happens to be the oldest street in Xingtai which is one of the oldest cities of China which means we walked on one of the oldest streets in China!  

On top of the most historic buildings in Xingtai overlooking one of the oldest streets in China. No biggie.

This looked so much like Mulan! It's in a smallish room full of historical government records.  Serena tried to translate, but the characters are pretty faded.

Streetview of the building we were on.  The courtyard was packed full of old people just sitting there.  It was kind of funny because hardly any of them were interacting with each other which meant most of them were staring at us....of course.

They burn this money on top of people's graves so that the person can have it in the afterlife.  Unfortunately, though, whoever translated "afterlife" was a little bit off...Or he knew exactly what he was doing...."I did it as a joke and they're all going out like that." Apparently they also burn cardboard iPods, cars, computers, etc. for their ancestors. 

 

 We also officially tried stinky tofu.  The way the lady cooked it was by deep frying tofu chunks in some kind of stinky oily stuff.  Thankfully, I'm still fighting congestion so wasn't able to smell or taste it super well, but it didn't seem to be that bad. 

After walking around the market and eating at a restaurant with people who are smoking (we're so excited to not be second-hand smokers someday) we smelled awful and were due for a good shower.  Oh, but they like to randomly turn our water off without letting us know so we haven't had water for two days now.  Awesome.  They tell us a pipe is broken and they can't figure out where it is, but we haven't seen any sort of construction or digging going on.  urgh. They turned it on for a few minutes this morning and Jason was able to  take a quick shower, but I think that was just a fluke because our pipes have been dry since then.   Fay also called us a few minutes ago to tell us the principal needs us to keep our lights off all day to conserve energy.  I think this school just wants to destroy all bits of happiness we have.  Ok, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but sometimes I feel that way!  We can't hold hands on campus, we occasionally have running water, we never know when our electricity will suddenly turn off, and now we can't even keep our lights on in this city that never sees the sun!!  I guess it's all  part of the experience and we're going to look back and laugh at all this. For now, though, I'm just glad we have each other, we have the love of our Heavenly Father, we're making friends and feeling more comfortable in our new, temporary home.

P.S. tender mercy of the day - walking around the supermarket that plays funny Chinese music over the intercom just to have our ears perk up to the sound of Lady Antebellum's, "Need You Now" - go country!!