So belated... but here!

I am aware that I have wholly fallen behind on my commitment to be a more frequent blogger, but things have finally started to settle down and so here is a picture tour of a few of the things we've been doing.

Not in the pictures: The job at the Korean school is a fascinating learning experience for me. The students are so varied in their willingness to try and their interest in learning English that every class seems like a balancing act. I gave them their first real tests on Friday and Monday, and the results are fairly discouraging, so I think I may have to change testing tactics if most of them need to pass the class.

But anyways, onto the pictures...

We investigated a park that is about a 25 minute walk from our apartment called Ritan park, I believe it historically has something to do with sacrifices to the sun. These were some neat trees in the entrance to the park, and there is a bit of a hill in the middle that the next picture is taken from, and the tall building on the right is (maybe) the tallest building in the city.

We visited the site of a rumored protest, which was interestingly scheduled to take place "in front of the KFC" in a shopping district. We found that upon getting to the area, we were heavily questioned by multiple policemen who were concerned with making sure we weren't journalists but claimed they were doing a "regular immigration check." We soon found out that in this one-block radius, there were 3 separate KFCs, with groups of accusatory policeman in front of each one - not to mention we were briefly followed by a man who had a very conspicuous curly cord coming out of his ear. We were questioned probably 7 or 8 separate times while we were in that area, and then we moved on to go to another park in the center of the city. After walking for about 20 minutes, we passed this other KFC that was entirely outside of the area where protests were even rumored to have been happening. The two people sitting in front of it are wearing red puffy vests that identify them as what John described to me as "Good communist party members." They weren't exactly security personnel, they were just stationed around the area (and apparently in front of every single KFC in the larger area) to signal a presence of the communist party. Very intriguing tactics. It gives some idea as to why protests in China have fallen short of the success that they have had in other countries.
This is from the hill in the park that we were heading towards: The view includes a fantastic panorama of the forbidden city, that glass dome towards the back and right is the opera house, and I think the thing with all the red flags around it is Tienanmen square.
A picture of us, below the pagoda on the top of the hill that has a good view.
The greatest surprise we found in the park were the singers. Although I wouldn't call the weather "springish" yet, at the point these pictures were taken, the older population in Beijing were ready to celebrate Spring anyways, and took to the park in droves to sing about it. The first picture is one of the larger groups that was singing folk songs.

This was a much smaller group that was singing Great Leap Forward era songs from the Beijing opera - touting the loveliness of communes. Again, very intriguing.

We have tried our hands at gardening, and the results are mostly encouraging. We planted yellow and red cherry tomatoes, purple and regular basil, and what seems to be purple chives. The purple chives and the red cherry tomatoes have sprouted very successfully, but the yellow tomatoes and both of the basils seem very hesitant to let themselves be seen, so I am trying to be patient. Here is John getting the tray ready for some seeds:

Here are the plants we have acquired over the past few weeks: the rosemary and mint were from a really neat plant market we went to on "Lady's Street," and the mysterious red flowers and yellow cactus came from a man who sells them in a subway station, but who appears to be deaf and mute, so we have just been watering them when the spirit moves us, for lack of a better idea. They seem to be doing OK.

Here are the completed seeds: the windows on our balcony have a blue tint on them, hence the eerie blue tint in this picture.
So that is the piecemeal and haphazard update on life! The next month will see many more days off of work for me (yay!), probably a quick jaunt up to Mongolia (yikes), and the writing and grading of 50 odd midterms (grrrrr) - So hopefully there will be more news soon.

Catching up!

I was trying to delay a blog post until I could include some of the touristy destinations we have been trying to get to, but I finally faced the fact that these may be a bit more in the future than I had originally thought. Instead, here are a few snapshots from the past few weeks:

Beijing finally got precipitated upon! I was later informed that the government makes it rain/snow, it is not naturally occurring. Apparently if clouds are in the area there is some sort of rocket they send up, containing precipitation-invoking chemicals... or something like that. It sounds suspicious to me, but I've been told from a variety of sources that it is, in fact, true.
Valentine's Day happened. It was on a Monday, so we celebrated a day early with a super swanky brunch. I tried many new things, among them were prawns, oysters, caviar, and some strange fruit. I have yet to try any animal that truly makes me regret being a nominal vegetarian, so I think I'll carry on for now.
I got a new job! I'll be teaching English classes at the Korean International School in Beijing, probably in the secondary school, but maybe primary. To celebrate, we went to the "Blind Masseuse" to get massages, and we got a package that we later found out included two traditional Chinese medicine techniques (scraping and cupping), in addition to the usual body and foot massage. They were running short on masseuses, (none of the ones we had were blind), so the Chinese traditional medicine doctor man started my massage until a regular masseuse came to his rescue.

The doctor man informed me that I was not "hot" enough to do the scraping/cupping routine, so I stuck with just extra massage time. John was not so lucky, and below you will see the evidence thereof. The vertical long red marks one either side of the spine are the result of the scraping, and the circles are from the cupping. I was frustrated I didn't have my camera during the procedure, because he looked quite comical. Maybe next time...Finally, for the less extreme: I had been telling my mom about the very annoying clothes washing process that the machinery in our apartment necessitates. Although I don't think I captured it that well, here are pictures of filling up the washer (must be done with the shower head, unless only cold water is desired), and the transfer of clothes from the "wash" to the "spin" cycle. Our dryer is the balcony.

Happy Year of the Hare!

A week-long ferocious celebration of the Chinese new year has finally ended. We spent the new years eve celebration at a small lake in the city. Around midnight, there were the requisite fireworks (they say it is to scare off evil spirits, I suspect its partially due to the fun factor as well), but these were better than any I have ever seen before. Instead of having one group of people set off fireworks, the whole lake was surrounded by individuals setting off their own private stash of fireworks, so it was probably more than an hour's worth of avid fireworking around the entire lake. It was beautiful.

After 24 hours though, the non-stop fireworks had gotten a little wearing - and that was just the beginning. They finally stopped a week later (yesterday), and a shell-shocked me was very grateful.

During the week, there were several "temple festivals" around the city, and these pictures are from the one we went to.

It appears to be ice skating, but on chairs. We didn't attempt.
Some performers.
A wide variety of meat on a stick.
Writing with water (a song about teeth brushing, we were told)
Some people from China's paramilitary that were roaming around the festival, trying to herd people out at closing time. Apparently they are responsible for some not so nice business, which seemed to clash for some reason with the one guy carrying the stuffed bunny and the briefcase.
We got a coconut.
Other news:

-Today I start my night teaching class. They just called to inform me that I will have to teach until 9:30 instead of 9p, so these students may end up with a class on The Western Art of Napping.

- I have two interviews tomorrow for other teaching jobs, lets see if anything more suitable shakes out.

- A nice young Irish lad moved into our spare room. His second person singular usage results in referring to me as "ye," which makes me feel kind of regal. I like it.

Major Steps

Over the past week, many important important steps have occurred in my Beijing adventure. 2 of them are depicted here.

1) I ate a duck. The restaurant was in an old courtyard house, meaning in was really neat, but required outerwear during the dining experience.
Please notice the chopsticks. This was my second chopstick-required meal. Not disastrous, but not easy.
See that plate of duck I'm chopstick-pointing at? I ate almost all of it. John only helped with the last little bit.
Check out our spread. In the front - To the left: eggplant yum. Middle: fried duck carcass. Right: garlic broccoli.
2) I am employed. Very part-time. These are the two nice statues that stand guard outside of my building, which is the one behind them and to the right. It is in a complex of lots and lots of towers that look too similar, called Jianwai SOHO. So far I am just scheduled to teach 4 evening classes a week (7-9pm), to a small group of students that are considered to be advanced-intermediate. We will see.

Bumbling in Beijing

I made it to China! The 2 pictures above are are the views from our balcony. I still don't even know what the front of our building looks like, perhaps exploring in that direction will be one of my "tasks" for the day.

This is the back of our building... we are on the top floor. Those two drainpipes are the markers for which apartments our stairwell gives access to, so of the top floor between the drainpipes, our apartment is the one on the right. Please note: we live on the 6th floor, there is no elevator.
This is what I call the bicycle jail. Its a kind of hangar-like structure with barred windows in the middle of all the apartment buildings. It seems to house bikes from many different time periods, and the majority appear to have been retired for a very long time. Were retired-bike-time to be measured in inches of dust, I would estimate many are in the 1/4 inch range.
My flight arrived a little before midnight, Beijing time, on Saturday. Sunday was a lot of errands, like registering myself at the police station (!), getting a cell phone, finding a wallet that would actually fit Chinese money (too big for my old one), and getting some essentials at the fancy "western" supermarket that has real crusty bread. We had lunch at a restaurant hailing from the Yunnan province in the southwest of China, which was lots of delicious vegetables. I ate the whole meal using chopsticks, despite John's insistence that they could probably find me a fork if I wanted one. Chopsticks, unless I become much more efficient, may prove to be an effective weight loss plan. They make it hard to eat big bites or eat fast.

Monday was a little calmer. John worked most of the day, although I did make a solo outing to go meet up with him for lunch. On my way out of the building I ran into a few ladies who were chatting away. To my chagrin, I realized as I was passing them, that they were chatting at me. Although my reflex was to say "no hablo espanol!", I caught myself in time and did the time-honored response of just sadly shaking my head. I think they were asking me if I was the new person living upstairs, so we settled to the communication that involves smiling, nodding, and pointing upwards. Oops.

Monday night we went to a market that seems to cater to the foreigners. Here are a few pictures from it:

John with the nuts and dried fruit lady
Me, with the vegetable lady

Those are all the pictures for now! Wish me luck, send me prayers, hold me in the light, or your choice of other good thoughts, for trying to learn some of this tricky tricky language. Although I am assured it is a completely human task, at this point it seems like I won't get far without some supernatural assistance.

Mini-travels keep the feet from itching

Mexico ended, Chapel Hill nourished my craving taste buds, and Clemson put my brain back to work all within a month. Though getting back into the academic groove is proving difficult when I know it will all be over in December, a brief weekend trip up to Maine to meet my brand new, first, best, and cutest niece was a fantastic break. Just a few pictures to illustrate!

Meeting dearest miss Ada Ruth

Granhappy having an atypical baby-holding session with his great-granddaughter

hanging out with Ada

4-generations of women

Granhappy and Dad - cutting lumber for the floor of the second level of the Yentes-Quinn house-to-be

Mom & dad on the partially finished floor

Pretending like I know how to help put down a floor...

The New Family on the New Floor! Success!

Collage day

Well - I leave for NC in 3 days, and this Mexican adventure is rapidly drawing to a close. With this crazy business about having real classes with real assignments, that means tomorrow is finals day and I must write an essay and read, read, read. So, no long thoughts today, just pictures with captions, enjoy!

Our second brigada in Preciosita - check-ups for the whole family!

I had the privilege of being the check-in/vital signs lady.

The eye doctor

The fanciest darned clinic you've ever seen.

Field trip to Taxco, "Silver City"

Another critter who tried to take up residence in the dorms

Outside of the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli museum (One he made... not of his stuff)

Leaving Frida Kahlo's house

LUCHAS LIBRES

Tiffany where the bus dropped us off to go to the Italian town of Chipilo.... it was just the side of the highway. We had some direction-asking and a lot of walking to do.