BOOK NOOK UPDATE

The first box of books has now arrived! We are excited to receive our first box of books for the Book Nook Student Reading Room here at Longnan Teachers College in Chengxian, China (a special thanks goes out to Rachel’s church congregation in the US for this donation!). Yesterday we were also finally told that we will soon be given the key to our room. Living in China requires patience; we have been anxiously awaiting this news, but things do not happen at the speed that we would like them to here in China! But good things come to those who wait…

Once we gain access to the room, together with our Amity colleagues, we will begin cleaning, painting, and furnishing the room. We have also begun the application process for volunteer student librarians. Our goal is to be finished before we leave for summer vacation, so that when we return in the fall we are ready to open. This weekend we hope to go shopping to price a sofa, chairs, end tables, lamps, bookshelves and paint for the room. Getting it ready will be a lot of work, but we have five weeks until the end of the term and plan to use them wisely!

To those of you who have already donated, thanks so much for your generous help, which we have used for books, and with which we will also purchase some furniture for the room. I would especially like to thank the members of Caldwell’s Rotary Club for their help in getting magazine subscriptions! I was overwhelmed by the support and thankful for it.

Still, we would be grateful for more books! All shipments do not need to be huge; we realize that shipping costs are high. But if you even have a few books that you would like to send, please do so. Many small shipments add up! We appreciate it!

If you do want to contribute, send me an email at shellinchina@yahoo.com and I will get you shipping information.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

After seeing Justin off in Xi’An, life has settled down for Thad and me. We loved having Justin come to visit; it was a shot in the arm for both us as we head into the last months of the school year. (Yes, I said months. We don’t get done until July!) On July 1 we will celebrate our “One-Year-In-China” anniversary (is that the rice anniversary?), so having a visitor from home gave us something to look forward to in the months leading up until he came and something new to talk about for the rest of the term.

This last weekend we took advantage of being home to clean, which hasn’t been done in a long time. We did several loads of laundry. The nice thing is, now that it is getting warm outside (upper 80’s), the clothes dry so much faster than they did during the winter. Now I hang my jeans up in the morning and they are dry in the afternoon. Last winter, if I didn’t drape them over the radiator, I would hang them up on Saturday and on Thursday the seams would still be damp. And we all know that no one likes damp jeans, especially in the winter! I did dishes in my tiny kitchen sink that has a drizzle of hot water while Thad swept and mopped the house. It took us awhile to get the house cleaned up, but it is nice to have it back in presentable order. J

Last week I had a great lesson in class. The students and I talked about interracial dating in China. I told them about a friend who is dating a Chinese woman and how her family is not very open to the idea. Then, I had them get in small groups to discuss why her parents might be concerned about such an arrangement. (Their ideas included worries over their daughter moving far away, huge differences in culture and language barriers. All of which are valid concerns.) We also talked about how their families would react if they brought home a foreign boy/girlfriend. Many students say their parents would be turned off by the idea at first, but over time they could be persuaded to accept the foreigner into the family.

I thought that it was interesting that when I said “foreigner,” they automatically assumed I meant “Westerner.” This point of view changed rapidly when I asked about foreigners that were not the stereotypical Caucasian-Westerner. When I suggested that the foreigner they wanted their parents to meet was Japanese, uproar ensued. There are still VERY strong feelings against Japan in China. There were atrocities committed in the past that many people have not moved beyond still. I used this topic as a springboard into a discussion about how students in both countries had a lot in common and the need to look at people as individuals and not judge them by what their past leaders (or even current leaders for that matter) have done.

I don’t know that I changed any minds when it came to acceptance of foreigners, but I do know that for at least an hour, they were thinking about things through a different lens and considering what would happen if they befriended someone outside of their own culture. Changes happen in small increments, so at least we have taken the first tiny step.

At Longnan Teachers’ College, my teaching assignment is Oral English for first-year students in the English department. That means that in three short years, my students will be standing on the other side of the podium; they will be the teachers rather than the students.

With this in mind, I feel that part of what I need to do here is not only teach speaking skills, but also equip my students with some skills that will help them be successful in their own classrooms. This means that when I am preparing lessons for each week, I try to find things that will benefit them as students of English, but also create activities that they can tweak in the future for their own use.

This thought process is what led me to spend the week teaching 20-year olds to do the “Hokey Pokey!” That’s right! Each class, I hauled nearly 50 students outside to the dirt basketball courts to sing and dance and shake it all about!

In the classroom, I taught them the lyrics and the basic dance and then we headed outside where we actually had room to make a giant circle. I would choose a leader to stand in the middle and pick a body part (a much safer proposition than it may have been with my American middle school students!) and lead the song. After being leader, the student got to choose the next leader to come to the middle and we did it all again.

After singing and dancing (and attracting quite a crowd of onlookers) we headed back to the classroom to talk about how they could use this song in their own classrooms in the future. I am trying to help them see outside the “stand behind the podium and lecture” teaching style, so brining in activities and songs is one way that I mix methodology with speaking skills. I won’t be here to see this group of students graduate and get teaching jobs, but I hope that the goofy things I teach them in class will resurface in their own classrooms in the future!

You take the good,

You take the bad,

You take them both and there you have,

The facts of life…

A little kickback to the 80’s and The Facts of Life, but I thought it was appropriate for the time being. Lately it has felt like everything that is happening is falling on one extreme or another on the spectrum. Thad and I have been feeling some frustrations with some people in China, but then, just when we feel so irritated we want to scream, someone else does something to restore our faith. To illustrate, I will give you an example of each, both of which happened on the same day!

When I was in Chengdu a few weeks ago, I picked up some postcards. (Yes, that means some of you will possibly be getting one in the mail!) I spent a good deal of time filling them out on Friday morning and then I took them down to the post office at the end of the road. I have mailed postcards from there before, so I expected it to be an in and out operation. Boy was I wrong! I went in and asked to send them to Meiguo (America) and the man behind the counter told me he couldn’t. He said I had to take them to the big post office in town. I was annoyed because I know they mail them from there and I got the feeling he just didn’t want to deal with me because I was a foreigner. I figured I would just go back on Monday and try again. When Monday rolled around, Tomas, another foreign teacher at the school, told me he mailed a couple of letters from the post office that morning and that I should try again because the man wasn’t there. So after lunch I hurried on down with my postcards in hand, only to walk in and see…the man!! Arg!! I figured I would give it another try, but again he told me no! I then, using me horrible Chinese skills, got a little grumpy with him, telling him that I knew my friend had mailed stuff from there that same morning and that I wanted him to take care of mine as well! Eventually a woman came out of the back and pushed him aside and took care of it, but the whole experience was not a pleasant one. I really feel like this man just didn’t want to deal with the blonde girl with a strange accent. He made it clear that it was easier for him to push me off onto someone downtown than for him to try and help. I walked away from the post office rather fed up with China.

My faith in the kindness of Chinese was restored later than same day. Thad had a boil behind his ear that he needed to have drained at the hospital. It wasn’t a huge deal and he knew what had to be done because he had the same thing one time in the States. He asked a fellow teacher to go with him, just to be safe on the translation part. To make a long story short, (I am sure you can get the long one on Thad’s blog in the near future!) he had it drained and the doctor that did it was very kind. The attending nurse happened to be the woman who lives across the hall from us and she was also helpful. After doing the small procedure, the doctor told Thad that he would not charge him for it because he knew that Thad was far from home and because Thad came here to help the people of the town! How sweet is that?!? Thad paid for the medicine to keep from getting an infection, but the procedure itself was nothing. Needless to say, it made both of us feel a bit better about the frustrations we have been dealing with lately.

So, back to the theme song of our wonderful 80’s sitcom: there is good and bad and you deal with both, and that is what makes life!! While nearly everything is different when you are living in China, everything is the same as well. There are frustrations and high points and it is the combination that makes life what it is!

The first week of May is one of three “golden weeks” in China, where the masses move, en mass! (The other two are during October for National Day and February for Spring Festival.) We had the week off, so like most PCVs, we headed out to explore the country that is our home.

Our trip went like this: Home to Chengdu to LeShan to Songpan to Jiuzhaigou and then home again!

Thad and I started the trip by going to Chengdu, where he had a VAC meeting. (VAC is the Volunteer Action Committee and he is the representative for our province.) We were excited to get to Chengdu not only because of the possibility of some Western food, but also because we were meeting Justin there. He is our first visitor from home since we’ve been in China and we were both excited to see him. It has been great hanging out with him for the last week, although I have to say that actually having someone from home has made me a bit homesick. I think it just brings what we are missing a bit more into reality, rather than the abstract that I place it in as a coping strategy.

During Thad’s VAC meeting, Justin and I went to see the pandas. It was a cool day outside, so they were all frolicking and having a great time. There was one enclosure that had ten babies in it! I think between us we took a good 100 pictures of pandas! I will definitely have to do some editing of those shots.

Songpan was one of the highlights of the trip. It is a great little town in Sichuan that is known as a base for horse-trekking. We only had time for a one-day trek, although they offer rides of up to twelve days! We went up to a Tibetan village, high up in the mountains outside of the city. When I mean high, I am serious! Even though we got snowed on while up there, the altitude did a number in conjunction with the sun. When I got back to town I had the worst sunburn I have ever had in my life! I’ve been peeling for a week. (Now that I am back at site, many of my students have scolded me for not carrying an umbrella to ward off the sun!) Also, as totally not being a horse person, I was more than a bit saddle sore for the next few days.

The trip up was interesting, although I spent a good deal of it white-knuckling the saddle horn! My horse thought it would be a great idea to walk along the very edge of the precipice that the trail bordered. I know that some people trust horses and talk of their sure-footedness, but as I looked over the edge of the abyss, I had little to no trust in my steed! While up on the mountain, we met many different people. One Tibetan woman was fascinated with my multiple earrings. She wanted to touch them. Strange, but she is not the first person to ever do that.

We took a bunch of pictures while we were there and then once we got back into town we found a photo shop to have prints made. I then took the prints back to the trekking place to see if they would take them up the mountain to give to the people when they went again. As I talked to the boss about this, he called in a bunch of men who were standing around outside the shop. It turns out that they were all from the village we had been in and promised to deliver the pictures for me! Talk about timing! I am sure it was a sight to see though as I stood in the middle of a throng of Tibetan men, passing around pictures to see who knew or was related to anyone in them!

Juizahigou was the last stop on our May holiday vacation. My students have been telling me all winter how beautiful it is there and how I hadto go if at all possible. We were amazed when we got there to discover it looked a whole lot like the mountains in Idaho! Between the scenery and having Justin along, it was just like we were home again! Once we were inside the park we had two options: buy a bus ticket to the top of the park or hike. We opted for the second- hiking. It was amazing that even though there were thousands (that is NOT an exaggeration) of Chinese people in the park, for the majority of the time we were all alone. They all took the bus, so we had the trail to ourselves! We were perky and full of energy in the morning when we started out, but I have to say by late afternoon we were beat! We may or may not have just slipped onto a bus to get back down the mountain. J

Our trip ended with a REALLY long bus ride home. We spent eleven hours on three different buses to get back to site. As is typical of buses in China, our driver knew where our ultimate destination was, so when he saw a bus that would get us closer to home, he flagged it down and transferred us to the new one. This is pretty common in China…bus hopping is just the way we travel!

So now we are home again and getting ready to go back to school tomorrow. It is great to be back home and have clean socks and undies again, but traveling was amazing! Sometimes I can’t believe I only have a year left to see the rest of this country! You can bet that we will be on the bumpy, unpaved road as often as possible in the next twelve months! (That and bugging people from the States to come visit us and see our wonderful home!)

• There are a lot of mountain ranges in China and Asia, which ones have you seen, and which one do you like the best? There are many different mountain ranges in China, the most famous being the Himalayas. This last week Mr. Ross and I traveled to an area in northern Sichuan called Jiuzhaigou which is famous for its mountains. We were happily surprised to find that it looked a lot like the mountains in Idaho. As we hiked through them, it felt just like being at home! J
• Mrs. Ross we have been learning about China in Social Studies. What are some land features you find unique? Like America, China is a very large country in terms of land-size, which means it has lots of different land features. There is a large river called the Yangtze which is current being dammed for a source of power. When the dam is done, I believe it will be the biggest in the world. (I am really hoping to get to see this before we leave, but it is in the middle of no where, so it is tough for us to get to!) Also, there are many large mountains. In the northwest of China there is a very large desert that is growing. It is encroaching on some of the cities and much of the farmland in the north, which is causing huge problems. Also, because of the desert, sandstorms can be a problem in the north. My fellow PCVs in Lanzhou occasionally get blinding sandstorms! Mr. Ross and I have not yet got to see one of these, but I think it would be interesting!
• What kind of land forms do you live by and how hot or cold is it there? Mr. Ross and I live in a small valley that is surrounded by terraced hills. In the spring it is beautiful! There is a lot of wheat and lotus grown around us, as well as many fruit trees. It is a dry climate here, much like the valley in which you live. In the winter it got into the 20s, so not super cold, but when you don’t have control of the heat, it is hard to stay warm. (In China, people living north of the Yellow River have radiator heat and those south have no central heat in their homes. We live north of it, thank goodness!) The winter was very dry, with snow only one or two days and nothing that stayed. Spring and fall were both really wet, with lots of rain. In the summer it gets very hot! It will easily get over a hundred many times this summer. Because of the heat, we also get incredible lightening and thunder storms in the summer! Overall, I would say it is similar to southern Idaho, but maybe a little more extreme in the summer.
• Do they have sports like we do here? Yes! My students are huge basketball fans. They all love the NBA, with the Huston Rockets and Yao Ming being the favorite! Mr. Ross often goes and plays basketball with the students in the afternoon. They are also amazing at ping-pong. When I play with them it is mostly me chasing after the ball, since I can never seem to make contact with it! Haha! Soccer is another popular sport. (They call it football, since they have learned English from books coming out of England!) We also play badminton with the students, and we are just introducing Frisbee to them! Our friend Justin got us a Frisbee, so at night we have been going out and playing with whomever we can round up! Sports are a favorite hobby for many students.
  
• What are some of the greeting customs in China? “Ni hao” (pronounced “knee how”) means hello. Chinese people shake hands, but rarely hug one another in public. (If I see a friend that I haven’t seen in a long time, I will hug them when I see them again. Chinese people don’t do this.) It is common to ask if the other person has eaten or where they are going when you meet as well. These questions seem a bit strange or maybe even nosy to us, but they are common greetings in China.
  
• Since China has the biggest population in the world is it hard to get to one place to another? Yes! Yes! Yes! Especially during the holiday season! Most people do not own their own car, so traveling is done my crowded bus and train. Very few people fly. During Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) everyone goes home to visit their families, like we would at Christmas. That means that during that time, it is nearly impossible to get train and bus tickets, plus the prices are higher! Grrrr!! Even with the hassles though, Mr. Ross and I try to travel every chance that we get. IT is our thought that we are only here for two years and we want to see as much of this part of the world as we can while it is available to us. That means loading up the backpacks and heading out for the bus station every chance we get!