June 27 - July 15, 2010

June 27-30

I went to a Chinese Classical Music concert. They played all sorts of flutes, harp type and guitar type instruments. It was very cool to watch but I don't think I could listen to it all the time. the singer had incredible control over her voice, which was very high pitched, but went well with the flute and guitar thing being played with her. There was a drum routine that was pretty cool; it reminded me of "Stomp". Either way, it was really cool to watch it all and take part in thousand year old music. ^_^

Aside from that nothing else really happened for the rest of the month.

July 1 - 15

Wow! I have officially been here for 6 months!

Alright, let's start with school stuff.

So my schedule is a little busier but as I guessed it's not by much. I have a few more lessons added and am still working from 9:30 am to 8 pm. Actually I think I lucked out in my schedule really; yes I have more classes, but my Saturday and Sunday still only have three classes in the morning with the rest of the day off and I went from having 3 nights ending at 8 pm to only 2 nights. My Thursday and Friday are the busiest days; I am working morning, afternoon, and evening shifts which make for a long day.

I have picked up a private lesson with a girl a few years younger than me. I get paid 150 RMB per hour and it's mostly just conversation I am working on, which makes it a fairly easy lesson to prepare. ^_^

As for the semi private lessons I was setting up with some friends: it's a go. We have two different classes that come twice a week, one class has 5 kids and the other has 4. It's an 8 week program that runs for an hour and a half on the afternoons of Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I finish my morning classes at Jordan's and run to these classes and once I finish these classes I run back to Jordan's. That's what lends to my Thursday and Friday being so busy.

I took a day trip to Hanzhou this month as well. Hanzhou is known for a lake called "West Lake"; it's a very pretty lake and there's lots of greenery there as well but traffic sucks! It takes forever to get anywhere there. While I was there though I happened to see this band from the states play; if anyone is interested in folk/blue grass type music her name was Abigail Washburn. She has a fantastic voice and her live performance sounds the same as her CD's. I thought she was very good. ^_^

The weather here sucks in the summer; it's wayyyyyy toooooo HOT! I'll turn my air conditioning on to 25° C and think that it feels nice and cool. I was told the other day that the average seems to be around 38° ish; add that to a humid climate and you have yourself some very uncomfortable days. I've started to love when it rains because it cools everything off a bit and makes it feel like a normal hot day instead of oppressive heat. I've learned that in this climate, wooden things will go moldy in no time at all if they are the tiniest bit wet and certain shoes too ha ha. The bonus to this weather though is that it has some of the coolest thunder and lightening storms I've ever seen. The thunder always sounds so close to the ground and the rain pours down by bucket loads.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to add this time around. I still miss everyone very much but have fortunately regained my comfortable routine. I hope all is going well back home for everyone. xoxo

Miscellaneous Pictures From My Xia Men Trip

China

Where's the door to get onto the balcony?

I tried to get some fashion pictures.

Police van.

Cool statue. I'm not sure what it's for though. :s

Miscellaneous Pictures From My Xia Men Trip

Cool Pic of Aquarium Life

Chinese crossword puzzle

Neat chair

Bridge

Turtle

Aquarium Trip

This fish reminded me of Bubba off of Forest Gump.

Shark!

REALLY big fish, their bodies are the size of my torso.

Cute frog.

Cool jelly fish

Boats from the festival

This is the boat we went on.

This is me on the boat drinking tea.

Dragon Boat 1

Dragon Boat 2

Dragon Boat 3

Trip to Xia Men 2

Xia Men! So clean :)

This is the Yummy dinner we had :) mmmmmm.

This is the sign that won't be there much longer ha ha ha.

And in the distance you can see Taiwan

Trip to Xia Men

This is the bowl that is used to play the dice game

Me on the boat that we took

LOOK! Fish! .... This is at the aquarium that we went to.

This is the Elementary School that looks much like a Parliament Building.

And this is a pretty yard in Xia Men. :)

June 1-26, 2010

June 1-26
Well I started June off wonderfully! I made oatmeal cookies. ^_^ George and Jessie have an oven that I stole for a bit. The cookies turned out very well and I can't wait to make the next batch. To make the day even better I saw the sweetest mullet on a Chinese guy; it was awesome! It was puffy in the front as most Chinese guys seem to style their hair and scraggily looking in the back.

"oh my lady ga ga" is starting to replace "oh my god". I have been hearing it every where by all ages. I have also been noticing, since I ride the bus so much, that if it can be helped, the girls will usually sit with girls and boys will sit with boys. It's never a random seat, it always seems to be carefully planned where they will sit.

I have a new roommate; a foreigner from Taiwan. She seems nice so far from what I've gotten to know of her; very curious though, I get asked questions all the time. She is here to help improve communication between the Chinese teachers and the foreigner teachers, also I think she is supposed to help with the organization of Jordan's. Anyways I don't see too much of her as she pretty much stays in her room or is out till really late.

I got to take a trip to Xia Men during the Dragon Boat Festival. I was there from the 14-16. We took the fast train from Wenzhou to Fuzhou; we stayed there for an hour before taking off to Xia Men; it took about 5 hours in total; the train was going about 250km/hr. All the activities we did sort of got mixed up in my mind so I will just list them I think.
We went to a museum that was showing the origin of this particular dice game. It was a gambling game; you had 5 dice; the kind that have red and blue numbers on them. On the first round you have to roll one red one, the second round it's two red one's etc. until the fourth round. We tried it and I only got through the first round.
*We went to a bridge museum, since there are so many bridges in Xia Men; it was boring for me though because everything was in Chinese and it's bridges…can't say I'm super interested in that.
*We saw a middle school that looked like it could be a government building. It was beautiful.
*We ate dinner at one restaurant that was soooo yummy. We had some shell fish, rice, lemon *chicken, eggplant and an omelet type dish that had oysters in it. ^_^ it was very good.
*The second night I got to eat dinner right beside the ocean, that was pretty cool, ha ha, and very expensive.
*During the day I tried a bunch of the different street foods in this shopping area of town.
*I went to an aquarium that had a ton of different kinds of fish.
*We went on this boat tour to go see Taiwan…we stopped a ways from it to see this sign that pretty much declares that Taiwan would soon defeat China. The hostess said we should take a picture because the sign wouldn't be there after China defeated Taiwan. Ha ha ha

Xia Men is definitely a place worth visiting; it’s clean, colorful and lush with plant life. The people are very friendly and considerate. People stick to the sidewalks, they wait for their turn to cross the road (for the most part), they throw their garbage in the bins and they have a normal sense of fashion. The cars stick to the road, they don’t drive on the sidewalks, they will slow down if they see someone crossing the road and you can tell they are taken care of; no rust or neglected car parts. Xia Men is famous for exporting it’s stone and tea. I bought some tea while I was there and still haven’t had a chance to make it on my own; there’s a whole method to doing it properly. The trip back to Wenzhou was direct and only took three hours. All in all it was a good trip. I can't wait to do more like it. ^_^

I’ve been really busy lately trying to set up a private English course with a couple of my friends. It will start July 1st and we will have two foreigners teaching the English lessons. Our lessons are based on conversation more than anything else and trying to teach them how to interact with a foreigner without sounding like a robot (based on their lessons from school).

I’ve been learning how to write and recognize some Chinese characters but it seems like such a daunting task at this point in time. I’ve also been trying to use what Chinese I do know in daily conversations more and more. Someone told me it’s coming along well, and one of the Chinese girls actually told me I had standard Chinese; which is a good thing; it means that I speak a very proper form of it. ^_^

Lessons at my school are still fairly useless. Summer school will be starting soon and my schedule will be different once again. Supposedly it’s busier, but I think some people are over exaggerating a bit; I think it will be busy but not any screwier than our schedules are now.

I miss home lots these days; I miss having regular working hours and a predictable schedule. It’s annoying always having to guess what my next week will be like.

I haven’t had time to do much else these days, hence the late blog entry. That pretty much sums up my latest experiences. I'll write again in July, xoxo.

Pictures of my Xia Men trip to follow.... :)