Alright! Time for the official update on my China experience thus far, since I was far too jetlagged last time I posted to say much of worth.
The flight here was LONG. Extremely long. My mom and I left our house for the airport (via Johnson's Corner, where I bought some kitschy Colorado souvenirs to give as gifts) around 7:30 on Wednesday morning and I arrived at my apartment here in Xi'an around 11 on Thursday night. Given the time difference, it ended up being about 25.5 hours door to door. Suffice it to say I was extremely exhausted when I arrived, having only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before and a few more on the planes. The trip went smoothly enough though; my baggage all came through fine (Kitty was not so lucky) and we made all of our connecting flights. My only travel fiasco happened in the Denver airport -- my big suitcase weighted 83 pounds when I got to the airport, 33 pounds over the limit, but I managed to redistribute my belongings and bring it down to 50 pounds exactly. I'm frugal enough to not want to pay $50 for overweight luggage if I can avoid it by taking a 30-pound backpack of books as a carry-on. And I had plenty of reading material for the flights.
We were met at the airport by a woman named Ma Jing / Sandy, who is an English professor at NPU (Northwestern Polytechnical University) and spent a year at Whitman two years ago. She recognized me, which probably has something to do with the fact that I was dating the RA of the Asian Studies House at the time. After some investigation into Kitty's lost bag, we were driven to the Zheng He Hotel on the NPU campus, our new home away from home.
Living in an apartment inside a hotel is pretty interesting. I have a living room with leather furniture and a TV, a kitchen with cutely small appliances, a bedroom with internet access and an unexpectedly hard mattress, and a bathroom with a toilet that runs constantly (I haven't yet figured out how to explain this to the hotel staff). I also have a maid who comes by every day to make my bed, rearrange my towels, and fold the end of my toilet paper into a triangle. This is entirely unnecessary and I feel a little funny about it, but I suppose she is being paid by NPU and I should let her do her job. Besides, anyone who has ever lived with me knows how I feel about making my bed -- not good. (We also know how I feel about top sheets -- unnecessary if the blanket you are using is easily washable. Because when you don't make your bed frequently, the top sheets always end up scrunched at the bottom. Thankfully, the Zheng He Hotel has only provided me with a very nice comforter with a washable cover that they only wash when I put the little sign on my bed asking them to.)
Friday was, as previously mentioned, a crazy day filled with errands. Some highlights:
- We had ID photos taken in the morning at a little photographer's shop that also advertised photos resembling GlamourShots. Kitty and I think they might have tried to give us a little glamor too, as our skin looks unnaturally clear in our new ID photos.
- The medical exam! Though I had already had all the tests done in the US and had medical records documenting all of it, as well as a signed form from my doctor, I ended up just forking over the 334 yuan (about $45) for the medical exam here, as Ma Jing wasn't even there to translate (got called to an important meeting 10 minutes before it happened. Apparently this is a frequent occurrence here) and it didn't seem worth the trouble of trying to haggle about it when the most likely outcome was having my records turned down and having to do the exam again anyways. Let's just think of it as the money I saved through luggage redistribution. (Note to future Whitman in China participants: If the handbook still tells you that you need all of those medical tests before going to China, don't try to be proactive about it and get them all done during spring break, because you will go to WIC training at the end of spring break and be told it was all a waste of your (parents') money.) Anyways, the medical center where we had the exam was remarkably efficient. After filling out our paper work and paying for the exam downstairs, we just had to visit each of a number of labeled rooms, complete their test, and get their signature. Once we had all the signatures, we were free to go! Of course, this makes it sound a little more fun than it was, as the first station I went to involved drawing blood and then me having to hold a bloody cotton ball on my arm for the next 15 minutes. One station also involved an ultrasound of my stomach, which made me giggle a lot, and another involved the most hilarious EKG device I have ever seen. The chest X-ray people called me back in to ask, "Do you know that your spine is crooked?" which also seemed really funny to me at the time, given that I've known about it for 10 years. All in all, a pretty entertaining medical exam.
- We met up with the whole English department at a hot pot restaurant for lunch. It was amazingly delicious, though one half of the hot pot (it was divided into a yin yang shape) was a little spicier than I could really handle. I am a wimp, and will have to learn to get over it. Hopefully soon, as I might be visiting Meg in Sichuan in about a month. But anyways, it was really amazing. My favorite things were the strips of lamb meat and the slightly wilted leafy greens. Also the peach nectar. Not juice, nectar. We met a lot of other teachers in the department, all of whom were really nice. The three women sitting to my left (two of them will be teaching writing and translation to my advanced students) were very impressed with my Chinese name, Bai Xiaoping (白曉平, to those of you whose computers can read Chinese), asking me "Who gave you this beautiful name?" All credit goes to Chiu Laoshi, and I suppose to my parents for giving me an American name that sounds like Xiaoping.
- I found out which classes I will be teaching. I'll have 10 hours of classes for the first week, though there will probably be more at some point in the future. I'll have five different sets of students, and I'll meet with each of them for a 2-hour (or maybe less?) period once a week. Three of the classes are sophomore Highlights students, who are the top 200 non-major English students based on some test they took last year. They will be learning writing and translation from Ma Jing and spoken English from me (or Kitty -- Ma Jing teaches all 200 and we each teach 100, split up into three groups). My other two classes are sophomore Advanced students, who are the top 200 students based on their entrance exams. They learn writing and translation from Lu Fang and another woman I met at lunch Friday whose name I didn't catch yet. I tried to figure out what class a student goes in if they are in the top 200 of the English test AND the entrance exams, but I don't think Ma Jing understood my question. Anyways, the Highlights and Advanced students are actually all at the same level, so I can presumably use one lesson plan for both classes. There are two different textbooks to choose from, both level 3 textbooks in the New Horizons series. Unfortunately, it sounds like my Highlights students may have already gone through half of the better textbook last year, but I'll make do.
- After our busy day, Kitty and I were so exhausted that we didn't go out for dinner, and instead made oatmeal and tea in her apartment and watched King Kong on TV. I don't recommend King Kong, but do recommend oatmeal and tea.
Saturday morning I felt very jetlagged and hungry and overwhelmed and homesick, as one is wont to do in a new country when she has not yet established a regular eating or sleeping schedule and hasn't figured out all of the details of her new job or what is expected of her. It was a rough morning, but life got a lot better after I got out of my apartment and discovered the joys of the cafeteria across the street. Like the medical place, it involves a lot of efficiency and stations. There is a counter for every type of food, so you just go point to what you want (if you are me and don't know the food names) and pay for it by pressing your pre-paid campus card up against a little cash register machine. The portions are huge, the food is cheap, and now that I have tupperware it's easy to take home leftovers. After discovering the joys of the cafeteria, we discovered the wonders of Ren Ren Le (人人樂), the huge 3-story everything store just off campus. We only made it through the first floor on our first excursion, but that was more than enough to convince me of its greatness. My favorite find was my new journal, which has horribly cheesy giant strawberries on the cover and says "Always Smile / It right out of something from a farly tale / A terribly exciting and a scary tale." Seems like an accurate enough description for my time in China.
Saturday also got better when Ma Jing came over and we had a chance to grill her about all the vagaries of our classes and what we are supposed to be doing about them. There are still plenty of vagaries -- as I'm sure there will continue to be -- but at least we have a place to start now. It sounds like flexibility will be key, as nothing is quite as organized here as it was at Whitman. Later Ma Jing took us on a walk to show us where the post office as and where we can buy the cheap fruits. In the basement of a building on campus, there is a giant market full of fruits and vegetables and tofu and dumplings and other exciting things. Ma Jing introduced us to the fruit vendor she knows, so he will now presumably give us good prices and the best fruit. Ma Jing bought some fruit from him and we came back to my apartment for a fruit party. Kitty and I eagerly ate the giant cantaloupe (it isn't actually cantaloupe -- looks and tastes like it on the inside but has a darker, greener rind and is the size of a watermelon) and nervously ate the jujubes and grapes, which had been washed in the tap water we were told not to drink without boiling.
We haven't died yet. And I've still been eating the grapes, though I've rinsed them two more times in boiled water. It's hard to tell how paranoid one should really be. I haven't had any of the stomach problems from the traveler horror stories yet, but I think nothing hit me until the second week last time I was in China.
I'm still trying to work through the jetlag. It's strange for me to have problems sleeping, given that I'm usually impossible to wake up. Friday morning I woke up at 4:15 and again at 6, Saturday I woke up at 7 after taking a three-hour nap in the evening and going to bed at 1, and today I woke up at 6 after falling asleep on my couch at 8:45 last night watching CCTV International, waking up several times, and eventually moving into my bed. My main goal is to be able to be awake enough to respond to my alarm clock tomorrow morning (shouldn't be a problem) AND to still be awake at 9 pm tomorrow when my last class finishes (a little more iffy).
All the classes I teach are on the new campus, a 45-minute bus ride away. Tomorrow I teach from 10-noon and from 7-9 pm, leaving a 7 hour break in between. Luckily, there is a teacher hotel there that I can stay in for free, so I will have a place to nap and rewrite my lesson plan if it goes horribly awry during the first class.
Today: mostly uneventful. Kitty and I went back to Ren Ren Le and investigated the basement this time -- a full grocery store! The Chinese seem to have some confusion about what is yogurt and what is milk. I was actually surprised to see so much dairy -- Kitty couldn't even find the soy milk -- but got my hopes up a little to high and was disappointed to realize that despite the abundance of milk and yogurt, there is no cheese. Anywhere. I must learn how to make cheese. Sam and I watched a History Channel show on cheese last week, so I've seen some of the tricks.
Other than that, we've just been getting ready to become TEACHERS. It's hard to believe that I will be the one standing in front of the class tomorrow morning telling everyone to turn off their cell phones and not plagiarize.
Some last words: If you don't have Skype, go download it. Now. It is oh-so easy and free. And eat some cheese for me.
Coming soon: Photos of my apartment. Photos of other things. Hopefully positive stories about my first day of teaching.
And here I am one week later eating some less-than-delicious mooncake:
More from Mid-Autumn Day to come!!
It turns out that Ma Jing lives only a block or two from the actual starting point of the Silk Road, where there is now a really cool statue of a caravan heading West: 
Ma Jing's husband (who does most of the family's cooking) made us a fabulous dinner with at least six different dishes, so we spent a long time at the Ma house (in Chinese names, the family name goes first, for anyone who was unaware) drinking tea and eating food with Ma Jing, her husband, and her son. At one point, we heard Ma Jing speak to her son referring to Kitty and I as his jiejie and Karlis as his gege – older sister and older brother in Chinese – so we felt very welcomed into the family. We might even get to tag along to a relative's wedding at some point, if the timing is right!
It is nice, when I am so far away from home and the people I love, to still feel like part of something here. Life is good.
I am the proud owner of 8 moon cakes in a fancy box, given to me by the waiban (foreign office). Kitty and Ali and I tried one from Kitty's box the other day and didn't really like it, but I guess they are all different inside, because I had one this morning and it was great!
MOON CAKE!!!
We are the world! We are the children!
Note the abundance of cranes (the national bird! Hahahaaaa...). All of China seems to be under construction. Also note the abundance of trees here on the old campus. Excellent.
The building in the foreground has a big student cafeteria on the ground floor, just across the street!
The gold thing is a pomegranate from Ma Jing, to wish us a fruitful year as teachers. The following day, she took us out to lunch and presented us with Teachers' Day cards signed by all of our Highlights students. There was a surprising abundance of the phrase "May you happy everyday," which is probably grammatically correct when you say it in Chinese, as well as a lot of comments about my height and my smile. As usual, some of the most entertaining snippets:
Kitty and Jens attempt to pull/push a cart full of beer up a non-functioning escalator ramp at Ren Ren Le.
Ali and the Chinese friends he made on the non-functioning escalator. Ali has an amazing ability to meet people everywhere he goes.
Jens thought photo time was a good time for tickling me, so now you all get to see my teeth.
And a solitary photo from Saturday evening! Yes, I'm still in China. There is an absurd amusement park area downtown in Xi'an. See Kitty's blog for some photos of Ali and I singing karaoke and being proposed to by a large German man.
what we ended up with. Some cold noodle-esque things that may have actually been strips of some kind of seafood, some fried peppers and squid (not my favorite, though the peanuts in it were really good), some strips of what looked like canned cranberry sauce but was actually some kind of hawberry jelly, and a whole fish covered in all sorts of veggies and served on a giant contraption that kept its juices bubbling the whole time. Not bad, and we were able to take home our leftovers.
Of course, we're not always quite so lucky, even in the cafeteria where we can point to the food we want. Case in point: Kitty accidentally ordered chicken feet at dinner the other night. It was a somewhat terrifying experience when we figured out that's what it was and spent the rest of the meal watching it reach for us from Kitty's tray. Chicken talons make great toothpicks though! (Ewwww....)
y news.
