Yellow Dragon Town

I liked this little place. It's a showing of part of older china. Plus the river is 2 different colors. They have made it a little more commercial with all the souvenirs, but what can you expect? It 2008 even I wouldn't live in the old style unless you paid me.

Anywho. When I first got there I wanted a picture of the gate and then me in the middle (of course) and when I finished this girl (12?) came and said Hi and shook my hand and rubbed my arm and, I think I should have taken a picture with her lol

My director invited some Chinese students from our university to try to ease the isolation (will post later) and so I made a new friend and we all went around looking at the old things and ate lunch. Then I found myself alone.

So I walked around and bought a few small things and then I saw a part of the river where you can cross on stones (they have animal characters on them like ，鼠，龙，猪） any who this is what it looks like:


and it has high traffic time. I convinced myself I wanted to go then, but before I could try crossing the guy in that picture wanted to take a picture with me. So I took one with him and his friends. and I got back in line. then some girl wanted to take a picture with me so I did and got back in line and by that time it was very high traffic lol

So I crossed without falling and as soon soon as I got to the other side person after person wanted to take pictures with me (one even said that her school is near mine so we should hang out sometime) haha

These people make me feel extra special sometimes lol

Sichuan Opera

I know that people often make fun of operas but i think that the people who sing, for the most part, have beautiful voices.

So my friend YeJin found a place that wasn't too expensive and we watched a Sichuan opera 川剧. They had a lot of different skits though so it wasn't opera the whole time. They had fire blowing, face changing, puppeteering, shadow puppets and Erhu.

I really like the music with the Erhu 二胡. It's pretty much classical but the guy who performed last night did an upbeat song later. I think those people are very talented because it only has 2 strings and yet so many different sounds can come from it.

I know shadow puppets sound very....dull or lame, but if you would have seen the animals he was making... It was brilliant.

The regular puppets are so detailed. They move their eyes and twirl a cloth or pick things up and while you're watching you know it took a lot of practice. I commend those people.

Eggplants???

For this class we made green beans and fish-flavored eggplants... I've never eaten eggplant before and i have avoided it until now because i don't want to waste a whole plate of food. (It was a very small amount though. I'm still here.)

Anywho it tasted ok the green beans were better. I got full points on it, but the eggplant was too dark. I think in Sichuan cuisine food needs to be very colorful, but I don't mind because i have discovered in my few years of cooking that the more color it has the more flavorful.

Exams

I got a B (84) on my first exam. It's time to study some more. I've been having too much fun being the beautiful foreigner. I better start bein the student lol

I Am The Foreigner

Yesterday I went out to return some things to a store (it was easier than I thought) and I was walking with a white guy (friend from my program) He was saying he liked walking with me and Vanessa (true red-head in my program) because people don't stare at him as much. I thought that was funny but walking to the store people obviously were paying him no mind. All eyes on me. lol

In the store one lady even followed me around a bit (this happens occasionally) and finally she started to talk to me asking "Where are you from?" "Where do you study?" "Who braided your hair?" (thank you Nayshay everyone has complemented) She remimded me of a teacher I had in the U.S. Very nice lady, slightly aggresive. lol

I was glad that I understood her and she and her husband were impressed (no applause needed) haha and then when she was finished my friend says, "I love it! I get nothing." And it's true. People made obvious stares at me and small conversation.

It's fun to be the foreigner. It's even more fun to be the beautiful foreigner. I had one girl tell me she's trying to tan and get my beautiful skin, haha, that is completely opposite of how asians view beauty.

Message

I got my first real massage ever today. My classmate YeJin took me to a place near our school. She found out it was my first massage and said she should have looked for the best one in town lol

It was nice enough though. It seems that this is very popular even among college students. (Most of the students in my program have traveled and gotten massages all around China) So I'm going to join in! lol

Not too often though, I need to save money for Japan.

It Still Hit Me

Yesterday I went to work for my classes (9:20a-12:30p). Then I had made plans to meet up with my new language partner (JiangYue). But of course that would be the day that the afternoon teacher had to call in sick. So I asked, even though it was our first time meeting up, if we could just do lunch and then I'd have to go back to work. She didn't mind coming back with me though.

When got back to the school my co-worker handed me the class' lesson plans and then while I was looking over them a couple of boys ran out of the classroom to get water. They turned around looked at me for a bit and then one goes "A real ghost! Whoa!" and his mom, i think, ran out the sitting room "HEY!!" and he says "but she soo ugly!" and of course she smacked him in the arm and dragged him out of the room giving him a good scolding.

My co-workers think I'm in the beginning stages of Chinese so they were silent with shocked faces. Of course I just smiled and then my language partner looks at me and says "Don't think too much about it they're still kids. They don't think before they talk."
I was very pleased that she'd said those words and didn't just look or pretend it didn't happen. I've read that at some (recent) point in time black people were called ghosts and ugly. And all asian societies firmly believe that the whiter you are the more beautiful. I haven't been called that directly or made fun of a lot since I've been here, but understanding what the child was saying and it's background still hurt a bit.


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

JiangYue still showed me around after that and we switched back and forth between english and mandarin. I am happy to say that I've found the 3rd person who doesn't underestimate my understanding of the language. So I had to make sure I did something for her. She's a medical student who wants to be able to do the "in" things and start wearing make-up and so on. So I took her to Starbucks! No surprise that it's still "expensive" so she would only let me buy her the small size. She's only in town on the weekends but I think she and I will be good friends.

First Day of Cooking!!

I must tell you that cooking class is awesome. It's about 2hrs long and our program director is there to translate for us. So we all are in uniform and we watch the demonstration, taste test ,and then cook, taste test, and get a grade of 1-5.

For this class we cooked Tomatoe Scrambled Egg and Fried Potatoes Green Peppers.


I want to cook that for breakfast a lot!
It as bomb!!
Our Professor liked my egg mix but the potatoes were cooked too much. (they were supposed to be almost raw)

Too much teaching assistance

I have a job teaching English to young children at a school that I think has a pretty good set up. They give us teaching plans to expand on so that we an make the class our own. They have nice sized classrooms and the staff is pretty small so we can get to know everybody.

The school employs native English speakers as Teachers and Chinese-English speakers as Teaching Assistants. I think this is a great plan because the children's accents are definitely better than most of the people who learn English in a regular school and if they are stuck on a concept their is someone who can explain it to them perfectly.

Of course my TA obviously needs to go somewhere that she can be considered the teacher. She wants to control my class that I spent the time to make the lesson plans on. She throws in games and songs whenever she feels like it. (Usually when it gets quiet and the children seem to really start focusing on the lesson. I think she takes it as boredom.) But the reason I designed a time for them to do spelling is because they showed me that they like to show off how much they can read and write. She makes "break time" in the most inconvenient time. Then she is always speaking Chinese to them so they have really started slacking. Sometimes they just use Chinese to do my projects and the boss even came in one day when they were cheering and told her to make them speak English.

I want to tell my boss about it but I'm not sure how. I know that Chinese people don't like to be confronted so I want her boss to do it. I know this TA has been there for 2 yrs but I have taught before too and they learn best when the teachers pretend they don't speak Chinese and they get to show off their writing skills.

Cooking Class!!!

Like i said the cooking class is off campus at a real restaraunt. Our tteacher speaks no english but we get to wear real chef outfits (including the hat) and we got our own cutting board and cleaver. shhh.

lol i won't do too much harm.

we have 6 weeks of actual cooking and so i'll post how each class went. The first class was a taste test and this was friday so you can expect a post each friday.

get ready for lots of pics and maybe some horror stories.

Dorming It

I really like my dorm I just wish that we had more contact with the students. I mean we are on the top 2 floors of a hotel behind campus and our classes are all on the 2nd floor. ( Except for the cooking class. It's in a real, nice, restaurant.)

Anywho. We get our own room like this

and our bathroom is like this

but our shower is just.....there O.O

Of course we share a kitchen....but i can't say i'll be doing much cooking in it. It seems like no one knows how to clean.

My Intro

This blog will be the life i live in china as it happens.
I'll be as real as possible. I've been here for 2 weeks now.
I will travel to 4 popular sites and report the experience.
I hope more of you will want to visit china after this.
(yes, i'm specifically speaking to minorities)

but all are welcome!