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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
jennywhere's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 | | 10:00 pm |
| | Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 | | 7:40 pm |
| | Friday, May 26th, 2006 | | 2:51 pm |
Qingdao
This past weekend, Anthony and I took a little trip to the "Switzerland of China" which is a city by the coast that was run by the Germans for 40 years starting around the early 1900's. Why, if the major architectural influence is German is it linked to Switzerland? Hm. This was our first time seeing the Pacific Ocean from China. We waved to all of you folks in CA and Vancouver. I promise.
J
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The Switzerland of China
This picture shows the view from the German governor's mansion, which has been preserved. (Mao stayed there on his trips to Qingdao and they kept the rooms just as they were when he slept in them.) The buildings off in the distance are all German-Switzerlandy I'm guessing, because I"ve never been and they are certainly not Chinese looking. |
Ahh the beach
Before we went to Qingdao many many people told us that it is an extremely beautiful place with gorgeous beaches, etc. I don't mean to sound disappointed, but...I prefer Jones Beach, if we're talking beaches. We should have known better. However, we had a great time walking around. There were certainly lots of beautiful parts of the city. Nice winding streets with interesting houses, friendly people, new kinds of food, a different accent... |
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The weirdest thing
We were there on days that were considered very lucky for weddings. Everywhere we went we saw people taking their pre-wedding wedding photos. Lines of white-clad brides and grooms trekked across the rocky beaches exposing the jeans underneath their fancy clothes. |
This wedding ceremony
involved the couple slowly edging forward as acrobats inside dragon costumes harassed them and flipped around. What a wonderful introduction to marital bliss. |
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Confetti
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Cheapskates
Because it was soooo cheap Anthony and I decided to take the train for 7.5 hours to get home, rather than fly. I learned half of the Chinese language. There was no point during the entire trip that we passed unused or wild land. Everything was a farm or town or city. |
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Tsingtao
Tsingtao and Qingdao are two different spelling of the one city. Yes, we went to the home of the Tsingtao brewery (which the Germans actually started.) I would phonetically spell the city's name Chingdao, in case you're curious. |
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| | Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 | | 9:44 pm |
| | 2:35 am |
Trip
Well, its been a while since I've posted, but to make up for it, I put a lot of pictures up from our trip to South Western China.
Backgammon
We went a lot of places on our trip and had a lot of different experiences, but throughout it all, we always had serious, competitve backgammon. Jenny now owes me 150 kuai, which is about twenty dollars. |
Pretty nice beach
This is a pretty nice beach we went to. |
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A lot of buddhas
This is one of my favorite rooms in China. Its wall to wall buddhas- about three hundred life-sized statues all together, and while I've seen a lot of representations of buddhas since I've been here, this is the only room where I've seen buddhas surfing, spitting, and yelling. |
Carl Marks (sic)
"Foreign Language is a weapon in the struggle of life" This was the sign posted outside a high school in KunMing. |
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Back at the beach
Here's another picture of the beach. (Thelivejournal won't let me put them in order for some reason.) Anyway, this guy's making cotton candy with the back wheel of his bicycle! This is just another example of how resourcful people can be over here. |
Jenny
Jenny and her cowboy hat. Cute. |
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The best dog in the world
On our last day in a small tourist city called LiJiang, Jenny and I decided to hike up one of the hills that border the town, and this small dog lead us all the way up. When we were lagging behind, stopped for us to catch up and showed us the path when we were lost. We decided that he was some reincarnation of one of the people that lived in the town because he kept leading us to the gravesites dotted around the hill. |
Tourists
Here's a bunch of tourists playing cards, dominoes, and MaJong by a stream. |
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Jenny's Friend John
Here's Jenny's friend John and his son. John's chinese is amazing, and his son is going to grow up bilingual. I really envy them. |
Godesses
Here's a statue of a lot of goddesses (or possible one goddess with a bunch of bodies.) Its in the center of the room with a lot of buddhas. |
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LiJiang
So here's a scenic shot of LiJiang. Its pretty. |
Didn't mean to.
I didn't mean to put this picture in twice. Sorry about that. It's almost 2 in the morning here, so maybe I'll take it off tomorrow. |
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LiJiang and the Jade Mountain
Apparently, this is the most photographed views in all of southern china. |
Ping Pong
At the airport on the way back home, everyone was enthralled by the internation ping-pong championship. It was better that the Superbowl. |
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More LiJiang
The city's name means pretty river, and here's a maid washing the hotels sheets in that river. |
Kunming College
For some reason we didn't take very many pictures while we were in Kunming, the city of eternal spring, and maybe my favorite city in China so far. It was probably because we liked it too much to stop and take a photograph. Anyway, here's me holding up a sun umbrella. |
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| | Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 | | 9:31 pm |
Woops
Well, as you may remember, there were many things that I feared about moving to China ("All the food will have nuts!"). Never once did I fear that, while blowing my nose on a paper napkin, the corner would cut into and tear my cornea and then my eye would get infected and get so swollen I wouldn't be able to open it. Yet, amazingly, this happened to me last week. I was kind of a mess and all I could do was sit in the dark and listen to the NPR show "This American Life" which I downloaded and try not to think about the fact that I wasn't doing work or that I couldn't see. And yet, the amazing Australian eye doctor who was working on a Sat. morning when Anthony led me to the clinic and Anthony's being endlessly helpful cured me. I can see!!!!! No more pain!!! Eyes are so weird. So many nerve endings! So quick to heal! So all of this is to say, we have a perfectly good excuse for not posting pictures. So there. What did I learn from all of this? I wish I could say that I learned to breathe deeply and relax and let things go, yadada, but what I really learned is that my crush on the host of "This American Life," which I have had for years, is gone. Vanished. Maybe it was the "Clockwork Orange" effect of listening to him for ten hours straight while being in such pain. Or maybe it was the sweet-lovin' care of my man. In either case, I'm doubly cured. Tomorrow Anthony and I are going to the southwest of China, a province called Yunnan, for 9 days. When we return we will have many pictures from the "land of perpetual spring." We miss you! | | Sunday, April 9th, 2006 | | 5:39 pm |
Guests
About one week ago Anthony's friend from high school, Ben, and his friend, Cindy, came to China to visit and see what all the fuss is about. It's been loads of fun having them. Cindy went home on Friday, but Ben is still gracing our living room couch. Of course, we have been very good hosts, taking them to the local sites, bargaining for them as they buy pumas that may or may not be real (well the shoes are real). Ben has been taking most of the pictures and has promised to post on this blog before he leaves, but I thought I would show a couple of very typical, daily kinds of things we've forced these two to participate in. It's strange, but having them here, I tend to find myself both acting very proud of what Beijing has to offer, and embarrassed about its flaws. I am also realizing that I have lost all sense of what could possibly considered cool in America style-wise, that things in China are very very strange, and that dumplings aren't really a breakfast food.
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Working out
Cindy and Ben stretching their legs and getting their blood flowing in the public gym the day they came to China. |
Outdoor pool
Many neighborhoods in China have outdoor pool tables. Fun fun. This is a little kiddie park right next to one of the lakes in an area called Houhai. |
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Minty!
Minty, the woman in the pink sweater, is one of my favorite people in China and in the world. We met her because she was recommended by Anthony's company as a Chinese tutor and she has tutored Anthony for several months. She is warm and funny and caring and a great teacher. Now twice a week Minty and I also get together and do a language exchange: she helps my Chinese and I help her English and we both make fun of Anthony a little behind his back. Minty also volunteers in her neighborhood teaching a group of elderly folks English (or what Chinese people consider elderly and what Americans consider middle-aged). Every couple of weeks they also have "English Corner" and this month we were the special guests. Ben, Anthony, and I each sat down with a group and talked very slowly about the date, the weather, and how many people are in our families. This is my group. |
Ben is a sport
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Ben and Anthony singing a rock version of the abc's
and dancing. I obstained. |
They were a hit
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| | Sunday, March 19th, 2006 | | 12:53 pm |
This weekend, so far
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Star and Chris
On Friday, the French Embassy brought one of my favorite bands to China: Stereo Total. They were so cute and French and it was loads of fun and free. I went with my friend Chris above, a very cool Canadian (have those words been uttered before?) who dates the very cool Star sitting next to him. Anthony met me there after work and we danced. |
How many times
can you go to the Great Wall? Many. This was time 2 for me and 3 for Anthony. The school planned a trip, so hey, why not wake up at 7 am on a Saturday and get onto bus number 11? There are many areas designated for people to go see/climb the wall, and this was one neither of us had been to yet. For some reason, the whole thing is just mind boggling. It's so big and almost silly and sad and old and remade and endless. And it is so very Chinese, I think, and yet you are surrounded by more Westerners than you've seen in weeks. And the landscape is pretty beautiful. Let's not forget that. P.S. Gaby made me the hat I'm wearing! |
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On and on
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There's a village
in between the Wall and another mountain. What are their lives like? |
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CHINAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Anthony and his kite and friend
After we got back from the wall, Anthony decided to go out and try to fly the kite I bought him for his b'day. He ended up getting lots of advice from Chinese men, young and old a like, and a little assistant to boot. |
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Yet,
he was most successful when he followed his own kite-flying instincts. |
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| | Thursday, March 9th, 2006 | | 2:28 pm |
Sorry
Sorry it's been so long since our last post! Maybe you were thinking we have been out and about, having adventures, seeing the sights, etc. Well, not really. Mainly what we have been doing in all of our free time is studying Chinese. We are obsessed with this ridiculous language and the further we go, the more we know we can never turn back. Never never never. Anthony curses me every day for introducing him to this addiction. But please don't think that when we get back to the US (in about 3 1/2 months, can you believe it!) we'll be all fluent or anything. Chinese is so hard! I won't bore you with all the details, I'll let Anthony do that in a subsequent post, but we both have a horrible suspicion that if we had decided to move to, say, Spain, we would know how to say, "He likes to play the piano." No disrespect to the Spanish speakers among you.
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Rui Fujita
Rui Fujita is a Japanese poet and painter and he just beat Anthony at pool and is drinking his prize. His wife, who is French and whose parents are Chinese, is behind him. They are a crazy couple and because it is hard for her to find work in Japan (she teaches French) and for him to find work in France (he speaks no French) China is the neutral territory where they can make their life. Rui also runs a poetry website and translated an essay I wrote on CIRCUMFERENCE for it. It was very very cool to be translated. I recommend it. |
Marina! John!
So, Anthony and I live right on campus, next to the dorms that house the students studying abroad here. We have seen this guy around a lot. We always tend to be eating at the Japanese restaurant at the same late hour. After once overhearing a conversation in which this guy used the word "wicked" I decided he must be Canadian. One night, when he was eating two tables a way, Anthony and I lamely used the word Canada as many times as we could to see if he might turn his head. No dice. Then, weeks later, we all went to the same party, thrown by a classmate of mine. John walked right over to us and said that it was about time we met. And it was. He is Canadian by the way and knew we were baiting him, smarty. Last week we, and his lovely French girlfriend Marina, all went to the American-style diner Steak-and-Eggs, a restaurant started by a Canadian when his vacation to Beijing turned into his extended quarantine in Beijing because of the SARS outbreak. How productive! |
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Huh?
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Drive in Movie Theater
Yes, really. And because most people don't have cars, they have cars there for you to sit in, which seems all turned around to me.
By the way, don't think that because we have one diner and one drive in movie theater things here are all western and easy to digest. These places are new oddities. I promise. |
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Xi Chuan
On the first nice of Spring Xi Chuan, one of China's most famous poets, gave a reading in the garden of a bookstore. I understood about 20 percent of what he said, and enjoyed every word. |
Right outside the East Gate of campus
you can buy sweet potatoes of a can on a bike, pineapples, or catch a taxi. |
| | Sunday, February 19th, 2006 | | 5:06 pm |
Takeover
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Considering
Leaving China for the first time in 5 months to go to Thailand made me aware of some of the small ways living in China is changing the way I think and the things I do. In Phuket, before we approached basically anyone to transact any business or make any sort of friendly inquiry, I still planned how I would say what I needed to in Chinese. Like I now have this weird translation program running at all times. |
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It's even happening to Anthony
The other night, Anthony was complaining that one of his students was very spoiled and to prove this he exclaimed: "And you know what, she wears different clothes every day!" Thus trying to prove that she was indeed a rich kid. |
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My first Chinese Joke
I was chatting with the unlicensed cab driver who brings me to Kung Fu training every week about cars. He asked me about mine and I told him about the 1980 Audi 4000 that Anthony bought us last Spring. I told the Shufu that I cried when I said goodbye to the car when leaving the USA. He laughed hysterically. Somehow, I knew, that in Chinese, this would be very very funny. Laugh out loud funny. It also happens to be true. |
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And yet
I am still a doubting American who once lived in the "Show Me State," known for people who have to be shown something to believe it. There are a lot of "facts" you hear here that are just impossible, and I still can't just jump in and believe. "You can see the Great Wall from space." "This is the third largest suspension bridge in the world." "There are 20 million people living in Beijing." All I can do is find the Great Wall beautiful and leave it at that. |
| | Sunday, February 12th, 2006 | | 12:26 pm |
CIRCUMFERENCE
Yay! After many many months of work, trials and tribulations, joys and victories, the new issue of CIRCUMFERENCE is out in the world. And, if I do say so myself, it's a beauty. (In case you didn't know, a couple of years ago Stefania Heim and I founded CIRCUMFERENCE, a journal of poetry in translation that publishes all work in the original language and in translation! We are also lucky enough to have the talented Dan Visel designing it.) From the beginning, Stefania and I have been so grateful for all the support our family and friends give to the journal. We couldn't do it without you guys. And, being in China, I am also so thankful that Stefania and her family have been sending these puppies into the world, among doing other things. But now, I have to say, that if you have never read an issue, or are not a subscriber, you are missing out. Really, I'm not just saying that because I'm the co-editor. (Anthony said that I should say, "If you love me, then you will subscribe." I considered saying, "If you like reading about my international life, then you should read my international magazine, or else." But I am not going to go there.) You will like the poems in CIRCUMFERENCE. Even if you don't like poetry! (See illustrations of said experience below.) So, thanks for the ongoing and loving support. It means a lot to me. I happen to be very much in love with this project and it's nice to have so many people involved. If you want to subscribe or learn more, go to www.circumferencemag.com. You can hit on the circle and then "subscriptions." Love, Jenny
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Hmmm
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Heheheh
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Wha!!!???!!!!
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Wowsa!
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Argg!
proofreading Russian is hard |
Don't you wanna be friends with CIRCUMFERENCE?
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| | Monday, February 6th, 2006 | | 11:25 pm |
Back from Thailand
Well, we're back. Thailand was a really great trip and we would suggest it to anyone. We had too much fun to take very many pictures, but here's what we got. Enjoy.
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Anthony in the sea
That little head in the distance. |
Utter laziness
Phuket was really beautiful. You would come across these amazing views of ocean and mountains. We found this beach on our last day and had to climb down to it on a rocky path. Then, we sat and swam and drank fresh mango shakes. Taking this picture I was actually too lazy to get off my chair and walk closer to the beach so as to avoid photographing an umbrella. Seeing as how A and I took hardly any pictures the whole trip, I thought showing something would be better than nothing. |
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Motorbike
When we were in Phuket, we rented motorbikes and that is how we got around the island. Fun fun. Especially when Anthony starting singing Bruce Springsteen as we zoomed around. |
Snorkling
One of the days we were in Phuket, we decided to go on a snorkling trip. A guy picked us up in a van and we went with about ten other people onto a speedy boat that first took us to a coral reef. I had never been snorkling before and it was just amazingly fun and beautiful and wonderful. The fish were all different colors and sizes and were everywhere. Then we went to a tiny island with a beach and relaxed and then to another island with an even better coral reef. The coral was alive and was bright green and pink and weird huge slug animals and black spiky ones and urchins lived within it and it was so close to use we had to skim the surface of the water very carefully. The fish were amazing. Then Anthony saw a shark but because fear doesn't hit me until about a day too late, I kept swimming around with the fishies. The picture above in no way represents what we saw and is a filler for what you will just have to imagine. |
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Jim Thompson House
Here I am, thinking about and staring at more fish in the garden of the Jim Thompson house in Bangkok. Jim Thompson was an American architect who came to Thailand when he was in the army and fell in love. He reinvigorated the Thai silk trade and had an amazing home which he build by dismantling and then connecting traditional, centuries old Thai homes from around the country. He had a lot of nice stuff and Anthony was envious of his taste. |
On this trip
we took a plane, a speed boat, a two seater tuk tuk (a taxi without windows and with two longish seats facing each other), a motorbike, a car, a three-wheel tuk tuk, and a public transportation ferry on the river in Bangkok, which is what Gwynn is on in this picture right here. |
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A big Buddha
This is the biggest Buddha in the world. |
At a Buddhist temple
Gwynn and I bask in the gold. Gwynn knows what all the poses represent and was willing to tell me all about it, for which I am grateful. |
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More fun at the Buddhist temple
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and more
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and more
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And even more
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Tongta!
One great thing about Thailand is all the street food. At one point, Gwynn and Anthony and I had about an hour to kill, just then a swarm of middle school students in uniforms surrounded us and, more importantly, went snack crazy over the different stalls and carts we had hardly noticed. I followed the kids around and bought exactly what they did and then made Gwynn and Anthony eat it all. They said it was amazing. I was afraid of having allergies. But later that night we met up with my friend from TC who is teaching in Bangkok and we all went out to dinner, at a street-restaurant and Tongta did the talking so I could eat everything and it was terrific. She also happens to be a fun and interesting girl. You gotta love a country where they sell fruit on the street everywhere and kids line up to eat it.
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| | Sunday, January 29th, 2006 | | 1:35 am |
Happy New Year  So today is the Chinese New Year. Its the year of the dog. Its also the first time in fifteen years that Beijingers have been allowed to celebrate New Year's by lighting fireworks. The government finally came to its senses and realized that a few blown off hands and burned down buildings shouldn't keep people from celebrating, and I completely agree. Tonight was really awesome. It blew any Fourth of July firework display in the US out of the water because everyone was in on it. The entire city was one big firework show.
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The Drum Tower
To celebrate the New Year, we visited the Drum and Bell Towers in the heart of Beijing. These two towers were the timekeepers of the city back in the old days. Inside is a collection of pretty ingenious clocks and strange, poorly translated essays on the nature of time. |
The Bell Tower
Here's a view of the Bell Tower taken from the drum tower. Pretty. |
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Fireworks.
This picture doesn't really do tonight's spectacular any justice. For about sixteen straight hours there was an uninterrupted orgy of fireworks. |
More Fireworks
Everyone was lighting them, and in a city of around fifteen million people that's going to make a lot of noise. As I write this, its 2am, and it still sounds like the city is being ripped apart. I love it. |
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Lanterns
Before coming to China, I suspected that things like red lanterns in front of Chinese restaurants were phony. I was wrong. Red lanterns are really big over here, and for New Year's, there were even more of them. |
Jiaozi
Aside from fireworks and red lanterns, you're supposed to eat jiaozi (dumplings) on the Chinese New Year. You can't beat pork and cabbage. |
P.S. Next week is a holiday for all of China, so Jenny and I are celebrating by leaving China and going to Thailand. We'll be back in a week with lots of pictures of Bangkok and Phuket. | | Monday, January 23rd, 2006 | | 6:42 pm |
Harbin and back
This weekend Anthony and I went to Harbin with our friends Cara, Michael, and Emma. Harbin is a city in the north of China (an area that was formerly Manchuria) and is about 200 miles from Siberia. (It takes about ten hours to get there by train from Beijing.) Why Harbin? Why in the dead of winter? Why us? I could say that the city's interesting history drew me: many Russians fled to Harbin in the nineteen teens, which was when Harbin became a city, and the city is an amazing mix of Russian, European, and Chinese architecture and culture. Most of the Russians who went were Jewish and there was a thriving Jewish community there for about 40 years. I could say that I wanted to see another Chinese city to better understand how cities work here. I could have been drawn to the Germ Warfare Base that the Japanese army set up when they controlled the area and which is now a museum, or lured by the Flood Control Monument. But the truth is, I saw a picture of an ice sculpture in a magazine from Harbin's two-month-long ice festival, and then I had to go. Ice! In cool shapes and designs! Lit up! I think maybe Emma saw the same picture and we were both infected with the desire to see how much cold we could take to see some pretty ice. I have to say, it wasn't too hard to convince Cara and Michael and Anthony that they too would like to see ice. It was a pretty amazing trip, especially considering that I often lost feeling in my toes.
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Clothes
We had to wear a lot of clothes at all times. Buried underneath the layers are Emma, Anthony, Michael, and Cara. (If you breathe without a mask, your nose hair freezes!) |
Songhua River
The entire river that the city is situated along freezes and a section is turned into an ice amusement area where you can: 1. walk on ice! 2. hit a big weird top with a whip to keep it spinning on the ice! 3. fall on the ice! |
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4. Ride down a slide of ice
on a sled with Anthony protecting you while you scream! |
5. Ride in a horsedrawn buggy on the ice!
(we skipped this one) |
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Russian restaurant
We spent our time rotating between cold and food, cold and food, which is a really nice way to spend a weekend! |
That Emma
Everyone is leaving Beijing at this time of the year to go home for the "Spring Festival" so traffic is a nightmare. When the last chance to board our train to Harbin came, Emma was still trapped with a passive cabdriver about a mile away, and I had her ticket. In my bad Chinese I told the ticket taker that my red-haired friend was coming and the tt told me to get on the train and that she would let my friend on without a ticket, I think. Then, Michael and I stood by the train door waiting to see if she would make it. I started to wonder, "Does she have red hair? Do Chinese people also call orange hair red? What did the ticket taker actually say to me?" Right before the train started to move I saw a group of people run onto a different car, but they all looked like Chinese men. We were crestfallen. No Emma? We called her, and yes, she had pushed herself into the group of Harbin natives returning home for the holidays who successfully begged to get on the train, and yes, the ticket taker said to let her get on! But now that we've had so much fun in Harbin, she is still returning to the US, possibly for good. The nerve. |
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This is Ice World!
That castle is made of ice!!! (That's me inside the layers.) |
Ice Buddha
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Ice Peanuts
I don't know why, but there were many ice sculptures of the Peanuts and one of the Peanuts movies was being projected (in Chinese, which was just weird) in the center of the ice park. The park itself, to me, epitomizes China: it was impressive and beautiful and gaudy and impossible to believe. We climbed up a castle of ice. |
Synagogue
Without even trying we found two synagogues. One is now a school, and one has an amazing and amazingly well-funded exhibit on the history of Jews in Harbin (and in general, and there was a film on Israel). Jews in Harbin were among the first to export soybeans to Europe. In the exhibition there was a wall of photos of famous, impressive Jews. Kafka was on there twice! |
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The Church of St. Sophia
Built in 1907 |
The street our hotel was on
It is easy to forget where you are when you keep looking up to see Russian and Art Deco architecture. |
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Saloon
I leave you with this: every salon we saw in Harbin was called a "Saloon" in English. There is an entire city in China, a city of 3 million people, that thinks one always gets one's hair cut in a saloon. |
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| | Monday, January 16th, 2006 | | 12:04 am |
How I Lost My Hair
  So, as Jenny says, you don't always get to decide in China. China decides for you. First of all, salons/barbershops are very, very different here than they are in the US. One big difference is that they're open til around midnight, sometimes later. They're also fairly ubiquitous. My block alone has at least ten salons, which is weird because they're empty most of the time. They also offer a wide variety of massages- from scalp to full body. And so, as near as I can tell, there seems to be a very, very blurry line in Beijing between barbershops and brothels. I'm not really sure on which side of that line the place I got my previous haircuts fell, but you have to be a little suspicious when a salon keeps you waiting as the three girls who work there find the guy that can cut hair. Suffice it to say, the place gave me the creeps. I also felt that maybe it was time to move on from the $1.50 haircut to the fancier $4.00 one offered at the higher end salons. So today, after work, I went to one of Beijing's more expensive and clearly legitimate places near the school where I teach. It didn't turn out well. Now that I look back on it, my first two haircuts turned out relatively well, especially considering that I barely speak Chinese. Even in English I have a hard time telling anyone what I want done to my hair. So when the hairdresser at the old place asked what kind of haircut I wanted, I just said, "I want my hair a little shorter." Amazingly, this worked fine. At the new place, the hairdresser understood this to mean, "Shorter! I want a little hair." He turned on the clippers, and in a second, I had an inverse mohawk. I still don't know why he took such a big leap with so little information, but there was no turning back from that. It took about two minutes, and my hair cut was finished. And once the hair was gone, the mustache had to go. Though I really loved it, there was no choice but to shave it off. I don't know exactly why, but you just can't be a preschool teacher with a mustache and a shaved head. It shouldn't be allowed. So, that's the story of how I lost my mustache. It was a good one while it lasted. | | Friday, January 13th, 2006 | | 6:31 pm |
| | Thursday, January 5th, 2006 | | 4:18 pm |
links
Hello all, Some links and stuff in case you are at your desk at work and are dying to learn more about starting a business in China, Chinese, or Yiddish. (One of these things is not like the other ones.) My friend Matt from Kung Fu is starting an intensive Chinese language school in Beijing that focuses on conversational Chinese. He has created a blog about what its like starting a business in China. Here is the address: http://www.livejournal.com/~chinaschool/And here is a link to his Chinese School website which has a Chinese learning directory and links to Kung Fu websites: www.1monthchinese.com/Chinese_Learning_Directory.htmlAlso, remember when I was writing my masters thesis for applied linguistics and was talking with lots of nice little old ladies about Yiddish and then picking apart what they said? The paper was recently published online and you can read it here: www.tc.columbia.edu/academic/tesol/Webjournal/Off to grade some more papers. Love, J | | Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 | | 8:05 pm |
A New Year
China!!!! This is what we sometimes yell to express our deep but fleeting frustration being foreign in this foreign country. Vinay had many occasions to yell China when he went off on his own to take a trip deeper into the country, changing from bus to cold bus, seeing lots of coal, and being warned against thieves after refusing a strange stack. Although in the last legs of his journey through Shanxi he was befriended by Chinese college students who fed him and introduced him to lots of girls, it may have been "too little too late, Shanxi." Luckily, back in Beijing, we eagerly awaited his return and our chance to redeem the country in Vinay's eyes while still not really making New Years plans. It's just not celebrated here!
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Aaaah
To celebrate the impending new year, we ate a Western style brunch and then decided to be really really cold in Beihai park. |
This is fun
The lake in the park froze over and now they rent these little slippery ice sleds and poles. I have to say, it's actually more fun than it looks. It's ice-skating meets bumper cars, all for around a dollar. You can even build up some speed. |
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Sometimes the bus breaks down
and everyone has to get out and push. |
Friends of friends
A friend of Gwynn's asked her let a friend of a friend who is visiting Beijing sleep on her couch. This friend of friend of friend, Kristin, just happened to grow up in NYC and to have graduated from the University of Chicago and be traveling with two others who share both my accent and strange love of calculus. Of course we all had to sing a lot of Karaoke together and then the next day go see where the Empress Dowager lived: The Summer Palace. Mio is in the red hat. Kristin is coy with a scarf, and Gerry is off being the star of DVD that teaches slang to Chinese people. Today he is teaching them Yiddish words. No joke. |
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Photo Op
Sometimes Chinese tourists in Beijing want to have their picture taken with us. |
Anthony and Vinay ordered
deep fried spicy worms and ate them. I did not. Gwynn, Mio, and Gerry did. I do not regret having missed out. |
| | Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 | | 5:39 pm |
Festivities
Happy Holidays everyone! Here in Beijing there are Santas and x-mas decorations up everywhere but no one celebrates x-mas by taking the day off work or madly shopping, so our holidays have been pretty low key. The best thing is that our friend Vinay has been visiting us. He was an amazing host to us when we went to visit him a year ago in Japan, where he has lived for the past four years, so we've been trying very hard to reciprocate. Vinay takes a lot of the blame for my meeting Anthony. In case you don't know the story, a couple of years ago, I mean 5 and half years ago, I went on a road trip with my friend Kathleen and celebrated its completion with a party at my apartment. I invited my high school friend Mike Welt, who invited his roommate and friend from college, Vinay, who invited his roommate at the time, Anthony, who crashed my party, flirted with me and then moved with me to China.
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Iwate
This is us in Japan. Vinay (right below Anthony) took us to a town in the north where he used to live so we could eat these yummy cabbage pancakes and soak in hot springs. I imagine the hot springs in China as where new illnesses come to be born, so we had to think think think. |
Guitar
Since Vinay's arrival to our living room, there has been a new soundtrack to my life. I received the Santa hat Anthony is wearing when I had to wear it while singing "Jingle Bells" along with ten other English teachers in front of 200 Chinese professors and retired professors at my University luncheon. We were given about five minutes notice. |
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Brazil
Every couple of weeks someone in the Chinese class I am taking plans a trip to a restaurant featuring the cuisine of their country. Here we are at a Brazilian restaurant. All the Brazilian girl could say between excited bites was "meat."Behind Vinay in the background is my scary listening comprehension teacher. To his right is an adorable girl from Brussels. |
Lingua Franca
At these parties the language we all have in common is Chinese, and we all know the same exact words so it's pretty easy to communicate, as long as we don't want to talk about the meaning of life, politics, anything we've read, or countries other than the ones we are from. However, Vinay had to show up and speak French to the girl from Brussels, Japanese to the Japanese girls, and then go on to greet the above in Indonesian and Tagalog. Not that I'm jealous. |
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Karaoke
Cara was born on December 24th, so here we are celebrating x-mas and the birth of Cara by singing our lungs out. |
French Party
The French woman I tutor invited us to her apartment for a Christmas Eve party and it was really wonderful. Lots of terrific food, of course, and interesting people, and Vinay again with the French and the Japanese. A funny coincidence was that the lead singer of Brain Failure was there (see below post). He is married to a French gallery owner and they have a son who is half punk-rock half-French. When I told him I had seen his band play on my B'day he was very unfazed. |
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For some reason
the hallway outside the French apartment was a holodeck and turned us all into holograms in a Kubrick film. |
I'm preparing you
Okay, sure, these girls are cute. But there is actually nothing cuter in the whole world than seeing little kids run up to Anthony screaming "Anthony!! Anthony!!!" as he arrives at the second largest mall in the world to lead his students in a Christmas performance in the Mall's atrium. I almost threw up. |
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Rehearsal
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Oh my goodness
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How did this happen?
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| | Monday, December 19th, 2005 | | 3:05 pm |
Aging Gracefully
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A great guy
Most of you probably already know this, but this guy right here is pretty terrific. Today I'm turning 30, and to help me grow old in style, Anthony planned a surprise trip to Shanghai for the weekend. We just got back this morning and the trip was fantastic. I'm ready for a new decade. (He took a nap at the hotel because entertaining me can be really exhausting.) |
Spinning Jenny
Growing old in style often entails riding in one of those spinning teacups in the freezing cold for 25 cents. |
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Tai Chi
Hm, or maybe it entails doing Tai Chi at rediculously early hours in the even more freezing cold. Alas, not for me. |
Whisked Away in a Taxi
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Anthony convinced me
to go to a punk show and it was pretty awesome. |
Brain Failure
Brain Failure Rocked. |
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We took a boat ride on the river
The old and the new China. You never see one without the other. |
Coal vs. Glass
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Captain Anthony
What is he thinking? |
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