The Qianling Park Debacle

Our school bosses had an idea that perhaps sounds good in theory: have
the Saturday morning classes in Qianling Park- this is the park I have
been to a couple times that has monkeys. It was really meant to be
promotional more than anything, the idea being that random passersby
would see us and sign up their children for our school.

So I racked my brain for ideas to do outdoors and prepared materials-
including making trail mix and going to the small zoo at the park. It
rains a lot in Guiyang, so the weather was touchy from the start. I
woke up early on Saturday to check out the weather, and it looked
quite rainy. I thought it would definitely be canceled, but then Matt
told me that it wasn't so we all headed to the park.

We met up with our kids. About half of my class showed, and I decided
to take them to the zoo. The ground was wet so I didn't want to sit on
the floor anyways. We walked the 15 minute walk to the zoo, stopping
along the way as I asked questions about animals we spotted. My
personal advice would be to avoid zoos in China- they tend to be sad
with small cages, and immediately all my kids complained about the
smell.

They were pretty good sports, I have to say. But then it began to rain
quite heavily. We hid under an umbrella- we only had about 3 umbrellas
between us, by the way- and walked around a bit more. By this time we
were all completely soaked, basically, and then we headed back.

By the time my class had returned to the entrance of the park,
everyone else had left. We made sure that my kids were all on their
way home, and got a ride back to school with my student. Of course,
the traffic was terrible so I arrived 20 minutes late, quickly changed
(the other guys taught in their wet clothes), and ran to teach my next
class. I still made trail mix with them indoors.

So it's been a crazy weekend. And I'm pretty exhausted.

Sunny Guiyang Days

It seems that the last few Mondays have been gloriously sunny, while
the Tuesdays tend to be lackluster in terms of weather. It happened
again this week, and usually I want to spend most of Monday
sleeping/recovering from the weekend. But I didn't want to waste a
nice, hot, summery day so I went out to walk around.

I thought perhaps with my sunglasses it would be less obvious that I
was a foreigner, but I was one of the few girls not carrying an
umbrella. In China you are going to see more umbrellas on a sunny day
than a rainy day, and the sort of pretty, lacy umbrellas not intended
to keep out water. All the women want whiter skin and are afraid of
getting a tan. It was the type of day where at Bryn Mawr, everyone
would be sunbathing in the grass.

I sat out on the balcony of a cafe and later, sat at the Wen Chang Ge
Pavilion across from the school. Kids were flying kites and sliding
down these flat slabs next to the stairs (or trying to run up them and
sliding back down). It was so nice to sit in the sun. I'm reading a
book I borrowed from Matt, "You Will Know Our Velocity" by Dave
Eggers. I like reading travel books (like "Eat, Pray, Love"), and this
book is quite weird and quite good. It has a lot of those little
details that world travelers notice. Like he talks about seeing a
house in Senegal with a random "Indiana University" umbrella outside.
You see lots of weird stuff like that- once I saw a guy wearing a
University of Arizona t-shirt and flipped out. He, of course, had no
idea what Arizona was.

This Saturday we are having our morning classes at Qianling Park. I
think it's more promotional than anything- they hope random passers-by
will see us teaching our classes and want to come to our school. Let's
hope for good weather.

I've found iTunes podcasts a good, lazy way to keep in touch with the
world. And NPR has an awesome one I've recently discovered called
"Tiny Desk Concerts." Sort companion to "All Songs Considered." They
are just live performances filmed in the office at a desk. I think of
them as "Tiny Desk Concerts" in that I play them on my tiny computer
at my desk, and it feels like someone is performing in my room (with
my speakers, I get excellent quality sound). They have a great variety
of music- the expected bearded indie types to fantastic world music.
The video is really great for artists like Abaji who bring along some
weird instruments. I recommend checking out Abaji, Tarrus Riley, and
Brooklyn Rider for some good fusion with world music.

Xijiang Photos

For more photos: http://s978.photobucket.com/albums/ae268/mobrien86/Xijiang%20Miao%20Village/

Xijiang: Miao Village Trip

Chris's birthday was Saturday, the worst possible to day to celebrate
a birthday since we work 12+ hour days. We decided to get away this
weekend as something exciting for his birthday (our weekend being
Monday and Tuesday). Chris, chris's girlfriend Jolene, Garry, Maja and
I went on the adventure. Guizhou is home to the majority of the Miao
and Dong minorities in China, and we decided to visit a Miao village.

We left on Monday, and after going to the wrong bus station, we got on
a bus to Kaili. Kaili is about two and a half hours away from Guiyang
and the jumping off point for visiting minority villages. . After that
it was another hour to Xijiang, the Miao village. It was a winding,
scenic road with lots of farmland, rolling hills, rice paddies, and
Miao and Dong minority homes and people.

It was a bit different to what I expected- there was a large entrance
and an entrance fee to get into the village. Sort of like Disneyland
or something. And lots of English signs everywhere, so clearly they at
least want it to be a tourist attraction. Yet still, we were in a
farming village with oxen and roosters wandering around, and
schoolkids playing basketball. It wasn't very crowded at all, and as
ever foreigners were more of sight than the girls in full Miao dress,
so we are in a lot of pictures with random Chinese people. Similar to
Qingyan, there were lots of souvenir type shops- Miao silver and
batiks and handicrafts.

There were plenty of hotels so we grabbed some rooms in a completely
wooden building. The walls were so thin we could talk to each other
despite being in our separate rooms. And we had little balconies with
a view of the wooden houses behind us.

We ate dinner on a balcony- the weather was really nice and warm. We
ate some delicious Miao food while watching the sunset over the
fields. We walked around and had some drinks. As I've mentioned often,
Guiyang is incredibly loud so it was night to be out in the dark,
quiet countryside.

Today Maja and I woke up a bit early and naturally, some crazy old
woman pulled us into her home video/family photos. We did some silver
shopping, and then heard music so wandered to watch a show of singing
and dancing in the traditional garb.

We had lunch at a place that had been rollicking at dinner the night
before. We ate on another balcony. Then we got a Miao toast- the women
sang, the men played the large pipes (you gotta just look at the
pictures, they're crazy looking), and women literally fed us rice
wine- we're guessing Miao rice wine of the town.

Unfortunately the last bus back today was at 3:30- or we could have
left early tomorrow. It would have been nice to stay another night but
we ended up making the journey back this afternoon. At any rate, it
was a nice trip and it got us excited to do more short trips around
the province for a change of scene.

I'll be posting pictures online and you'll see the scenery- it really
looks like the images that pop into your head when you think of China:
the rice paddies, the rolling green countryside. Although it's sort of
a strange juxtaposition when you see the traditional Miao wooden
houses that all have satellite dishes.

Useful iPod Touch Apps

Before I came to China, I bought an iPod Touch, which is basically an
iPhone without the phone part. I saw that it could be a useful travel
tool, and it has really been since I got it. I even did most of my
vacation blogging from it. Besides the music and movies, you can get
on the internet anywhere that has wireless (most youth hostels seem to
have free wireless these days). It has an international clock and an
easy to use calculator. The best part are the apps, some of which are
free and some that you can buy. As I have switched Chinese teachers
I'm trying to get myself more into studying Chinese for the next few
months. Here are my most useful apps:

For Teaching:
-I got Dictionary.com's free dictionary and thesaurus app (free). I
mostly have been using this in my high level Reading and Writing
class. I try to do everything in English with as little
English-Chinese translation as possible. This helps me describe more
difficult words, and the the thesaurus is surprisingly useful for
this. Or when the students are trying to describe a word to me.
-KTdict C-E: This is a free Chinese-English and English-Chinese
dictionary I got. You can type in English, pinyin, or write out the
character. I use this as a last resort, usually in my reading and
writing class that has younger students. I can let them type a word to
look it up, which is faster than a real dictionary or asking a staff
member. Some Chinese words really have no exact English translation
though and vice-versa, so this can be tricky.

For Studying Chinese:
-iLearn Chinese Characters: Sadly there's only a free Lite version,
though I'd gladly pay for an app with more characters. This is
awesome! It has the character, audio pronunciation, pinyin, and a
short history of why or how the character came about (from a pictogram
or whatever). It's fascinating and it helps me remember the characters
better. Then it has an animation of the stroke order, which is really
important for learning Chinese. And you can practice writing with your
finger.
-Dragon Scribe: This is cool- it's a game for practicing writing. The
characters fall and you have to write them correctly before they reach
the bottom. There's a free version, full version, and pro version.
-Chinese FlashCards (Declan software ((not my brother)): This has sets
of flashcards with audio (and both simplified and traditional
characters if you're into that). It has several different ways to
review the words and it was my favorite of the flashcard programs I
tried.
-Bigram: I have the Lite version, which I think will be more useful
when get more advanced into sets of 2 characters (bigrams). Anyways,
kind of a cool way to study, has audio, and the free version has 50
bigrams.
-eStroke Animated Chinese Characters: Both a dictionary and study tool
for writing (no audio). Shows the stroke order and has all the
characters.

I guess you can tell I am trying to get into writing characters. I
have enjoyed the bit of calligraphy I've done, and writing the
characters can be fun. I bought some composition books to practice my
writing in, with big squares, which all have Disney characters-
clearly intended for very young children.

Qianling Park Photos

I am trying to get all my photos organized on the sidebar of my blog. So there you will find a link to a Photobucket album with my Qianling Park photos!

Monkeys Monkeys Everywhere!

Maja and I continued having lessons with my 3 Chinese teachers this
semester. However, they are seniors and now it's graduation time. So
we are changing to a new teacher.

Today, one of my former teacher Xiang Juan, who I can now call by her
English name Jenny, invited me to go to Qianling Park with her. Jenny
now works at a different English school quite nearby ours. This week
has been a national holiday. However I think we're the only English
school that got no days off for the holiday! Jenny got 9 days off, so
we decided to go the park today. It was busy with lots of old people
dancing and singing, and families taking pictures with the monkeys.

I like hanging out with Jenny because she's fun and she always tells
me to bring my camera and take lots of pictures. So I will try to post
them up today. We decided against climbing up the mountain at the park
because it was hot and sticky today. I love how even at the park you
still see all range of outfits- plenty of women clambering around the
park in high heels, mini skirts, and tights.

Then we decided to go shopping. We went to a pedestrian overpass. It's
this huge labyrinth of little shops, popular with the university
students, and Jenny bargained for me so we got some cheap prices. As
ever, we couldn't find shoes anywhere big enough to fit me. When I
told one of my favorite students, Mike, my shoe size, he said "You can
buy men's shoes." Thanks Mike.

We had the very Guiyang food- siwawa- for lunch. Little thin pancakes
that you filll up with whichever vegetables you want and eat, sort of
like a little taco.