Qingyan II and Lots of Dumplings

A couple of weeks ago, Matt and I got bored of Guiyang and decided to
go to Qingyan ancient town, which I went to with my Chinese teachers a
few months ago. We managed to find the right buses on our own,
somehow, and got there within the hour. It wasn't as crowded as last
time I went, although there was a group of foreign tourists there-
some old French people, which was the most foreigners I'd seen since
vacation.

We skipped on the famous pig's feet of Qingyan, which are everywhere
there, but I did get the strangely delicious rose flavored pudding
that I had last time. We did some shopping (okay, Matt watched me do
some shopping), and I showed off my archery skills. Qingyan has a nice
change of scenery from the city- it's more country fields and karst
mountains.

Last Tuesday, Huang Min and Maosi, our bosses, decided to have all the
Chinese and foreign staff over to their apartment for dinner. Huang
Min was making dumplings. Their house is outside of the city in a more
suburban area I haven't been to before. Anyways, it was pretty fun to
hang out with everyone from school. and then more dumplings...

For our Chinese lesson last Thursday Yang Haiying taught Maja and I
how to cook dumplings. First we went shopping for the ingredients.
This is one of the those things where shopping is incredibly different
than America. We bought the vegetables down a little alleyway, which
led us to a huge underground building full of fresh meat, which is
where we bought the pork. We bought the dough pre-made so if I try to
recreate this at home I'm going to have to figure out how to make the
dough.

Then we cooked at the cafe area in the school. We made pork and spring
onion and pork and cabbage dumplings. They turned out pretty well, I
think. Hopefully I can bring a bit of Chinese cooking skills home with
me.

This week is open classes, which means parents can come and watch. So
all we have to do is survive this week

Restless

I have been getting restless. We tried to plan some kind of weekend
getaway but it fell through. I am planning on some kind of trip soon
though. Things are getting too routine around here, which I never
like. My schedule makes it a bit more difficult to travel then the
others, since I have class on Wednesday. Still, I could go away late
Sunday night or early Monday and return by Wednesday afternoon in time
to teach. There are a few places close by- Anshun and Zunyi are a
couple of hours away by bus. Chongqing is a city that's about 6 hours
by bus. I'm also looking into flying, especially if no one else can
get it together, I might just go myself. Kunming, the capital of
Yunnan, is about a two hour flight away, and Chengdu is about one hour
away by plane.

Otherwise, things will be a bit stressful: we have to write mid-term
progress reports already for our students, then we have open classes
where the parents come to watch. This weekend, a few of my classes
were filmed. I guess they are going to put some videos on the school
website.

I will leave you with the music of Akbar Abliz:
http://www.myspace.com/akbarabliz. He is from Xinjiang and does a lot
of fusion with traditional Xinjiang music/rock/flamenco which I think
is pretty cool. I really like folk music fusion with rock, or with
other types of folk music. At one of our Xinjiang restaurants here,
they like to watch music videos on their computer which sound much
more Middle Eastern than Chinese to my ears. Xinjiang culture is
pretty inresting and the food, at least from my sampling here, is
fantastic.

Megan's Guiyang Tips

Not very many people have Guiyang as a travel destination, but who
knows? Maybe someone is coming here and they'll stumble across this.
At any rate, I've been collecting the weird Guiyang tidbits to share.

1. If you don't like spicy food the first thing you should learn to
say in Chinese is "bu la jiao" (which sounds more like "boo la jow (as
in ow!)"). These chilies are a different kind of spicy, and they tend
to use lots here.
2. The buses here are 1 kuai, so get your single bills ready. And be
prepared to stand on a jerky, crowded, squeaky bus.
3. When you ask a local when rush hour is, they say something like
"between 7 am and 10 am, and between 4 pm and 11 pm." Which seems
insane right? My experience is getting a taxi between 5-6 pm never
seems to work out. The taxi drivers won't pick you up if they're
changing shifts either.
4. Be careful what meats you eat- you might accidentally eat dog one day.
5. Locals here drink beer out of shot glasses. Another important
Chinese word- "gambei" (or gawm bay) means "Bottoms up!" or "down it."
If people seem to be shouting angrily at each other they're probably
playing a drinking game. They love drinking games here- especially
number/dice games.
6. In the city it's incredibly noisy with nonstop horn honking, metal
clanking, music, fireworks...you name it. And yes this often includes
late into the night and/or early morning hours.
7. That grey gooey substance in those "special Guiyang noodles" your
Chinese friends are always buying you is coagulated blood.
8. If you get on a mini bus and you are standing, you will probably
have to duck whenever you pass an intersection with police.
9. Those glass pyramids aren't the Louvre but the underground
Wal-mart. Sidenote: Strangely enough I'm now used to Wal-Mart with
piles of frozen chicken feet on sale (or were those duck feet?) and
samples of tea on the way in.
10. Baijiu, the local specialty liquor (famous brand: Maotai, from
Guizhou province), tastes about as close to rubbing alcohol as you can
get. According to Wikipedia, during Nixon's state visit Henry
Kissinger said "if we drink enough Maotai we can solve anything." That
explains a lot actually....
11. Hang around Guiyang long enough and you might say something like
my friend Chris said, "I now not only eat brain but I know how I like
my brain cooked."
12. Look for Xinjiang restaurants and you must try handmade noodles,
and some "naan" bread. Don't forget that Xingjiang people are Muslim
and so you can't buy alcoholic beverages at their restaurants, and no
pork.
13. Try one of the bean hot pots. It's almost like Mexican food in
some weird way,
mixing your beans and rice and soup.

That's all for now. Someday maybe I'll put together more of a travel
guide. It's sadly lacking. After about a week in Guiyang I felt I
could write a better guide than the Lonely Planet one.

Happy Birthday to Everyone!

Wow I can't believe that March is almost over! It's seriously flown by.

We've had Matt's birthday, Garry's birthday is Friday, and our friend
Weiyi's birthday was last week. Then we have Philip and Chris's coming
up soon. So lots of spring birthday parties.

Weiyi had her party at a French bar, believe it or not. Four or five
real live French people work at this bar, owned by a French woman.
Weiyi is Matt's former Chinese teacher and briefly worked at the
school. She's actually learning French and her goal is to be a Chinese
teacher in French. It was a fun night.

Last night we went to Garry and Chris's apartment to celebrate Garry's
23rd. Matt and I managed to find champagne for Garry's birthday gift.

Otherwise I've been busy lesson planning and teaching. Actually
yesterday I went shopping at the mall near school where I often get
coffee. There are some really nice small boutique type shops there-
like an Anthropologie style of clothes. I also ate lunch at a cafe,
where I had a duck, egg, and cheese sandwich. It was fantastic!

My current favorite TV shows- Bones, Psych, and Glee, are all on some
kind of hiatus right now. I got into American Idol in the Philippines
when I had cable TV so I've been keeping up with that (at least going
with my musical theme from Glee).

Here in China the internet is censored, and I can't even read my own
blog. But one cool thing we do have is Google music China, which is a
website where you can download music legally for free. They don't have
a lot of the newest or less popular artists but they do have quite a
lot. It makes it easy to expand my musical horizons. It's great for
classical music as well. I tend to go through phases with music right
now and currently I'm in a powerful female singer mode, more on the
soul side, so if anyone has any suggestions I'm up for it (last week I
was in Rolling Stones mode so clearly this changes a lot).

Carpe Diem

When I was in Singapore, my random missionary/massage therapist friend
Bernie asked me, "What's your life goal? Do you want to climb Mount
Everest?" Now, see, the thing is, I have no desire to climb Mount
Everest. My friend Paige runs marathons. I admire her, but I have no
desire to run marathons either. Many of my friends are working toward
PhDs. I'd rather climb Mount Everest or run a marathon than go back to
school.

I gave the question some thought, but I think I already knew the
answer. I want to learn to surf. Now, this may come as a surprise
since I live nowhere near an ocean currently. Also because I grew up
in the desert. But if you've ever been with me to the ocean, you
probably aren't shocked at all because you know you can't get me out
of the waves. I usually body surf. Boogie boarding was fun when I was
little, but it's too easy. To body surf, you have to throw yourself
into the waves at exactly the right moment to catch a ride. Too big a
wave at the wrong moment and you're tumbling around feeling like
you'll never come up for air again. But I'll stay out there as long as
it takes to get a ride.

My goal now is to go to Indonesia after my contract is up here in
China. I've wanted to go to Indonesia for some time, and it's probably
one of the cheaper places to get surfing lessons in the world. This is
on my way to Australia, ideally, to see my friends there. Well, and
it's no coincidence that these two countries are known for gorgeous
beaches and great surfing.

Plus, this is probably the one life goal that I have that will inspire
me to get in shape (as the poster of inspirational quotes in our dorm
room said last year: don't be a fatty.) It will also be nice to have
something to look forward to, since there are no big vacations left.

Boracay Photos

Page 1:http://www.xoopit.com/s/2142bx0urqqive09s27t
Page 2:http://www.xoopit.com/s/2142bx0urqqiv3b2qhio
Page 3: http://www.xoopit.com/s/2142bx0urqqivx4bpk8z

Starting to get Photos up

Singapore:
http://www.xoopit.com/s/2142bx0urqqivogj1js4