change of plans

I will be returning to the USA on December 14th!

Don’t worry, everything is fine here in China.  Except remember that post I wrote awhile ago about budgeting?  Yeah, that didn’t go so well.  Of course, if that were the only reason then I am sure I could find a way around it.  But I am also love sick and want to return to the arms of my boyfriend.  You all don’t want to hear about that though, so let’s move on.

I am happy with this decision and by the time I leave here it will have been three months in Beijing, which I feel is a pretty good chunk of time.  I still barely have a grasp on the language, but do plan on continuing to study after I settle back into life in California.  And yes, I do want to come back here someday.  The city grows on me a little more each week and I wish I could have my cake and eat it too.  Buuuut, there is still A LOT more of the world I want to see, so it is time to rejoin the workforce because I gotta finance my dreams somehow! 

Well, in a couple months it will be time. 

drum tower and hutongs

Saturday was another group excursion, this time to the Drum Tower and Hutongs.  The video above is of the drum performance which occurs every thirty minutes at the top of the tower.  Personally, I was not all that impressed.  Though I can’t name any specific incident, I want to say I’ve seen better.  By all means go if you are in the area, but I wouldn’t put it on a list of “Must Do in Beijing.”

Riding around the Hutongs in a rickshaw, however, was quite fun.  I have no history lessons for you this time, because I decided to take pictures rather than listen to the tour guide, and I don’t regret that decision.  Some of the pictures turned out pretty good in my opinion, which is weird since there doesn’t seem to be much to take pictures of at first glance.  Where as places like the Lama Temple, there are so many beautiful things but my simple point and shoot couldn’t seem to capture them.  I think my camera has a knack for making average look significant and making significant look average. 

Best part of the trip is when Jaime and I were trying to take our self-portrait with the Bell Tower in the background.  We were doing so in the parking lot, and a few guys were playing a game similar to hacky sack, only it wasn’t a sack they were playing with.  It was more like a stack of small discs with feathers sticking out at the top.  Anyway, the main guy wanted us to play and even though we both shyly refused at first, he kicked it to Jaime and she tried to return it.  At first I just took pictures of her struggles, but then joined in the fun.  I think I had beginner’s luck because my first go was pretty good, but I couldn’t repeat it again.  We played for about 15min and slowly improved to “acceptable” as a small crowd gathered to watch the two white girls make fools of themselves.  But I think we probably did better than most foreigners they pull into their little game, because we did get nods of approval upon leaving.

UPDATE: I bought one of those things used in the hacky sack like game, you can see a picture of it here.

quantum of solace

A couple of hours ago I just got out of the movie theater where I saw the new James Bond movie, my first movie-going experience in China.  I’m not sure why this is something I wanted to do while in China, but it was and I can cross it off the list.  The movie was played in English with Chinese subtitles, so we were relieved.  However, what we didn’t think of until the movie started was that when a movie is subtitled in a different language, when they speak languages other than English those also are not going to be subtitled in English.  This applies to informational text like location as well.  So much of the time I wasn’t sure were they were but the dialog usually mentioned it eventually, and I could have missed important plot points since they spoke a lot of Spanish and some other languages, but it is in action movie so does all that really matter?  Eh, not really.

To Ed and the rest of my old crew, if any of you are still reading my blog, the new logo looked fantastic!

update on greatest fear contest

In a previous post I told you all about a video short contest and asked for your votes.  Thought I would update you on how that was going.  The first round of voting has closed, the top twenty moved on… and Tim’s was one of them!  (I actually think it came in third.)  So THANK YOU to all who voted!  Now here is the catch.  For those twenty finalists, all the votes they had accumulated have been cleared and voting has restarted.  What does this mean?  That you can all vote again!!  Aren’t you excited?  The video is currently in the top ten and if they stay that way they have a good shot, but it is a very close race.  So please please please if you can afford one minute from your day to click the below link and then click where it says “vote for this” then… well I don’t know what then, but I will be grateful.  And if you can afford more than just one minute, spread the word, leave a comment on the voting page… you know how those things work.  The grand prize winner is picked by Rob Zombie and I believe will be shown on AMC TV.  So just think, if it wins you can watch it and say, “Hey, I voted for that!”

Tim Tuchrello’s Greatest Fear

Thank you!

UPDATE:  The contest is over, and while Tim’s video did not win the grand prize, they did remain in the top ten so aren’t walking away empty handed.  Thanks to all those who voted!

food court friendliness

So I have a bit of a dilemma.  There is a foodcourt in the mall that I frequent almost daily, and 95% of the time I go to the same stall and order the same thing.  The reasons for this are: one, the food is really good and comes with fruit, two, I can just point to what I want and they don’t ask me any follow up questions, and three, I can eat a filling meal without intaking carbs. 

A little more explanation on the third reason.  A few weeks ago I decided I was going to try to not eat carbs during the week.  Mainly because I tend to carb-load on the weekends, and yes, I am trying to lose weight while here in China.  You would think training for 17.5 hours a week would be enough, but it isn’t. 

This meal that I always order is beef with onions and it comes with fruit, soup, and rice.  When I first started ordering it I ate everything, but because of my new “diet” I started to leave the rice on the plate.  The lady behind the counter that takes my order has always been super nice and had given me an additional bowl of soup once when she noticed I had devoured the first.  So about a week after I began leaving the rice, she gave me a small bowl of spaghetti.  I thought she was just being nice again and at the time I didn’t make the connection between the not eating rice and the offering of pasta.  So I ate the spaghetti as to not seem rude.  This turned out to be a mistake because now every time I go she gives me pasta instead of rice.

I know this is not standard protocol, and she is going out of her way and possibly losing a bit of money since I am sure the spaghetti costs more than the rice.  Because of this, guilt has got the best of me and I end up eating half the pasta every time.  So now I am not sure how to handle this.  I know enough Chinese that I am sure she would understand me if I told her I didn’t want pasta and I didn’t want rice, but I feel rude.

So what do you all think?  Sould I continue to eat the pasta?  Should I just leave the pasta uneaten?  Should I tell her I don’t want either?  Or should I go somewhere else to eat?

Barack Hussein Obama

I am not politically minded enough to post something witty or profound about yesterday’s historic event, but I can’t very well not mention it at all… so this is all I am going to say:

more stories from the hiking trip

Me, Jaime, and Helen.

I forgot to mention a couple of funny things that happened during the hiking trip.  The first happened as we were all snacking and I was writing down Jason’s basic information.  Helen was watching me and when I was done she looked a bit confused and said that I wrote my “A” wrong.  Apparently her English teacher is teaching students that English letters have a proper stroke order just like Chinese characters do, and actually corrects them if they do it “wrong”.  I found this quite funny and explained to her that it doesn’t really matter and to disregard what her teacher says about it.  She seemed relieved.

Second story.  After the hike we went out to lunch and as the meal was winding down Helen said something that sounded to me like “go dance”.  Anybody who knows me knows I am NOT a dancer, and considering it was the middle of the afternoon, I was really hoping I misheard her.  Turns out I was, but Jaime and I still could not figure out what she was trying to say.  Jason has a Chinese/English dictionary in his cell phone, and the screen he showed us had three things on it, all of what used the abbreviation AA.  The first one of course was Alcoholics Anonymous, I can’t remember what the third was, but he was pointing to the second one which said something like Agreeable Average.  At first this didn’t add any light to what Helen was trying to say, but within about thirty seconds I realized Agreeable Average meant split the bill.  After that translation was confirmed to be correct, Jaime realized that “go dance” was “go dutch”.  Such a random phrase for a person who has only been studying English for a month!

hiking with LEPs

I think this says “Hundred Hope Mountain” but I am pretty sure that isn’t what the mountain is called… so yeah, I don’t know, but Chinese characters are cool!

The school I go to is joined with another school that teaches English to Chinese students, and one of the “perks” is that they pair us together with what is called a Language Exchange Partner (LEP).  In the first couple weeks I was here they had a little party where we met our partners and played games.  I haven’t heard from mine since.  Yes, I know I should contact her and make use of this language learning resource, but I don’t.  Not sure whether to blame it on being too lazy or too busy.

Anyway, Jaime’s LEP, Helen, is very proactive and invited her to go hiking over the weekend so I decided to tag along.  Helen also invited one of her classmates, a guy named Jason.  (No, these aren’t their real names, students learning English often pick English names to cater to Westerners who cannot pronounce their Chinese names.)  The hike was short but steep and made up of stairs.  The view from the top reminded me so much of Griffith Park in LA, look to your right and it is just nature, look to your left and it is the city.

On the way down we stopped at a cute little bench and had some snacks.  This is when Jason told us he was interviewing with an American company and asked us to write his resume for him.  That’s right, not to help him, but to actually do all the work for him.  It was obvious he didn’t know what a resume was and although we tried to explain it, I don’t think he understood.  While we said we were willing to help, he insisted that no, we had to do all the work because it was just too hard for him.  When we suggested that perhaps somebody at the school may be of more help, an English speaker who speaks more Chinese than we do, he told us that the interview was the next day and he wouldn’t be going back to the school before then.  Sorry buddy, but if you waited until the day before to start worrying about this, I’m not going to feel guilty about not being able to help.

In the end I wrote out some basics for him that he specifically asked for, like name and phone number, things you would find on an application and then added some others he was likely to see like birthdate.  I even had to explain that he couldn’t simply write “Jason” as his name and had to use his surname as well.  This concept was a little hard for him to grasp since in China the surname comes before the given name, and when they use their English names they don’t attach them to their surnames.  But we insisted he either had to write his full Chinese name or his English name with surname and finally he agreed to the latter.

On the car ride back he wanted us to ask him mock interview questions so he could practice.  This was kind of fun, but some cultural differences were made apparent.  When we asked him, “Why do you want to work here?” he replied, “Because I want to make a lot of money.”  We told him he couldn’t say that and he didn’t understand why not.  So we tried to come up with a BS answer for him to give, something about how he is super motivated and eager to learn and sees a lot of growth opportunity.  Considering he probably has no idea what this means, it is doubtful he remembered it.  I haven’t seen him since he had the interview, but I’m not exactly eager to ask him how it went.

all you can eat = awesome

One of the foodies in our group, Will, has returned home to Australia.  We said goodbye to him over an all you can eat/drink dinner at a restaurant called Tairyo Teppanyaki and man was it good!  It could possibly even take over as the best meal I have had in China thus far, which is kinda funny considering it was Japanese food.  As you can see from the picture above, it is one of those places that cooks in front of you.  Well, if you are a large group it does.  Luckily we were a party of thirty (hooray for Will being social)!

I started off trying a drink called plum wine, which was ok but not all that great, so I then switched over to beer.  First dish was raw fish, probably the freshest I have ever tasted and we had to order more.  Then came more seafood, cooked this time, and then meats that melted in my mouth and veggies too.  The picture is of the chef making our dessert of bananas and ice cream.

A grand time was had by all (hard not to when it is all you can drink) and we all agreed every going away party will be hosted hear from now on.

lama temple

mandala sand painting

Being at the Lama Temple transported me back in time to the person I was about seven years ago when I was really into Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama and all that jazz.  Even though I have seen the present Dalai Lama give a talk before, it was still cool to be here and see where he and the Panchen Lama sat. 

My favorite thing there is a bronze sculpture of Mount Sumeru, an hour glass shaped world with “heaven” on top, the mortal world in the middle, and 18 layers of “hell” at the bottom.  It is pretty rare that a piece of art grabs me enough that I just stand and stare, but this did and I can’t even explain why.  I just love to see similaiities between religions and how concepts are taken from other cultures and adapted.  For example, we had the same tour guide from our previous outings and this day he pointed out all the lions used in decoration around us.  He asked us if we knew why they used lions, since there have never been any lions in China.  None of us could answer so he explained.  As most of us did know, Buddhism was founded in India and later found its way to China, and India does have lions.  Chinese people, not knowing what this creature was, assumed it to be mythical and therefore powerful.  Even though at some point in time they obviously found out lions are in fact real,  they have remained an important symbol in China, you can see pictures and statues of them everywhere, despite them never being native to the country.

I also loved seeing the sand painting of the mandala, which is a talent that has always fascinated me.  The temple also contains a structure that holds a record in the Guinness Book of World Records.  Tallest structure carved from a single tree or something like that.

All in all, pretty cool place if you know a little something about Tibetan Buddhism.  If you don’t then I suggest either reading up on it first, or getting a tour guide, or both.  Without our guide I wouldn’t have found this place nearly as intersting.  Even if he was adamant about the fact that Westerners know nothing about the true story of the Tibetan conflict, only the lies the media has told us… but that is a whole ‘nother story that I probably should not blog about.