I’m such a bad American.

Somehow or another, I completely forgot about the Fourth of July. I probably would have forgotten about it all together had I not hopped on the computer at out hotel/hostel in Yangshuo to email my folks back home. After quickly composing the “I’m fine and it’s beautiful here” email to them, I scanned through the ones that I had received since leaving Xiamen on the first of July. Strangely, this was the first and only time in the span of six days that I surfed the world wide web. I think it’s a personal best, really, considering my awful addiction to the the great WWW. I guess Yangshuo kept me pretty busy because I didn’t really think much of it until I got back to Xiamen this afternoon. I’ve more or less been on my computer ever since. Heh. 🙂

So yeah, the whole idea that the Fourth of the July had actually come and gone a whole day earlier didn’t even register until I read these words at the bottom of my Dad’s email. “Hoping you have a safe and patriotic Independence Day!” I had to stop and think about what it said for a second.

“Independence Day?” I thought to myself. “The Fourth of July?” I looked down at the date on my watch. A little 5 stared back at me. “Is it really the fifth of July?” I then looked at the date on the right hand corner of the computer. “Holy crap, it is the fifth!”

I guess the lack of American flags, firework stands and constant TV ads to remind me made me completely forget that it was that time of year. That is how it is for most holidays here in China. Unless it’s Christmas, all the other holidays you grew up celebrating sort of fade into the background. To keep the traditions going in this home so far away from home, I have to try my best to remember when the holidays are even if I am not surrounded by all the decorations and other hoopla related to them. Lucky for me, I’m in China, the land that invented fireworks. If I really want to, I can go down and buy a warehouse full of fireworks and celebrate with all the hoopla I want until I am blue in the face. And since I can do that, I think I just might.

Who cares if it is a few days late. It’s the thought that counts.
I’ll start posting my 4.2 GB of pictures tomorrow that I collected on my trip to Yangshuo, but for now I am going to bed.

Well, as of 11:20 am this afternoon, my summer vacation has begun. Tonight, at 11:10 pm, I’m boarding a plane at the Xiamen International Airport, and getting the hell out of here! 🙂 Yippy Skippy, as Miss Piggy would say.

Phil and I are going first to Guilin and staying at the Guilin Flowers International Hostel for a night. I have no idea if it is a good or bad hostel, but it is near the first stop of the CAAC – the bus that goes from the airport toward the actual city of Guilin. I just need a place to put my head, so I don’t really care.

When we wake up, we aren’t going to try and deal with the city. We are going straight to the bus station and going to Yangshuo, the supposed Backpacker’s mecca. We’ve been wanting to go for quite some time, but we’ve been either poor or entirely too busy with other China related stuff.

Speaking of poor – I am officially poor again. Well, not poor like we were after being bounced all around China a few months before, but poorer none the less. We are poor because we just went out and bought a super freaking awesome camera, so that I can take super freaking awesome pictures from now on.

We bought the Canon Powershot S5 IS at the Suning across town for about $490.00 – or 3760 RMB, but the camera came with a bag, 2G card, and a rather large tripod. And for what the camera does, it was a pretty good deal. Although, after playing with it for a few hours last night, I was ready to toss it out the window because it has one too many settings and I have no idea what any of them do yet. Today though, I feel I have a better understanding. Finding the manual in English on the internet helped too. Everything in print in the box was in freaking Chinese. I know, I know. I’m in China, but couldn’t they have included a section or something in English for the possible Laowai that might buy the camera?! Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter much anymore. Everything is all good. I mean, I still have to read the manual and play around with it, but I think I will be very happy. Having really nice pictures and videos will be a super plus too. My 5 year old Kodak was on her last leg – it was time for her to be replaced. I’ll put some sample shots later. They are super awesome.

Well, I guess that I should jet. I’ve still got to pack and what not. We’ll be gone until the 11th, so don’t be expecting any regular posts during that time – not that I have been regular lately anyway, but that is beside the point.

Oh, and Yahoo is unblocked again. I guess someone flipped that switch again.

What a load of crap.

Maybe it’s a glitch. Maybe someone fixed the broken light switch located in the hallway of my apartment in Fuyang, China. I never did figure out what that switch turned on or off.

But that is just me thinking positive.

After having my mom check to see if Yahoo was up in running state side, she confirmed what I already feared – China has gone and really done it. They’ve blocked Yahoo here in China.

This is totally not cool. Even though I don’t use Yahoo for email anymore, I still frequent it to check what’s going on in the world. I was a smart cookie and switched to Google when that nasty earthquake killed the internet access between America and China, but that is beyond the point.
The point is – I hope they can see this because I’m doing it as hard as I can.

Well, after fighting the Great Fire Wall of China for the greater part of the last year, I’ve given up. Yep, I’m throwing in the towel and jumping overboard. Like many before me, I’ve decided that it is just easier owning my own space. Because China hates Blogger, and blocks it on and off(more on), I’ve decided to give my blog a new home where people both far and away can view it without having to jump through hoops of fire. Tushes should not be burnt in the process of reading about my daily life in China. That just isn’t right.

That is the main reason why I haven’t been posting lately. I’ve been busy trying to figure out the best place to host my blog. It’s unbelievable how many many hosting services are blocked in China. On top of trying to find one that wasn’t blocked, I’ve had to look for one that actually gave me a half decent service for a price that I could afford. That process was actually harder than it should be. I’ll write all about that later.

After weeks of scouring the Internet, the search is over. Thank God. I finally have a nice, new home for my little blog. Phil is still working out the details so that it looks pretty on it’s debut. He’s adding a lot of cool features and making it really user friendly. When everything is ironed out and ready to be published, I’ll come back here and give you all the link. It should be ready in the next few days.

The service that I decided to go with offers IP banning and it made me start thinking . . . is it possible to get the IP address of the computer(s)Nanny uses so that she can’t come to my site and block it. 🙂 How cool would that be?

I’ll try to get a few cool pictures up this week before Phil and I run off to Guilin and Yangshuo for a week and half. If you have any suggestions about the area – I would love to hear them! Keep checking back though so you can update your links.

Every so often I get bored and decide to take pictures of myself. I know, I know – how vain of me! Here are the results of my latest session with boredom. They aren’t exciting or anything, but they made me think of the time when I showed this little Chinese kid my eyes in Hangzhou.

Back when we lived in Fuyang, we were invited to go to a food festival by one of Phil’s students. After stuffing ourselves with all sorts a weird, but fantastic food, we were informed that we were going to finish the night by going to a nice restaurant across town. There was no way I was going to be able to eat anything, but Phil and I agreed and promised to eat as much(or as little) as was possible. We thought we were going to be joined by the student’s parents, but neither stayed in the room very long. They were too busy running around the restaurant socializing. They just wanted to give their son ample time to practice his English. In that, they succeeded.

Sometime into the feast(Phil was somehow able to down a rather large portion) another boy entered the room. He was first introduced as the student’s brother, but we later discovered he was just a family friend. I guess he was invited to practice his English with the foreigners. He was shy at first, but before long we had him using what English he knew. We even taught him a few new words and phrases. Somehow or another we got on the conversation of how westerners look different than Chinese.

The boy that had entered the room had never before seen a foreigner’s eyes, so I offered to show him what mine looked like. I stood up and walked to the other side of the table where he was sitting, bent over so that I was at eye level with him, and opened my eyes as wide as I could. It was almost hysterical. The boy jumped out of his chair, nearly knocking it over, as if he had seen a ghost or something. I don’t know exactly what he saw in the depths of my eyes, but he wouldn’t sit back down until I was safely seated in my chair. I couldn’t help but giggle. He acted very similarly when Phil leaned over to show him his blue eyes. I guess he thought all the people in the world had dark eyes up until that moment in time. That would probably freak me out too.

I particularly like how you can see the reflection of the bars of our balcony.

Perhaps this is what the boy saw instead! I’d be pretty freaked out too.

After going over simple present Wh-questions I asked my students if they understood what their brains had just absorbed. Like always, they said yes, even though I knew that they hadn’t fully comprehended it. So, I decide to test their knowledge.

“Emma,” I said, “I want you to think, imagine, pretend that you are wearing a dress. OK?”

“OK,” Emma said.

“Alright. You are wearing a dress. What do you want to wear with the dress?”

She stopped and thought about it.  She even repeated the question a few times to herself, looked to Lisa(the Queen of translating) for possible help, and then finally back to me with apprehension in her eyes.  She cleared her throat and very sure of herself said, “I want to wear Lisa.”

I couldn’t help myself. I started to giggle. Lisa started to giggle because she actually understood what Emma had just said. Monica started to giggle only because the rest of us were even though she had no clue why. Emma sat there for a moment watching us all giggle and then it hit her.

“Oh! No, no, no!” She said emphatically. ” I want to wear a coat! A coat!”

This, on top of them questioning me about homosexuality, totally made my day. Yes, for some strange reason they were very curious about that particular topic.

Yesterday Phil and I decided to do our weekly shopping at the Wal-Mart located inside of the SM shopping mall. We’d only been there once before very briefly looking for a modem(which they didn’t have), so we wanted to go back and see what kind of selections that they had in comparison to the other stores in town. We usually shop at Carrefour because it is the closest store to us, but occasionally we will go to the other Wal-Mart(it’s closer than the SM mall), Trust Mart or the very far away Metro(1 hour by bus). Carrefour is probably the most convenient, less crowded of the bunch and has most of what we need, but is often sold out of or doesn’t have what exactly it is we are looking for. This is the case for the other stores too though. All of the stores have the basics, but each one seems to have only one or two of the things that we really like to buy. This of course, makes us store hop until we have everything that we need. If all the stores could just combine – shopping would be a breeze. The SM Wal-Mart wasn’t much different. Like the other stores, it had all the basics plus a few other items that are hard to come by elsewhere. It was however a little different. Different enough to lure me back in a few weeks or sooner depending on how soon I need a refill. Cereal isn’t hard to come by in Xiamen. Even in Fuyang, I was able to get my hands on brands I was familiar with. All the major chain stores usually have one or another brand to choose from in their imported section. Depending on what country they come from effects how much money you are going to have to shell out for them. American brands are always the most expensive, but they sometimes have Korean(I think they are Korean) versions sitting beside them for a much smaller box at a much lower price. The Korean versions to me taste the same, but the choices are much more limited. If I want something familiar – it is either Cheerios or Trix – everything else is the real thing, in a much bigger box, and much more expensive. The real thing being American Cheerios, Rice Crispies, Frosted Mini Wheats, Raisin Brand and a few others. The price on these range from 40 – 50 RMB($5 -6). To you that my not sound like a lot, but in order to save money to travel and to enjoy other luxuries in China, we have to watch the money we spend. If it costs 40- 50 RMB and we are going to eat it – it better either A) last a very long time or B) be damn good. Cereal only lasts so long and it isn’t quite to damn good level yet. Cheese on the other hand is . . . and we only splurge on that every once in a blue moon. So, you can imagine my surprise and disbelief when I spied a HUGE box of Honey Comb sitting amongst the usual suspects with a price tag of 19.90 RMB. My first guess was that it either A) was the box was in the wrong place or B) had expired a year ago. Neither turned out to be the case. I had a lady ring it up to make sure it was indeed 19.90 and then double checked the expiry date. I was so happy to see Best Before August 2007 starring me in the face. I almost chucked two boxes in the buggy, but remembered that there are other more important things that we want to do in China than eat Honey Comb for breakfast.

Nothing reminds me of home like Honey Comb in the morning.

“Don’t ask a question if you already know the answer.”

Ah, I have heard that statement many of times, but yet I don’t follow it.

Today in class we were going over an exercise that was talking about Japanese food. I thought hey, what the heck, while on the subject I’ll ask how they feel about Japan. Other students have asked me if I liked Japan, Korea(they never mentioned north or south) and what I thought about 9/11. I mean, if they can ask – why can’t I? So, I did.

“Do you guys like Japan.”

Usually, I have to explain myself, but this time they understood completely.

“NO! I hate Japan!” Emma said ecstatically. She really said it in bold italics, too.

Although I half expected it, I was taken aback just a little. Maybe it had to do with the bold italics thing. “Ok, Monica, what about you? Do you like Japan?”

“NO! I hate Japan too!”

At this point in the conversation I thought, well, I’ve already taken the plunge, I might as well take a swim while I’m at it.

“Why?” Ah, as a teacher you have to love this question.

“Because . . . because . . . a long time ago,” Emma started, but her tongue couldn’t spit out what she wanted to say in English. I could see the emotion behind her eyes and could all most hear the Chinese version of what she wanted to say bouncing in between her ears. “Because,” she said, lifting up her hands. She balled one into a fist and left the other one flat and open. I knew what was coming. It was pretty obvious. How else is one supposed to express hate and war without being able to verbalize it? And then it happened. She started pummeling her open hand with her fist. “Because,” she said, “Because.”

They were both quiet for a minute. They were frustrated that they couldn’t tell me why exactly, but I told them that that was OK and that I understood.

“Do you like Japan?” Emma asked.

Well, I don’t believe in lying so I told them the truth. “Yes.” Both of their eyes squinted together and their lips got very tight. If you know what look I’m talking about, which I’m sure some of you do, then you should be able to picture that image rather well. It was the look of mixed anger and disappointment, that I, their teacher, could in any way shape or form like their supposed enemy. It only lasted a second though.

It was as though they thought they had made me angry or something. I’m not sure what their logic was, but after giving me that horrid look, Emma perked up with a big smile on her face and said, “We like America. America is good.”

She gave me the thumbs up to demonstrate how good good was.

You are sitting in a blue plastic chair at a desk in a room that you know all too well. On your desk is a pencil with .5 mm lead. It’s the kind you hate because it breaks too easily if you press down too hard. Written on the blue plastic neck of the pencil in black ink is your least favorite number in the world. Two. Specifically, #2.

The room is quiet, except for the steady ticking of the clock positioned on the wall behind you. Every now and again there is a nervous roll of a pencil across a desk from someone sitting behind you. You’d roll your pencil too, but you don’t want to draw any attention from the woman standing behind the podium at the front of the room. It doesn’t even seem like she’s even paying attention, but you know that it’s all an act. Her eyes are trained to see anything and everything that might be deemed suspicious. Years of practice have taught you to remain still and quiet.

The woman, if you haven’t guessed yet, is your teacher and today is test day.

You’ve known about it for a week now and you studied for it, but your anxiety is still running a little high. Tests, well, they just make you squirm. And you’ve heard rumors about this test. A friend of a friend of a friend who knew this one person who dated this one person who took this test a few years back said that it completely made him self destruct. With rumors like that floating around, you have all the right to be just a tad bit nervous. It can’t be that hard, right? It’s just an English exam after all. What is there to be afraid of?

As the clock behind you flips to 9:30 am, the woman behind the desk lays the test face down on your desk. She’s gives you that look that says, “If you cheat, I will personally eat your soul.” You nod in understanding and flip it over.

Before you is the test that you’ve been losing sleep over all weekend.
The test is only one page. One line. One question.

The question is . . .

Why?

“You have until the end of class to finish your test. Good luck.”

*****
Humor me and answer that question for me.

I gave this question as a extra credit to my students on their test today, and they really did self destruct. They had no idea how to answer it.

And finally, a random picture from my collection. This picture comes from the selection I stole from Tim when we met up in Hong Kong.

The following pictures are from our little excursion to the Taiwan Folk Village during our May Holiday. I apologize in advance if they suck. Five minutes after we arrived, my camera decided to collect all the moisture that Xiamen has to offer(which is a a lot) in the very center of my lens. Luckily, Phil had his camera, but then his battery decided to die half way through the day. I don’t think God wanted us taking pictures or something, but somehow, we ended up with a few decent photos. Take a gander and enjoy.

Religious figurines chilling on a hill.

This little moth attacked Phil’s foot before we headed into the village and wouldn’t get off. Phil shook his foot real hard too. So, I coaxed him on to my finger and lead him to safety. Hopefully, he liked the bush I chose for him.

This little guy just doesn’t know how to play fetch.

There were countless statues all over the place.

Lantana. It’s every where I look in Xiamen. A very pretty flower.

More religious offerings. This would make a super cool bird bath.

Buddha. Enough said.

I’ve never stood so close to a Tiger before. If you can see through the ring cloud, you should be able to notice the cataract in his left eye. Poor thing. I thought at first that they were just letting him sit there without any chains and that made me super nervous as I took the picture. However, I saw later that there was a very short, older than sin chain that attached his neck to the table – which somehow didn’t make me feel any better. I have a feeling he could have easily dragged the table with him as he made the crowd of on-lookers his dinner.

Once again, if you can see through the fog that is my lens, you might be able to tell that this is no ordinary leaf. It’s actually a butterfly. We found him in a building called butterfly world. It is the best place to go to get photos of butterflies – if your camera is willing to cooperate. I thought it was pretty cool looking.

If I had been on the other side of the road, this picture would have turned out better. All things considered though, it didn’t turn out to shabby.

Lantana over-taking the beast.

Popcorn clouds. We never had this many blue skies in Fuyang. Never.

Most everything in the village was man-made, but it was still impressive.

Everyone thought it was normal for the local Chinese to get a picture with the gigantic Taiwanese statue, but when the laowai decided to do it – everyone had to stop and stare as if I were doing something wrong or exotic.

One of the best pictures to come out of day. No matter where we go in China – there always seems to be stairs in the way of my destination. You would think that I had gotten used to them by now, but no, I still hate them as equally if not more than before I got to China.

Here is that moth chilling on Phil’s shoe. I think Phil could have walked all throughout the village and he never would have budged.

Probably the cause of the moisture attacking my lens.

Pretty mountain side.

Actually, I take that back, I’m pretty sure this was the shot that destroyed my camera for the day. If you forgive my finger intruding on the left over there – the picture didn’t turn out half bad.

That’s the Beach Road and the ocean relaxing in the background.