Unexpected Wanderings

(This is a chronologically out of order post that I started writing before my school departure post but didn’t get a chance to finish until just now, sitting at the Beijing airport. But enjoy!)

Around June the 30th, we the teachers of Pengtun Middle School were informed of a 9-day break, from July 3rd-11th, coinciding with the administration of the high school entry exam for the ninth graders and some sort of test for the eighth graders.

Had it been earlier in the year, I would have chilled, gone somewhere for a few days, and chilled/prepped some more. However, the combination of just how soon I’m moving back to the States and just how much I’m trying to keep myself busy instead of staring at my computer led to me going happily for broke.

So it was that, after taking Saturday to relax and grade, I bussed out on Sunday with a couple changes of clothes, showering supplies, school stuff, my journal, and a novel.

First stop was Dali, where I wandered up the now-familiar stone sidewalk from the parking lot on the DaLi Lu up into the touristy clutches of the old town. It was strange. I hadn’t been to Dali since mid-May, at which point there were tourists but not that that many. Early July was a very different story, and more than just feeling a little surprised I felt a little uncomfortable. I didn’t know how best to interact with all the white faces, which set of manners to use. Hearing American English from sources other than Colin, Mark, Arianne, and Hallie threw me off.

Luckily, the German Bakery remained the German Bakery, and I plopped down at a table with a slice of raspberry cake crowned with real whipped cream and fresh berries. It was a quick trip. Less than a couple of hours after arriving I dashed off again, this time into the city of Xiaguan, Dali’s modern counterpart.

I met up with Mark, Arianne, and Arianne’s mother (who’s visiting China for a couple of months), and we got rooms in a hotel near the bus station in preparation for the morning’s journey.

The first leg of our journey, from Xiaguan to Yunxian, was a bus ride we’d actually taken once before, going the other direction, on our way back from the English Teachers’ conference in Lincang. I thought then that I’d never be in Yunxian again, but so it went. The awesome thing about Yunxian is that it is possessed of a most excellent handcut noodles shop, and, as our bus got in around noon, we got to indulge.

It’s a small world in rural China, because as we sat chewing our delicious lunch, who should walk in but Laura, on her way down to Lincang. After sharing pleased hugs, she joined our table, and we walked together to the bus station, where we got to see Kristen and Sean before all three of them jumped onto their bus. I’m super grateful for the random rendezvous, because I didn’t think I was going to get to see those two ladies again before heading back to the states.
The ride from Yunxian to Gengma was a pretty one, southern Yunnan revealing itself in flowing, rich greens—sprawling plant-life filling almost every non-sky inch of space beyond the road. The mountains rose, it seemed, taller than they are up here, although Heqing itself is at a higher elevation than Lincang.

Gengma itself, unfortunately, didn’t exactly impress.

There’s this thing with Chinese cities of a certain size—namely that they’re all organized in a very, very similar fashion. It’s the sidewalks that really get me; they’re all paved in exactly the same way. Yellow dotted tiles, guides for the blind, run down the center of every single sidewalk. Gengma was pretty to walk about, with palm trees and very warm weather, but it was the fields I found, when I wandered to the very back of the town and kept going, that made me happiest. I traipsed, largely ignoring the confused glances of the farmers, although I did get into one conversation with a local who told me that Pu’er Tea (which can be really expensive and generally considered good quality) was not at all good and that I should only drink the stuff from Gengma. We did, in fact, buy a whole lot of really nice smelling, really cheap tea.


Cangyuan, where we went the following afternoon, was not too much more exciting. Because it’s only six or so miles from the Burmese border, we expected a city steeped in Burmese style food and culture. Instead, we found a mostly Chinese place with a few Burmese accents. Certainly there were little things that were different from my part of Yunnan, but on the whole it was in every way a Chinese city. So we wandered, wilting in the heat but pleased by the mountains surrounding, eventually finding ourselves in a grocery store where we purchased ridiculous Chinese sweets with the intention of making ourselves a 4th of July “cake” later. This did not happen but was nonetheless fun.

In the morning, we hiked. Hiked, in this instance, ought to be taken as as loose an interpretation of the word as may be, for by “hike” what I actually mean is bushwack, and by “bushwack” what I actually mean is a pleasant enough trudging through a farmer’s hillside corn fields, followed by not at all pleasant crawling up a muddy slope towards a pine forest. It was really pretty, to be sure, and we enjoyed wandering through the woods.
However, when it was time to get back down to the road again, we basically ended up sliding down a severe slope and ending up covered in mud. It was very exciting indeed. A couple locals strolling alone stopped to watch and pronounced us incredibly badass (as the term 厉害 would perhaps be best translated).

The next day, Mark and Arianne went back to school, but Arianne’s mother, Jean, and I went on up to Shangrila (thus named by the Chinese), a Tibetan area of Yunnan. I hadn’t really experienced any Tibetan culture since my brief but powerful trip to Lhasa in 2007, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. In fact, I was a bit nervous that, because this is more or less a designated tourist spot, the government would have made it a little Tibetan theme park.However, while there were certainly kitchy touches, on the whole it was easy to see a core of organic Tibetan culture. Monks walked the streets, there was a large, active monastery, and the villages just outside the town were entirely different from those in Heqing and reminded me really strongly of the ones I’d seen in Tibet itself. While it was a short trip, it was so relaxing, and I’m really glad I was able to go. I also bought a small yak wool blanket for myself, woven with Tibetan motifs, that makes me really happy.


By the time I got back to school, almost a week after I’d left, I felt incredibly alive and rejuvenated and more than ready to jump into my last week of class.



(I think the sleepy baby yaks helped)

New Year's Travels

Well, it’s been awhile coming, but I’m finally ready to sit down and write about the five and a half weeksish I spent on the road. I could do this in a couple chunks, but instead I’m just gonna post one heck of a long entry. It keeps things simple. Also, I've split pictures from break into four albums: Thailand, Cambodia, post-Cambodia, and Food. All are at http://anamericaninheqing.shutterfly.com. And on facebook too.

Adventures began on the evening of January 15^th, with my very first Chinese night bus. I have vague, drowsy memories of the driver and a passenger or two crouched over a panel on the bus floor that opened down to the engine. And as I recall there was dish fluid of some sort involved. Nonetheless, we arrived in Kunming bright and early.

After meeting up with my travel buddies (Emily Cole, Kristen, and Laura—Alex was already in Bangkok), we napped atour hostel for most of the morning to make up for the night’s lack of slumber, then enjoyed an afternoon and evening sitting at Salvador’s (best western food in Kunming). The city was chilly and wet. I found myself wishing I’d brought a scarf and mittens for the trip.

Then we went to Bangkok. Bangkok, where I was sweating in shorts and a tank top. Bangkok, where our guesthouse’s whole neighborhood smelled good. Bangkok, where public transit zooms about, where both the local and the western food are amazing. Thailand wasn’t love at first sight; it was love at first touch of tropical air wafting in through the gap between plane and jet way.

Our first Bangkok stop was a short one. We spent a day getting acquainted with the incredible weather, Thai iced tea (made thus with sweetened condensed milk—highly recommended), street food delicacies of all sorts, public ferry rides, wats, hot showers, and…the fact that we don’t speak Thai.

This became quickly obvious, as we all tried to speak Chinese when ordering food, buying tickets, etc. It was a bit hilarious, and somewhat embarrassing, and also very humbling. None of us would consider ourselves fluent Chinese speakers (heck, I don’t know if I’d call myself proficient), but we’re all so accustomed to trying to make do with what Chinese we do have, circumlocuting left and right and, usually,eventually, getting ourselves understood. In Thailand, we were helpless. The first time we wanted to order iced tea there was nothing to point at (except a Thai-alphabet menu), we didn’t know any numbers, and we couldn’t even say thank you. If some young, English speaking guy hadn’t come to our aid, I don’t think we’d have succeeded in acquiring our tasty treats. But throughout Thailand people were, in almost every interaction, so very helpful and accommodating. Those who spoke English (and there were many, no doubt due in great part to tourism) used it with us, and those who didn’t tried to help us anyway.

The evening after arriving in Bangkok, we took our first Thai night bus down to Krabi and then bought ferry tickets to Ko Lanta. Going into this trip, I expected the island to be my least favorite part. I’m not a huge beach person. But I’d also never been to a tropical island.

And what an island it was. Bungalows a minute from the ocean, beachside meals, water in colors I didn’t know existed outside of postcards and movies, tropical fruit everywhere, caving, snorkeling, mo-peding…. Ko Lanta is certainly a resort town, and hence there were a heck of a lot of European vacationers about (we all went into blonde haired/blue eyed shock) and a lot of expensive things.It could hardly be called the most traditionally Thai part of our trip. Still, it was an exquisite few days.

As we came to Lanta (by ferry), so we left, boating first to Ko Phi Phi and then to

Phuket. Phuket has a party town and an old town, and we opted for the latter. We stayed in a creepy old hotel (home to Phuket’s first elevator) and spent a night and a two days wandering the streets, appreciating the strange but enjoyable mix of Chinese, Thai, and European influences.

After another night bus, a quick stop at the Bangkok bus terminal, and a couple hours on yet another bus (a second class one rather than the first class one we’d been sold tickets for—oops), we arrived in Kanchanaburi, a river town that was

once the site of a WWII POW camp and now plays host to lots of backpackers. We slept in raft rooms on the river Kwai, visited a war museum moving in its simplicity, rode bikes about town, and bused out to a park with seven tiers of waterfalls and monkeys.

Laura, Kris, and I headed back to Bangkok a day earlier than Alex and Em. We stayed by Khao San road rather than in the less touristy area where we’d slept our first night. It was nice for the experience, and Khao San road is certainly a good place to shop, but I much prefer the quieter Ari neighborhood. We went to the Great Palace—which contained more gold than I think I’ve ever seen in one place—and met up with Alex and Em for one last night in Bangkok before Kris and I split off for Cambodia.

Going overland to Cambodia is complicated and full of potential scams, which I spent a good long time researching. We took the 5:55 AM, quite uncomfortable 3^rd class train from Bangkok to the Thai border (ash blew in through the window, and the seats jutted into our backs), rode a tuk tuk to the border itself, walked through, got a visa on arrival, immigrated, took a complementary government bus to the transit station, and got a shared cab to Siem Reap.

Siem Reap, so far as we could tell, was not a particularly exciting place. It was incredibly touristy, of course, and hence had a lot of western and Cambodian food options, and a few fun markets, but the attraction of the town was definitely the temples. There are lots and lots of temples to see, Angkor Wat being the most famous, and Kristen and I spent two days exploring. As many visitors as there were, most of the sites were not nearly so crowded as American and European tourist spots I’ve visited. So that was nice.
The temples were big and small, in various states of repair and ruin. I found myself, naturally, utterly amazed by the architectural feats of so long ago. Watching the shifts in religious allegiance was also fascinating. Buddhas hacked out of rock or turned into Hindu holy men with the addition of beards, broken statues of Shiva and Vishnu.

Cambodia also threw me for a loop by using the American dollar more than the Cambodian riel. I hadn’t had greenbacks in my wallet, much less used them, since July. This was made even more confusing by the fact that everything in Cambodia is very cheap in American dollars. Kristen and I decided to splurge in a major way when we bought 5-dollar plates of homemade, and very authentic-tasting, four-cheese gnocchi and tagliatelle with pesto.

The trip back to Bangkok was much simpler than the trip to Cambodia. We went to our original guesthouse in Ari and spent a relaxing night there before Kristen met up with her boyfriend for more beach time and I embarked on my first ever solo travel adventure.

At first, this just meant going across Bangkok, where I dropped my bags at the train station and explored. I walked to Chinatown to check it out, and then I walked swiftly away from Chinatown, because it was a bit too authentic. After wandering for most of the afternoon, I returned to the train station and got on my night train up to Chiang Mai. I happened to be sitting across from an American family living in Beijing and had the longest English face-to-face conversation I’d had with a non-CEIer since leaving the states. Thai sleeper trains, as opposed to Thai third-class trains, are a really nice way to travel—quite comfortable and with actual beds instead of just reclining seats like on the buses.

Chiang Mai was not as hot as down south or Bangkok, but warm and comfortable, with tons of cafes and pedestrian-friendly streets. The combination of my being a solo traveler and

wanting a bit of a break after being on the road for something like three weeks meant taking time to relax. I’ve said many times that having a coffee shop in Heqing would solve half my problems, because there’s nothing quite like that atmosphere (not to mention selection of beverages) to cheer up a mopey/uninspired/unproductive me. I spent a lot of time in Chiang Mai sipping mochas and smoothies and other treats. I also spent a lot of time in cooking school—three days, in fact. I knew I wanted to go for at least a day, but the first was so much fun that I signed up for the second, and the second was so much fun that I signed up for the third. I now feel fairly confident that, given proper ingredients, I can replicate some pretty authentic Thai stuff. I explored a lot of wats and markets as well, and my visit happened to correspond with the annual flower festival, so I saw a parade with rather incredible floral floats.

After a week in Chiang Mai, I night bused back to Bangkok and reunited with Kristen for our last couple days in Thailand. We went to Wat Arun (the Temple of Dawn), Wat Pho (home of the incredible reclining Buddha), Bangkok’s largest outdoor park, and Cinnabon. Yes, there is a Cinnabon in Thailand. Actually, there’s a Cinnabon and a bunch of other ridiculous places at this huge food court in this huge mall that definitely was a bit of cultural overload. I also went to the US Consulate to get pages added to my passport. It was American but not, and I was surrounded by perfectly nice looking folks and by some creepy old guys with their 20-something Thai girlfriends/wives.

Flying out of Bangkok was a sad experience, I must say, excited as I was by the prospect of Hong Kong. And Hong Kong was quite fun (and quite expensive). Mark surprised Kris and me by meeting us at the airport,and he proceeded to be our guide for our three-day stay.

We booked a room at the Chungking Mansions, not realizing until after the fact that, though its reputation has improved dramatically, the place is pretty darn sketch. That would explain the prices. Certainly I wouldn’t want to stay alone, but with Kristen it was fine. Our room was a shoe box but clean and secure, and the mansion itself had some amazing Indian food because many of the residents are Indian and Pakistani.

Hong Kong’s weather left something to be desired. I don’t think I would have been that bothered by it coming directly from China, but going from Thailand it was cold. Also wet. Very wet. So much so that when we went to see the Lantau Buddha (which is among the world’s largest seated Buddhas) we saw shapes rising from the mist. Still, we had a lovely time checking out different parks and neighborhoods and getting a sense of where Mark grew up.

Macau is about a one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong, and Kris and I passed through on our way back into the mainland. While there we met up once more with Emily Cole, who was staying with her aunt, and she toured us around. What a cool city. Macau has a Vegas-like reputation in China, and it’s true that there were casinos, but all I saw was amazing Sino-European architecture and food. We visited a centuries-old church that had burned down, leaving only the stone façade, and a fort, and had Portuguese egg tarts and sandwiches at a café near the center square. All too soon, however, it was time to get on a bus and cross back into China. It was Valentine’s Day. I’d been out of the country for nearly a month.

After a one night stay in Guangzhou and a 26-hour train ride with the lights on and without a sleeper car (not recommended—after finally drifting off I got woken up by a young guy who wanted to know about what I put in my hair to make it curly. ‘Nuff said.) we got back to Kunming.

Laura was already there, and over the following days the rest of the CEI crew trickled in.We indulged in lots of western food, city strolls, and a day of hiking west of the city, before settling back into work with a professional development conference and a plane ride back to Lijiang. Flying over Heqing, I was struck, as always, by just how gorgeous it is. There’s a lot I don’t appreciate about this place yet and a lot that I think I never will, but the straight up beauty is a definite perk.

We’re three weeks into term now, and today marks exactly 8 months since my arrival in Beijing. I’ll be teaching (with a few breaks, I’m sure) until mid-July. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities I had during my time off and am working to make this new semester more successful (academically and personally) than the last. So you can expect a return to regular, rural, China-style blogging soon enough.

And We're Back!

The exclamation point there might be slightly less than exuberant, but I felt like continuity with my departure post would be appropriate.

Break was incredible on so many levels, and while it's certainly nice to have my feet on the ground and my bags unpacked for the last time in the near future, I'll miss the places I've been. I've got over 900 pictures to sort through and a good 50 pages in my journal before I post about the trip, and as I begin teaching either tonight or tomorrow (I love rural China's last minute lifestyle, don't you?) that may not happen until the weekend or even later.

However, this post contains substance of its own! I realized last night that I hadn't put my last album from semester 1 online, so now it's here: http://anamericaninheqing.shutterfly.com. Enjoy. I'll be back with break adventures soon enough. :)

And We're Off!

Well, the plan was to write a nice reflective entry about my 6-month mark in China (I got into Beijing on July 15th), but as I plan to walk out my door in 45 minutes that's not going to happen. Oh well. Instead, I leave you with this picture of my bags for the next six weeks on the road. If all goes according to plan, I will get on my first sleeper bus in three hours, arrive in Kunming early tomorrow morning, meet up with my travel buddies, chill for a day, and embark for Thailand!

I can't post a proper itinerary because I don't really have one. Basically, we'll planning on being in Bangkok for a couple days and hitting up beaches for a bit. Then, three of us five will head back up to Bangkok to meet up with family/friends while Kristin and I hang out down south a little longer, go to Angkor Wat, and then make our way back up to Chiang Mai. On February 11th, the two of us have a flight to Hong Kong where we'll meet up with Mark and Hallie and who knows who else? On February 23rd, we have to be in Kunming for training. Whether we will get there by plane, train, or bus is TBD.

For now, there's dinner to eat, a kitchen to clean, things to unplug, computers to lock in drawers, and a night bus to catch.

Back to the Grind

Well, it’s been a lovely week, but now it’s Thursday, which means we start classes again tonight. Today is, in effect, Wednesday, with tomorrow becoming Thursday and Saturday filling Friday’s shoes. At least we still get Sunday off. There’s an interesting article in the NY Times this week about how China’s handling the holiday schedule in general; in effect, we aren’t the only ones who are confused.

Adventures were nice. We first went to Shaxi Old Town, busing along mountain paths, competing for space with huge trucks and little motorcycles. I fell asleep as we were leaving Heqing and woke to a crazy sharp turn, at which point I giggled sleepily and pointed out to Mark and Ma Lijun that we were all going to die. No idea if I said this in English or Chinese. That’s been happening a fair amount lately—of course I’m always speaking Chinese to the local teachers/people in town, but when I’m talking to my CEI coworkers I’m managing to have whole conversations where afterwards I can’t remember the language I used. The same thing used to happen when I was studying abroad in Beijing. I’m guessing this is a good thing?

Shaxi is pretty and quiet, with far fewer tourists than I’d imagine most places had for National Day. That being said, I was shocked to spy not one or two but a good dozen Westerners wandering about, and some of said Westerners were children! I’ve seen many 20-somethings and retirees in Lijiang and Dali, but Shaxi was the first place where I’d seen young families. We think the most likely explanation is that these are families living in China who wanted a quiet place to go with their kids during the holiday. Shaxi’s good for hiking, and there’s a nice river right outside the old walls, with a few pretty bridges and farmland views. If Lijiang is the Disneyland version of a “Chinese Old Town” and Dali is the Cool Big Brother, Shaxi is the closest I’ve seen to the real deal. It still has the tourist trappings of handmade shoes labeled with American sizes, as well as its fair share of inns, but ultimately it seems as though a lot of the people there are just the people there. I liked that.

We stayed not in a traditional inn but rather in a house with a separate building containing three guest bedrooms. It was perfectly comfortable and in a nice location, with a pomegranate tree and a bunch of other plants in the courtyard. Plus a hot shower! Actually, interesting moment. Shower aside, the bathroom was an outhouse much like the one at my school—the only notable differences being the lack of a door and the fact that it was for one person rather than a dozen. If I’d encountered such a bathroom more than two months ago I would have had to pee like crazy to even consider using it. As it was, I didn’t blink.

Our time in Shaxi was spent wandering stone-paved streets…and hiding from the rain. Yes, rain. Rain that started the morning after we arrived and made mountain climbing, along with most other outdoor exploration, less than enjoyable. After spending an hour escaping a downpour by drinking tea in a nice little shop with an equally nice but not so little german shepherd, we decided it was probably best to move on. So where to go in the rain? What’s in Yunnan that doesn’t require good weather? Dali!

So the three of us piled into a van and then later onto a bus, and although we didn’t save any time by leaving from Shaxi instead of from Heqing, we knew we were headed to a good place. Of course, the holiday meant major traffic, but we still got there without too much trouble. Then there was the issue of finding a hotel. Because our bus was delayed, and the holiday week was only half over, we ended up with no choice but to share a relatively pricey room—at least compared to what we’re used to paying. Still, it was nowhere near expensive by American standards, and we had a place to dump our stuff. We introduced Ma LiJun to Indian food (not very good Indian food, unfortunately) and wandered around. Dali is just a very open, very free-feeling space. I really can’t get over how grateful I am to have it close. During our wanderings, I bought a purple hanging that is currently masking some of the white space that is my room. It’s quite pretty, with flowers and butterflies tye-dyed onto it, and it makes me happy (happier than is probably reasonable) to see it on my wall.

The next morning marked the closest experience I’ve had to a “coffee shop chill time” since getting here. We ate breakfast at the German bakery, and then we just hung out. I didn’t actually have any coffee (I haven’t, in fact, since getting to China), but I sipped on tea and we chatted and I did a little writing while Mark was responsibly lesson planning and Ma LiJun went to the bank. It was just quite lovely in every way. Then the day got even lovelier when we met up with May! She’s one of this year’s American fellows, but her family and she have lived in Dali since she was twelve, so she was home visiting. We went out to lunch together, and then May took us back to her house where we drank more tea, chatted about our schools, and met her parents and adorable seven-year-old brother. It was a really nice feeling to be in a house, to chat with some new people, and to hear more about Dali from someone who knows it well.

Because we all had colds (I’m only just now getting over mine—slept twelve hours straight a few nights ago, which I never do), we decided to head back home. Ma LiJun stayed the night in XiaGuan, the modern city right next to Dali, but Mark and I took a bus back up to Heqing. We left at five with plans to get into town at eight, but instead we didn’t make it back until after ten, because our bus stopped for about 45 minutes—twice. It was quite wretched, really, and made all the worse when the driver decided the best way to improve upon the situation would be to blast Chinese pop. I have a rule of thumb regarding my iPod that if I ever have to turn it way up to block out other sound, it’s not worth it. That ride was an exception. Upon arrival in Heqing, Mark and I discovered, much to our surprise, that our humble little city possesses a red light district. We had the pleasure of walking right by it on the way to find a cab. Luckily, nobody came out of the buildings, so there was no need for me to pretend to be Mark’s wife or something.

The last two days have mostly been about recovering from my cold, getting laundry done, and trying to think through the next couple weeks of class…which start in ten minutes. Guess I better get over there, huh? Ah well. Vacation was nice while it lasted.

Happy 61st, China!

Yesterday was National Day, and thus we get time off. A whole week, as it turns out. Of course, our week off started yesterday, and we didn’t find out for sure we were getting a week until Wednesday, which made planning difficult. As it stands, Mark and Ma LiJun and I are leaving this afternoon for a village about 3 hours away and then deciding after a day or two there whether to venture elsewhere. I’m really excited. I’ve never done this sort of “follow the wind” travel before, but it should be fun. And Yunnan is so beautiful that I don’t doubt we’ll find cool things to see.

Yesterday, my first day off, I kept it local—doing a major room cleanup in the morning and then strolling out into the villages behind the school in the afternoon. My original plan was to find a back path to Heqing that I could walk along without fear of being hit by a tour bus or a tractor, but before long I stopped paying too much attention to where I was, rather just wandering indiscriminately. It’s worth noting that, when wandering rural China, you never really know where you’re going to end up or what you’re going to end up trekking upon. Yesterday’s walk encompassed nice, concrete, sidewalk-like roads; packed down dirt (and sometimes mud) paths; skinny, almost-dumping-me-into-the-rice-paddies trails; and straight up bush wacking. My tiva’d feet got a taste of the local stream, my bag picked up many friends in the form of burrs and needles, and I terrified/herded about 100 ducks before warranting the attention (and mercy) of a local farmer, who allowed me to cut through his courtyard to get back to the main road. It was, all in all, a quite lovely afternoon, despite the embarrassment and need for extreme foot washing. There are new pictures of my wanderings, as well as Lijiang and Dali, at http://anamericaninheqing.blogspot.com.

Today marks 11 weeks since my arrival in Yunnan. I wonder how long it’ll take the weeks to add up enough that I stop counting and default to months. I have been teaching for a month now, officially. In some ways it feels longer, but I still have quite a lot I need to improve upon. The kids will have their first “Monthly Test” shortly after the break. These tests are modeled off of the prefecture and regional tests students are subjected to on a quarterly basis, and they are really, really dumb. So far, my students have learned the alphabet, a few simple greetings, ways to introduce themselves and others, and a few scattered colors and nouns. Everything I’ve taught them (with a few exceptions for classroom commands like “stand up”) is in their textbook. There are other things in the book like acronyms (because BBC and UFO are really terms that first year English students need to know), and I’ve been putting those things aside in the interest of teaching them, y’know, practical English. Unfortunately, China and I do not see eye to eye on what constitutes practical English. Thus, if I want my kids to pass their test, after the break I will need to spend significant time teaching them things that absolutely are not important to first year English study. It’s quite frustrating, but everything from here builds to the end-of-ninth-grade Zhong Kao. If they don’t pass that, they don’t go to high school, so I have no choice but to bite the bullet as far as content and test prep are concerned.

I’ve been in a slump since getting back from Dali—more homesick and less motivated than usual. I’m really hoping this is just a short thing that I’ll snap out of soon, but I don’t know.

Last night, I watched “Beauty and the Beast” in Chinese. It was glorious—classic Disney fun with the added benefit of me being able to write down some vocab words. I intend to do quite a bit of Chinese Disney watching in the future.

Anyway, that’s all for now, folks. I’ll post about my 2-5 day adventures upon my return.

A Trip to Dali

So my schedule’s a little weird this week. Wednesday was the Mid-Autumn Festival (a national holiday), so Pengtun got Wed-Friday off. Excellent, right? Five day weekend! No, no. We traded Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for last Sunday and this whole weekend. I teach an evening class tonight and have my normal Thursday and Friday schedule tomorrow and Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, everybody was talking about the three-day vacation, but… I mean… we don’t actually get time off. Somehow most people didn’t seem to notice that fact. At any rate, it’s been really nice to have three vacation days back-to-back-to-back, even if it means having a seven-day work week starting tomorrow.

To take advantage of these three days, some of us Heqing folks decided to bus down to Dali. Dali is one of two cities in my area of Yunnan (the other being Lijiang) frequented by Chinese and Western tourists alike. Dali’s the bigger of the two, by quite a bit, and I’d say there’s more of a permanent expat population there than one would find in Lijiang. In fact, one of CEI’s American Fellows this year has lived in Dali with her family since she was twelve. (Her Dad works in agricultural exports or something.) There are a lot of Western restaurants and a bar street of sorts and little inns approximately every three feet. It’s a nice place to walk around and just chill out.

Mark, Ma LiJun, Arianne and GaoShan (two girls from JinDun, another of the Heqing schools) and I went down together on Wednesday afternoon. Buses leave frequently and take about two and a half hours. It’s a pretty ride, mostly through mountains. I took some pictures of the trip back up and will post them soon. Once arriving we wandered through the streets and found an inn. Since there were five of us, we split two rooms, with two of the girls kind enough to offer to share one of the double beds. While hardly fancy, the hotel was nice enough, with a fish pond and sit-down flushing toilets. There was even a shower in my room! Of course, the floor of the shower was kinda falling apart, but the water was warm and there was enough of it that it didn’t take me three minutes to rinse the conditioner out of my hair. Plus there was a big mirror. The beds were also a bit harder than what I would have liked, but they were perfectly adequate. And what did we pay for this place, you might like to know. Eighty kuai a room, or 32 kuai a piece. About five bucks. Not bad at all.

After dropping our stuff, we wandered in search of dinner. I was ridiculously excited at the prospect of eating something not Yunnanese—I’d seen Tibetan, Xinjiang, Indian, and Western places coming in. As we headed back towards town center, I suddenly heard someone yelling my name. Now, in the states, if I hear someone yelling “Emily!” I turn with half my attention, knowing that it could very easily be a different Emily. However, I was in Yunnan, China, and the two kids with American accents who’d come with me to Dali were standing right next to me. I turned around, and it was Kristin—my American roommate from the Lincang STP!! We had a rather epic, running-at-each-other-and-big-hugs reunion. I was so, so happy to see her. And as it turned out, she was far from the only one. There were like a dozen CEI folks who’d come up from Lincang for a couple of days. So many hugs, so many smiles, so much catching up (and I feel as though I barely got started in that respect. I wish I’d had more time with them). A lot of schools only found out they got Friday off on Tuesday night (thank you, rural China), so plans had been hastily made. Since the Lincang kids had already ordered, the Heqing folks decided to do dinner alone and meet up again later for some revelry.

We walked for quite awhile, trying to find a suitable restaurant, and eventually settled on a place that Ma LiJun and Gao Shan said was known for its pizza. They were not mistaken. It was by far the best pizza I’d had since leaving the States—thin-crusted and cheesy. We also supped on banana fritters and fruit salad, and I even got a can of seltzer water. I felt very indulgent indeed. Of course, Western food is more expensive than Chinese, but it still wasn’t that bad pricewise, and totally worth it considering the circumstances. The restaurant/bar is owned by a Scotsman and had expat bar tenders—something I’m not sure I even ever saw in Beijing. Bad Monkey, Dali, Yunnan, China. If you’re ever in the area, check it out. Bad Monkey, in fact, became CEI’s spot for the evening, which was a ton of fun. It was just so fantastic to see everyone and hang out American style. I really, really miss the Lincang people. Heqing is great, but it's isolated. I'm about seven hours from the nearest non-Heqing fellows, if I counted correctly.

A little after one, I was sleepy and decided to wander back to the hotel. An amazing thing about China is that I felt totally safe doing this. There are so many places in the States where, that late at night, I wouldn’t feel at all comfortable walking around alone. There are places like that in China too, but they’re far fewer.

The next morning, I strolled alone, wandering through the mix of stone and asphalt-paved streets that mark the city. I got to an area where there were suddenly no expats, so that was nice. Dali is a lot more integrated than Lijiang, in the sense that the “Old Town” is not just for tourists and entirely distinct from the new town. It feels healthier in that sense. That being said, there are definitely still areas more touristy than others, and it’s nice to have the option to meander away from them.

The Heqing folks (who’d gone to bed earlier than the Lincang folks—the other four all went back to the hotel at least an hour or two before me) met up for breakfast at the famed German Bakery—Bakery No. 88. Oh my goodness. I’d heard about this place from a bunch of last year’s fellows, so I was really excited to try it, and it was heavenly . just a little café, with IKEA-esque fixtures and tableware. (I know for a fact that the silverware is from there, because it says so.) They have a small collection of imported cheeses and other products, but the real treat is the bread. I had excellently chewy and flavorful ciabatta with cream cheese and homemade raspberry jam. I also splurged on a bottle of Italian olive oil and a loaf that turned out not to be the whole wheat sourdough I was told it was. I’m not crazy about the flavor, but still, it’s bread. I want to make friends with the workers there. They seem really nice, and I get the feeling I’ll be paying that place a visit at least once every time I’m in Dali.

After some more wanderings, including a stop by an English bookstore where I found a bilingual copy of “Horton Hatches an Egg” (Yay Dr. Seuss!) we ran into some CEI folks again and said our goodbyes. Then it was off to…well, Wal-Mart. Not a place I ever shop in the states but, unfortunately, one of the best places to find things in China. And find things I did! I got rotini and skippy peanut butter and ground cinnamon and dried black beans and a small bag of brown rice. No cocoa powder or chocolate chips could, unfortunately, but you can’t have everything in life.

We bussed back home after that, quietly content. Dali really was just a breath of fresh air, and I hope to get down there fairly regularly. It’s just far away enough that I won’t be tempted to go every weekend, but it’s close enough (and cheap enough to travel and sleep) that I can get there easily. I know that last year’s fellows had local friends (Chinese and otherwise) who lived in Dali, and I think that’d be really cool. It’s weird though. I’ve really never had to make friends without something major in common like school or a job. I don’t know how. We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.

Also, random moment of the day: I went into town to go shopping this morning, and I took one of the little cars that runs along the road from school to the town center. I was squeezed in next to two older Bai ladies, and one of them reached over and grabbed my arm, looked at it for a second, let it go, said something in her dialect that I couldn’t understand, and continued her conversation with the other lady. I don’t know if she was interested in my arm because it was white or because it was fat. I’m hoping for the former.