Pengtun Cooking- Rice Noodle, Broccoli, and Tofu Stir-fry

So, it’s been a good long while, I realize, since I posted a recipe for a chocolate zucchini rice cooker cake and an intention to write up more recipes. However, better late than never.

This is not a rice cooker recipe. It’s not actually served with rice but rather with what is probably among my very favorite foods in China, 二丝 (ersi). The Dali area is famous for its ersi, thick and glutinous rice noodles that are often served in broth with meat sauce for breakfast but are also lovely stir-fried.

I realized this week that, at this point, for me to use a recipe for fried rice or a stir-fry seems as silly a notion as using a recipe for a sandwich. Aside from baking adventures and occasional pancakes and curry and the like, everything I make comes out of the wok. I no longer think about the order of putting things in, the temperature needed, or amounts of rice wine/vinegar/soy sauce/sesame oil/etc. And I can’t imagine a kitchen without a wok ever existing in my future.

Really, quite a bit’s changed about my eating habits this year, and a lot of it’s not for the better. I eat more sugar, fewer whole grains, and, I’m sure, a ton of pesticides. But I love the market and eat a heck of a lot of fresh produce. In fact, I imagine that the people at the grocery store think that all I eat is sugar and rice and oatmeal, because veggies, fruit, tofu, eggs, and noodles are all easily found elsewhere. My eating manners have also changed. We Heqing fellows joke about how we’ve turned into country bumpkins, slurping from our bowls. And I eat pretty much everything except oatmeal and baked goods with chopsticks. Those two get spoons. Yes. Baked goods too. I was skyping with my family about a month ago, and they were extremely perplexed to see me scooping banana bread out of a bowl, with a spoon. Oops.

Anyway, pretty early on in the year, I discovered that ersi stir-fried with broccoli, tofu, ginger, and garlic is a truly awesome dish, and I’ve made it probably at least once a week since.

Because I’ve never run into anything like ersi in the states, I’m not sure exactly how this should be replicated in an American kitchen, but I think a pad-thai type sort of noodle would work. Everything else is easily findable in American stores, although one of the things I’ll miss most about China is buying my tofu and noodles fresh at the market, along with huge hunks of ginger, garlic, and broccoli direct from the Baizu farmers. Amounts are, obviously, approximate, and really don’t matter—just use however much of each as you like.

Noodle, Broccoli, and Tofu Stir-fry

Ingredients

-A cup or so of broccoli stem and florets, chopped roughly

-Half a cup of tofu, moisture squeezed out and diced

-a large handful of fresh rice noodles (or an equivalent amount of dried rice noodles, cooked)

-about 2 cloves garlic, diced

-a half inch piece of ginger, diced

-a tablespoon of roasted peanuts, chopped or whole

-rice vinegar to taste (maybe a teaspoon)

-soy sauce to taste (1-2 teaspoons)

-a drizzle of sesame oil

-sesame seeds to garnish

-oil for the wok

-water

Procedure

1) If you want your tofu crispy, fry it first and remove from the wok. I’m bad at frying things, so no tips here.

2) Heat the wok over medium-high and add perhaps a teaspoon of cooking oil (I use peanut here, but I assume anything would work), along with a pinch of salt. Swirl to coat.

3) When the oil’s spitting a little, put in the broccoli, garlic, and ginger and stir-fry briefly, tossing about so it doesn’t burn. If your wok starts to smoke, you might need to add a touch more oil.

4) After a minute or two, turn the heat up a little bit and add a couple tablespoons of water. Stir-fry, letting the broccoli absorb the water and turn a lovely shade of green. Try a piece and add another tablespoon of water if it’s still really crunchy. You want it a little crunchier than how you like to eat it. Turn the heat back down to medium.

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5) If you haven’t fried the tofu, put it in now and stir-fry briefly before adding the rice noodles. Stir-fry for a minute or so and then, if using fresh noodles, add another tablespoon or so of water so they’ll soften. Stir in a circle to keep the noodles from sticking, and add your vinegar, soy sauce, peanuts, and sesame seeds.

6) Continue to stir until ingredients are incorporated and the noodles and tofu are cooked through.

7) Serve, topped with a drizzle of sesame oil and more sesame seeds, if desired. Sometimes, I also add chopped scallions, but it’s just as good without.

Hooray for Bubble Tea! (and other musings)

I have said, on many occasions, that a good number of my issues with living in China might be resolved if only there were a coffee shop closer than an hour away.

My dear friends, one of my most desired standard-of-living wishes (up there alongside “toilet” and “shower” and “oven”) has come true! Sorta.

It’s not actually a coffee shop. It’s a bubble tea shop. Really creamy, thick, sweet-but-not-too-sweet bubble tea. There are many CEIers relatively obsessed with bubble tea, but until January (when this place opened) Heqing didn’t have any that didn’t taste like plastic. We didn’t know about it until last week, when Arianne went and told Hallie, who went and told me, etc. We met up on Friday and ordered, settling at a table upstairs. While ambiance isn’t necessarily the shop’s strongest suit, that one table on the tiny balcony is a place where it will be absolutely lovely to grade or read or whatever in the future. Plus, bubble tea! They have a relatively large small cup, which goes for 5 kuai here and would likely go for close to 5 dollars in the states. The other awesome thing is that this gives us a place to hang out in the city, where, really, there aren’t places to just go and sit unless you’re at a restaurant. So, hooray on all counts.

As we set out from the tea shop, the workers there—young guys probably around our age—asked if they could take a picture with “the first foreigners to come to their store.” So we posed, Backstreet Boys blasting from behind the counter, as they took several shots. Such is life for Americans in Heqing.

At this point, all five of us are entirely accustomed to attention, desired or not. Most of the time it’s just fine. Sometimes it’s funny, like when little kids I walk or bike by stare at me as they would perhaps a UFO. Sometimes it’s embarrassing, like when my bike falls over as I park it in front of the yarn store and before I can right it myself I find a small pack of nearby shop owners coming to my aid. Sometimes it’s annoying, like when I’m walking along, having not-a-very-good-day, and teenage construction workers say “Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.”…you get the idea. Or when I’m standing on the side of the road waiting for a bus into town and the cars that sometimes have seats in the back for passengers and sometimes have pens in the back for pigs slow down such that it’s quite difficult to tell whether they’re stopping to pick me up or simply pausing to gawk for a moment.

Sometimes it can be a source of entertainment, if I’m bored and engage just for the heck of it, like when folks in Dali take pictures of us (not subtly at all, I might add) and I encourage them, in my best enthusiastic and sarcastic tone, to take more. Sometimes it’s endearing, like when I take the scenic route back from town and end up pedaling randomly around villages trying to make my way to my elusive pepto bismol colored-home, which locals are more than happy to help me find. Or when I’m in the vegetable market buying ersi and ask a question of whomever I’m buying from, which all 5 of the noodle sellers try to answer at once.

This week I’ve begun to appreciate a little more the non-academic impact I’m having on my students. Some of it connects with the “Oh my god, a white person!” thing. We had our midterms yesterday and Thursday, and, as such, every teacher was assigned 5 periods of proctoring (11 hours in two days. Oh joy, oh bliss.). Since the classes are shuffled for testing purposes, each room had three kids from my class. When I entered the room I was assigned to one evening (don’t you want to take exams from 6:30-8:30 PM after having already taken 3 during the day? I know I do), a girl in the corner covered her mouth and practically leapt from her chair. While her reaction was the most extreme, it was very clear that other students also took interest in my arrival. Then I saw one of my boys and greeted him in English with a “Hey, Kendall.” He looked up with a nonchalant “Hey Miss Emily,” and then went back to his geography textbook. Rowan walked in a minute later and asked me if I’d be proctoring. We chatted briefly about the test he was about to take and he went to his seat. Then Peter strolled by the window, yelling “Miss Ou!” (the first character of my Chinese name) on his way to his classroom.

My kids know me. And in 20 years, whether they’re working in Beijing or farming in Pengtun, they’ll have had the experience of knowing an American (and a left-handed one at that. I still catch kids trying to take notes with their left hands occasionally) at a very young age. I’m not saying it’s going to shape their lives, but it has value, especially for folks immersed in this homogenous community.

I’ve also remembered, this week, that I love them. They’ve been driving me absolutely bonkers, and grading their last big test made me want to break into the bottle of Jack Daniel’s I have in my kitchen, but I do love them. It helps that I’ve been loosening up more in the classroom, even as I’ve gotten stricter in terms of reporting to the principal. I like to have fun with my kids, and I like to be silly, but for much of this year I’ve been pushing and pushing myself to emulate my very stern local counterparts. All that’s really succeeded in doing is making me angry and my kids rebellious. So I’m trying to, for lack of a less clichéd term, be my normal teacher self again. Stay tuned on how that goes. It’s certainly put me in a better place mentally, so that’s gotta be worth something.

The weather’s changing again. We had nothing but blue skies, with some chubby puffy marshmallow clouds, for months. But over the last few weeks we’ve swapped all-day blue for blue mornings (mostly) and a gradual blowing in of big clouds and rain. But the thing about living in the basin here is that it can look like it’s about to downpour and not spill a drop, or it can be partly cloudy and pouring. Arianne and I discovered this last weekend, when we went biking in the hills around her school and got pretty darn wet when the seemingly more-blue-than-grey sky opened on us. Luckily, lushly green rice paddies look just as lush and green while wet, and my camera didn’t get messed up. Unluckily, my school doesn’t like rain, or at least thunder. The power goes out a lot—not for more than a couple of hours, most of the time, but a lot…like right now. At 8 PM on a Saturday night…. No, I am not making this up. Thank goodness for my lovely Mac’s ridiculously long battery life. Now where did I put my candles?

Moral Ambiguity

Sometimes I think about what would happen if you put last July’s Emily Cohen and me into the same room. I’m the same person, if hopefully a little more mature and a little wiser and with a few more life skills, but there are things about me that have most definitely changed. There are stances I’ve taken and things that I’ve done that last summer’s me would never have considered. Some are rather ridiculous, like the fact that I, Emily Cohen, now wear eye-liner and lip gloss almost daily (nobody is more shocked than I, I assure you) so that my kids will think of me as a little older and thus take me more seriously. I also bake, knowingly, with bleached flour. Some are stupid and dangerous, like biking on mountain roads without a helmet (sorry, mom!), because bike helmets just don’t really exist in China, and perhaps not washing all my veggies as meticulously as I might. And some continue to make me wrestle, resigned but not content.

I remember so clearly during the very first week training reading an essay by one of Pengtun’s former fellows about corporal punishment in the classroom. He wrote eloquently about his personal moral struggle with how to handle behavior problems in a system that prizes physical over all other forms of discipline. He decided that he would bring students to the lead teacher and to the principal, where they would almost certainly be hit. Reading the essay, I remember understanding his logic and respecting his decision but firmly convinced that I would never, under any circumstances, make a similar call.

I have. I have on not just one or two but on a number of occasions. I’ve brought kids to the lead teacher. I’ve brought kids to the principal. I have grabbed kids by their upper arms and collars to make them stand up. I have collected lighters and knives by using pressure points. I’m not proud of any of this, but I’ve learned this year that there are times when, to a certain degree, it can be necessary to bend one’s personal ethics in order to better mold to and positively impact one’s environment. I know, I know, that sounds really bad, and where are the boundaries? Does allowing my kids to be hit this year mean that I’ll make the same decision regarding my own children in 10 years, or that if I end up teaching in the States I’ll wish I was allowed to strike my students?

I don’t think so. I remember conversations at the Minneapolis public school where I worked where teachers lamented phone calls to parents, because they knew that reports of bad behavior at school would result in hitting at home. Nonetheless, at school, there was no hitting. At school, there were other punishments, a system that maxed out with expulsion rather than slapping. There were also reward systems, a relatively new concept for my students. This year, I’ve implemented an extensive rewards system that’s been largely effective for my good kids but hasn’t succeeded in curbing bad behavior. For that, as it was with the teachers at my old school, I’ve needed punishments.

Since September, I’ve tried a plethora of American-style discipline techniques, ranging from seat changing to lectures to holding students back after class to texting parents to extra homework to sharing treats with only well-behaved students to kicking students out of the classroom into the cold in the middle of winter (I lived in Minnesota for five years. Yunnan cold is not cold). Some have been vetoed by the administration of my school, others by the lead teacher, leaving me with few options and even fewer that I’m capable of enforcing without help. Calling on this help risks corporal punishment for my impish students; not calling on it risks an utterly chaotic classroom for my engaged and dedicated students. I’ve come to the difficult decision that the latter is worse.

These kids have been hit by their teachers since they were in first grade—swats on the legs and top of the head for not paying attention, strikes on the hands for incomplete homework, being dragged by the ear or hair from classroom to office for bad behavior. Hitting is technically illegal, and hence it isn’t regulated. Although I’ve never witnessed this, I’ve heard stories of students slapped across the face, thrown to the floor, hit so hard they dropped out of school. My poorly-behaved students do not take my ‘lighter’ punishments seriously. If I were their only teacher I would probably have more success, but the 1-4 hours of the school day that are left in my care aren’t enough to mitigate the other 10-13 spent with hitting teachers.

I will never hit my students. I’m actually, according to CEI, not allowed to hit my students. I will, however, continue to bring my kids to teachers who take reports of bad behavior as cause for physical punishment. I have moral qualms with this, but I have deeper moral qualms with the notion of a few badly-behaved children keeping the other 40 from being a part of a classroom conducive to study. My students are products of their school environment, an environment that, unlike school environments in most of the United States, includes hitting. I don’t like it, but like so many other parts of rural education in China, I’ll work with it.

On Meat

I am a vegetarian, and, in the states, a fairly strict one. I engage some amount of “don’t ask, don’t tell” when it comes to broths in restaurants and at friends’ houses, and will sometimes pick around meat if it’s in big, avoidable chunks, but when I cook for myself it’s all veggie, all the time. In China I’m quite a bit looser. Although I still won’t eat straight up meat unless I think I’m in a position where refusing to do so would be quite rude, I’ll eat out of very meat-heavy dishes and order things with meat in them. My reasons for being a vegetarian range from health to environmental to ethical to just plain having lost the desire to swallow a steak, but I’ll say this: If I were only a vegetarian because of the way animals are treated, and, eventually, slaughtered back home, I’d be eating chicken in China .

A couple weeks ago, Malijun and I arrived early at a restaurant where we were going to have lunch with the rest of our team and some local teachers. After ordering enough to feed a small army (as is often the custom when we eat with anyone outside of our 4-person group), we headed to our table. A few minutes later, the owner’s small son (I’d guess he’s 7 or 8) wandered by, looking rather bored and holding a very alive and rustling chicken by its foot. The chicken, it would seem, outwitted the child, because a moment later we saw him chasing a running fowl. Eventually, feet beat out talons. I didn’t see the chicken’s throat slit, but by the time the owner was partway through draining its very fresh blood onto the cement floor of the courtyard, I had tuned back in. The chicken twitched a good bit, even after the owner dropped it to the floor and went to fetch a bucket of boiling water.

I found myself simultaneously repulsed and entranced as the owner dunked the still-twitching carcass into the bucket, sloshing it around like a rag, feathers growing heavy and grey. He plunked it down and plucked it—gloveless, as he had been since the beginning—a damp pile of fluff growing beside him. With a sharp knife, to took off the head and feet. Malijun, watching beside me, had long ago decided just how disgusting this whole thing was, but I found myself amazed. I wasn’t happy the chicken had just died, but the notion that this animal, alive five minutes earlier, would be gracing a plate five minutes later, made me just so very happy. This was exactly the way, I exclaimed to a rather grossed out co-worker, that meat should be consumed! But then, in China, or at least in rural China, that simply is the way meat is consumed. And it makes so much sense.

I’m a vegetarian. The idea of eating chicken grosses me out. But, if it didn’t, I’d be all over this stuff. Fish…perhaps not as much, as the preferred method of fish killing in these parts would seem to be throwing it from the tank to the ground and stomping on it. This sometimes results in fish flopping about for some time while cooks try to stomp properly. It can take 5 or 6 or 10 attempts. Oh…rural China.

My Kids Need Glasses

This is Andy. No, he doesn't always have that deer in the headlights look. I took these shots on the first day of class so I could learn their names. It was day one of middle school and day one of being taught by an American teacher, and naturally a lot of them looked pretty silly.

Anyway, he's a good kid. Not the brightest bulb in the box, so to speak, but he's usually paying attention during class and does his homework about half the time. He seems to like English, when he's not too tired to focus on it. I feel bad, because he's got a pretty thick accent and I usually have a difficult time understanding his Chinese, but, at any rate, he's a good-natured soul and I'm rather fond of him.



This is Andy during class. No, he's not sleeping, although he does from time to time. Usually I tap him on the shoulder and say "Andy," and he looks up blearily and smiles sheepily, as seems appropriate for the sensation of opening one's seventh grade, rural Chinese eyes to the sight of one's very not Chinese English teacher.

No, this is Andy trying to take notes. Andy, you see, has terrible eyesight. He sits in the front row but still can't read the board. Andy has glasses, but they don't do him much good, it would seem. I asked him how old they were and he didn't seem sure how to answer.

Andy needs new glasses. I'd like to buy some for him, but I don't really know how to do that, and, even if I could pay for them, I'm not sure it'd be appropriate to give a student something so (relatively) expensive. Instead, I'm wondering if any of you fine folks who follow or stumble upon my blog know anything about organizations or other means of acquiring glasses of the proper prescription both for Andy and for some other kids. He's the extreme case in my classroom, but he's not unique. I bet across the school there are dozens of students whose grades could improve dramatically if they could, y'know, see.

Monday Musings

It's funny how, when you're a teacher, you can spend so very long writing a lesson plan, or filling in a behavior chart, or painstakingly cutting photocopied dollar bills from the confines of their white borders, and have absolutely no idea if your work will pay off. As it stands, I've planned my classes for the next day and a half and have until the end of the week sketched. This is pretty darn good; I'm a rather last-minute planner, for the most part, and as a less than detail-oriented individual, going from rough sketch to fleshed-out plan (with points A, B, C, etc) always requires effort. Luckily, on Monday afternoons we have faculty meetings, a multi-tasker's paradise, during which I half-heartedly listen and whole heartedly scribble away all the intricacies behind such phrases as "Come to visit Bridge Street," and "Take a walk through the park." Our current unit is on, you guessed it, directions and neighborhoods. It should perhaps be pointed out that I still struggle with directions in Chinese, and French, and every other foreign language I've taken. Those pesky little prepositions. And imperative sentences. Woof. I'm doing my best to keep things simple to remember and prod my students along without driving them, or myself, to frustration.

I feel in some ways as though I'm back in college-- never done with work, and always concerned, to some degree, with whether or not I'm doing things right. I guess that's common to many jobs. It's not the best feeling, and having a group of 46 students to critique me two or three times a day can be a bit wearing. Last year was hardly a no pressure zone, but I felt like my job ended when I walked in my front door after a day's work; things were compartmentalized, and although I thought and talked about my students a ton (as I'm sure both my former housemates would attest), work was a part of a well (or at least better)-rounded life. In Pengtun, work is life. In college, work was life too, but work was generally more fun. I miss it, and I'm really excited to start grad school, if I can get in, in Fall 2012.

My students are rather unpredictable, growing more-so by the day. A lesson plan that might keep them quiet and engaged one morning could lead to utter chaos the same afternoon. My kids all know the phrase "Everybody. Shut. Up. Now!" Oops. At least they don't know that it's any worse than "Everybody quiet!" Nonetheless, I've been trying to supplant it with "Simmer down!" (I figure that whatever phrase they associate with me being loudest and widest-eyed will be the one they try to replicate, and both because I don't want them telling each other to shut up and because I think the notion of rural Chinese kids telling one another to "simmer down" is hilarious, that's my new angle.) I've tried shouting, whispering, kicking kids out, storming out myself, ignoring bad behavior, bringing poorly-behaved students to school administrators, etc. My current rewards system, using the aforementioned fake American money, has been working relatively well for the good kids, but unfortunately isn't curbing rotten behavior. Only hitting seems to do that so far, and as I'm not allowed to implement that, well....

As much as I appreciate the differences from my life in the States, I also appreciate what I can keep the same . Desk, computer, school books, notebook, warm beverage (usually green tea, but I got so much lovely American stuff in my holiday packages that I've been favoring chai and cocoa lately). Often enough, streaming MPR (that's Minnesota Public Radio for you uninitiated folk) or some other music. Lesson planning, yes, but comfy lesson planning.

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.