huo ji tian zai zhong guo (火鸡 天 在 中国)...

and what a day it was... well not really anything to write home about. But it was interesting to see the substitutes that i and my fellow foreigners made to try to keep tradition alive. We had a small feast for Thanksgiving - China style: including duck a l'orange, where no turkey (or fire chickens, as their name translates to) could be found; stuffing made of the usual dry bread; pumpkin nangua 南瓜 pie with ginger; also an intriguing chutney of pomegranate and orange, a little spicy. All of which was created by Ellis, our resident culinary expert. That is putting it lightly. This girl lives for food, constantly takes pictures of food, i think if possible she would rather breath food than air...

anyway Nellie made cornbread and a blueberry tart, blueberries being a rare commodity we savored every spoonful of the juice left over.

A Chinese friend, Lulu, was also in attendance and she brought the essential snacks for grazing pre-dinner:

sure pistachios and peanuts are great, and so is, the uniquely Chinese, twice-popped corn kernels, but i still would have loved a veggie platter and a cheese ball! All in all, it was a surprisingly good Thanksgiving in the Chinas. i think i have to attribute the reason for this, for me, being that i made the mashed potatoes and even acquired sour cream (rather a sour cream want to be) from Shanghai! The Chinese don't know what they're missing with the beloved tudou 土豆, mmm potatoes!

Enough about that. i know you would love me to regale you with an epic poem about my love and fervent admiration of tubers and dairy but i won't do it.

Turkey day was good, despite the fact that i had to work both on the day and the day after! Here's looking forward to working Christmas and the Eve. Bah Humbug! At least it should probably be the last time that i have to do that for a long, long time. So enjoy your days off, you lucky Cratchets. China is like the biggest Ebenezer Scrooge ever! If you can guess i have started gearing up for the impending Holiday Season in my heart by listening to Christmas music (downloaded and courtesy of itunes holiday radio) and decking everything i can in tiny, twinkly lights! A side note: copious amounts of hot chocolate have also been consumed in the name of "the Season", or so i tell myself.

i'm mentally preparing for my last month of teaching in China, but i'm also preparing my bank account by trying to save money for the month of traveling i will do before i take the long flight back home. This means that i will only be making two more trips before i leave Huzhou for good. One of said trips was last, last weekend to Nanjing. One of my most beloved professors from Seattle University, Kan Liang, is doing research at Nanjing University for this semester so i went to visit him. He's really the reason i am in China now. i took his China in a Changing World history course a year and a half ago and came to China for the first time with that class. Without that experience i would never have dreamed of coming back to teach.

It was a great reunion with a familiar face and Nanjing is an amazing city. The one thing i didn't get a chance to do last time i was here was to see the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. i think for justifiable reasons, this war memorial reminded me strongly of the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, both in subject and design. Despite its very sobering affects i was very thankful i was able to see it.

i had just enough time to see the devastating exhibit, get dinner with my mentor, engage in a heated debate over ice cream with John, Gino, Ellis and Kan and then the next morning i did a little shopping in the Fu zi miao district near our hostel, ate some egg tarts and grabbed a 3 hour bus ride back to Huzhou in time to tutor at 4pm. It was a quick trip, but i had a good time due in large part to the wonderful location of our hostel.

i strongly recommend staying in Fu zi miao, it may be a little touristy but its really beautiful in a kitchsy way. i really enjoyed myself as i walked around the surprisingly busy shopping district in the early morning. It was kind of refreshing to see Chinese tourists, i had many "they're just like us!" moments while i people-watched. Sometimes it's important to remember that sentiment amidst the daily bureaucracy of school, banks (choice curse word), the post office and constant public spitting (on bus floors, in super markets, you name it). i think one reason that i really love this time of year is that i buy into the crap about remembering what's really important. Maybe i'm naive or gullable, or maybe it's just because i'm so selfish the rest of the year. but i'm trying to appreciate my time here a little more and really enjoy the Chinesey-ness of it all. that's right i said it. Happy Holidays everyone!

ICE COLD!

seriously, what a difference can be made from standing in a courtyard flooded with sunshine and, i don't know, say a flourescently lit classroom... it's like the difference between standing next to a bonfire and being locked in a walk in freezer for 40 min.  Every day i wake up at 7:30am and i never want to take the covers off.  i know as soon as i do i will step into icy slippers and when i go into the living room the air from the drafty windows will hit me like ice picks.  It's only November, right? i feel for my students. They don't have heaters in their rooms.  Granted my heater only warms things that are within a 3-foot radius, but it's something.  The real shock i think is that i was not prepared for this cold.  i'm in a city about two hours outside of Shanghai.  Shanghai is pretty far south, but apparently not south enough. To keep me warm i have a twill jacket and a cozy grandma sweater + some scarves and multiple pairs of socks... i have to wear at least three layers of clothing at all times.  Including, but not limited to wearing my leotard under my jeans!  It's not going to be enough when the temperature starts dipping below freezing in a couple weeks.Noodles also help combat the cold.  There's a great halal noodle place right near our school that we often frequent.  They make the noodles right in the tiny shop on a counter in the corner.  As i slurp up the broth i hear the familiar slapping noise as the guy beats up the dough and strips  the noodles into a boiling pot.  Here's hoping i don't get frost bite, or become a solid human block of ice, so that i can no longer go to class... wait that might not be a bad idea.

With only seven weeks of teaching left, time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future.  They took away some of my grade 5 classes due to one of my co-teachers retirement half way through the year. What? Weird, but i'm not complaining too much.  Now it's the grade 1 kids that are killing my soul slowly.  Sometimes they are cute little angels, other times they become monsters: kicking each other, hitting each other with their books, yelling about nonsense. i can't handle the randomness and lack of attention span that 7-year-olds have.  It's madness i tell you!  When i'm not teaching them though and see them around campus they're so cute and inquisitive i have to forget that earlier that same day they made me want to shoot myself.  i kid (not really), it's not that bad, but through this experience i've learned that educating elementary children is not my forte.  In the beginning i dreaded the middle schoolers, but they turned out to be my favorite class.  

This is a good thing because i got my final placement, and i accepted my position in the 2009 corps of Teach for America, and i will be teaching middle school science in New Orleans!  i'm very excited, but it's going to be a lot of work.  i can tell simply by the registration process and the preparation for training, not to mention the 5 week intensive training this summer! i think i can handle it after five months of not understanding a damn word/being understood... consider me prepared for many more things and my patience infinitely expanded.  In other news, i bought my return ticket finally!  i will make my triumphant return

to the States on February 24, 2009.  Rejoice, rejoice!  i will spend a couple weeks in the Tri-Cities and then head up north to Seattle to perpetually couch surf for a couple months, looking forward to it!

Last but not least, some random things to share that are a little strange: pickled roses.  They look a little bit like alien babies, and at first i thought they would taste the way it does when you accidently get some of your perfume sprayed in your mouth. But, no.  They actually are a delightful snack, something like dried cherries or other sweet, chewy snacks, but it's best not to look at them too long, just pop one in your mouth and it's quite nice.  Secondly, China has not especially impressed me with its hygienic practices, but this was really thoughtful: microphone condoms. So many people spend their time at the KTV, 

and who knows where their mouths have been! So each patron is given a nice foam cover for their microphone, as shown in the diagram, slip it on and it keeps oral herpes at bay. However, i wasn't surprised that after examination of the package it's actually Japanese.

Wan Sheng Jie (万圣节), Hallowe'en, Dia de los Muertos

Halloween in China, much to my surprise, was a lot like previous Halloweens of y'or, my costume was wack (i was Jem, from Jem and the Holograms, the '80s cartoon), some people are always resistant to dressing-up, and drinking & dancing are generally involved. We went to Shanghai for the blessed occasion, to a club called Candy and got our dance on! Huzhou had nothing going on and most people have never even heard of the holiday here, in fact they tend to confuse it with Thanksgiving (speaking of which if anyone wants to send me a can of cranberry sauce now would be the time to do it...whole berry is preferred, but at this point i can't be too picky, or can i? it is me we're talking about...) i digress.

As i was saying, most Chinese don't know what Halloween is so i gave a lesson on it to my Junior 1 class and learned a little myself  in the process.  For instance, did you know that it should really be spelled Hallowe'en? Apparently the progression of the word went from the Gaelic Samhain (pronounced like Sau in), to the old English-Catholic influenced three day festival known as All Hallow's Eve Oct. 31, All Hallow's Day Nov. 1 and All Soul's Day Nov. 2 that was created out of thin air to discourage pagan rituals and to bring in converts. Hallow, meaning saint, as in hallowed be thy name... holy, saintly etc. you get the picture. Funny that this holiday kinda represents the opposite of that now. So the Chinese name for Halloween literally translates to 10,000 Saint's Festival. Which means, no one knows why we parade around in scary costumes and ask for candy or we will TP your house! Then again, do we know why we do this? i'm done being teacher for now, suffice it to say i got a few creeped out 14-year-olds when i showed them this:

also i wore a bright pink wig to class and gave them skittles, am i good teacher, or what?

Back to the weekend in Shanghai... it is such a major metropolis i really don't know what to do with myself when i'm there. This trip, my one and only goal was to find a caesar salad and eat it. Ambitious, i know.  Mission accomplished. i also did some chilling, coffee drinking and window shopping.  Shanghai is famous for its impressive, and somewhat other-worldly architecture and the neck-breaking speed with which it has developed into the international hub it is today and it continues to do so, reportedly adding a suburb the size of Houston, Texas every week! (Source unknown, but someone told me this, i'm sure of it) i promise to take pictures of this famousness the next time i go... but what i have taken pictures of and what has caught my eye in all of China, not just Shanghai, is the way this whole country operates on a system in tandem. Old, traditional cultural relics stand amongst sky shattering modern monstorsities, gleaming of glass and metal, or in less developed areas hulking masses of concrete. 

They all work together some how... i don't know how.  This is Jing' An Temple, really close to the hostel we usually stay in and it is an actual temple but it's on one of the wealthiest shopping streets in the city and the sides of it have been turned into storefronts themselves.  Along the temple side you'll find Burberry, Rolex and Pizza Hut hocking their wares among other luxury items... luxury used lightly in regards to the Hut. it's mind boggling.  The golden temple would be really beautiful nestled between the towering office buildings but with the bright lights of Louis Vuitton blinding me i don't really even want to go in... is that wrong?

in other language-related news: 赫伊! this is my Chinese name, or rather the way they pronounce and write Hoy (said he yi). it's a bit difficult to write... why is the alphabet so wonderful? in studying Chinese, even at my basic level i have come to appreciate the roman alphabet like you would not believe... i don't just know my ABC's i love them and miss them dearly. Another interesting thing about my name is that in the local, Huzhouhua, dialect my name, Guen Hoy, loosely translates into "beat you, ok?"

湖州新世纪外国语学校  体育场路  355 号 

湖州  浙江  中国 313000

this is my mailing address in Chinese, pretty cool, right? right? our computer in the office has a program that lets you type in the pinying and then pick the correct character, i'm slowly learning how to use it based on the very minimal number of characters i know. but still i'm impressed and therefore you should be too! So the English/pinying translation of this is:

Ms. Guen Hoy

Huzhou New Century Foreign Language School

Huzhou Xin Shi Ji Wai Guo Yu Xue Xiao

Ti Yu Chang Lu No. 355

Huzhou, Zhejiang, CHINA  313000

in case you wanted to send me a much needed care package...mail takes about three weeks to arrive and i only have 11 weeks left at this address. what? that ish is crazy. so getta sendin' if you're gonna be sendin'. 

also everyone better vote on Tuesday, it'll be Wednesday here, but unfortunately i will not know the outcome of the election just by virtue of being in the future... as my friend Nellie said, say your Obama prayers! eg. keep Obama safe and let him be elected the next president of the US of A...