may holiday
*yawn* i'm tired. long week. fun, but very very long. my last stop was unquestionably my favorite, which is good. i saw the great wall in every city i went to and out the window between cities but that was pretty much the only constant in my trip.
i stayed with four very different families and at one chinese hotel.
i walked in the sea and climbed some mountains.
i walked through a duststorm and a rainstorm.
i shivered from cold through a sweater and coat and sweated through short sleeves and a skirt.
i felt like an inconvenience and i felt totally wanted.
i felt more homesick for america than i have so far here and i wished i were staying longer.
i got my first haircut since august.
i didn't shower.
and i stayed in my home province the whole time:)
hebei is something like the size of nevada. 116,000 or so square miles. a lot of it, especially up north and out west, is mountains. i spent about 40 hours (give or take) just traveling from one place to another.
i hate to even start to figure how many desperate phone calls i made to people who speak good chinese, asking them to talk to ticket agents or people sitting by me on busses to find out ticket info or arrival times or whatever.
i was up all night last night taking an 8 hour slow train (hard seat) back home. the train left at 9:20 pm, arrived at 5:20 am. i nodded off for maybe 10 minutes of that time.
two nights before that, one of my students decided i needed to take the crack-of-dawn train out of town, so woke me up at 3:15 am so i could have a little breakfast before my 4:20 am train. i spent 10 hours that day traveling a total that should have been less than 100 miles. this was the time when i was miserable and wanting to go home. i'd spent five days with people with no-to-strictly-ok english and was sick to death of not being understood. and sick of chinese food. and sick of busses and trains. but i had one more stop, which, as i mentioned, happily turned out the best one.
most of the money i spent on vacation was spent being lost and cheated in beijing the first day. i had to transfer from my bus in beijing, which proved as hard as i had feared. 4 hours, 4 bus/train stations, one travel agency, lots of phone calls, and more than a couple hundred yuan later, i was on a bus out. i really hated beijing that day.
but all the stress and frustration and time was worth it. i saw where the great wall meets the sea. i saw where 50 chinese virgin girls and boys (and presumably a few sailors) set off in search for the fountain of youth, instead discovering japan (thus the similarities between japanese and chinese in so many ways). i saw the 2008 olympics stadiums for soccer and ping pong. i watched a good deal of the world ping pong championship on tv. i consistently ate until i was half convinced i was going to throw up. i was guilted into drinking till drunk or at least tipsy seven times in as many days (as the anceint chinese proverb says: "if your friendship is not deep, drink more. if your friendship is deep, drink more"). i had two middle-aged chinese men tell me, in english, that they love me. i stayed in one new house (they'd moved in days before) and felt like i was in a mansion because it had two floors and a garage. i walked around the old summer palace in the rain (i saw the other, more famous one, in beijing, in bad weather too). i visited a temple that boasts having the biggest wooden multi-armed budhist god in either china or the world. i had a picture taken of me in traditional chinese royal clothes while talking on my cell phone. i realized that some of my students have worse english skills than i'd hoped (some can't even remember how to say the days of the week in english). i had a super hot, friendly, cool chinese boy with good english help me get on the right bus (i think he was with his girlfriend though, sadly). i walked around a city surrounded by big mountains at night on the arm of a student's boyfriend. i was told by this boy, margaret's boyfriend's, parents that i should think of them as my chinese mom and dad, and margaret's boyfriend (jason) as my brother. i climbed stairs up a mountain until i felt lightheaded and sick and my legs wouldn't stop shaking. i saw the only part of the great wall made from loose stones and sand that goes through a city. i was made to wear long underwear in 65 degree weather. i wandered around a near-deserted budhist temple high, high above the city, and watched dust whip through the city below from the gobi desert. i broke my vow never to ride a bike in china. in my last city, i took pictures the chinese tourist way, meaning i was almost every single one of the unnecessarily copious amount of pictures taken, posing nicely. i dreamed in chinese.
i'm sure pictures will follow before too long.
in other news, my parents fly into china in about four days, then i see them two weeks after that.
and i have about a month and a half of teaching left. weird.
i stayed with four very different families and at one chinese hotel.
i walked in the sea and climbed some mountains.
i walked through a duststorm and a rainstorm.
i shivered from cold through a sweater and coat and sweated through short sleeves and a skirt.
i felt like an inconvenience and i felt totally wanted.
i felt more homesick for america than i have so far here and i wished i were staying longer.
i got my first haircut since august.
i didn't shower.
and i stayed in my home province the whole time:)
hebei is something like the size of nevada. 116,000 or so square miles. a lot of it, especially up north and out west, is mountains. i spent about 40 hours (give or take) just traveling from one place to another.
i hate to even start to figure how many desperate phone calls i made to people who speak good chinese, asking them to talk to ticket agents or people sitting by me on busses to find out ticket info or arrival times or whatever.
i was up all night last night taking an 8 hour slow train (hard seat) back home. the train left at 9:20 pm, arrived at 5:20 am. i nodded off for maybe 10 minutes of that time.
two nights before that, one of my students decided i needed to take the crack-of-dawn train out of town, so woke me up at 3:15 am so i could have a little breakfast before my 4:20 am train. i spent 10 hours that day traveling a total that should have been less than 100 miles. this was the time when i was miserable and wanting to go home. i'd spent five days with people with no-to-strictly-ok english and was sick to death of not being understood. and sick of chinese food. and sick of busses and trains. but i had one more stop, which, as i mentioned, happily turned out the best one.
most of the money i spent on vacation was spent being lost and cheated in beijing the first day. i had to transfer from my bus in beijing, which proved as hard as i had feared. 4 hours, 4 bus/train stations, one travel agency, lots of phone calls, and more than a couple hundred yuan later, i was on a bus out. i really hated beijing that day.
but all the stress and frustration and time was worth it. i saw where the great wall meets the sea. i saw where 50 chinese virgin girls and boys (and presumably a few sailors) set off in search for the fountain of youth, instead discovering japan (thus the similarities between japanese and chinese in so many ways). i saw the 2008 olympics stadiums for soccer and ping pong. i watched a good deal of the world ping pong championship on tv. i consistently ate until i was half convinced i was going to throw up. i was guilted into drinking till drunk or at least tipsy seven times in as many days (as the anceint chinese proverb says: "if your friendship is not deep, drink more. if your friendship is deep, drink more"). i had two middle-aged chinese men tell me, in english, that they love me. i stayed in one new house (they'd moved in days before) and felt like i was in a mansion because it had two floors and a garage. i walked around the old summer palace in the rain (i saw the other, more famous one, in beijing, in bad weather too). i visited a temple that boasts having the biggest wooden multi-armed budhist god in either china or the world. i had a picture taken of me in traditional chinese royal clothes while talking on my cell phone. i realized that some of my students have worse english skills than i'd hoped (some can't even remember how to say the days of the week in english). i had a super hot, friendly, cool chinese boy with good english help me get on the right bus (i think he was with his girlfriend though, sadly). i walked around a city surrounded by big mountains at night on the arm of a student's boyfriend. i was told by this boy, margaret's boyfriend's, parents that i should think of them as my chinese mom and dad, and margaret's boyfriend (jason) as my brother. i climbed stairs up a mountain until i felt lightheaded and sick and my legs wouldn't stop shaking. i saw the only part of the great wall made from loose stones and sand that goes through a city. i was made to wear long underwear in 65 degree weather. i wandered around a near-deserted budhist temple high, high above the city, and watched dust whip through the city below from the gobi desert. i broke my vow never to ride a bike in china. in my last city, i took pictures the chinese tourist way, meaning i was almost every single one of the unnecessarily copious amount of pictures taken, posing nicely. i dreamed in chinese.
i'm sure pictures will follow before too long.
in other news, my parents fly into china in about four days, then i see them two weeks after that.
and i have about a month and a half of teaching left. weird.