Monasteries, Hiking, and Leprosy

Today is the post of a thousand pictures! Welcome to the beautiful Xichang

Monica is friends with some female Monks! We went and had a very spicy lunch at their gorgeous monastery. They asked me endless questions about America and made fun of my leg  hair. (I hadn't shaved for... a while)

The kids performing Ajielu for the lady monks

 One Saturday, Yinglei Chen (My super awesome coworker who is my age and therefore my salvation from an office of old people who I can't understand) and I took the kids on a hike! The mountains here are great. We get gorgeous sunrises and sunsets just like in the good old valley.

baaaaaaa

Cool hills

It got hot like two weeks ago. I am basking in my extended Summer

My coworker and salvation

How cute are they???

The sky is so much better than Nanjing

Xiao Lu on the left and Ajimo Erguo on the right.

Shiniu likes to pose with plants obviously

This is Riga. She reminds me of me. A total know-it-all

This is Shama Rimu. He is a BRAT. But always makes me laugh

A keymaker in an older part of Xichang. I love this neighborhood

These next few are shots of Xichang College. The campus is gorgeous. 

Arts and crafts

practicing their song

This was amazing. I got to go to one of the schools in the city and talk to some girls that our program supports. They are incredible. They all came from impoverished families, and their parents are still either farmers or not around. Most of them are the only ones of their siblings to have ever attended school, and they are so hardworking. They are just about to enter into high school, which means they have to test well, or they will have no way to get into school and be forced to drop out. All of them dream of getting into a good college so they can find a good job. They have so much pressure on them to do well, otherwise, all they can look forward to is a life of continued poverty. They kind of inspire me. I hope I get to see them again.

Have I mentioned that the food in Sichuan is AMAZING?

Nothing beats Sichuanese hot pot. Like, literally.

 More hiking pictures, are you serious? Yes.

 

 

  Some random pictures of the city and cool mountain view

It’s been almost four weeks already, the time here is flying by. Which might have something to do with the fact that from 8 in the morning until 9 at night, I am constantly working. I’m not complaining, I love what I am doing, but it is exhausting. My daily schedule goes something like this: I get up between 7 and 7:30 every morning so I can exercise for a while (for my sanity mostly). I start making breakfast at 7:45 so it can be ready by 8:15 so the kids have time to eat before they take their AIDS medication at 9. We clean up and the kids wash clothes or clean their rooms and then I have class for them, and I head to work in the office at ten. I’m back to the apartment at 4 to teach more class, we have dinner, and either practice reading or watch a movie if they were good that day. They go to bed at 8:30 which anybody with kids would know really means 9:00. So I am tired guys. I am really really tired. 

So one day my boss is like, ok I want you to hold a training meeting on how to write project reports for the staff. Obviously I know how to do that, because I am American, and they write things like budget reports in American NGOs, unlike Chinese NGOs. All I had been doing up to that point was translating stuff. What? A training meeting? In Chinese? With actual people listening to me? I had a little bit of a panic attack, and I’m pretty sure my face was red the entire time I was reporting, but I didn’t die. And I didn’t have to report in front of my boss. If that had happened, I think I would have cried. And now, I guess I’m the official project report writer for the NGO because they have already assigned me two of them. So that’s fun. I finished the first one and sent it in, but apparently I did none of it right, so I had to redo it, and the whole process took me a week. I’m still getting used to communicating well.  

The life here is definitely different from Nanjing. People in the Yi ethnicity still have a very different culture. Life in big cities is pretty much all the same, but here, people still dress in traditional clothing and women grown their hair down past their waist so they can braid it in two loops around their head. I was on the bus last week and a large family of Yi people walked on, dressed pretty traditionally. The mom sat on the floor, which is something that Chinese people NEVER do so I was surprised – and proceeded to breast feed her toddler. Right on a moving bus!

Something else that stands out is the smell. There’s not really a garbage system here, at least in our area, and so people dump garbage in piles near the river or smaller roads. Sometimes I’ll be walking and smell a smelly smell so awful that I want to retch, and see a pile of smoking garbage near the road. A sanitation system is going at the top of my list for things that need to change here. And you know there’s the AIDS and heroin problem bus seriously, just get a landfill!

There was an earthquake last week! None of us felt it, but apparently a building down the street from us fell down. I forgot that this region is very seismically active, and so now I’m freaking out a little bit about earthquakes. All the kids say they have been in earthquakes before like it’s no big deal. Another strange experience, I heard a gunshot one night. Firecrackers go off all the time in China, so I’m pretty used to it by now, but this was very distinctive. I live right next to a prison (did I mention that before?), so I guess that must have been it, but guns are suuuper illegal here so it was strange to hear. 

Has this blogpost been crazy enough yet? I still haven’t mentioned they guy that molested me! Unintentionally, but I am still offended. It was when I went out with my coworker one weekend. We were walking down the street and chatting it up, and all of a sudden a man’s hand was on my breast! I was quite startled, and turned towards him like, what the hell dude, ready to flip out. And he was gesturing that he wanted to shake hands with me. Well I did not shake his hand, and my coworker pushed him away from me before I had a chance to punch him in the face. I thought that if you want to get somebody’s attention, you make eye contact and say hello, or at the VERY MOST tap their shoulder. My mother taught me incorrectly apparently, because you’re actually supposed to make physical contact with their sexual organs. I get it now. #pissed #handsoffthegoodies

And if all THAT is not crazy enough for you, listen to this: there is a prostitution house right next door to me. There is a shop that is normally closed, but the other day it was open, and it said "massage" on it. I was like, right on! Massage parlor right next to my house, and then I looked inside, and saw a lot of leg and unnecessary makeup. Prostitute massage parlor. Every time I think there could not possibly be more problems with this place, something else comes up. I just thought of another one, leprosy! That's right, LEPROSY. Like in the bible! I thought that leprosy was laughable now, like, quick fix, go to the hospital and take some meds. But apparently AIDS isn't bad enough, and this place is backwards enough to still have LEPERS. It's just,... it's ridiculous!

So I think those are all the strange things I learned about this place recently. Back to how awesome life is: I freaking love these kids. I want to put them on "kids say the darndest things". At night, Monica and I kiss them all goodnight right? So one of the girls thinks it's funny to call me her "prince". She plays this game where she talks like little red riding hood: "prince, prince, how are your arms so big?" she asks, and I respond, "all the better to hug you with my princess". It's pretty adorable right? Tonight, she was asking me those questions, and she said, "how do you say this?" while pointing to her waist (their Chinese isn't good remember?), I told her, then she said, "Prince, prince, why is your waist so thick?". Ouch. Guess I need to lay off the noodles. But I still love her.


Also, I think one of the boys has a crush on me. Tonight I kissed him on the forehead, and when I was kissing another one of the boys, I saw him touch his fingers to his head and then his mouth. I am so flattered. At least he doesn't think I'm fat.

That's all for now folks! This weekend I'm going to my coworker's house to attend a traditional Tibetan wedding! whaaaaaat! So I will update soon.

Love.