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.

First week in Xichang

Alright, so Xichang is amazing. I got in on Sunday the 9th, and took a cab from the second smallest airport I have ever been in to my hotel, which was unfortunately quite a ways away totaling 70 RMB ($11.50, I'm such a whiner). Before I came, I was looking into the area, and all I could find about it was that it is in the middle of the mountains, it was very poor, and it's far enough away from everything that it's the city where satellites are launched from. I thought I was coming to the middle of nowhere! But as it turns out, because of the amount of ethnic minorities in the area, it is a huge tourism town. For Chinese people at least. There's even a Walmart here! KFC and Pizza hut too. I was worried for no reason! If I can get pizza, I'll be just fine.

On Monday, I came to the office and met some of the people working there. I'm doing my internship at the Liangshan Yi Empowerment Center, which organizes schools for kids and women of the Yi ethnic minority here that can't afford it. The Yi people are very backward, from what I understand. It's the kind of culture that teaches children not to go to school because it's a waste of time. Ugh, it makes me shudder. They also apparently let children DRINK and SMOKE. WHAT??? As soon as they're big enough to walk and talk basically. I do not understand how you can not know that that is bad for a child. I was in the office one day, and a 17 year old kid gave me some chocolate, and when I bit into it, it had alcohol in it. I was taken aback, and asked: is that alcohol inside candy? And he was like, ya. And I was like, sorry I should tell you I don't drink. And he was like, oh no it's just rice alcohol, you can drink that. *facepalm* There's also a huge drug and AIDS problem in the rural area here, and people are pretty much all around unsanitary. I live in the city so I don't see a lot of that here, but in the rural areas it's bad apparently.

The office set me up to live in an apartment where there are currently six kids that got pulled out of school for either psychological or family problems or both. And five of the six of them were born with AIDS because of uninformed HIV positive parents. When I first met them, I would never have guessed that they had any problems at all. They seemed like happy, normal, bratty, cute kids. But after being with them for a week, I get it. They range from ages 7 to 13, and I've been teaching them how to read. None of them have gotten a good education because of their family situation. I had never seen them really sad before today, but this afternoon, after class, one girl just started crying for no apparent reason, and wouldn't stop or move on her own for an hour. The other two girls got in a fight over some toy or something, and when I was trying to settle them down, one started crying worse and said "I just thought of my parents". "What about them?" I asked. "I don't know where they are", she said. What do you say to comfort a child whose family is just gone? And she either has no idea where they are or is blocking out what happened to them. That caused the oldest girl to start thinking about her family, and the afternoon turned into a big crying fest.

The lady taking care of them is a forty-something Spanish woman named Monica. She is LEGIT. Seriously, she's got these kids well-trained. She said when they got here, they didn't know what toilet paper was for. And now, they brush their teeth after every meal, wash their own clothes, and have a cleaning schedule that they follow every day. I don't know how she does it. After my first day here, I was like waaahh I want to go hooooome. I was exhausted and just wanted to be ALONE for two seconds. But she just goes non-stop all day every day, paying attention to each child separately and managing to cook and shop for all of them. She also apparently has a knee problem that is bad enough that it needs surgery, but it doesn't even phase her. She must be exhausted, but it doesn't show even a little bit. I don't think I've met a more selfless person in my entire life.

I still feel a little out of place here. I had no idea this was going to be my living situation before I got here, I thought I was going to be living in the office. I feel like I'm being more of a burden than a help at this point, because I'm not paying rent, and Monica refuses to let me pay for my share of food. I am literally taking food out of children's mouths! I've only been here a week, so I'm still figuring out how I can best help out, but for now I just try to keep the kids happy and not break anything.

My internet sucks here so I can't post pictures, but I will as soon as I can! Because it's gorgeous here.

bye bye for now!

Last day in Nanjing

Hi World!

I haven't posted in over a month! There is so much to catch up on. Basically school is done and I've already put it way behind me. Here are some pictures from the final flagship banquet:

My roommate on the left, my teacher for the past two years in the middle.

probably my favorite asian evah

Best roommate in the universe. No contest

Lol, he finally made me blush

                          Over the break, I went to my darling roommate hongxia's hometown to celebrate the most important holiday in China with her and her family! I absolutely loved it. It is far from the business of urban china, the air was slightly better, and the people are very very friendly. She grew up in a "cunzi" which is kind of like a neighborhood of a suburb.  Her's is called Xujiacun, which literally translates to the village of the xu family, which  is her surname, and they own some farmland in the surrounding area. Hongxia's mother has passed away, so its just her dad now, and he has his own house in a gated yard, which is a one minute walk away from hongxia's grandpa and aunt's house. In the "nongcun", or rural china, you can buy a plot of land and  pretty much build whatever you want on it, which gives people a lot of freedom to have a lot of rooms and is also crazy cheaper than renting an apartment or buying a house.

Hongxia's front door

       I loved being in the house where hongxia's grew up. I was there for about a week total and now have a new perspective on Chinese people. The life there is very simple. There is one tiny market in the neighborhood, and you have to go to the city for pretty much anything else. Her dad doesn't even have internet because he never uses it. They get their water from a spigot type thing outside, and rarely bathe in the winter because most of the water is heated by boiling it. They go to the bathroom in an outhouse, yet every house has a TV. Her neighborhood, although completely different from mine, reminds me a lot of where I grew up, a small neighborhood where everybody knows everybody else and life moves more slowly. We had lunch with her aunt and cousin, then went down to the very polluted river by her house and skipped rocks for a while. She has been telling me about her old friends and memories with her family and customs of the neighborhood which is totally fascinating to me.

Some of Hongxia's cousin

Omg so cute

One thing that I thought strange is the government involvement in the neighborhood. Every cunzi (around 500-800 people usually) has it's own government office that I presume organizes things for the cunzi. It was closed obviously, for the holiday, but we went and looked  anyway. There was a billboard posted with different people that were good community members. Not too strange right? What I thought was weird was the categories. There was a category for who followed the laws the best, who was a good son or daughter, who was a good daughter in law or son in law, who did the most for his neighborhood, and also a category for kids that send their parents money, and how much they send them. Was it the strangest thing I have ever seen? Probably not. Did it make me feel like the communists were watching me? Absolutely.

      We spent the week meeting her family and basically just hanging out. On new year's eve, we hung paper characters over every door and window in their house. At night, we watched a TV program that everyone watches to bring in the new year, and which everyone follows to make fun of the next day. One of the performances was a guy singing a song about the "Chinese dream". I've noticed that a lot, most advertisements that I saw surrounding the coming of the new year were all about being Chinese and having China pride, which is very strange to me. Anyway, so during his performance, he was walking on a treadmill with a green screen behind him making it look like he was moving along a path, and he was dressed in jeans and a collared shirt, supposed to look like the common man living his Chinese dream. The critique of the performance was that the supposed "Chinese dream" that he was singing about, was continuously moving, but staying in one place, just like being on a treadmill. People were also really angry, because he was supposed to be appealing to the common man, but his simple outfit was actually designer and cost hundreds of dollars.




      Over the week, I probably ate my weight in dumplings. It's traditional to eat them at the new year, and to eat a lot of them. I felt bad saying no to food, so I'm pretty sure I gained 10 pounds in my week there. And Hongxia's sweet Grandpa noticed the first day that I liked a certain food, so he bought more of it and insisted that he cook for me so I could eat it for the rest of the week. They definitely know how to take care of guests in China.

            So, the word for "immediately" is "mashang" which literally translates to "on the horse". I don't know why, and nobody really thinks about it like that anymore. But since it's the year of the horse, there is a joke where people say "on the horse, there is money/a boyfriend/a new job" or whatever they want in the new year. So it's like saying, the year of the horse will bring those things. It's a lot funnier in Chinese... Anyway a ton of businesses have little stuffed horses with fake money or little trinkets on them. I think it's the cutest thing ever.

Before we came to her dad house, I met hongxia at her brothers house in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong province. I got in to Jinan on Monday evening where Hongxia picked me up from the train station and we took a cab back to her brothers place. He and his wife and adorable daughter yang yang welcomed me in to the city by taking me out to dinner. Where the dishes included cicadas and cow knuckle. I am not joking. It's a specialty here! Something that I don't love about the hospitality of Chinese people: if you say you don't want something, they think that it means that you do. You can refuse something multiple times and they will literally force it into your hands. For example, at dinner, my roommate told them I don't eat seafood. So her sister in law promptly asked me if I wanted shrimp. I said no, I don't really eat seafood, she was like, no it's really good just try some, and my roommate had to tell her again that I don't eat it. It's the same thing with alcohol. You can tell someone a hundred times that you don't drink AT ALL, and they'll be like, oh just a little, and buy me a drink. Sometimes, this hospitality is really nice, and I feel taken care of, but when I feel compelled to eat bugs, legs and eyeballs and all, I wish they could understand that no means no. It's a cultural thing here to refuse something that you actually want, so they think I'm just being polite. Surprisingly, the roasted cicadas tasted pretty good, but I could feel their little legs moving around in my mouth with every bite and I wanted to puke. But it is so rude to say no! So I think I ate about three of them.

The next day, Hongxia, yang yang and I went out to see the lake and a natural spring that jinan is famous for. It was gorgeous! I feel like anywhere I go in china I can find something amazing. Before we went to the spring, we were waiting in the main square of the city for a water show to start, when yang yang decided that she wanted yet another toy.

How cute is that face?

We had already bought her two that day so hongxia said no. Yang yang started crying, but hongxia stood her ground. Kids do it all the time right? But after a couple of minutes, the lady selling the toy was like, oh it's fine just give it to her. I think she was going to give it to her for free just to stop her crying! I've seen kids dragging their moms into toy stores or to buy ice cream and getting whatever they want. Their moms say that it is bad behavior but they do nothing to stop it. I have also noticed that whenever a kid is crying, it will be held. And I have never seen a Chinese parent punish a child for being bad. Maybe it's just me but I think this is a big problem. My roommate tells me that kids rely on their parents for years here, throughout college, and sometimes after working, parents still give them whatever they want. There was a girl working in the flagship office full time whose mother still paid for everything she did. She told me she spent 2000 rmb (300+usd) in one shopping trip with her mom, and she buys stuff online all the time! None with her own money. I cannot understand this part of their culture, if you want your kid to have a better future, stop spoiling it.

Quick side note on how much I love hongxia, she has been in flagship for a long time, and has had three American roommates before me. I always joke about being her favorite, and she says, of course you are! I thought it was just a joke, but she says she has never invited any of her roommates home with her before. How sweet is that? Also, at the end of the flagship semester, all of the Chinese roommates had to write a story about their American roommate to put in the flagship magazine. What she wrote about us literally made me cry. She has become one of my best friends, and my Chinese would be nothing without her. #idkmybffhongxia

Since I've been back in Nanjing, I've just been running errands and getting ready to go! I am crazy excited and nervous at the same time, I can't wait to start on Monday!

 sorry for the longest blogpost in eternity, hope i didn't bore your minds out.

Some China pics for the day：

This is a piece of candy, that reads "stomach leisurely the first"

this says"choco roll", There is no chocolate in this roll! Chinese people don't get what chocolate is

weird dish that they eat on the new year made of glutinous rice