(Nick)All is still going very well in Hangzhou! We have all settled into the school routine nicely (though I guess this is not a very hard task considering our lives are not nearly as stressful as all the students around us!).
Since Terry wasn't at school yesterday (it was International Women's Day), I will talk about yesterday in addition to today. We had our first Chinese handicrafts class! We focused on papercutting - which turned out to be rather difficult! We started out by cutting out a Chinese good luck symbol, which wasn't too hard at all. Then our teacher pulled out a sheet with all the Olympic mascots, and cut them all out. There are five Olympic mascots: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini - if you put them all together they form - "Beijing Huanying Ni", which means Beijing welcomes you. I chose Beibei, Baker (our translator) chose Jingjing, Drew chose Huanhuan, Emily chose Yingying, and Cady chose Nini. We glued together three different colored sheets of paper, with the mascot on top. Then, we each used exacto knives to carve out our Olympic mascots. It was very hard!!! The mascots have a lot of small, detailed components that are hard to carve out, and you have to push hard with your knife to get through each sheet of paper. We all had trouble with it, but Drew managed to finish his, Cady is almost done, and.......Emily and I had to start over because we totally butchered our mascots. Oh well, hopefully we can get better at papercutting. Our teacher told us that next class we would focus on Chinese knot bracelets which we are looking forward to!
Before our next class, we walked to our favorite milk tea store and bought hot chocolate with oreos in it.....SO GOOD. Our next class was gym. We had a new teacher this time who was great, but we did miss the energetic, smily teacher we have had the last couple gym classes. We started out playing badminton - we did a couple drills and then played games. Drew played against the gym teacher, who is ridiculously good at badminton, so Drew finished the game in quite a sweat. Baker, Cady, Emily, and I had a nice relaxing game compared to the one next to us, which was fine with us! After badminton, we played ping pong. Once again, Drew and the gym teacher had another strenuous game, while the rest of us had normal, relaxing games. Although, Cady and I managed to get a little crazy during our game, to the point where we were hitting the ping pong ball over the room and acting like complete fools. I know...its probably a good thing that we have our own private gym class....and I stress the word private.
We had yet another delicious lunch (when do we not?), and as usual, our chef came in towards the beginning of our lunch and made sure everything was good. He is a really funny guy and is always laughing with us. After lunch, we went to the English "corner," aka the water well near the front gate of the school. It was kind of rainy so there weren't as many kids as usual. The first girl to come is a third year student (senior) whose English name is Cherry, which I got a kick out of because that is my grandmother's name and it is pretty rare. She wants to study Swahili in university, which we thought was SO COOL. Michael, a year 2 student, came as usual. Michael is a huge singer (like me) so of course we sang some quality tunes (we then proceeded to invite him to come with us to KTV, or karaoke, that night!).
After English corner, we went to classes as usual. However, during the first period, Drew and I came to Cady's English class because Cady's host sister, Eve, invited us. Their English teacher gave us a couple of his student's English compositions, which we read and corrected. They were very well written, but the teacher told us that often, their writing is a lot better than their speaking. Drew, Cady, and I then taught the class about the ever so popular five paragraph essay that we use in America (it was literally drilled into our heads at DS during middle school, so this was no hard task for us!). Then we sang some songs for the class: Wonderwall by Oasis and Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The teacher then showed us a song in their English book that we then proceeded to sing to them....Santa Claus is Coming to Town. It was a good time.
My host father has caught on to my incredible love for eggplant. After school, he stopped at the market and bought a ton of eggplant which, along with the bamboo shoots dish, beef dish, and egg dish, made me a happy camper at dinner. My host mother's younger sister (meimei) came over with her son, Raven's cousin, who he calls didi since he doesn't have a real younger brother. They brought along their new puppy, some sort of yappy little white dog that was pretty cute. My host family owns a lizard so we had the two meet, and the lizard ran as fast as he could up the wall onto a tall plant, where he stayed for the remainder of the night. Raven, his cousin, and I then went to KTV (karaoke) and met up with the rest of the gang. Karaoke in China is amazing. We had our own room with a large TV and a couple microphones, as well as a selection of hundreds of both Chinese and western songs. We had a really good time...and spent many, many hours singing.
This morning we met at school at 9 AM. It was raining, so instead of going to Hefang Road first, we went to an interactive pottery museum...the interactive part being that we all got to use pottery wheels! We spent about 40 minutes sculpting our pottery vases/bowls, which we all agreed was a lot of fun. The pottery wheels were a part of the museum, so every so often a group of people would come in and watch us using the wheels (the sight of a bunch of Americans trying to make pottery must've been rather amusing). The pottery we made today will be ready to pick up in a couple days! After, we walked through the museum, which had so many celadon pots and vases from the Song dynasty. The color of the celadon glaze is a beautiful, almost transparent, light green. After the pottery museum, which was very impressive, we went to lunch at yet another (extravagant) restaurant (Hangzhou High School sure does treat us well). There were so many dishes but a couple favorites were the duck tongue (once again), duck soup with bamboo shoots, beggar's chicken, and shrimp. After a fabulous lunch, we took the school's bus to Hefang Road (I'd already been, but for some of the others, this was their first time!). Compared to the rest of modern Hangzhou, Hefang road is really the only glimpse of the "old Hangzhou," and even on a rainy day, clearly people love seeing the old Hangzhou! I hadn't really seen that many westerners thus far in Hangzhou, but I saw many on Hefang Road. There are many differerent shops with beautiful artwork, crafts, instruments, silk, tea, famous foods, nuts, and very old medicine stores! We all split off with our respected host sibling and walked around for an hour and a half. It is definitely a nice break from the bustling, modern city we know as Hangzhou. The old style street with the old architecture reminded us somewhat of the other old towns we've seen in Beijing, Xi'an, Lijiang, and Yangshuo.
Tonight at dinner, my host family made stinky tofu, which is Raven's favorite. I've smelled it many times before, as it is a common smell on the side of many Chinese roads in all the cities we've been to. I even ate it at the opening banquet on our first day. The smell is probably the worst smell I have ever experienced in my life...I can't even describe it in words....it is just awful!!! Well, I ate a lot of it tonight, and although it doesnt actually taste that bad, I could still smell it even when it was in my mouth! I've tried very hard to be open minded about food on this trip, and I think I've done a good job with that so far. But the stinky tofu made me cringe so much that I could not possibly hide it from my host family! They thought it was funny though, and we ended up laughing for a good five minutes about my reaction. In addition to the stinky tofu, I also ate squid eggs, which were pretty good, along with pork, bamboo shoots, and yes, EGGPLANT. My host father is such a good cook....our everyday "meals" look like gourmet Chinese food from a fancy restaurant. I told him that he should move to Boston and start up a restaurant!
A couple days ago, Ella and Patrick (who is currently in Xi'an taking an exam for a university that will allow him to study Japanese for two years in Xi'an and two years in Japan), took us to a music store during our lunch period to buy some Chinese music! I bought three CDs: Jay Cho, who seems to be the Justin Timberlake of China, Soda Green, a Taiwanese band that is a favorite of Raven's, and S.H.E., a girl band that Zhu laoshi played for us during Chinese class back in the states. It has been very interesting for me (the music lover) to get a taste of what the Chinese music scene is like. It almost feels like China is experiencing what the U.S. experienced during the late '90s. Boy bands are very popular, as well as just pop music in general. One of my friends, who I call Fly (his favorite animal is a fly), went to the Backstreet Boys concert in Hangzhou on Thursday night. He had such a good time and asked me if I liked the Backstreet Boys....I told him that I used to, ten years ago!!! I tried to explain to him that in America, not only are boy bands not very popular anymore, but not many guys listen to boy bands in the first place. Oh well, it is just a lot different here! A lot of my favorite bands (aka Guster) are not known at all here, which is understandable, but I've been having fun introducing them to Raven. I've also played Raven a bunch of songs from my a cappella group at DS (The Rest), which he loves!
One thing I've noticed while I've been staying in Hangzhou is just how much more I think about conserving than I do in the U.S. Even though it is pretty obvious that my host family is well-off, that doesn't exempt them from still wanting to conserve resources. I have found that I am a lot more aware of my use of certain resources here. I have my own thermostat in my room, and despite having the power to leave my heater on all night while I sleep, I make sure to turn it off every night, as it is not necessary. When I shower, i make sure not to spend too long. With electricity, I only use lights if I absolutely need them. There is just such a different attitude here than in the U.S. In America, we have the attitude that we spread "from sea to shining sea," with so much open space, and there is room for everybody to live comfortably. But in China, which is similar to the U.S. in land size, over 1 billion people are, for the most part, limited to eastern China because the geography in the west is pretty much unliveable. This puts a lot of pressure on the land that is liveable, tightening resources. The concept of having an actual house is unimaginable at least in the more urban areas of China. Apartment complexes are the norm here, for it would be impossible for every family in China to have their own house. I have definitely realized just how much we actually have in the U.S., and that is not necessarily a good thing. My family in the U.S. only has three people in it, and we have three cars - one car for each person. My host family, on the otherhand, has one car, yet they manage to go about everyday life in the same way that my family in the U.S. does. There is just such a difference in attitudes between the two countries. People tend to give China a lot of crap for their many environmental problems (which, don't get me wrong, definitely pose many concerns for the future), but when you compare the average Chinese citizen and the average American citizen, the Chinese conserve so much more, while the Americans use so much more. Obviously, population is the main difference between the two countries. I just think it's important not to automatically assume that the Chinese people are responsible for all these environmental problems. From what I've seen, at least, they know that they must conserve for the good of their country. The real problem is the corrupt government officials and factory owners, but that is a whole other topic. Okay, there, the enivronmentalist within me is now satisfied ;)
We have less than a week left with our first host families, and although I love my second host brother, I am not looking forward to leaving. Two and a half weeks is simply not enough time but what can you do! It will definitely be a hard goodbye, as we have gotten very close, and I am in such a comfortable place right now that I don't want to change a thing. Tomorrow, my host family is taking me shopping in Hangzhou, which will be fun. Also, one of the English teachers invited us to hear some live music with him at a club tomorrow night!
Zaijian for now!
Since Terry wasn't at school yesterday (it was International Women's Day), I will talk about yesterday in addition to today. We had our first Chinese handicrafts class! We focused on papercutting - which turned out to be rather difficult! We started out by cutting out a Chinese good luck symbol, which wasn't too hard at all. Then our teacher pulled out a sheet with all the Olympic mascots, and cut them all out. There are five Olympic mascots: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini - if you put them all together they form - "Beijing Huanying Ni", which means Beijing welcomes you. I chose Beibei, Baker (our translator) chose Jingjing, Drew chose Huanhuan, Emily chose Yingying, and Cady chose Nini. We glued together three different colored sheets of paper, with the mascot on top. Then, we each used exacto knives to carve out our Olympic mascots. It was very hard!!! The mascots have a lot of small, detailed components that are hard to carve out, and you have to push hard with your knife to get through each sheet of paper. We all had trouble with it, but Drew managed to finish his, Cady is almost done, and.......Emily and I had to start over because we totally butchered our mascots. Oh well, hopefully we can get better at papercutting. Our teacher told us that next class we would focus on Chinese knot bracelets which we are looking forward to!
Before our next class, we walked to our favorite milk tea store and bought hot chocolate with oreos in it.....SO GOOD. Our next class was gym. We had a new teacher this time who was great, but we did miss the energetic, smily teacher we have had the last couple gym classes. We started out playing badminton - we did a couple drills and then played games. Drew played against the gym teacher, who is ridiculously good at badminton, so Drew finished the game in quite a sweat. Baker, Cady, Emily, and I had a nice relaxing game compared to the one next to us, which was fine with us! After badminton, we played ping pong. Once again, Drew and the gym teacher had another strenuous game, while the rest of us had normal, relaxing games. Although, Cady and I managed to get a little crazy during our game, to the point where we were hitting the ping pong ball over the room and acting like complete fools. I know...its probably a good thing that we have our own private gym class....and I stress the word private.
We had yet another delicious lunch (when do we not?), and as usual, our chef came in towards the beginning of our lunch and made sure everything was good. He is a really funny guy and is always laughing with us. After lunch, we went to the English "corner," aka the water well near the front gate of the school. It was kind of rainy so there weren't as many kids as usual. The first girl to come is a third year student (senior) whose English name is Cherry, which I got a kick out of because that is my grandmother's name and it is pretty rare. She wants to study Swahili in university, which we thought was SO COOL. Michael, a year 2 student, came as usual. Michael is a huge singer (like me) so of course we sang some quality tunes (we then proceeded to invite him to come with us to KTV, or karaoke, that night!).
After English corner, we went to classes as usual. However, during the first period, Drew and I came to Cady's English class because Cady's host sister, Eve, invited us. Their English teacher gave us a couple of his student's English compositions, which we read and corrected. They were very well written, but the teacher told us that often, their writing is a lot better than their speaking. Drew, Cady, and I then taught the class about the ever so popular five paragraph essay that we use in America (it was literally drilled into our heads at DS during middle school, so this was no hard task for us!). Then we sang some songs for the class: Wonderwall by Oasis and Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The teacher then showed us a song in their English book that we then proceeded to sing to them....Santa Claus is Coming to Town. It was a good time.
My host father has caught on to my incredible love for eggplant. After school, he stopped at the market and bought a ton of eggplant which, along with the bamboo shoots dish, beef dish, and egg dish, made me a happy camper at dinner. My host mother's younger sister (meimei) came over with her son, Raven's cousin, who he calls didi since he doesn't have a real younger brother. They brought along their new puppy, some sort of yappy little white dog that was pretty cute. My host family owns a lizard so we had the two meet, and the lizard ran as fast as he could up the wall onto a tall plant, where he stayed for the remainder of the night. Raven, his cousin, and I then went to KTV (karaoke) and met up with the rest of the gang. Karaoke in China is amazing. We had our own room with a large TV and a couple microphones, as well as a selection of hundreds of both Chinese and western songs. We had a really good time...and spent many, many hours singing.
This morning we met at school at 9 AM. It was raining, so instead of going to Hefang Road first, we went to an interactive pottery museum...the interactive part being that we all got to use pottery wheels! We spent about 40 minutes sculpting our pottery vases/bowls, which we all agreed was a lot of fun. The pottery wheels were a part of the museum, so every so often a group of people would come in and watch us using the wheels (the sight of a bunch of Americans trying to make pottery must've been rather amusing). The pottery we made today will be ready to pick up in a couple days! After, we walked through the museum, which had so many celadon pots and vases from the Song dynasty. The color of the celadon glaze is a beautiful, almost transparent, light green. After the pottery museum, which was very impressive, we went to lunch at yet another (extravagant) restaurant (Hangzhou High School sure does treat us well). There were so many dishes but a couple favorites were the duck tongue (once again), duck soup with bamboo shoots, beggar's chicken, and shrimp. After a fabulous lunch, we took the school's bus to Hefang Road (I'd already been, but for some of the others, this was their first time!). Compared to the rest of modern Hangzhou, Hefang road is really the only glimpse of the "old Hangzhou," and even on a rainy day, clearly people love seeing the old Hangzhou! I hadn't really seen that many westerners thus far in Hangzhou, but I saw many on Hefang Road. There are many differerent shops with beautiful artwork, crafts, instruments, silk, tea, famous foods, nuts, and very old medicine stores! We all split off with our respected host sibling and walked around for an hour and a half. It is definitely a nice break from the bustling, modern city we know as Hangzhou. The old style street with the old architecture reminded us somewhat of the other old towns we've seen in Beijing, Xi'an, Lijiang, and Yangshuo.
Tonight at dinner, my host family made stinky tofu, which is Raven's favorite. I've smelled it many times before, as it is a common smell on the side of many Chinese roads in all the cities we've been to. I even ate it at the opening banquet on our first day. The smell is probably the worst smell I have ever experienced in my life...I can't even describe it in words....it is just awful!!! Well, I ate a lot of it tonight, and although it doesnt actually taste that bad, I could still smell it even when it was in my mouth! I've tried very hard to be open minded about food on this trip, and I think I've done a good job with that so far. But the stinky tofu made me cringe so much that I could not possibly hide it from my host family! They thought it was funny though, and we ended up laughing for a good five minutes about my reaction. In addition to the stinky tofu, I also ate squid eggs, which were pretty good, along with pork, bamboo shoots, and yes, EGGPLANT. My host father is such a good cook....our everyday "meals" look like gourmet Chinese food from a fancy restaurant. I told him that he should move to Boston and start up a restaurant!
A couple days ago, Ella and Patrick (who is currently in Xi'an taking an exam for a university that will allow him to study Japanese for two years in Xi'an and two years in Japan), took us to a music store during our lunch period to buy some Chinese music! I bought three CDs: Jay Cho, who seems to be the Justin Timberlake of China, Soda Green, a Taiwanese band that is a favorite of Raven's, and S.H.E., a girl band that Zhu laoshi played for us during Chinese class back in the states. It has been very interesting for me (the music lover) to get a taste of what the Chinese music scene is like. It almost feels like China is experiencing what the U.S. experienced during the late '90s. Boy bands are very popular, as well as just pop music in general. One of my friends, who I call Fly (his favorite animal is a fly), went to the Backstreet Boys concert in Hangzhou on Thursday night. He had such a good time and asked me if I liked the Backstreet Boys....I told him that I used to, ten years ago!!! I tried to explain to him that in America, not only are boy bands not very popular anymore, but not many guys listen to boy bands in the first place. Oh well, it is just a lot different here! A lot of my favorite bands (aka Guster) are not known at all here, which is understandable, but I've been having fun introducing them to Raven. I've also played Raven a bunch of songs from my a cappella group at DS (The Rest), which he loves!
One thing I've noticed while I've been staying in Hangzhou is just how much more I think about conserving than I do in the U.S. Even though it is pretty obvious that my host family is well-off, that doesn't exempt them from still wanting to conserve resources. I have found that I am a lot more aware of my use of certain resources here. I have my own thermostat in my room, and despite having the power to leave my heater on all night while I sleep, I make sure to turn it off every night, as it is not necessary. When I shower, i make sure not to spend too long. With electricity, I only use lights if I absolutely need them. There is just such a different attitude here than in the U.S. In America, we have the attitude that we spread "from sea to shining sea," with so much open space, and there is room for everybody to live comfortably. But in China, which is similar to the U.S. in land size, over 1 billion people are, for the most part, limited to eastern China because the geography in the west is pretty much unliveable. This puts a lot of pressure on the land that is liveable, tightening resources. The concept of having an actual house is unimaginable at least in the more urban areas of China. Apartment complexes are the norm here, for it would be impossible for every family in China to have their own house. I have definitely realized just how much we actually have in the U.S., and that is not necessarily a good thing. My family in the U.S. only has three people in it, and we have three cars - one car for each person. My host family, on the otherhand, has one car, yet they manage to go about everyday life in the same way that my family in the U.S. does. There is just such a difference in attitudes between the two countries. People tend to give China a lot of crap for their many environmental problems (which, don't get me wrong, definitely pose many concerns for the future), but when you compare the average Chinese citizen and the average American citizen, the Chinese conserve so much more, while the Americans use so much more. Obviously, population is the main difference between the two countries. I just think it's important not to automatically assume that the Chinese people are responsible for all these environmental problems. From what I've seen, at least, they know that they must conserve for the good of their country. The real problem is the corrupt government officials and factory owners, but that is a whole other topic. Okay, there, the enivronmentalist within me is now satisfied ;)
We have less than a week left with our first host families, and although I love my second host brother, I am not looking forward to leaving. Two and a half weeks is simply not enough time but what can you do! It will definitely be a hard goodbye, as we have gotten very close, and I am in such a comfortable place right now that I don't want to change a thing. Tomorrow, my host family is taking me shopping in Hangzhou, which will be fun. Also, one of the English teachers invited us to hear some live music with him at a club tomorrow night!
Zaijian for now!
1 comment:
The Chinese society is very different than the Western one. In matter of food, arts and hobbies, they are more elaborated I think. For example, pottery making and ceramic printing- they are the specialists in these areas!
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