Christmas Packages!

I received two Christmas packages today! One came from my family and one came from my church in Seattle. The packages contained lots of goodies:

• Butterfingers & Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (two of my favorite candies...I love peanut butter!)
• Beef Jerky
• My sister-in-law's amazing pistachio bread (Thanks Leah!! You know how much I love your pistachio bread!)
• Hot Chocolate packs
• A box of cereal
• Crackers and Cheese
• Some peanut butter wafer cookies
• Time "The Year in Review" magazine
• A couple of movies

Thanks for those who sent packages. Anyone else who wants to send me a package is welcome to :).

Anyhow, we're having a Christmas party here in about 30 minutes with the other ELT Edge teachers. Should be a good time. We're having another one on Christmas day with the other foreign teachers here at QFPLC.

Merry Christmas!

Bowling

One of the main ways I spend my time when I'm not teaching is to hang out with students. A lot of times we watch a movie or play a game, but we recently found a bowling alley downtown that has a "happy hour" between 5 and 7:30 pm (only 5 RMB for the shoes, and 3 RMB per game per person), so Josh (another ELT Edge teacher teaching here at QFPLC) and I took some students bowling on Friday. It was the first time any of them bowled, so needless to say, none of them did terribly well, although a couple of them got a strike, which is more than can be said for me. I bowled worse than I have in years.

In case you're wondering what a Chinese bowling alley is like, it's almost exactly like a bowling alley in the states. They seem to have the same software for the score-keeping computers. However, the machines that clear away the pins and set up pins for the next frame don't work as well as ours do in the states...several times it would set the pins down and one would immediately fall over.

All in all, it was a fun way to spend a night. I'll probably be taking students bowling again.

Wǒ Xuéxí Hànyǔ

While I'm living here in China, I've been taking the opportunity to try to learn Mandarin Chinese. It really isn't necessary for living here, since I'm at a foreign language school and there are plenty of students who want to practice their English and help you out, but I figure it'd be a waste to live here and not learn Chinese at least a little.

Since this is a foreign language college, they offer Chinese language class for the foreign students (mostly Russian and Korean) who come here to learn Chinese. I go to these classes on the days I don't teach (Monday and Thursday). It's a great environment to learn Chinese in because usually there are only 3 students, counting me, although sometimes there are as many as 5 if some of the other foreign teachers come to class. Unfortunately, I don't usually feel motivated to study outside of class, so I tend to forget a lot of what I learn in class every week. Most weeks I have a student come tutor me for an hour or so, so I get that, at least. And the classes I go to add up to about 6 hours per week, so I'm still learning a lot.

Chinese is quite difficult to learn. Here's an overview of some of the more difficult parts:

1. The pronunciation. In addition to the regular character written system, Chinese has a latinized alphabet known as pinyin. Since it's a recent (20th Century) creation, it was created to be completely phonetic and hasn't evolved funky spellings like English has. However, there are a number of sounds that are difficult:
• R: The pinyin 'r' is this weird sound that is somewhere between an English 'j' and an English 'r'. That probably sounds odd, since 'j' and 'r' aren't anything like each other in English, but that's how it is. Or maybe it's more like both of them at the same time. Regardless, I can't say it anywhere close to correctly, and I've given up trying. I just say it as an 'r' and don't bother with trying to fit the 'j' sound in there.
• Zh and J: In pinyin, both 'zh' and 'j' are an English 'j' sound, but they are slightly different 'j' sounds. For the longest time, I couldn't tell any difference. I hear a little bit of a difference now, and can sometimes make a difference when I say it, but I'm still never completely sure.
• Ch and Q: Like 'j' and 'zh', both of these are an English 'ch' sound, but are slightly different, and very difficult to tell apart.
• X: This is somewhere between English 's' and 'sh'. It was difficult at first, but I've gotten better at it.
• Ü: It's a little like a regular "u", but different, and it was very difficult at first. You kind of have to pucker your lips up like a fish to say this right.
  
2. The Tones. Chinese is a tonal language, which means that in addition to the raw pronunciation, each syllable also has one of 4 tones (or the neutral tone). The tones are notated using accent marks. The same word spoken with different tones will have a completely different meaning, so it's very important to say/hear the tones correctly. Some of the time you may be able to guess which tone (and hence, which meaning) is intended by the context, but a lot of the time, this won't work. For example, "hànyǔ" is Chinese and "hányǔ" is Korean. So if someone says "Wǒ xuéxí hànyǔ" ("I am studying Chinese"), it's important that you hear the tone correctly. You have no way of knowing if they're saying "I am studying Chinese" or "I am studying Korean" unless you're able to discern the tone. Anyhow, here are the tones:
• 1st tone (i.e. ā): The same pitch is used throughout the entire syllable.
  
• 2nd tone (i.e. á): The pitch rises during the syllable.
• 3rd tone (i.e. ǎ): The pitch drops slightly, then rises during the syllable.
• 4th tone (i.e. à): The pitch drops during the syllable.
• Neutral tone (i.e. a): A syllable with a neutral tone is pronounced lighter and shorter, and the pitch doesn't have any rising or falling motion.
3. The Characters. Pinyin is usually only used to help students learn Chinese but is never used to write Chinese (I've been told that pinyin is even used in Chinese schools to help Chinese students learn the language. So it's not just for foreigners). Chinese is always written using characters. One article I read mentioned that one major dictionary has about 86,000 characters. They're really isn't any way to guess the pronunciation or meaning of a character just by looking at it, although the characters often share common elements (called radicals) that aid in memorization. Luckily, you only have to memorize about 2,000-3,000 characters to be able to read the newspaper. I'm at about 50 or so, so I've got a long way to go.

Anyhow, here are some simple Chinese phrases, with the characters, pinyin and English meaning:

• 你好。 = Nǐ hǎo = Hello. (Literally, this means "You good.")
  
• 你好吗？= Nǐ hǎo ma? = How are you?
  
• 谢谢。 = Xiè xie = Thank you.
• 再见。 = Zài jiàn = Good bye. (Literally, this means "See you again.")
• 那个多少钱？= Nàge duōshǎo qián? = How much does that cost?
• 我是美国人。Wǒ shì měiguórén. = I am American.

And just for fun, here's a Chinese tongue twister, in characters, pinyin and English:

• 四是四，十是十， 十四是十四， 四十是四十。
  
• Sì shì sì, shí shì shí, shísì shì shísì, sìshí shì sìshí.
• 4 is 4, 10 is 10, 14 is 14, 40 is 40.
• (This stops at 40, but it could continue at "44 is 44"... sìshísì shì sìshísì).
  

By the way, this post took quite a while to write. If you actually care about stuff like this and want me to post more about Chinese, then please leave a comment. I doubt I'll make the effort to write something like this again if no one really cares to read this.

Snow, Winter Vacation and More

I haven't posted in a while. Sorry about that. There hasn't been a particular reason, but I've been busy with other things and just haven't felt like making the effort to post something. This is just kind of a generic update for how things are going.

• Yesterday we had the first snow of the winter. It started snowing during one of my classes, and surprisingly, there wasn't a rush to the window and a "wow, look it's snowing!" like I would have expected. It snowed for about 3 hours. It was cold enough to stick on the concrete, but it quickly melted in the afternoon. It probably only snowed about a 1/4 or 1/2 inch before melting, but at least it was something.
  
• There are only a few weeks left for this semester. Christmas week is our finals week, and then I have about 2 months (until Feb. 26th) of paid winter vacation. It's definitely one of the main perks to teaching in China, because you get to travel around and see a lot of China while still being paid :). My plans are still in the works, but as it stands right now, it looks like here's how I'll be spending my winter break:
• The first couple of weeks, I'll stay here at the school. A couple of the people I'll be traveling with are flying home to the states for Christmas and to make it to a wedding. They'll be back in mid-January and that's when the travel will start.
• For the rest of January, travel around the south of China (where it's warmer!) with some of the other ELT Edge teachers.
  
• The first week of February, I'll fly to Japan to spend a week with my cousin Tim, who is in a PHD program in Sendai, Japan right now. It'll be good to see him and to see some of Japan while I'm in this part of the world.
• I'll fly from Japan to Shanghai on February 8th, to meet my parents, who are flying into Shanghai on that same date. My parents are going to be here in China for 3 weeks, so I'm in the midst of planning a travel itinerary for their time here. Here are the places I've been thinking we'll visit: Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Huang Shan, Xian, Pingyao, Beijing. We'll wind up back here at the school in time for the start of next semester on February 26th, and they'll get a few days to experience life here at the school.
• I got Skype setup recently and bought a headset to use with it. Now I can make cheap calls (2 cents a minute!) back to the US and free calls to other users of Skype. If you have Skype and would like to chat, my user name is myron.marston.
• A while back, I posted about the fact that my mp3 player had died and I was looking into buying an iPod to replaced it. Instead, I managed to find somebody here who could fix it. He charged more than I liked (360 RMB, or $45), but that's still much better than having to spend more than $200 on a new iPod plus go through the hassle of having it shipped here. So I'm thankful to have my mp3 player up and running again. I don't use it that often in day-to-day life, but I love having it with me when I travel...and that's coming soon.

That's it for now. Hopefully it won't be as long to my next update :).

Ganen Jie

Happy Thanksgiving! Today is Ganen Jie (that is, Thanksgiving Day in Chinese). I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with the other ELT Edge teachers on Saturday. Tonight we had a thanksgiving dinner with the foreign teachers here at QFPLC (which included 4 of the ELT Edge teachers plus a bunch of other foreigners). It was a Chinese meal, so it wasn't much like a real thanksgiving dinner, but it was good, nonetheless.

Anyhow, this week I got inspired to compose for the first time in a long time--definitely the first time since I've come to China (I think the last thing I composed was a piece for my cousin's wedding back in March). I'm extremely happy with this piece--I think it's the best piece I've ever composed. The form is similar to some of my other pieces--in this case it's ABACABA--but there are a lot of creative things I managed to do with it. I purposely tried to force myself to do some unusual things like make some parts 5 bars or 9 bars instead of the usual 4 or 8. And man, the MIDI sounds coming out of Finale have never sounded so good--particularly the oboe. If I close my eyes, I feel like I'm hearing a real oboe, especially with the really nice vibrato finale gives it. Anyhow, I finished the piece today, so it seemed appropriate to call it "Ganen Jie". Give it a listen. And I always welcome feedback :).

Ganen Jie

Chinese Cuisine

One of the best things about living in China is the food. I never ate Chinese food very much in Seattle, but I usually liked it when I did. However, I had been told that Chinese food in the states is very "Americanized", and the stuff you get in China is quite different. This has turned out to be true. The style of the food is the same--rice, chopsticks, noodles, pork & chicken dishes mixed with various sauces and veggies...but the specifics have been very different. About the only dish I have had here that I had had at a Chinese restaurant in the states is sweet & sour pork. Last week in Beijing I had spring rolls for the first time in China. While these are a staple of Chinese restaurant in the U.S., I had started to think that was a completely American invention since I had never seen them here. I guess they do have them here--as proved by my getting them last week--but they seem to be a rarity. The food here is quite cheep--I can get a decent meal from a street vendor for 2-3 RMB (about 25 cents!). For a great meal at a restaurant, it comes out to about 10-20 RMB per person (about $1.25-$2.50). Gotta love the 8-to-1 exchange rate!

When you eat at a restaurant here, it is always communal. The dishes are brought out one at a time as they are prepared and placed on the lazy susan in the middle of the table. Everyone digs in. Usually we eat directly off of the dishes on the lazy susan without bothering to transfer the food to the little plate or bowl placed in front of each of us. Someone will probably say this is unsanitary, and it may be, but you get good at using the chopsticks to go for that specific bit of food you want without touching all the rest, and it's great fun eating this way.

Anyhow, here are some of my favorite Chinese dishes:

Tang Cù Lĭ Jĭ -- Sweet and sour pork. Always excellent.

Gān Biān Dòu Jiăo -- Spicy fried green beans with bits of pork. I never used to like green beans, but that was before I had this dish. This might be my favorite dish.

Gōng Băo Jī Dīng -- Chicken, peanuts, carrots and cucumber in a zesty sauce. Always a solid choice.

Dì Sān Xiān -- Potatoes, eggplant and green pepper. I never liked eggplant before this, but it sure is tasty in this dish.

Hūa Shēng -- A plate of hot roasted peanuts. I could eat these all day.

Jīng Jìang Ròu Sī -- Pork strips and onions in a tasty sauce, wrapped in a tofu pancake.

Xī Lán Hūa -- Garlic broccoli. The best broccoli I've ever tasted.

Yú Xiāng Ròu Sī -- Pork strips with carrots and garlic shoots in a sauce. The green things are garlic shoots. I like them alot, but I don't think I've ever seen them in the U.S. before.

Chăo Mán Tóu -- Potato strips. Just like french fries!

Jiăozi -- Boiled dumplings with various contents. These dumplings have pork and celery in them.

And, just for fun, here's a video of a ride around a lazy susan:

I hope this gives you a little "taste" of Chinese Cuisine. (sorry, I couldn't resist the bad pun...)

Halloween

I know this is a week late, but I've been having more issues accessing blogspot. However, I've found a way to work around the Great Firewall of China, so I shouldn't have any more problems accessing this, unless they wise up and block my work around. We'll see.

Anyhow, on Halloween night, the school took all of the foreign teachers out to a special meal. They told us that the meal was because we have been so patient about the lack of running water in our apartments these last two months. However, when we got to the restaurant, they had signs out every where saying "A special night of Halloween for foreign experts in Qinhuangdao" and there were lots of other foreigners from other schools in town. So I'm not entirely sure that it was just to thank us for our patience....but it was a nice guesture, nonetheless.

The restaurant was excellent--they served a multi-course meal of western food. Salad, bread, soup, chicken breast or steak, coffee or tea, and ice cream. Many of the waiters were dressed up with halloween masks. They had a Chinese music ensemble playing traditional Chinese music that was pretty neat. It was an interesting mix of western instruments and Chinese instruments--Cello, flute, hammered dulcimer and a bunch of Chinese instruments that I don't know the words for.

The local news even showed up, and they roped the three of us foreign teachers who played piano into playing the piano at the restaurant while the camera recorded us. I guess they were going to put us on TV or something. It would have been nice to have gotten some advance warning, but it was still pretty fun all the same.

Here's some media for your enjoyment:

Chad, Krystal, Linda and I at our table. Chad and Krystal are a married couple from Oklahoma teaching here. Linda works for the school in the international cooperation office.


One of the waiters in his halloween mask.


Me, playing piano, without any prior warning.


This is Ruth, another one of the ELT Edge teachers, messing around with one of the traditional Chinese instruments. She plays violin, so I think she could probably play this pretty well if she really tried.


The Chinese music ensemble.

Miscellaneous Update

There are a number of things I've wanted to post on recently, but I've been having Internet issues. For some reason, the Internet has been incredibly slow here the last week or two, and some websites were completely inaccessible, such as my blog. So, I had no way to even get on here recently. This morning it just worked again. Here's the latest from China:

• Even though I haven't posted about it recently, the water pressure problem has continued. About a month ago I mentioned that it was apparently fixed, but that was a false alarm. President Ding, the president of the college, called a meeting to tell us he had made some phone calls and the water problem was now fixed. The next morning, I was in fact able to take a shower in my apartment (which was when I posted saying it appeared it was fixed). But that was an isolated incident. The water problem remained. Every morning I had to walk down to the 2nd floor to take a shower. I didn't mention it on here because I try not to be the complaining type. But now I'm glad to report that the water problem has in fact been solved. They don't think they're going to be able to get good water pressure up to the 5th floor anytime soon, so they moved us down to the 2nd floor, where the water pressure is great. I moved on Saturday, and I'm loving being able to take a water pressure in my apartment. Plus, being on the 2nd floor has the added bonus of only being up 1 flight of stairs, rather than 4.
• This weekend, I'm going to Beijing. I've been in China over 2 months and still haven't been to Beijing (besides landing at the airport and immediately getting in a van to come here), so I figured it's time I make a visit. I'll be leaving Friday afternoon and getting back Sunday night, so that'll give me pretty much the entire weekend in Beijing. I'm also taking a student, Allen, who speaks really good English and is going to help me get around town.

I'll probably post some more soon, now that I can access this again.

MP3 Players

For the last couple years, I've owned a Creative Zen Xtra Nomad 40 GB mp3 player (which you can see a picture of the the right). I bought it instead of an iPod because when I bought it iPods were much more expensive. I have a large music collection, so I wanted an mp3 player with a lot of capacity. I would hate having to pick and choose what music to put on the mp3 player and what music to leave off. It was nice bringing it to China, because I brought my entire music collection simply by having it along :). Anyhow, when I bought it, this mp3 player was $200 cheaper than the 40 GB iPod. So it definitely gave me a better bang for the buck than the iPod.

Yesterday it finally died on me. It simply won't turn on anymore. I'm not sure what happened--it was working fine the previous day and has never shown any problems turning on--but my best guess is that it get a little wet because I had it in the same compartment of my backpack that had a sealed water bottle, and the condensation was particularly wet this time.

I've used it to play music in my classes for a couple different lessons this semester, and I'd like to be able to do that again next semester. Also, I'll be travelling for about 10 weeks during winter break, and really don't want to go all that time without having music. So I'd like to get a new mp3 player. Luckily, I found out yesterday that my church wants to send me a care package soon. So, I can order an mp3 player online, have it shipping to them, and they can include it in the package they send me.

So, for all of you reading this: what do you recommend? The prices on iPods have sure fallen the last couple of years, so this time I'm considering an iPod. In addition, I've been thinking that something else I could use is an external hard drive, because the computer the school has given me doesn't have a CD burner and I'm going to want a way to bring all my pictures home at the end of the year. I found a 60 GB iPod for $290. This would kill two birds with one stone as it can also function as an external hard drive. I think 60 GB would be more than enough to store all my music plus all the photos I take this year.

If you know of a place I can get a better price than Amazon, I'd be interested in hearing about that, too.

Only in China...

Yesterday morning I went to teach my 10:10 - noon class, and when I arrived, there wasn't a single student in the classroom. Luckily, I had the phone number of one of the students, so I called her up on my cell phone. She informed me that class had been cancelled and rescheduled for Sunday at the same time because the students needed to get graduation pictures taken. This was the first I had heard anything about this--no one from the school had mentioned anything about this. Of course, Sunday morning I already had plans--I get together with the other ELT Edge teachers on Sunday mornings.

Why would a school cancel a class and reschedule it, all without talking with the teacher?

In China, I don't even think this is a rare occurrence--I've heard of it happening before. In the end, the Dean of the English department came to me to apologize and he cancelled the rescheduled class. So now it's just a cancelled class and I don't have to make it up, which is nice. It really wouldn't be fair (and also a violation of the contract I signed with the school) to make me make the class up.

Can you imagine this happening at a college in the US?

Teaching

I'm employed here as a teacher, and yet I've never really posted anything about that aspect of living here. So I figured this is a good time to do that. My teaching schedule consists of 9 classes, 3 each on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Each class is two 50-minute periods split by a 10-minute break. I see a different group of students in each class. The classes vary in size from 14 to 27. This school is only a 2 1/2 year program. All but two of my classes are 3rd year students, so they'll be gone after this semester. The other two classes are 2nd year students.

This schedule has some advantages and disadvantages. On the good side, since it's a different group of students for each class during the week, I only have to create 1 lesson plan per week. This makes lesson planning a piece of cake. I don't assign any homework (none of the other oral English teachers do, either), so I really don't have any "work" outside my teaching schedule besides the 1 hour or so that I spend planning my lesson every week. On the bad side, I only have 1 lesson plan per week, and it sure gets old when Friday afternoon rolls around and I've done it 9 times. Having 9 different classes of students is a good way to meet lots of different students (I have almost 200 students!). But that also means that learning names is real difficult. I've got all the names down in several of my classes, but there's a couple where I still forget their names--especially the Friday afternoon class. There's something about it being the last class of the week (and the 9th time on that same lesson) that makes it extremely difficult to really care about the class, pay attention, and remember their names.

The only teaching supplies we've been given are a blackboard, chalk, and pretty basic textbook that occasionally has some useful activities but usually isn't worth using. Most of the classes have been made up of activities I've thought up or gotten from others. I try to base each class around a common theme or topic rather than just simply jumping from one random activity to another. Also, each class begins with two students giving presentations on a topic of their choice, just to give them some practice speaking in front of people. So how do I fill the rest of the time? Here are some things I've done so far:

• One of my lessons was a music lesson. First, we went over a bunch of music vocabulary--genres of music, musical instruments, and a bunch of other musical terms like tempo, rhythm, melody, etc. Then we split into groups and played "Name that Genre." Each group was given a set of cards with names of genres on them (like Rock, Blues, Jazz, Folk, Bluegrass, Flamenco, Celtic, Electronic, Classical, etc). I brought in my mp3 player and some computer speakers and would play about 30 secs of a song of a particular genre that matched one of the genres on their cards. Each group tried to pick the card with correct name of the genre of the music I had just played. Ideally, they would use the music vocabulary we had just gone over as they discuss the genres in their groups. Finally, I'd keep score to see which group got the most right. Usually I would ask a group to explain why they chose a particular genre when a group got it right.
• I based another one of my lessons around famous people. We first played a game I've previously played on a couple of occasions. I created cards with names of famous people, each name having a matching partner (for example, Isaac Newton & Albert Einstein; Mickey & Minnie Mouse; Beethoven & Mozart). Using tape, I put a card on each student's back, so they the student doesn't know which card they got, but everyone else can see it. The goal was for the students to figure out who they were by mingling with everyone else and asking yes & no questions about their person. After that, they needed to find their partner. After the game, the students stayed in their pairs and prepared a TV Interview. One of each pair was a TV reporter and had to think of 5 questions to ask the famous person; the other person pretended they were the famous person on their card and answered the questions. Then the students had to come do the TV interview in front of the class.
• This past week I did a travel lesson. Since my parents are probably coming to visit during winter break, I had the students get in groups and plan us a tour of China. They had to pick where we should visit, how long to stay there, what to see while we're there, decide how to travel to the next location (bus, train or airplane), and come up with a cost estimate of the whole trip. Most of the trips the students came up with weren't very feasible, but they did give me some good ideas of places to visit as I try to plan the travelling my parents and I will do.

Overall, I'd say teaching has been a good experience. Before coming to China, teaching was the single thing I was most nervous about since I've never taught before and I've never been good at public speaking. But it's turned out to be very easy and now I'm not nervous at all. I still don't particularly enjoy teaching. I'm enjoying living in China and spending time with the students, and I try my best to be a good teacher, but I just kinda view it as a means to an end--the end being having a chance to live here and invest in the lives of the students. It seems like I'm doing a decent job of it, though--I've got lots of good comments from students about my teaching.

My National Day Holiday Travels

National Day Holiday

Oct 8, 2006 - 24 Photos

Well, I'm back in Qinhuangdao after travelling for over a week. I travelled with 9 other people (7 Americans, 1 South Korean, 1 Chinese). Overall, we got to see some cool stuff, but there were some frustrating things on the trip, too. I'll try to describe the trip chronologically. If you just want to see the pictures, click the photo album to the right.

Dalian

On Saturday (Sept. 30th), we took a bus from Qinhuangdao to Dalian. Dalian is a port city in northeast China and is supposed to be one of the most prosperous cities in China. Being prosperous, it had a Starbucks. I tried to tell them I should get a discount because I'm from Seattle and Starbucks started in Seattle....but they didn't bite :(. Still, it was nice to get a decent cup of coffee :). Dalian has some things that are pretty cool to see when you're in town, but it's definitely not a place I would make a trip to just to see it. It was really just our starting point for the trip so we could make it to Changbai Shan. Anyhow, here are some of the cool things we saw:

The Crystal Ball of Dalian, right in the middle of a traffic circle in Friendship Square. This is supposedly the symbol of Dalian.

This boat sat in a pool of water in the middle of a traffic circle near Dalian harbor. It was very cool at night when it lit up, as it is above.

Mark, Krystal and I in front of the giant soccer ball in Labor Park in Dalian.

A sculpture in Labor Park in Dalian.

We also took a tour van for most of our first full day in Dalian. This turned out to be more trouble then it was worth. In China, tour guides always get commissions for taking the tourist to particular places where the tourist is expected to spend money. This may or may not be a good spot to go see. Before we agreed to take the tour, the ladies who were selling us the tour agreed that we would be able to decide where the tour van took us, since it was just the 10 of us in the van, so that we could avoid the lame tourist traps and go to places we really wanted to see. Unfortunately, the ladies either didn't communicate this agreement to the tour guides or the tour guides chose to ignore it...but they wouldn't listen to what we wanted to do at all. Instead they took us to a firing range where we could pay money to shoot a chicken and to a market where we could buy jade necklaces. It was very frustrating...but you learn from these experiences. They did take us to one very cool place: Drinking Dinosaur. Drinking Dinosaur is a coastal location near Dalian with some amazing rock formations jutting out into the sea. Some pictures for your enjoyment:

From Dalian, we had train tickets to Tonghua to try to continue on to Changbai Shan. We were told by the ticket counter that the train leaves at 5 PM. One of our group had all the tickets, noticed the time printed on the ticket was 16:07 and figured that meant 5:07 PM. He didn't take the time to do the military time math and figure out 16:00 is 4 PM. So when we got there at 4:30 to catch the train, we realized we missed it :(. It wasn't a good feeling. Instead we caught a later train to Changchun, the capital of Jilin province. The train was an overnight sleeper train--the bunk beds were stacked 3 high. It wasn't exactly the easiest place to sleep, but it was nice to have a bed on the train. After spending a day in Changchun (going to their Walmart, among other things!), we continued on with another train to Dunhua, and then took a bus to Baihe, which was only about an hour away from Changbai Shan. In Baihe we managed to get a hotel for 20 RMB per person per night--$2.50! It didn't have a shower, but the rooms were very clean and you can't beat that price.

Changbai Shan

Changbai Shan means "always white mountain". I'm not really sure why it's called that--yes, it was a mountain (and a fantastic one at that), but it wasn't white. In spite of the name, it isn't always white. Changbai Shan's main attraction is Tianchi, the Heavenly Lake. This is the highest crater lake in China, at an elevation of 7180 feet and it's a pretty incredible site. The lake is also right on the border between China and North Korea. To get there, you hop in a jeep that speeds up this road with lots of switch backs. The drivers seem to know this road like the back of their hand, because they don't even bother to slow down for the hairpin turns. It was a pretty fun ride--it felt a bit like a roller coaster--but it certainly didn't feel safe. Here's some video I took of the ride up.

The view from where the jeeps take you is absolutely breathtaking. The jeeps take you to some peaks way above the lake (probably several hundred meters, at least) where you can look down onto the lake. Here's a panorama video and some pictures for your enjoyment:

In spite of the temperature being barely above freezing level, we couldn't resist taking our shirts off for a photo.

The Jeep Army.

After the jeeps took us down to the bottom (again, with a pretty crazy but fun ride), we hiked up directly to the heavenly lake's beach, passing a waterfall on the way. The hike up was incredibly tiring--it was a long tunnel with tons of stairs to climb up. Without a doubt, it was the longest stair case I've ever climbed. I counted on the way down. From the top down to the base of the waterfall I counted 906 stairs. I must be a pretty accurate counter, because after I told that to our Chinese friend Robin, he pointed out that the sign said it was 905 stairs. It was quite a few stairs from the base of the waterfall to the parking lot where we could catch a bus--in all, 1155 stairs, which I think is the highest I've ever counted. As I said, the hike was very tiring, but worth it in the end. Some pictures:

The Waterfall at Changbai Shan.

The 905-stair staircase.

The Heavenly Lake has its own Lochness Monster legend. This statue, on the Heavenly Lake's beach, is what it's supposed to look like.

The entire group on the beach at the Heavenly Lake.

National Day Holiday

October 1st is China's National Holiday, celebrating the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st, 1949. It seems to be a bigger deal then the 4th of July is in the US. In the US, we don't usually get the day off work, but here in China, we get the entire week off. I'm going to use my week off to do some travelling.

I'm travelling with a group of other foreign teachers--about 10 of us total, I believe. We're going to Changbai Shan (which you can read about here, here and here), a mountain range that seperates China from North Korea. We're also planning to visit the city of Dalian.

We leave Saturday morning. This'll probably be my last blog post for a while since I'll be travelling.

My Apartment

Our apartments are finally done. Well, more or less. They installed Internet last week. It looks like we've got more consistent water pressure now (I was able to take a shower in my apartment this morning!!). There's a few more minor things we're still waiting on, but this is essentially how are apartments are going to be for the year. So I figured this was a good time to introduce you to my apartment. Our apartments are essentially a single big room--this functions as a bedroom, office, living room and dining room. We also have two other small rooms--the bathroom and kitchen. It feels a little like a college dorm room again, but the school calls it an "apartment", and since I don't have a roommate and it has a bathroom and kitchen, I guess maybe it does qualify as an apartment.

The apartment building. It's shaped a bit like an 'S'. I live in the red section on the 5th floor, and there's no elevator :(. But I guess it's good for exercise.

The hallway outside my room. The entire floor is for foreign teachers.

My apartment as seen from the door. You can see how it's just one big room...there's the TV in the foreground, and my bed and computer in the background.

Some of the furniture the school provided. The couch is covered in 1's and 0's, so we call it the binary couch. The other foreign teachers hate it, but being the computer geek I am, I like it. They've asked me to read it, but there isn't any indication where to start and stop, so I haven't made any progress yet.

My TV and DVD player, which the school provided. I bought the speakers, though.

This is a typical Chinese wall decoration. Much better then a poster (but more expensive, too). I bought this for 60 RMB (about $7.50) after I bargained the merchant down from over 200 RMB.

My bed. It has a mattress, but it's the hardest mattress I've ever slept on. I'm glad I don't have a bad back, because I don't know how I would sleep on it if I did. But it seems to get the job done, and I've gotten used to it.

My computer desk: The Two Towers. On the bottom right is my panda-bear clothes hamper.

This is the side of my room. To the left is the kitchen. To the right is the bathroom. The appliance on the left is our washer. I use the bar above to hang my clothes to dry, which unfortunately takes a very long time (pants and towels can take a couple days!). The appliance on the right is a water dispenser. I can't drink the tap water, so this is where I get my drinking water.

The kitchen. It's got a fridge and microwave on the right. On the counter is a rice cooker (which I have yet to use) and this hot-plate like device that can be used to fry food, boil things, etc. Note quite like a stove, but it seems to get the job done.

Lastly, the bathroom. In China, they don't seem to ever have the shower separated like we do in the US. The floors just have drains, and the shower head just sprays water all over your floor.