A Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Being that both Christmas and New Year's Day are rather significant American holidays, I figured I should post something about how we celebrated these days thousands of miles from home, family, of friends.

Part I: Christmas

It certainly has been a new experience in so many ways...although I must say the McDonald's store in Changsha has still been blasting that not-so-classic "Last Christmas, I gave you my heart...." song. Ahh! I thought I"d escaped, but no! However, the real beautiful Christmas carols we had to rely on a CD we brought from home. The Chinese here do decorate for Christmas in many shops- with colored lights, Christmas trees, etc. (Although I haven't seen any manger scenes to be sure). You can see from a previous blog some of the decorations. I myself purchased a little tree from Walmart, and decorated the second week in December...so late in my opinion. My students, however, were shocked. "So early!!" They said. They didn't seem to grasp, despite my explanation, that Christmas is indeed a month long holiday. Our school and this city put on several Christms parties the week of Christmas. We volunteered at a children's library (hopefully we can post some photos) and helped the children practice English while giving small gifts. We also attended/participated our department's (the Department of International Studies)Christmas party. It was well done but interesting...not exactly Christmasy. They had some Avril Lavine singing, some rap songs and dancing, even a magician. For my part, I sang "O Holy Night' (always my favorite Christmas song) and a teacher from English sang "Deck the Halls." We also got several wonderful gifts from our students, including a chocolate heart with our names on it- from the foreign chocolate store!! (my favorite), two cakes, some traditional chinese figurines, candy, a beautiful silk cloth, and a LOT of apples. I think I'll go take a picture in fact of what remains after a week of trying to eat as many apples as possible. The work for apple in Chinese "ping guo" sounds like the word for peace (i don't know that one) so its a traditional Christmas gift in China.



Christmas morning, Shane and I first read the Christmas story, the opened most of our gifts for each other. The highlight was opening the packages that my parents and his parents sent from America. One could hardly believe the rejoicing over a bag of cheese girls, nacho cheese, or Dove chocolates. Even now we are working our way through very slowly, as to savor each precious food item. One could never imagine how a bottle of Advil or a box of bandaids brings a thrill to your heart until you are without them. Right before class (yes I had to teach still) I was baking some Chocolate Chip cookies (thanks for the ingredients from said parents) to give as special gifts to our foreign advisor, when our electricity went off. Well, went off is far too gentle of a term...our electricity wires overcharged and burst into a dangerous and odorous smoke. By afternoon, there was still no one to fix it, so we weren't sure what we were going to do for Christmas dinner and for the 15 students that planned to join us in the evening for a Christmas movie. Fortunately our dear friend Suekoilya lent us her house, and we just ate in a little street restaurant. My husband's positive and humble attitude helped me get through the evening without too much resentment over the constant problems our apartment has, continuing even on Christmas day. How thankful I am for him! Late that night after the movie/party, Suekoilya came back to our cold, dark apartment to exchange gifts with us. We lit many candles and it had kind of an adventuresome, romantic feel to it. And, we are also provided for (even if not in the way we ask), another package arrived that evening from my mother and jay full of warm long underwear, fleece shirts, and warm wooly socks. (In fact, we've been wearing them for a week straight!). So all in all, we had a beautiful Christmas Day!



Part II: New Years



For New Years we have planned a big kareoke party with foreigners and native Chinese alike. We have rented a rather expensive room for kareoke (here you rent private rooms, you don't do it in a restaurant full of people you don't know) and will stay from 9:30 to 12:30 or later. (We're getting old, can't stay up like we used to, lol). Yesterday, Shane, Suek, and I went to the English corner which each week we volunteer, and we discussed New Year's Resolutions. Mine I think is to have a grateful heart. Because this year we have gone through unbearably hot & humid weather the early fall (with no ac anywhere but our house), a dirty apartment upon arrival, our hot water breaking at least 3 times- once for a week!, a glass light fixture in our living room shattering on me, a fuse that for 2 months refused to stay on longer than 1 hours ( a fuse that ran all the appliances in the house except two), lack of heat during the "broken fuse" days, total loss of electricity at least twice, loss of all water 3 times, lights that go out that we don't know how to fix (we've been using flashlights and candles now for 4 days in our bathroom), broken wash machine, leaking kitchen sink subject to partially flood the kitchen at any time, broken stove, a computer constantly loaded with viruses that has several times erased all data including lesson plans on our zip drives, not to mention culture shock, adjusting your stomach to new foods, learning a difficult new language, and the overall inconvenience of living and working in a culture that simply has different ideas about life than you do, (sorry I know thats a long list), I have found it difficult to stay positive both in my heart and my words. However, I truly am grateful to have been given this opportunity to come over here with my husband that I adore and do the work that we are doing. My desire is to learn that these troubles are "momentary and light" in the long run, and to be thankful for the many things that I have been given besides the obvious: A wonderful and supportive husband whom I have the priviledge to watch grow more and more into who he was made to be, for the time being a functional portable heater (and it really helps) plus a lot of blankets, parents that love us and the packages of special food and gifts they have just sent, the foreign friends esp. Suekoilya and Elic, that we have met here, an income that, while small in Us dollars, is entirely adequate to support us while living here and even with careful planing can afford us a vacation, those friends at home that keep us in their thoughts each day, our dear Chinese students and friends, and most of all the work we are doing here. I don't know how to save a blog and rebring it up, so I will post this now and edit it once we have finish the party and can add the pictures.

Biking Bozo's

I will have to add the pictures to this post as well, so bear with me on it. This happened about a month ago, but I haven't made the time to put it up yet on our blog.

At that time, one of the students here that Lisa and I have met knew that I wanted a bike and agreed to show me where to get one. He assured me that they would not be too much. (This is not the first time that a price said is not at all true when we actually get there) The same thing happened when I went camping with my friend to Moon Island from the previous post. A tent that we thought would only cost around 200RMB was like 500 or 600 at least. Ugh!
But anyways, so I got a decent/cheaper bike and we agreed to go on a bike ride that week with some friends. We were having a great time on our ride out and made our way to a nice pond surrounded by trees. There were literally about 7 -8 people all dressed up wedding gowns having their pictures taken at this place. That was cool.
Being guys, we of course began our series of many stunts to come with the climbing of a tree there. Then we were quickly running across some stones that were placed across one part of the lake. When you run really quickly, it kind of reminds you of the whole Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon type thing of running across the water.
Then, from there we headed off again. However, I soon began to have problems as the pedal on my bike no lie, just fell off! We didn't have any tools with us, so we could only screw it back on pretty lightly. I would go another 300 yards, and then have it fall off again! It was crazy!
But the craziest part was when we rode alongside this large hill that I stopped at and told them that we should climb up. They had never done anything like this and agreed to it. When we got up to the hill, we realized that it was much, much steeper than we thought. Also, it was very loose little pebbles of rock.

At that point, one would think to not go up it, but we were so excited that we had already made it about 20 feet up before we realized that it was slippery and very steep. We then climbed up another 30 feet before I No lie, actually began to get scared. I was clutching onto the side of the hill and hoping beyond hope that I would not fall and die. One of the students who is really good at martial arts just kind of cat like sprang past me all the way up the hill. I think his momentum up was helping him. We were ever so slowly trying to make our way up the hill, almost just like sliding our way up with rocks crumbling down as we tried.
But at this point, my legs were shaking from trying to push our way up and I was seriously thinking that if I didn't stop and try to make our way down, that I was gonna fall and be in bad shape. I slowly made my way back down, very relieved to be back on solid ground and thinking to myself how stupid a thing that was, even if cool at the beginning.
But this did not erase the fact that our friend Eric was still at the top with nowhere to go. For some reason he thought that because it was so slippery he would go back down barefoot instead of shoes. (Oh yeah, I was trying to go up in my walking shoes which have the flat bottoms with absolutely no trackion on them at all)
So he began making his way down, but instead of going down sideways like I did, he was going down just as if you were to walk down. He of course began to slip and as he did, he now tried to run down the hill. This was the most frightening sight ever, as this guy was frantically trying to run down the hill. I thought that at any moment he was going to slip and really hurt himself. Rember, it was about 40-50 feet up and a really steep incline.
By the time he reached the bottom, he was running so fast that he couldn't stop and crashed heavily onto the ground. Luckily he didn't break a wrist or anything, though his hand was a little cut up. However, his feet were in bad shape. Trying to run/slide down a hill barefoot that is full of little pebbles did quite a number on his feet. His toes were all cut up and his toenails... I'll just stop there. It was kind of bad. But nothing that needed medical attention or that can't heal.
I just felt terrible knowing that it was my fault and so incredibly thankful that he was not seriously hurt. We were nervously laughing at how incredible it was to see this Jackie Chan guy running down a hill that steep barefoot. Anybody else would have definitely sprawled over head first and broke their wrist, neck, or something. I'll put up the pics soon. Am on a friends computer as they are sick and we were seeing how they were doing. (They are still asleep. Haha. I'm not abandoning them by being on the computer. :)

Walking in a winter wonderland....

Okay, so by winter I don't mean snow, I mean Christmas decorations have gone haywire. The following pictures are from Christmas shops- it looks as if I have been swallowed into Santa's workshop. Pretty interesting considering where I am.

The picture with the Chinese girl ( I can't seem to get it to upload right now) is one that I took after she took a picture of Lisa in her shop.

Since we sometimes get our picture taking with random strangers, I fought back his time! Haha. Lisa was walking around the store and she, like many others, was shy and was trying to sneak a photo of Lisa while she wasn't looking. I noticed this and got Lisa to pose for her. This of course, only caused several other people to come over, whip out their phones and snap off pictures of us.

So then I suddenly pulled out my camera from my pocket and got a photo of her with Lisa.

The prices in the store were crazy! You really do have to bargain. Lisa the other day was shopping for Christmas gifts and was trying to tell the woman in Chinese that she is a teacher who lives in China. We are not the rich Americans that they think we are. We are getting paid in RMB, so when we see the price, we think of it in dollars, not the 1/7th that tourists would do.

However, the woman wouldn't budge and answered by saying: "Chinese_ this is the price; American_ this is the price; Japanese, and on and on. Haha.

Therefore.. if the woman are not going to budge with their bargaining prices.. we must pull out the big guns... literally. Hahah!

The next picture is us with a friend in a candy shop arm wrestling the manager for a lower price. It was really funny too, because the two of them would go back and forth changing the price on the paper when the other wasn't looking! We were ordering a bunch of candy for an upcoming Christmas party, and so we needed a lot and wanted a good price.

Lisa was estactic also, because we finally realized that you can just take free samples of the candy. I should have realized this a long time ago when I saw people freely eating out of a big vat of sunflower seeds. I bought some and then didn't like them as much because they were not flavored. However, if you want nuts, or candy, you can just open one up and try it. They don't mind.

The employees were even walking up to us and having us try different ones. So once we got comfortable with this, we just moseed around and tried different one. Then when we were going to buy a small bag of some that we liked, they gave it to us for free! Awesome!

I am enjoying being able to share with my students more about Christmas and listen to some Christmas carols and do different games and activities. I can't believe that it is coming up so soon! We hope that all of you have a wonderful Christmas as well! We will miss you all as well this Christmas year!

Love, -Shane and Lisa and Benny

The Dangers of Eating in China.......

If only I had pictures to add, but I don't. This will be a short blog, but I couldn't leave it out. In China, Shane and I often eat fish. It is a common food here and they do it rather well. The dis-advantage of fish here is that they don't just serve you fish...nat they serve you a fish-complete with skin, bones, head, tail, and nice beady eyes. The Chinese usually make a nice piles of discarded bones on the table next to them- and sometimes the bones can be very small and sharp.
Again, in lisa fashion, while eating dinner a forked bone actually went THROUGH my tongue- all the way. Being that it was forked, I had no idea which way to try and pull it out.This caused a bit of commotion in the restaurant staff (fortunately we were the only ones there) and after much gesturing and a sad attempt at chinese (being that my tongue was sticking out of my mouth) they brought me a mirror. Successfully, and with much pain, I pulled the bone out through my tongue. Oh....China.

(And Shane, being the great husband that he is, was only laughing a bit. I don't think he realized that it was all the way through. Only that it had pierced me.) At first they brought me a tooth-pick, but then after seeing what was happening... and laughing/smiling a bit I might add, they got a mirror. )
Shane was trying to reach over and get it out for me, but I was afraid of it hurting me, but I wasn't even able to say NO. Rather, only vain attempts at sounds with my tongue hanging out of my mouth. Hahaha. It was quite an ordeal. :)

The Champions! (at least in our minds)

So just a few shots from our recent

badmitton experience. Sorry our camera's action ability stinks! However, we were delighted to find that our gymnasium has an entire (large) room dedicated to badmitton, and another large room dedicated to ping pong. You can come to the gym and rent out equipment quite cheaply and play all day. We came and played for several hours with some Chinese friends (not our students) and generally held our own. We both love badmitton and ping pong, so we came to the right place. Since then, we've had several invitations to go back, which we hope we will have time to accept. We have noticed the Chinese, at least in our college area, are SO much more active than Americans. The students are always outside, walking, playing basketball, doing something. The older people are often walking or at 8 am each morning a group of maybe 15 old women are outside are apartment brandishing their swords with tai chi.

In other news, we had a FANASTIC thanksgiving here with a group of foreigners we spend a lot of time with. They were kind to invite us into their group. We had everything from stuffing, turkey, green beans, and mash potatoes- even to refried bean dip! However, unlike thanksgiving, there were no leftovers. Food like this is precious and extremely expensive so it was all promptly demolished. I hope we can include some pictures, but we forgot our camera so we'll have to ask someone to send it. In usual Lisa style, I burnt my hand that morning making chocolate chip cookies. They still tasted good though:)