Too much dampness

Everything in Xiamen is quickly coming to a close. Tomorrow I have my Chinese final. I am not sure how that one is going to turn out. What's most frustrating about Chinese, is I don't think I have found a foolproof way of studying. We have a lot we need to memorize and I have yet to find a way to make all of it stick. I don't like feeling like I am wasting my time. It's not like I've lots of time to spare. Well, seeing that the test is tomorrow, I won't have to worry about such things for much longer.

Monday is another final. This time for Contemporary Society. I don't think it should be that difficult. No biggie.

I just put in a load of laundry. I don't know how often we'll have access to a washing machine on Travel Component. If it's anything like MESP then we will have zero access, so that's what I am preparing for. Doing laundry here is a pain. To start with, the washing machines don't fit that much into them. You think they do, judging by the size, but it's all a lie. The water only fills up basically to the half way point. I am using a bag from H&M to throw all my dirty clothes in. One full medium size H&M bag is just about how much will fit into the machine. Not very much at all. Laundry here is pretty cheap--3 yuan per load (about $0.40), but again, nothing is easy. In China there are one yuan bills as well as one yuan coins. You need the coins to operate the washing. I always seem to only have one or two coins. Not the required three. Lame. Also because of the lack of dryers here and the humid air, you have to make sure you leave enough time for the clothes to dry. For me it's taken about two days, but if it starts to rain, who knows...

I had one of the best meals of China today. When I first got here, I was really disappointed by the lack of variety when it came to food. Now I am discovering new and wonderful things. I don't know if that is because I've been brainwashed into thinking that rice for every meal amazing, or if I am just expanding my pallet. I think that a lot if it is truly trial and error. It helps when there is an English menu, but even then, I am never sure exactly what I am getting. Today I had sour and spicy fried eggplant. Amazing. It was basically eggplant french fries with a sweet and sour like dipping sauce. So good. I am loving all the eggplant options here. Lots of variety and all good. I think that eggplant is my new favorite vegetable. I also had tofu. Normally I am not a fan of such nonsense, but there was a vegetarian in our little lunch group. This tofu was quite good. I would get it again. It tasted like chicken. And I think it was breaded or something so it didn't have the slimy texture to it. On our way back to campus, we stopped in at our normal juice bar. All the workers recognize us. I think I go pretty much everyday. I had a watermelon/strawberry juice. Love it. Oh fun fact to know and tell, I just learned in my Chinese medicine class that because watermelon is a cooling food, you should eat it whenever you have skin problems. It cools down the fire that is creating the impurities. Just fyi.

Speaking of Chinese medicine, today we had an acupuncture lesson taught by a real life acupuncturist. At the end of his lecture he offered to do acupuncture on anyone who wanted it. Joni has a hurt food so she had some done. Another girl had some done on her knee. Bryce, one of the three guys on CSP, has neck problems so he decided he wanted some done. After the professor inserted the needles (four in total) Bryce started to look pretty pale. Then he started to look REALLY pale. The professor noticed and quickly took the needles out. By this time Bryce had lost all color in is face. And then he fainted. He was out. For like 5 minutes. I would have been worried but the professor was there and he didn't seem worried at all. He was just calmly supporting Bryce's head. And then he started to put pressure on that space between your top lip and your nose. Apparently that is supposed to bring people around. Bryce was gone. It took him a really long time to become coherent again. Apparently he's scared of needles. Best class of my life.

I didn't get acupuncture done. He did diagnose me though. He felt my pulse and looked at the color of my tongue. According to the pale color of my tongue, my qi is not as strong as it should be. Also, he said I have too much damp in me (not too sure how he came to this assessment), so I should avoid cold drinks. Interesting.

Wrapping things up.

Things are starting to wrap up for this leg of CSP. We leave in 10 days for our travel component, or "trek" as Dr. Jay calls it. We'll be in Xi'an (home to the terracotta soldiers) for almost three weeks. There, we will be taking our Chinese History class (gag) and completing a week long service project in rural Xi'an suburb. I am not sure exactly what we're doing for that yet, but I think it something along the lines of teaching English to kids...One of my friends on the program, Joni, was in Xi'an for about two weeks last summer, working in an orphanage. So I think we'll be able to go and help out for a couple of days (In China, everything is about the people you know. So I wouldn't be able to show up at a random orphanage to help out--they'd never let me because they don't know me. But thanks to Joni, we have contacts). After Xi'an, we take an overnight train to Beijing and will be there for three or four days. Not enough time, if you ask me. Then comes Shanghai for three or four days as well. Finally, we end up back in Xiamen for the last three weeks of our time in China. When everything is so split up, it makes me think that these two months are going to go by rather quickly.

Before we leave, we have to finish up our Chinese class as well as our Contemporary Society class. This morning actually, we had to recite a famous poem in Chinese that we'd memorized. It's a good portion of our Chinese grade. This coming Friday is our final exam. I've lots of characters to memorize for that one. In a week we also have to take our Contemporary Society final. Contemporary Society is a class that has been comprised of different Chinese professors from Xiamen University (Xiada for short) giving us lectures on things ranging from Chinese education, the WTO, special economic zones, to rural reform. I've liked that the professors are constantly switched up, but I don't really know how the exam will look. It's not like Dr. Jay has been attending all the lectures and taking notes along side us...Yesterday, I had my tai chi (actually pronounced tai ji) exam. We've had three weeks of lessons, 5 days a week. Our teacher taught us a routine that anyone who has ever done tai chi knows. It has 24 steps and takes about 5 minutes to perform all the way through. We had to perform it one by one in from of everybody else. And then when you finished your routine, the teacher announced the grade to the class. Can you ever imagine that happening in the States? I don't think so. Tai chi is part of the Dimensions of East Asian Culture class I'm taking. When we get back from our travel component, we will continue to learn about Chinese calligraphy, Chinese medicine, and Chinese cooking. We've already had a couple of Chinese medicine classes, and I am in the process of reading a book on the subject for class. It's been very interesting. There's a lot of merit to Chinese medicine, I'm finding. Next week sometime we are going to an acupuncture clinic. I think it'll be really cool...

Right now, I am sitting in a little cafe with free wifi. I am on a constant quest to find decent coffee, and it isn't going so well. My intern told me that the place I'm at now, Brown Sugar, had some of the better coffee she's had. It's not great, but better than a lot of other places around here. I've run into the same problems here that were in Egypt when in comes to coffee. Lots of instant Nescafe that smells burnt when you add water. And compared to everything else, coffee is pretty expensive. About the same price would pay in the States. Lame. I have found some fantastic fresh juice/smoothie bars. I am loving the kiwi juice. They also have kiwi yogurt here (when you can find dairy). It's like in France with the pear flavored gelato and yogurt. Not something you can find in the States, but a wonderful idea. America needs to branch out when it comes to fruit flavored things...

In other news, I'm trying to figure out my summer plans. It's been stressful to work all that out from China, where I don't have limitless internet time. And I've been feeling pressure to nail things down before I leave on Travel Component--I'm sure I'll be super busy and won't have time for things like job applications. I get back to Xiamen at the beginning of April, which is much to late to start inquiries...

That's all for now, zaijian.

A day in the life...

Yesterday when I was at the supermarket, I saw a lady holding her child over the trashcan to pee. Chinese people are so strange when it comes to things like bodily functions. Men hawk and spit all over the place. I am constantly seeing piles of what I am pretty sure is vomit surrounding bus stops. I don't know what it is about bus stops that makes people throw up, but it must be something. Also, I have heard that Chinese children become potty trained at a very early age. And lots of toddlers where little onesies that are split in the crotchal region so whenever they have to go to the bathroom, they can just squat where ever they please. So it's ok to have children pee anywhere and everywhere, but it is a HUGE faux pas to pick a piece of food out of your teeth. I guess such a thing isn't exactly considered polite in the States, but it's really not the worst thing you could ever do either. However, if a Chinese person catches you doing such a thing, they think it is SO disgusting. Like I said, Chinese are strange.


Yesterday I also got my haircut. It was worth it for the experience if nothing else (and it was SO cheap--40 yuan or about $6 USD). I went with a couple of other girls on the program. To start, they had us lay down on a massage bed (instead of the typical chair in the States) with a basin for washing at the end. Then I was shampooed and conditioned along with a wonderful long head slash neck massage. After that, they proceeded to clean my ears with a q-tip. That was weird. I hope my ears were clean, I wouldn't wish lots of earwax on anybody. After that I was given an arm and hand massage. Then they gestured for me to flip over and it ended with a back massage. It was fantastic. Then came the hair cut part of it all. There was only one girl at the place who spoke any English. And her English wasn't up to technical hair cutting terms. The day before Luisa asked for one of their haircut books, so we had all picked out what we wanted in advance, so we were able to point to the picture. None of us have anything that looks like what was indicated. But whatever, that's all part of the experience. My hairdresser was very good and very meticulous. I ended up with shorter hair and bangs that start very far back on my head and come down to just past my eyebrows. Apparently though, my hair naturally parts in the middle. Who does that? So lame. So the bangs have a tendency to want to part down the middle. Hairspray here I come...

Today in Chinese class, we had to use our Chinese skillz to find our way to the Xiamen post office. The Chinese teacher is so cute. She is constantly bringing in little helpers (nieces and nephews, friends, etc.) so that we have other people to practice Chinese with. And she does fun little exercises like set up a restaurant in class so we can practice ordering food. Today she had her friends posted en route to the post office and we had to ask each one for directions. Love it.

In other news, I have recently seen two movies that I highly recommend. First, "Traitor" with Don Cheadle. So suspenseful. He is a bomb specialist (I guess) who supplies a terrorist organization with weapons for suicide bombings. Seriously, so good. And it was comforting to hear Arabic and understand. Second, everybody should watch "Slumdog Millionaire". It was in theatres right before I left for China, but I didn't get a chance to see it. One of the girls here bought a copy (much like in Syria) and I saw it a couple of days ago. I don't even know what to say about it--just go watch it.

Xiamen, week One

I've been in Xiamen for a week and a half now. Xiamen is a city of 2 million people on the East coast of China, across the water from Taiwan. I am living in the international student dorms owned by Xiamen University. There are about 30,000 people who attend. I'm not sure how many are international.

Classes started for realz yesterday. Chinese I, Intercultural Communication, Contemporary Society, and Dimensions of Culture are all packed in there. Our Chinese teacher is very cute and very excited. She is constantly very earnestly saying things like "Oh, you are very clever," "Oh, hen hao, hen hao" (very good, very good). There is a tai chi component to Dimensions of Culture. That started yesterday as well. Yesterday it was lots of fun. Today it was lots of work. If you do it right, your muscles are flexed practically the whole time. Today our teacher made us do it right. I think I am going to be sore tomorrow. Our teacher is pretty legit. He was asked to be a judo judge at the Beijing Olympics. Crazy.

I am slowly getting more and more used to China. I don't remember it taking me this long in Egypt, but that might just be me looking at my experience through rose-colored lenses. I think I was able to learn Arabic a little quicker (at least the important phrases). Here, I think they are focusing more on building a solid foundation and then moving forward. We're still in the foundational stages for sure.

Things are most frustrating when it is time for a meal. There is a cafeteria on campus, but the food is sub par like cafeteria food world wide, so I typically try to go off campus to eat. (We don't have a fridge in our room so it is impossible to just buy lunch/dinner from the supermarket.) All of the menus are in Chinese so unless a restaurant has pictures (which many of them do) I never quite sure if I know what I ordered. CSP did give us a list (in pinyin--basically a transliteration of the Chinese characters) of popular dishes that most restaurants have, so I typically end up sitting down to eat and pull out my own personal menu. Conversations with the waiter usually go along the lines of "Yo mei yo (do you have) what ever dish I am looking for?" To which the response is either "Yo (have)" or "Mei yo (not have)." Or "ching gei wo nei ge (please give me that)" and then I point. I found a noodle place that I really enjoy. It is run by Chinese Muslims and the food is fantastic. They serve all types of noodle dishes. No rice, which is a nice change of place. I have also found that I enjoy dumplings, of which I am learning there are many varieties. Who knew?

Alright, I am off to English Corner--literally a corner of campus somewhere, where Chinese students gather with English speaking students to improve their speech, so I will end here.