Zaijian China!

I’m back in the US! Woo!

Friday night we had a goodbye dinner for JR, and then he left. Saturday morning I woke up, expecting to be flying from Mianyang to Shanghai around 11pm that night and then back to the US on Sunday. However, a typhoon (like a hurricane) is passing through Shanghai so my flight to the US on Sunday was cancelled, and I was rebooked for another flight on Monday. While my flight to Shanghai wasn’t cancelled, I was worried it would get delayed or cancelled at the last minute, leaving me stuck in Mianyang until the storm blew over, which could be after my flight to the US on Monday. So I freaked out and tried to get out of Mianyang anyway I could so that I had more flexibility, as Mianyang only has one flight a day to major cities. Unfortunately because China hasn’t seemed to fully modernize yet, nothing can be looked up online and no one can be called for information. The only option is to go to a travel agency to find out travel information. Unfortunately all the teachers were in class and no one seemed to understand the urgency of the situation. Finally after storming out of several offices, Mrs. Zhang, the head of the English department with whom I made dumplings a few weeks ago, found some one to take me to a travel agency. I didn’t know that’s where we were going since no one would tell me anything so I didn’t have my passport with me, which led to some problems booking my tickets. After discovering there were no flights out of Mianyang to anywhere useful that I could get on in time (I hadn’t packed yet either as I thought I had all day to pack up), we started looking at flights out of Chengdu, the capital city 2 hours away through which I have passed almost everytime I have travelled this summer. Chengdu to Shanghai flights were booked so I finally got a seat on a plane to Beijing, with the intention that once I got there, I could take the fast train to Shanghai before my Monday flight out of Shanghai. Luckily, my amazing mother found a flight from Beijing to Atlanta leaving even earlier on Sunday than my original flight home! Mummy dearest also booked me a hotel in Beijing for the night so I wouldn’t have to sleep at the airport. The hotel was located right near Beijing’s famous food night market, complete with roasted silk worms and cockroaches although I stuck to noodles and dumplings. I also took a swim in the pool there, so nice. This morning I hooped on my plane to Seattle and am currently in flight home! (This won’t be posted until I land obviously- at home, in Atlanta!!!)

So my third journey to China is over. This trip has definitely taught me a lot about Chinese culture, particularly Sichuan culture, and the Chinese education system, with which I have many complaints. Overall this program turned out to be more of an opportunity to travel to more remote places in Sichuan I never would have seen otherwise, than a volunteer teaching program. They just honestly didn’t need us at the school. To any randos out there considering teaching English in China, make sure that your program is very well defined and that you will actually be teaching, not just playing games with kids on occasion.

So Goodbye China, Hello Senior year! Hopefully I will return to China next year after graduating, doing something more rewarding and challenging intellectually. See you next year China! 

Holiday Week in Xi'An

Last Friday, Ricki left to go back to the US L. That night we got two new volunteers, Ester and Koen- both from the Netherlands. Saturday night we all went out to KTV and celebrated Martha’s last night, which was super fun. Josh, who has now been adopted by a home stay family and doesn’t live at the palace anymore, said goodbye to us Saturday night since he was leaving for the week to go to Yunan province with his family for the holiday. Sunday evening Martha left, which was really sad too. I didn’t realize quite how much I would miss everyone until they left. Sunday night we also met 3 more new volunteers- Marine (from Belgium/France), Solene (France), and Anna (Germany). They arrived with Ester and Koen on Friday night but had been taken away to live with teachers from another school, even though they all signed up for the Children’s Palace. We told them to just leave and come to the Palace so that’s what they did. The Children’s Palace didn't know they were coming, but it's worked out fine so far. I also had to say goodbye to Margaux on Sunday night because she left for Chengdu this week while I was in Xi’An. So many goodbyes! L

Jean-Raphael and I left Sunday night, right after Martha left, for Xi’An, which is a 13-15 hr train ride away. I thought taking a “sleeper” train would be fun, but the “sleeper” seats were sold out. In order of best to last, the trains have soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat, and no seat (yes, they actually allow people to stand on the train for 13-15 hrs. Mostly they camp out in the empty space by the bathroom and between the cars, but they’re loud and annoying. I felt quite bad for them). So we got the hard sleeper seats. The “hard” seats don’t seem that bad at first but after awhile your butt goes numb and you can’t really move that much and you’re smooshed between other people. I slept ok on the way there and listened to music, read, and watched TV shows on my iPod. In typical capitalist style, there were people on the trains shouting every 5 minutes about something that we could buy, holding auctions, or simply betting on each other playing cards. Seriously, I think Chinese people are the loudest people ever. And whats worse, they don’t really understand proper use of public space. Example: Smoking in an elevator=NOT OK; spitting on the floor of the train= NOT OK; playing music or a movie on your iPad speakers= NOT OK. But of course all these things happen daily so you just get used to it.

So once we got there at about noon on Monday, JR and I checked into our hostel and showered, then off to sightseeing. We went to the Muslim quarter, which was really cool but quite touristy. For lunch we had some delicious liang pi, which are these special noodles covered in a peanut-like spicy sauce. We don’t have these kind of noodles in the US, but I guess they’re closest to glass noodles. We also had chaunr, which I’ve had before and don’t parituclarly like. It’s just meat or veggies on a stick with some brushed on spice, but the meat is mostly fatty and gross. These was a lot of shopping in the muslim quarter too. Then we went to the Great Mosque, which looked more like a Buddhist temple and garden then a mosque. It was cool to see though.

me at the Mosque

gardens and archway at the Mosque

Then we went to the old Drum Tower, where we got a nice view of the city.

old drums with ancient traditional characters on them

Me at the drum tower with a view of the city

view of the bell tower from the drum tower, plus a park

Then we walked to the old Bell Tower. Clearly Xi’An was into its towers.

Me at the Bell Tower

Something cool about Xi’An was the mix of modern and ancient architecture. Even the new skyscraper buildings had winged roofs. Plus the main part of the city is enclosed by a city wall that is completely preserved. On Monday night, the other new volunteers joined us in Xi’An.

Xi’An is most famous for the Terracotta soldiers. The first (and only) emperor of the Qin Dynasty had these clay soldiers built to be buried with him so that he would be the most powerful emperor in the afterlife as well. He reigned for 33 years, during which time he had the Terracotta Soldiers built (of which there are approxiametly 8,000 but they’re finding more every year), unified China for the first time (Qin was later recorded by foreign missonaries as Chin, and then an “A” was adding, creating the English name China), built the city walls of Xi’An, AND the Great Wall (built to hold together the empire he created). So basically he was a baller. Apparently he was also crazy because he frequently ate mercury, and later died of mercury poisoning. Each of the Terracotta soldiers were made to look like a real soldier, however their faces looked like the workers who made them. There were tens of thousands of slaves who worked to build the soldiers, and then the workers were killed so that no one would find the tomb. Of course, the next ruler of China found the warriors and stole all of the weapons they had, but they didn’t get to the Emperor’s tomb. Even today, the tomb hasn’t been opened because it is surrounded by 1000X the normal amount of mercury. A farmer looking for water rediscovered the soldiers in 1974, and he was paid 10 RMB for his discovery. Now he’s employed by the tourist site to just sit there and sign books for tourists, kind of sad. Seeing the soldiers was really cool though. There are 3 main pits, or excavation sites, that have each been worked on to different levels. The best pit has over 2,000 soldiers uncovered and put together (apparently only one soldier has been found that was completely whole. The rest were broken by raiders, or the roof that enclosed them collapsing over time).

2,000 soldiers they've put back together

There is still ongoing excavation as well. There are 3 different types of warriors that were built- the general, the horseman, and the archer. Originally they were all painted by over time and with exposure to oxygen, they’ve all faded.

what the soldiers look like in the pits before they're put back together

Officer

Jean-Raphael and I with the horsemen

standing archer

The tour guide also really liked me and even let me hold the flower that she used to gather all of us.

Zha Zha and I with her conducting flower

That night we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda and saw a fountain light show. We didn’t actually go into the Pagoda because we didn’t have time. The fountain light show was funny, very Chinese, and tons of pushy Chinese people trying to see. Then we went out with some people we had met on the tour to our hostel bar and a dance club. Even thought it was a Tuesday night, everything was fairly crowded because August 1-4 is a national holiday celebrating the communist party soldiers or something.

Wednesday we rented bikes and biked the entire city wall, which was really fun. It took us about 1 hr and 45 min. The bikes were really shitty and my chain kept coming off, but with lots of my expert European biker friends around, they helped me fix it each time. It was a really cool way to see the city, but we all got pretty tired by the end and were exposed to a lot of sun. Definetly a cool thing to do in Xi’An though. Then we went back to the muslim quarter for lunch since the new volunteers hadn’t been there yet and shopped around some more and ate more delicious noodles and other Xi’an delicacies. Wednesday night we hopped on our 15 hr train ride home and I seriously thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown from the cramped space, my numb butt, and the loud Chinese people everywhere. Luckily though we got some people to switch seats so that the 7 of us could all sit together. We arrived in Mianyang Thursday morning around 10:30am.

I leave tomorrow night for Shanghai, then Sunday morning for the US! WOW! So soon! JR leaves tonight so we’re having lots of goodbye celebrations. The new volunteers are really cool thought so its too bad they didn’t come earlier. It's funny, We started off with 4 American girls and 2 British guys; now we have only 2 native english speakers and I'm the only American. It's funny being around non-native english speakers while we're teaching english. Often people will start speaking dutch or french when we're all hanging out so that's interesting. It's been good practice for me to listen to the french!

I’m certainly ready to come home! 46 hours until I land in Atlanta!!