Xingtai

So after the initial shock of living with another person wore off I decided I really hated it. It was super awkward and not at all what I expected it to be like. We are never alone. We feel like we have to stay in our room all day. When we finally decided that we couldn’t starve to death in our room braved the living room in hopes of being able to go explore the city, but he was there waiting for us. There was really no way of leaving without him so he came along too.

He took us to downtown Xingtai. We are a long way from Beijing and home. Xingtai is pretty small and they definitely don’t see many white people walking around. There are no western conveniences here. I can avoid the squatty pottys no longer. The downtown area is basically a little shopping area with a bunch of restaurants. Our roomy decided to take us to a place he liked for dinner. It was an interesting place with hot pot style food. What this means is they give you a choice of broth flavor and then you boil your own broth and just add stuff in it and eat it. It smelled pretty bad but we decided to give it a try. It was sorta neat in that all the different things you can add to your broth float around this track thing in little boats and when the boat goes by you just grab stuff off of it. However, it tasted pretty horrible so… the cool factor was a bit ruined.  I was ready to leave after one bite.

Our roommate however was not ready to leave…ever. We seriously stayed at this place for almost 3 hours. He just kept eating and eating. This guy is not a huge guy either. Not really sure where it all goes. It doesn’t help that he was already the type of guy that moves at a pretty slow pace. Anyways when we finally made it back to the apartment I went straight to my room and determined I would never leave again haha.

Unfortunately a person has got to eat so the next day we went out again. Our roommate, who I will call Bob from now on, took us to a restaurant he liked again. YEAH! This time we went to a duck place. It sold yummy whole cooked ducks. But we just ordered other things. Eric and I had gone out in the afternoon by ourselves and eaten at pizza hut so we weren’t that hungry. So we just thought we would order some of these spicy green beans and rice to snack on while we waited for Bob to eat. No surprises we stayed at this place for over two hours and watched him down more food than I thought possible. We finally headed home for the night. Bob wears the same white shirt everyday and has the same short shorts that he dons out in public. I am not judging men wearing short shorts out in public but this should give you a mental picture. He also has a little bear belly that jets out about 6 inches.

We got a pleasant surprise that night from our favorite restaurant the duck place. This surprise was the type that you really just want to be alone to wait out but no we have a roommate so he got to share in all the wonders of food poisoning with us. That’s right both Eric and I got it good. It sucks. I wish there was a better, more powerful word than "suck"ed to describe food poisoning. All our readers will know: when you get it, you are prisoner to the bathroom. You are on house arrest. You do not and you cannot venture past the walls of your own home until the naughty food has run its course...literally. But for now...we can just use "sucks."

This time I vowed to never leave the room except to go to the bathroom and that I would never eat again.

Finally, the day rolled around to meet with Fay about our schedules and to discuss with the headmaster the reasons that we need a private apartment. We got our scheduled and waited for about 30min past when the headmaster was suppose to meet us. He never showed. Fay reported that he wanted to reschedule for tomorrow so we left.

Tomorrow came and the headmaster never showed. At this point our program that we came with, China Horizons, was in contact with our school and trying to solve the problem, but things just weren’t happening. Finally we get a call from a guy with China Horizons telling us that the school is not cooperating and they would like to move us to another school. At this point I would do anything to leave Xingtai and our roommate behind. So we say we are game for the change. Now what they asked of us was no easy task. They, China Horizons, asked us to leave the city without telling anyone or without anyone finding out. Now that is no easy task when you have a roommate that basically sleeps in the living room where the front door is. You can't just be like "yeah we are all packed up because we are...not moving out or anything like that." or "yeah we just got packed up because we like to roll our baggage down that street to make sure the wheels still turn..." or we got bored and decided to head to another city for the day...with all of our luggage." It is very hard to leave! So we packed up all of our stuff in the nighttime while our roommate was busy drinking in the living room. We slept and woke early and quietly we rolled out of our room with luggage in hand and tried desperately to not wake him. We felt like we were escaping prison and we could not wake the guard dog. It was important for him not to know what or where we were going because he would tell the school. It was important for the school not to know because they would try to stop us. So we made it out o the apartment, down four flights of stairs, and out to the street where we hailed a taxi and were on our way out. Success! we didn't wake him and nobody even had known that we had left until later. This seems like a flaky thing to do, but it is common to do in China when a party is in violation with their contract which the school was.

Leaving Beijing

Today is the day. We are done with our arrival tour and heading to our cities to begin teaching. I’m a little nervous but excited to be going to the place we will really be living in for the next few months of our lives. We got a call last night at about 10pm from one of the guys with the program telling us to be ready and in lobby at 5:30am. Oh joy! So we got up super early and were down in the lobby right on time. We then got in a van and were driven to the Beijing West Railway Station with one other couple from the group. We walked in and found the other couples waiting area first and said goodbye to them. Then we headed off in search of our own. We were alone in China for real for the first time. It was just a little freaky.

We found our waiting area pretty quick. The problem was that the other couples train left at 7:30am so they needed to be at the station that early. We however did not. Our train didn’t leave till 9:30am. So we sat and waited for what seemed like forever. After a bit I could no longer wait to use the bathroom so I decided to brave the restrooms which so far had been unpleasant in every way. So in China the bathrooms are squatty potties. They are just porcelain holes in the ground and you squat over to use them. 

 That bucket is where the toilet paper is suppose to go. You are not suppose to flush it.

 As of this point I have yet to use these bathrooms. Beijing is more of a touristy area so I had been able to find western style toilets but I didn’t hold high hopes for this bathroom. I went in and there was a huge line so I waited in the stinky hot bathroom. When I got towards the front of the line I noticed that one of the toilet stalls was not on a raised platform. I became excited because I knew that this probably meant that it was a western toilet. The funny thing was no one was using that toilet. There was seriously a huge line and still no one would brave the weird western style toilet. I giggled to myself and walked over to the stall. When I opened the door I laughed again. The toilet seat was up and there were foot prints on the rim of the toilet. Haha. They seriously don’t understand the toilets at all. The positive to this is that when I put the seat down it was nice and clean.

After what seemed like the longest wait in history… about three hours but for real I could have been sleeping… the train was finally here. We got in line which in China is really a joke. They don’t believe in conventional lines. They all just kinda crowd in as they please and the person who is first in line typically gets pushed out of the way a lot. Anyways we were standing there trying to figure out which gate we were suppose to walk through and looking lost when this guy behind us taps Eric on the shoulder and says in very clear English go through gate three. Then he continued to ask us what we were doing in China and where we were going. It made me feel so good to hear English and see that general human kindness can still be found here in China.

The train ride was pretty short only about 2.5 hours but it was a long 2.5 hours because our bags had to be right where our feet go because they don’t have storage for big luggage on trains. I think the lady next to us was annoyed at how much luggage we had. For the entire 2.5 hour trip there was not even an awkward glance exchanged.

When we got off the train Fay our liaison was there to take us to the school with a couple of guys.

First Fay said she would take us to our apartment so we could drop off our luggage. When we get in the apartment we were surprised that it was pretty decent sized. It looked way nicer on the inside than the outside… though that isn’t saying much. But still it was not that bad, there was just one slight problem. There was someone else living there.  A guy who was in his mid-twenties to be precise. He was another English teacher from Canada who had been working for the school for about a year. But I was still a little surprised…did all apartments in China come with a strange person or was ours extra special? Fay explained that the plan was for us to live with him because the apartment was so big and they didn’t have another apartment for us. Sorry, but… is this for real?

More on that subject later. So we dropped off our bags and Fay says that she will take us to lunch. We go to a restaurant nearby and the food was alright. She gave us the opportunity to try donkey. Which is not as terrible as one might think. She then took us on a quick tour of the school. It was a cute little elementary school that looked like a castle from the outside. But the classrooms look like Cinderella's cellar.

The plan was for me to teach 1^st and 2^nd graders and Eric to teach 3^rd and 4^th graders. This was pretty exciting to us because we really wanted to teach the cute little ones. After the tour Fay told us we were free to go back to our apartment for a rest and to come back in a few days and she would give us our schedules.

Beijing Tour Day 6

So the problem with going with the group is that you are expected to do everything the group does according to the schedule and today I just didn’t want to. We had 8 hours of training planned. The first part was more on the language and then traveling in China. By now I have given up ever learning how to speak Chinese…at all. So that was pointless. The traveling in China part was super boring plus they were going to send us the powerpoint so why would I even try to listen to him read it? Then we had a group lunch which should have been yummy but it just wasn’t.

After lunch we had another 4 hours of advice about teaching basically. However, after lunch I just couldn’t do it. I had a cold. I was nauseous. And I was exhausted I mean HELLO I’m pregnant here! So I just decided to skip. I went up to the hotel room and had a nice 3.5 hour nap. When I woke up I wasn’t sure what to do or what time it was. I decided I better go back to the meeting. When I walked in the room Eric was asleep! He was supposed to be taking notes for us to use later. Haha oh well I doubt it was really crucial. It definitely was not. I walked back at the perfect time too because it was basically over! They wrapped it up pretty quick and then handed out our train tickets to our cities we were teaching in and our cell phones.One thing that Katy did miss by snoozing through the meeting was her award that she won. She won the award for looking the least like her passport picture haha. She won this head massage thingy that looks like a wiry jelly fish. I won the award for looking the most like another dude. Whatever I didn't really care...I did win a potato peeler tho haha.

Day 4 & 5 Beijing Tour

Day 4 Beijing tour
Just a quick reminder everything that is bolded and in italics was written by Eric!

This is the day we were waiting for. We get to go to the Great Wall. We traveled about 1.5 hours in a bus which was ridiculous, but it was worth it. We took a ski lift basically up to the wall. It was gorgeous. Such a pretty ride. We could touch the tops of the trees as we went up. The Wall is everything that it is cracked up to be and more.

It is seriously beautiful and huge. It is very impressive that they went to such work to create this. It took 150 years. Our tour guide Clement was this super funny Asian guy that explained it to us. Apparently they carried the stones up just a few at a time. Many men died while helping to build the wall and were buried under the wall because of this it is known as the longest grave. Yeah it is pretty pathetic that we take a ski lift to the top of the hill and then complain about the steep stairs when we are hiking a few hundred yards. It’s like we had a lot to complain about. I bet Ping Ling never complained once when he was packing a fifty pound brick up the steep slope that we looked down on from the ski lift chair.

The wall is quite the hike lots of ups and downs on uneven stones. A little oversight from the engineers who planned the great wall. I mean come on…seriously…when you are building a wall that is suppose to last for hundreds of years please remember to use a level so that future tourists don’t twist their ankles when they are trying to admire its beauty.   But the view is breath taking. The pictures will never do it justice. 

 This is a toboggan slide that you can take down from the wall instead of taking the ski left. I passed it up because I was feeling super sick and figured that wouldn't help matters. However, Eric went on it. He said that it was alright but it went too slow so it wasn't that much fun. He probably said it to make me feel better...

 This down here is a cute little lizard I spotted. It had a really sweet blue tail, but he was a bit camera shy.

 For anyone wanting updates on the whole pregnancy situation I will be posting info and a couple pics soon hopefully. But in this picture here I am 13 weeks about and if you look, unfortunately, you can see the beginning of my baby weight... or at least that is what I am telling myself that is!

After the Great Wall we ate as a group. At this point I was thrilled to be able to get some food down and didn’t even mind too much that it was Chinese. I am also happy I am starting to get better with chop sticks for a while there I thought I would starve. So when we have been eating with the group they sit us at a table with like ten people. They bring out a dish at a time and put it on a lazy susan. People pass around the dishes. It is hard to grab food from those dishes with chopsticks when the person at the other end of the table sees something that he likes and starts spinning the lazy susan for his desired dish. I feel like a baby that cannot crawl and is playing with a toy that he or she drops, tries to pick up, but is so clumsy that he or she ends up pushing it further away than the spot that he or she drops the toy. I sense a baby’s frustration… Plus like he said there is like ten of us to the table and then they bring out several dishes, but only one bowl of rice and one dish that is good. This leads to everyone still being hungry and you only get like one tiny bite of the yummy dish before everyone has scarfed it down and that’s if you are lucky.

Next we went to a jade factory. It is incredible how detailed they make all the pieces of artwork. The statues and everything else were very pretty. I was tempted to buy quite a few pieces but we were told it was spendy in the factory so I resisted. 

 This is in the jade factory. You can watch them cut and design the jade. It is really intricate work and very impressive.

Next we went to the Ming tombs. I thought that this would be super cool. The tombs have some cool buildings and things which was neat. Lots of statues of Buddhas and things which people leave money at and bow to. Where does the money to stuff like this actually go to? I know buddah doesn’t come back at night and take it. It most likely gets taken by the staff and they divide it up as waitresses in America would do when they earn tips. It’s also like wishing wells. Money goes in, but when it comes out where does it go?

Then we went over to the last building. Maybe it is just me but when I am told we are going to visit the tombs I expected to see like a mummy or a casket or something, but not so much. It’s basically a little hill that you can’t go close to that holds all the tombs under the ground. So I was a bit disappointed to say the least. 

 This building is basically a museum with info on the Ming dynasty.

 This guy had tons of money around him... We were just a little tempted.

 Supposedly if you walk through this gate when you come back through it you have to say something in Chinese or the ghosts can get you... Eric and I walked around the gate... just in case haha.

 Just a funny sign we found. The signs always have fun English translations.

This is a picture of  the name of one of the buried men. Apparently the more important men that our entombed have a statue with their names on it.

This was one of our busiest days and when it was time for the bus ride to the hotel I was excited. I thought I would get in a nice long nap. Boy was I mistaken. Clement started making jokes about how we could do karaoke on the way home and people actually took him seriously. Thus preceded one of the longest bus rides of my life. It was funny at first and some people were actually pretty good. But then there are those people that think they are good that really are just super annoying and of course they have to get up like a hundred times… I thought it would never end. I enjoyed it. People making a fool of themselves. I’m not a huge fan of American Idol. We used to watch it as a family when I was younger. One of the best parts was the beginning of a season where all these horrible singers get on and butcher great songs. I can do no better but the beauty of it is…I don’t claim to and I don’t try.

 This is the genius that came up with the idea to have karaoke.

 Yep... It really happened.

Day 5 Beijing tour

Today started out with a nice long language/ teaching training. I’m sorry to say it but when you are as tired as we are and on top of it both Eric and I have picked up some sorta cold training for four hours just plain sucks. All we wanted was to crawl into bed.

After the training we went to the Summer Palace. It is beautiful. It really is. It has passageways through  the stones in the hill that are really cool. At the bottom there is a nice big pretty brown lake. Haha. It really is brown but somehow still is pretty with neat little boats on it.

The group gave us 2 hours at the Summer Palace. Eric and I were done in less than an hour. I was determined to be done with the tour in less than an hour so that I could go back and get a long healthy nap. So we decided to be brave and try to find our way back to the hotel on our own. We basically just had to back track through the subway system, but it was pretty scary.

We were able to make it through without any hiccups. Once again we were both sick so we just went back to our hotel and Eric fell asleep and I watched a movie. Later we went out and found a pizza place which wasn’t horrible. Then we just returned for the night and went to bed.