Thursday, November 25, 2010

Thanksgiving

What's the best way to celebrate an American holiday in a country that doesn't recognize it? I remember Thanksgiving being one of the hardest days of my time in China two years ago. In fact, Thanksgiving was much harder than Christmas, because all my foreign friends wanted to celebrate Christmas and only the very very small handful of us Americans even knew that the third Thursday of November was anything special. So this year I just wasn't going to make anything of it.

As expected, my Thanksgiving was indeed turkey-less, mashed potatoes-less, cranberry sauce-less, even (biologically speaking) family-less. But it certainly wasn't friend-less.

My American friend A and I ended up spending the entire day together as a holiday baking day. And let me just say, there is nothing quite like holiday baking done in a country that has just recently been introduced to the oven! In fact, our morning started by going out and buying an oven. And by oven, I certainly don't mean one of those convenient devices built into your kitchen that becomes a temporary home for your 20lb turkey during the hours leading up to your Thanksgiving feast. I'm not sure a 5lb turkey would fit in the kind of oven we have to work with. Perhaps that's why we ditched the turkey idea.

Perhaps also because turkeys don't exist in China and are therefore outrageously expensive to purchase. Yeah, that could be it, too.

So we went and bought an oven. We got quite a few stares as we carried this (surprisingly not-that-big) box down the street from the electric market back to my friend's apartment, but I can never quite tell if the stares are because we're carrying an oven down the street or because we're white. Could be either. I would go on to tell you now about the difficulty of getting this new oven up the multiple flights of stairs in my friend's elevator-less apartment building, but that would be a lie. The oven is so ridiculously light, it took basically no additional effort beyond that of simply climbing the stairs regularly. In fact, it was so easy that we then went to my apartment to carry our oven over to A's apartment for the day. Carrying oven #2 down the street? Definitely more stares.

Despite our early morning (okay, okay, 9 a.m. ... which in a country that is bustling by 5 a.m. every morning is not actually early at all), it was already lunchtime by the time we had purchased all the necessary ingredients and equipment (the oven being utmost among them). Being Thanksgiving Day and all, we certainly needed to eat lunch. Japanese rice bowls from the street vendor it is! Woot! Turns out whoever decided Thanksgiving should be about turkey has never tried our Japanese rice bowl place. It's definitely something to be thankful for.

Then to the baking. No day of baking is ever complete without some sort of mishap in the kitchen, but again, baking in a country that just met the oven is really just asking for trouble. Why does my brown sugar taste like ginger? Is this thing I bought actually a pumpkin or am I making an "unknown vegetable" pie? How do I turn the oven on? Why did the oven turn itself off (in the middle of baking that tray of cookies)? Will this yeast rise? Uh-oh, how do we make the yeast stop rising?!

Somehow, by the end of the day, our endeavors proved worthwhile. Nearly 75 crescent rolls, 100+ speculaas cookies, and 3 pumpkin pies later, the apartment smelled better than ever before and we were pleased! Now hopefully all our non-American, never-experienced-a-real-Thanksgiving-before friends will enjoy the goodies at our Thanksgiving/family dinner on Saturday. We might not have the turkey, stuffing, or cranberry sauce, but we have rolls, cookies, and pumpkin pies. Not bad!

Saturday, November 20, 2010

A Day in the Life

In the past week, my apartment has slept anywhere from one to seven people on any given night. And that just gives you an idea of the Grand Central Station nature of my apartment.

 

I took a trip last week to visit some old college classmates in another city, a few hours from here. Tons of fun! It was a refreshing break from the routine and responsibilities of life in Shenyang. As I headed home from the train station upon arriving back in town, however, I knew I needed to be prepared… Eleven p.m. in my apartment could be anything. And I mean that quite literally. Absolutely anything could be going on, from nobody being home to having a houseful, from all sound asleep to excited dancing and screaming, from warm and friendly to tense and argumentative. Anything.

 

This time it was extra people. Two American girls here for a brief visit. I totally love meeting all the foreigners who trickle in and out of this city, and usually enjoy having the girls stay with us. I just feel bad for them that they get stuck sleeping out in the living room, which I end up traipsing through at completely ungodly hours of Saturday morning as I get ready for work. And our living room floor creaks. A lot.

 

But a creaking floor isn't the only noise that may keep the girls up tonight or in the morning. Today we have a Chinese lady and her 8 month old baby staying with us as well. The kid is as cute as can be… as long as there's no crying or screaming involved. Which, for an 8 month old, is not often the case.

Chinese kids really are cute, though. Teaching my handful of them today, I was reminded of my old eighth grade Spanish class. My teacher was quite laid back and let us get away with a lot – as long as it involved Spanish. So I remember the studious boys in the class getting really excited about looking up insults in their dictionaries so they could say the craziest or silliest insult to the next person. Not that there was any actual meanness to it. It was just fun.

 

I'm not sure how much meanness was behind my nine year olds today, but two of the boys were definitely insulting each other and calling each other names (in Chinese) in the way that so many nine year old boys do. Now my Chinese is alright, but when it comes to insults, I'm a bit behind the learning curve. But no problem: we have a rule in our class that we're only supposed to speak English. So I avoided dealing with the actual insulting going on by simply enforcing that they had to speak English only.

 

And to that, the one boy turned to the other and said in the same insulting tone of voice: "You're a piece of cake."

 

Yup, pretty sure he doesn't really know what that phrase actually means in English! I definitely cracked a smile at that one. Sometimes it's so hard to be the responsible adult in a situation and not just laugh with everyone else!

 

So lesson learned? Next time someone is getting on your nerves, just go ahead and say it. "You're such a piece of cake."

Thursday, November 4, 2010

An Ode to Little Guy

Several weeks ago, I came home from a tough day of teaching to my very first pet! "Little Guy," as he became known, was a bright blue, beautiful beta. He was special. Not only because he was honestly a very beautiful fish, nor even simply because he was mine. He was a delight because my roommates cared enough about me, knew I was having a tough day, and just decided to bless me with him. What a delight!

Coming home to a new pet was only the beginning of the adventure, though. Then came learning how to take care of a pet -- in China. Some of you know about my track record with pets in China. For those of you who don't, let's just say it involved a rabbit that wasn't even mine ending up either being dissected at the Medical University or eaten by some students. I'm not sure which. I didn't ask.

But Little Guy was mine, so I needed to learn how to care for him. So off I went to go buy him some food. Turns out, the rabbit was easy: lettuce and carrots from the local vegetable stand. Fish food in the US? Also easy: a bottle of pellets or flakes. Fish food in China? Now this is entertaining.

From what I understood (and granted, my Chinese is limited), I was supposed to go buy Little Guy some food every 5 days or so. A lady on my vegetable market street sells it, so it was easy enough to pick up whenever I bought vegetables. And at only 2 mao for a bag, it wasn't going to break the bank. (Two mao is about 2 or 3 cents.) But here's the entertaining part: what I was buying for Little Guy to eat was actually little live plankton! And every 5 days or so, I was supposed to dump a whole 2 mao worth of these reddish colored squirmy things into Little Guy's bowl, and he should have plenty.

The first time I fed him, I was a little nervous. Sure seemed like a lot of food to give him at once. So Little Guy and I made a deal that he wouldn't eat too much. It was fun to watch him go at those little reddish things, and, as he had agreed, he filled up on them and then stopped. No overeating.

Three days later? Not sure what happened. The little reddish things were still there, still squirming around, still ready to be eaten. But poor Little Guy passed away. Bad water maybe? Too small a bowl? Just sick? Not sure.

But it was fun while it lasted.

This past week, I came home from a similarly difficult day of teaching to a clean room and a little plant! My roommates are amazing. And hopefully I won't kill this one. :)