a picture is worth a thousand words...

... so this post must be worth several thousand words. I thought I'd save you and me both time by posting some pictures rather than typing out all the thousands of words. :)











































1. I had to laugh the first time I saw the "2 kuai" store near my apartment. Something like a dollar store, except that 2 kuai is only 29 cents. But I REALLY had to laugh when I saw that the 2 kuai store had been one-upped... here's the 1 kuai store!!

2. Pick-up game of basketball/keep-away with the kids in the complex. I live through the door behind my roommate's shoulder.

3. Wedding! Cameroonian groom, Chinese bride, and American pastor.

4. At my friend's graduation from the Medical University. Definitely a cross-cultural experience.

Ah, China

It has come out of my mouth countless times in the two weeks I've been here. "Ah, China."

 

This is a country that is developing and changing rapidly, so eleven months makes a big difference. The statistic is apparently 400 new cars on the road every day in the city of Shenyang alone. Sure, it's a city of 8 million people or so… but 400 new cars a day?! Times eleven months of being gone, and it's something like 132 thousand more cars on the roads now than when I left. Needless to say, traffic has gotten significantly worse. Significantly.

 

Ah, China.

 

Another change I noticed upon coming back: oreos with green cream are available at the average convenience store now! One of my friends and I used to make trips all the way across the city to the one store that sold mint-flavored oreos, because they were so good yet so hard to find, so I was excited to see the green packages all over the place when I got back. Finally, mint making in-roads into the Asian tastebud! Or so I thought… I decided to splurge and pick up one of these nice packages of green cream oreos. Never thought to actually read the label before making the purchase. I definitely got home not to mint-flavored oreos but to matcha-flavored oreos. Matcha, that incredibly potent green tea powder from Japan that can be used to flavor ice cream or bubble teas, is delicious in the right context. Oreos, when I'm expecting then to be minty, is not the right context.

 

Ah, China.

 

Turns out matcha-flavored Sprite is not the right context either. Another new item failed.

 

Ah, China.

 

I was having lunch with my Ghanaian brother the other day and was telling him about the place I'm currently living. Last time I was here, he and I were in the same building – the "home for foreign friends" at the university. The dorm has adopted some pretty ridiculous rules, so he has actually moved out into his own place off campus. And I've been to his place; it's pretty nice. It's a new complex, with everything that means: beautiful façade of a building, nice landscaping on the grounds, etc. These new complexes are going up everywhere, but it's only the growing middle class who can move in to these comparatively expensive places. So I told him about where I am and how much I am enjoying the authenticity of my experience living not in a dorm for foreigners or even in one of these new, middle-class complexes, but in a "real Chinese place," as I put it. "You know the kind of place I mean," I told him. "I have to step over piles of smelly garbage to get out of the complex. I love it!"

 

Ah, China.

 

But no experience living abroad is ever complete without the fun and adventure of grocery shopping – which, in many countries, is done in the farmers' market style of buying fresh produce on the streets, but unlike in the U.S., these street vendors are the cheapest way to go. An actual grocery store? Way too expensive and less flavor in the produce. So I was picking up some tomatoes and cucumbers from the street on the way home. Dodging the muddy puddles from the overflowed fish tanks, moving past the rows of raw meat, skipping over the baskets of every size and color of egg you could ever imagine… no big deal, until I almost tripped over the live chicken just wandering his way through the street with me. Not quite like shopping at Safeway!

 

Ah, China.

 

I love just about every minute of it.

a whirlwind of fun

It is just now the beginning of Day #6 for me here in SY after arriving safely last Wednesday, but it has been a whirlwind of a few days! This journey has been all the fun of moving to a foreign country with the added bonus of already having an extensive network of friendships. So here's the relatively brief version of the first five days, which have already included both a graduation and a wedding!

Wednesday morning I landed, bought a sim card for my Chinese phone so I could figure out how to get to my new home, and hopped in a taxi. Being the experienced traveler I am in this city, I even knew to go upstairs and pick up a taxi that was just dropping people off -- they will use the meter rather than bartering with me (i.e. ripping me off) like the taxis that line up at the arrivals section. So I got myself into town for 67 kuai instead of the typical negotiated rate of 100 or more.

My incredibly generous friend R has allowed me to come live with her and her roommate A, and R was even there to help me lug my heavy suitcases up the five flights of stairs to her apartment. I obviously knew R and A before, and had been to their apartment, so needless to say I was quite surprised to find out they had moved into a larger place in the same complex. Pleasantly surprised, mind you, since the new place is on the 5th floor instead of the 6th, and has three bedrooms instead of the two at the old place. So I am incredibly blessed to have my own room in an apartment with two amazing girls.

Speaking of amazing girls, I have the best of both worlds in this situation. R is an American, so we can totally relate and understand each other with the various adjustments or complications of being an American living in China. A, on the other hand, is Chinese, and when R is not around even talks with me in Chinese! So it looks like I'll be able to improve my Chinese, learn to cook real Chinese food, and just understand this culture in a deeper way through living here. Couldn't ask for a better arrangement!

Okay, skipping over a lot of details... Wednesday evening R and I headed up to LiaoDa, my old university here in SY, for their midweek fellowship. I had called to get the info on the meeting, so two people knew I was coming, but it was so much fun to surprise everyone else! The best reaction? A guy enters the room, sees me, and exclaims "It's a miracle!" Reaction or no reaction, though, it was so good to be back in that place and see some old friends as well as meet some new.

Thursday I spent most of the day with a couple of Chinese (English speaking) friends of mine, a married couple. They treated me to a delicious meal with a big, fancy fish. Yum! It was a bit entertaining to me that they kept trying to get me to try acupuncture... I'm not sure what symptoms I'm supposed to be getting treated, but they kept telling me that it "really works!" and so obviously I should go. Don't think I'll be doing it anytime soon, but that's okay. :)

Friday I had the great joy of attending the graduation ceremony of two good friends from China Medical University. When I booked my tickets to come, I had assumed this graduation would have been in May or early June, so imagine my surprise and excitement to find out I would be here in time to go! On the down side, R and I dutifully arrived for the 10:00 a.m. ceremony, assuming that was the one we should attend. Turns out that one was all the speeches... more than a dozen speeches, all in Chinese (and formal Chinese, so I couldn't even understand it very well), for over an hour and a half. R literally fell asleep for a while. But it was all okay when we got to go down and see our friends after that ceremony, take a bunch of pictures, grab some lunch with several of them, and then be back for the 1:30 p.m. walking ceremony when the graduates actually got to walk across the stage and get their diploma. Good Chinese fashion, though: no names were called, but six people would go up at once and stand intermittently with the three important people on stage, pose for a picture, then walk off and let six more go on. And also in good Chinese fashion, nobody actually sat to watch the entire thing. It was just a picture opp. Once the first few rounds of people had gone through, everyone was up and mingling as the line for walking across the stage just continued to trickle through. Certainly made me glad the foreigners were the first group!

While the graduates and a few of their friends went off for a party that evening, R and I headed off for our regular Friday night meeting with people from the fellowship. It was such a blessing to be back, and again fun to see the surprise on people's faces when they saw me.

Saturday I spent all day with my "brother" from Ghana. After enjoying lunch at our favorite Muslim restaurant, he showed me a couple of the new hangout places near the university. I also got to meet his new girl and spend some time with a whole group of Africans. But I realized that the downside of living on the other side of town and having roommates is that I now have to pay a bit more attention to the time I leave to get home. So I missed out on the late-night African dinner (which was just starting to be cooked at 7:30 p.m.), but he promised to cook for me another day.

Finally, Sunday. Probably my favorite day of the week. I went alone to the Chinese fellowship I used to attend every week, and enjoyed it thoroughly. And to no surprise, the woman there who for whatever reason absolutely loves me was the first to see me and welcome me back. She always has new advice or health tips to give me, so yesterday she had a bottle of something to drink and made me take some. Not quite sure what it was, but it hasn't killed me yet anyway!

Usually after that fellowship I stick around in the same room to attend the English one, but this week the English fellowship was meeting at our Friday location at a hotel on the southern side of the city because we got to celebrate a wedding! A guy from Cameroon married a Chinese girl, so in order to have her family attend, we had to change the venue. But it was wonderful -- and so much fun! The first ever wedding at the international fellowship was a success even if there were a few hitches... such as the groom showing up an hour late and the rings not showing up until after the [first of several] closing[s]. As I told the groom later, it just means they will have plenty of stories to share and laugh about from their wedding day for years to come!

As R and I got home from the wedding last night, there were a bunch of kids from the apartment complex playing in the courtyard. We enjoyed a fun pick-up game of basketball with them. (Or perhaps it was really a game of keep-away, since there are no hoops for scoring.) Although this is my fourth time here in China, it's my first time living literally surrounded by Chinese people. R and I are the only foreigners in the complex (at least as far as I know). The kids, their parents, and everybody who passed by thought it was awesome to see two foreigners playing with them like that. I think I'm really going to enjoy living here and building relationships with my neighbors.

And so it is now Monday. Phew. My plans for today involve writing on my blog, going to the bank, and finding a store to buy some essentials... such as food. But then again, my plans for the past five days only involved trying to see people. Things always come up here. So we'll see what actually happens today!

[A brief aside: I have an impressive number of pictures already, given all these fun events. Once I can actually get on this website, I'll post some. With my current maneuverability online, I can only post script here on my blog. I also can't "accept" your comments to make them show up for everybody, but if you comment I do get them. So comment away!]

Korea

The first official post from China in this chapter of my blog! Welcome to China, everybody!

I have been here in Shenyang now for less than two days, and I have enjoyed every minute of it, but it has really struck me that my dad was right when he visited this city a year ago: China is a place of over-stimulation. So having been over-stimulated by everything that's happened since arriving here, and not knowing quite how to process things enough yet to write something coherent for you, I've decided to stop delaying on my blog and just tell you about my night in Korea while en route here.

But don't worry, you'll get to hear more about China itself soon enough.

My travel itinerary took me from Seattle directly to Seoul, South Korea, where I had a 14 hour overnight layover. Bright and early the next morning, I got on a second plane that flew directly into Shenyang. I've done this exact itinerary before, while en route to Shenyang two years ago, and that night in Korea made for a good story... For those of you who haven't heard that one, it involved getting on a bus to go to a hotel in the center of town, missing my stop since I know a grand total of 2 words in Korean (hello and thank you -- neither of which were the name of the stop I needed), and having the bus driver eventually stop the bus, come talk at me in a completely foreign language, look at my printed out reservation form with the address of the hotel, and walk me off the bus to grab me a taxi and tell the driver where to take me. Very kind of the nice bus driver, since I don't have any idea how I would have figured out how to get there otherwise!

But that's an old story. I have now officially spent not one but two nights in Korea, and this second one was far more exciting than the first! A friend from college, who I actually studied with in Beijing for one semester, is currently living in a city two hours from Seoul. When she heard I would be in Korea, she offered to take a train up to Seoul for the night to see me! Of course, no way I was going to turn something like that down!

Certainly, this girl is American and doesn't speak fluent Korean either, but she can get by just fine. So after meeting up in the airport (which involved having my name called across the loudspeaker! woot!), we took the subway out into town a ways and grabbed a delicious meal -- pieces of meat cooked at the table and then eaten wrapped in lettuce with garlic, onions, and a sauce of red pepper paste mixed with something else. Yum yum! Definitely beat the street food I managed to purchase for myself the first night I was in Korea, which I threw away after one bite because it was disgusting. Still don't know what that was, actually...

After dinner, we went to a jjimjjilbang or bathhouse. I have heard of this phenomenon in Korea but never expected to experience it since, again, I don't speak Korean. But it was wonderful! For 8,000 won ($7 or $8), we could shower, enjoy several different sauna rooms, sit in a variety of hot baths, and finally sleep for the night. Sure, the sleeping is on a mat on the floor in a room with other people sleeping, but that certainly beats any amount of sleep I might have gotten in the uncomfortable chairs at the airport! (And since I spent two years sleeping on the floor in DC, I felt quite at home.)

So it was the absolute best layover I have ever experienced. In fact, it didn't even feel like a layover. It was relaxing and refreshing to enjoy the saunas and spa, fun to sleep in a famed jjimjjilbang, and most of all incredibly encouraging to catch up with an old friend and have her be just as (or more) excited as me that I will be back in China for a while.

All that said, it was also great to get on that second plane to come back to China. As soon as my plane hit the ground in Shenyang, I was flooded with excitement and joy. It is wonderful to be back, and awesome that the journey over could be as encouraging and fun as it was!

Bathroom stories

No trip to a foreign country - especially if that foreign country happens to be in Asia - could ever be complete without plenty of stories concerning bathroom experiences. I don't mean to gross anybody out, but I think anyone who has ever spent time in the Far East will agree with me. This is so completely true, that I'm not even in China yet and I already have a story!

Actually, I'm sitting in the airport in Seoul, South Korea, after a ten and a half hour flight from Seattle. The flight went smoothly enough... most of the time. Unfortunately, "smooth" and "turbulence" don't really go together. And now you see where this is going.

At the 7 1/2 hour mark, the stewardesses dutifully came around offering scrumptious meals of beef & rice or pasta. Not being particularly interested in eating a meal in the middle of Korea's afternoon, nor in the undoubtedly mediocre offerings developed by the airplane food association, I refrained. Instead, I enjoyed a tasty apple from Albertson's in Seattle. Yum.

It never fails. Immediately following the second meal on any flight from the US to Asia, the skies get rough. It almost seems like they plan it that way, but what a weird thing to plan. Give everybody food that is already going to take a little extra effort to digest properly, and then churn that all up with turbulence. Bad combo, in my opinion. Which is why I have learned to not eat that second meal.

I'm not sure if it was the apple or the two glasses of acidic fruit juices that I had with it, but it turns out that wasn't the best combo with the turbulence either. So despite the fact that it's the middle of the afternoon in Korea, and therefore I ought to have been awake and doing something, I sat back and rested, trying to calm my surprisingly upset stomach. Yup, that almost worked.

For the first time, I had to get out of my seat while the seatbelt sign was lit and rush to the bathroom... and by rush I mean, stumble into and hope I don't pass out along the way. Weirdest - and possibly scariest - feeling. Thankfully, my story doesn't get much grosser than this... I managed to refrain from seeing that apple again. But I did have a nice long stay on the airplane bathroom floor, alternatively sweating hot and shivering cold. Besides thinking, hoping, that my body would somehow be able to stabilize itself despite the continued motion of flying (since I didn't think the pilot would take too highly to me asking him to "pull over" for a minute), my main thought was that I am certainly grateful it was a Korean Air airplane bathroom floor and not the bathroom in the hard seat compartment of an overly full train in China!

So optimistic, aren't I? :)

But seriously, the random (though freaky) sickness subsided and the rest of the flight went well. The stewardesses didn't even yell at me for not having my seatbelt fastened.

All that said, I certainly hope to not be visiting the bathroom on tomorrow's airplane during the hour and a half flight to Shenyang!

A New Chapter

How can one write on a blog called "Life in the Middle Kingdom" from a metropolitan area in the United States? For those of you who may not be aware, "Middle Kingdom" is the direct translation of the Chinese term for China -- the Middle Kingdom of the world, the great nation whose neighbors would send emissaries to kowtow and pay honor to the Emperor and whose history goes back some five thousand years. Life in the Middle Kingdom is life in China... so for those of you who have been following my story can understand that this blog has been post-less for a year now.

And for those of you who haven't been following me, I have been in Washington DC for the past year, finishing up some coursework towards my masters degree in Asian Studies.

This, then, is the beginning of Chapter 2: The Return to the Middle Kingdom. Yes, next week I will be moving back to China. I am incredibly excited to return to the city I called home for a year, the place deep and long-lasting friendships were developed, the part of the world that has gotten into my blood and become a part of who I am.

For those of you who are interested, this blog will be the best way to keep track of me, hear about my adventures, and join me in this new Life in the Middle Kingdom.

"Happy Birthday" in a dozen languages

Okay, a dozen is probably over estimating how many languages people used this year to tell me happy birthday, but not by much. Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Creole, Swahili…

 

But instead of boring you with a list of languages, let me tell you about the most amazing birthday I could ever have asked for while living in a foreign country. The morning was pretty typical for me, although I did decide to skip my first two hours of class in order to call home. And we did have a pop quiz in the class I did go to, over material I hadn’t even looked at yet. Oops. But besides that, it was pretty normal.

 

After class, a friend from the Medical University had asked me to go down to his campus to help him with an application. So I headed off on an absolutely ridiculous attempt to take a bus to the Medical University. Let’s just say it normally takes 40 minutes, and this time it took more than twice that. But after finally realizing my normal bus choice has recently changed routes such that it no longer comes my way, then walking a while to find another bus going the right direction, standing on a crowded bus for far too long, managing somehow to get lost between where I got off and where I was headed (construction sites…), and getting soaked in the sprinklers that randomly decided to go off right when I was walking by, I made it there.

 

After a few minutes of “work” there at the school, we decided the weather was too perfect for sitting inside. So we headed down to a beautiful park along a river at the south side of the city. It was marvelous! It was the perfect opportunity to enjoy a surprisingly-not-so-full-of-Chinese-people park. We walked along the river a ways, happened upon the damn upstream that we didn’t know about, and played badminton for a while on an amazingly green lawn.

 

I had no plans for the evening, so was more than willing to spend plenty of time enjoying the park and the perfect weather. However, the guy I was with insisted that he had to be back to his room at 6:00 for something. So at the appropriate time we made our way back to campus. (Not my campus, but the Medical campus. A significant portion of my friends here are from the Medical University and not from my school, so I spend a good deal of time down there.) To my great surprise, the “thing” at 6:00 was a party for me!

 

I was really impressed that they actually managed to keep the event a surprise to me, especially when I found out that several of the others were also surprised to find out it was a surprise! But they managed, and I was indeed not expecting such a thing. But I have to admit that the whole day made me feel so loved and feel so much belonging among these people.

 

The party itself was way better than just a typical birthday party, because it started with a time of singing my favorite kind of songs and some sharing from my favorite book, and then they all asked our Father on my behalf. What an encouragement! But of course, the party would only have been a fellowship if it had ended there. So that was followed by lots of delicious fruit, some delivered Chinese food, and even a cake. (By the way, turns out it really is the thought that counts. Somehow the cake really did taste pretty good, since it was from my friends who cared enough to get it for me, even though it was one of those typical Chinese cakes that really can’t compare to anything back home.) The food, though, had nothing on the other activities of the night. Among the eight of us there, we represented seven countries. Of those seven countries, six of them were in Africa. (Hint: I’m from the U.S., which is not in Africa.) So someone grabbed a guitar and started playing some African P&W songs that I have learned over the course of this year. African songs are very energetic and just make you want to dance. So six of us (minus the guitar player and the cameraman) squeezed into the open half of the one dorm room and danced: South African dancing, Tanzanian dancing, etc. And all to music that is uplifting and encouraging. How fun!

 

However, six sweaty people in a (small) dorm room with no air soon turned into a hot, sticky mess. After we were too hot and tired to go on (or was it that they ran out of African P&W songs that I know?), we decided to watch a movie. It was a really interesting experience for me, though, to sit with 7 Africans and watch a movie about African Americans. We had an interesting discussion afterwards about that.

 

Soon enough, midnight rolled around and it was no longer my birthday. At least not in China. So we all headed back to our homes (a.k.a. dorms) and slept well. (I slept well, anyway. I was worn out after all the unexpected excitement of the day!) But I went home that night feeling very special, very loved, and very much excited about the year that is to come.