Daily Discovery
April 2019
April 30: It's almost the end of the first half of the last semester ... or midterms. Although midterms are not really until after the May 1st holiday break, I will be in Chengdu for the COS conference, so I had a few of my classes complete their midterm exams early.
I had them make presentations on a trip that they wanted to take to anywhere in the world (they all still choose a place within China that they've always wanted to go to), and share it with the class: where, why, how, what will you eat, and what will you bring.
This picture is from my Humanities major students, and they are very sneaky: last week during the break they asked me to take a picture with them, and so we took a few pictures (I think I posted a few of them below), and then voila! Today one of them appears on the slide of things to bring with when traveling: a friend - and a cute (I guess?) English teacher.
And bonus points for anyone who notices the other piece of my (artistically) selected viewpoint: another fascinating denim jacket I've seen in multiple colors over the last two years, all with the same wonderful catchphrase that I doubt anyone wearing the jacket truly understands.
April 29: It's the second to last full day of classes/work in China, as Wednesday - Saturday are a four day holiday for the Chinese labor day (officially May 1).
I'll be heading out tomorrow to go visit another PCV in their school/city on the way to Chengdu, where we will have our last training of Peace Corps service. Wow, it seems strange to type that, but it's true: the COS conference will be taking place in just about 5 days, and it's the chance to figure out what's next, how to leave our sites and service to the next generation of PCVs, and to prepare ourselves for heading back to life in the States... a new life, as it might feel.
Speaking of new life, there was a bit of new life today on campus, too, as I don't recall seeing these flowers last year, but they were in full bloom today, and sweetening the air as I walked to class.
April 28: It's been a long time, and a bunch of water has been poured consistently on the grass for days and days, but it's almost looking green and as if Spring is actually here!
I am not sure how long it will stay once the weather starts getting even hotter, but for now, it's a great time to hang outside with students or read a book!
April 27: It's a Saturday, but because next week is a holiday, they moved one of the work days in China from Thursday to this Sunday, which means that Saturday night becomes a night of self-study for the students. (Did you follow that?)
Of course, no one told me this until my students called me 10 minutes before class started ... and so we had a relaxed class, listened to some English songs, worked on the midterm exam oral project, and of course, took some photos with both whacky and beautifying filters activated.
April 26: It's another movie night for the English association, and they chose to show "Shawshank Redemption," though what this really means is that we will watch the first 40 minutes of the movie to complete the requirements of the event, and then the movie will conclude and students will miss the remaining 70% of the movie, which is arguably the best part of the movie.
I've tried to convince the club to only show movies and have events where we can watch the whole movie, but I haven't been successful... yet.
April 25: It's almost a case of deja vu here, as my supervisor called me up on short notice and invited me to join him and some other teachers for dinner tonight. The reason? A delegation of teachers/administrators from a school in Spain looking to set up an exchange program with Wuwei have arrived, and it would be nice for me to be present to show the school's success with other international programs - and, you can speak Spanish with them, I am told.
It's been awhile since I've even thought in Spanish, much less read/studied/spoken anything, so I was more than a little rusty with no real time to really prepare, though more and more was coming back to me throughout our dinner together.
April 24: It's not too much longer until May is here, and with it, the last training of our Peace Corps experience: COS conference. It's a three-day conference where we figure out how to wrap things up at site, how to transition out of our current communities and into our next ones, and discuss techniques for how to share the PC experience as it relates to future career opportunities.
Part of that process also means that I will be taking back a bunch of extra equipment that I have around my apartment, and the first of those is my spare water distiller. It's served me well these last two years, and I hope that my main one doesn't break once I return back to site!
April 23: I think my heart broke into two pieces for the first time in awhile here, and every time I see this piece of paper I feel the same emotions, again,
We had a lesson on jobs, education and the process of finding a job, and part of the lesson had students think about their dream job and then describe it to the class, speaking using a word web.
One of my students handed in the piece of paper with her dream job: volunteer teacher. It's reminders like these that my students value my work and my presence here that keeps me motivated and able to continue working through some of the loneliness that I am feeling more often lately.
April 22: I made one of my favorite foods that I have learned to cook in the last few months here in China for lunch today, and it's super simple, super delicious and something that is relatable to the Western palette. It's a potato pancake, as they'd call it I think in a translation, but it's simply potatoes, seasoning, flour, egg and water, fried with a generous amount of oil in a frying pan, and sprinkled with some peppers on top.
I also customize them a little bit, with some corn and other veggies that I have left over, but today was a nice day to just settle in with the potatoey goodness.
April 21: It finally rained for the first time here in I-don't-know-how-long, and by rain, I mean a meteorological event that probably wouldn't even classify as a sprinkle back in Wisconsin. Here is the amount of precipitation that fell ... as you can see, not much. Though, one of the characteristics of Chinese sidewalks is that even this amount of rain makes the bricks just slick enough to be dangerous if you are not exceedingly careful.
The best part is not so much the rain, but rather the fact that the air becomes a little less dry and it actually feels fairly comfortable for a day or two.
April 20: Happy Easter! While I am not able to really celebrate Easter here, they do have their own little Easter (celebrations?) in Wuwei, as I saw when taking a taxi to my colleague's house for dinner. A mini parade of bunny costumes walking down the street handing out fliers/advertisements for some local business.
April 19: Construction is also taking place outside of the campus, and while I hadn't realized it before, but perhaps one potential benefit of using bricks and mortar for the sidewalks is that, unlike concrete, you can reuse the bricks if you need to pull them all up for some other project.
It took 3 or 4 days, but the entire kilometer length of sidewalk outside the campus has now been readied, with surprisingly few broken bricks that I could see.
April 18: Construction is also beginning in the city, with a whole street corners worth of stores being torn down one day, and construction beginning the next.
It's interesting to see the techniques, as whatever they are building now uses bricks and mortar with a team of a half-a-dozen people working on this current wall.
Whether this is actually part of the final design, or simply a temporary wall to enclose the future construction, I will never know, as I'll probably be gone before it's finished.
April 17: It's back to the Wuwei weather that I was expecting: sandstorms, with little mini sand-tornadoes birthing from the new construction sites dotting the campus.
I hope it doesn't last for too long, though, I'm assuming that it will be here to stay for at least two or three days.
April 16: I've been getting a lot of calls lately from someone claiming to be with the police, and I'm always wary of random, persistent calls like that, especially when anyone official should be going through the school's foreign affairs office to contact me for official reasons.
As it turns out, it was actually the police, and so today I had to go the station to renew my basic information on file; it's something that I am used to now, given that it's not often that they have a foreigner to register, and the concept of a middle name is quite confusing and leads to many issues in determining exactly how to input my information into the system. It was a short process, but it didn't end without a few pictures of me sitting in the office as different officers and supervisors would sit down near me for their photo opportunity. I'm not sure how those will be used, but my school contacts were the ones who suggested that idea .. I really wish they wouldn't, or would at least ask me.
April 15: Needless to say, the photo from yesterday didn't work, so I am back to the cafeteria for my single's lunch again.
This is the cafeteria's version of 面皮子, or a local specialty, type of cold noodles that is common in this part of Gansu. I was pretty disappointed in it, actually, as it's not nearly as good as the restaurants outside the campus, and it's more expensive, too!
April 14: We hung out together yesterday, and of course, that means take a few photos together. It also means that some of the students will take photos of me, though I usually don't allow them to take photos of just me, otherwise they end up on the social media platforms that are floating around, and I really don't like that (apparently, I am very popular on the apps here in Wuwei, and sometimes get over 1700 'likes' for the candid photos that are taken of me when I am just walking around - creepy).
Anyways, the students took this photo of me yesterday and today sent it to me telling me that I should send it to all the girls I know and they promise I will have a girlfriend before tomorrow.
April 13: It's Saturday, and today some of my students invited me to hang out and visit some places throughout the city together.
We walked far and wide to finally make our way in through the back entrance of the botanical garden (it's under construction, surprise!), and found a little area where we could sit together and enjoy the fresh cotton candy that was being sold out of the back of one of the small, ubiquitous mini-trucks that are everywhere. It wasn't too expensive, and it was fresh, so it was fun to eat with the students ... but it always surprises me how the desserts that I make are too sweet for them, but then we can eat pure sugar together with nothing but contentment and joy.
April 12: It's Friday! And that means it's time for a special treat: 酸辣粉, sour and spicy potato/rice noodles, and I've heard from my host mom in Chengdu that this is not traditional at all, but it is far more delicious (I think) than what I had in Chengdu.
It's not really that spicy, but filled with crunchy, pickled vegetables, bean sprouts, roasted peanuts and a few greens. Add a piece of bread to soak in the residual soup, and you have a delicious evening treat.
April 11: I will say that one of the foods I could cook prior to coming to China has definitely been refined and improved lately: roasted potatoes.
I've made these once or twice a week for the last few months, and they are delicious. I've perfected the seasonings and the procedure, and now they're deliciously crispy on the outside and fluffy soft on the inside.
I'm off to go bake another batch.
April 10: It's been a long time since I came to China, and I've kind of forgotten whether or not this company is one that is found in Wisconsin, but it sounds familiar to me for some reason.
April 9: The flowers on campus are finally starting to bloom and add some color to the otherwise brown landscape of life in Wuwei, and the students are all taking advantage of it. Usually, there is at least a student or two lately who are taking photos together near the bushes!
April 8: Here's another design that I have seen on dozens of shirts/sweatershirts and in half a dozen cities throughout China... I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly to whom it originally belongs, but it looks to be a campaign design/slogan...
I am pretty sure, however, thanks to a quick internet search, that Balenciaga is a brand name of clothing, and it was been superimposed into this campaign slogan. Fascinating.
April 7: If you look carefully, you'll notice that this green fabric shows up in a ton of my pictures over the past year, and whichever company produces and markets this product makes a killing, as it is just about everywhere - particularly in this city where construction is a way of life.
I'm not exactly sure what the purpose is, but I'd guess that it's to try and prevent too much of the dust/dirt from being blown up into the air.
April 6: It's also a sign of Spring's arrival when students start putting away the jackets and start wearing sweatshirts or even t-shirts in some cases (like me).
When the new wardrobes are brought out, though, it's also interesting to walk around campus and take a look at the designs/texts on the shirts, as most people here have no idea what their clothing says in English, and they usually just buy it for a combination of price/color factors.
This one looks to have a menu for a bar on the back of it.
April 5: If you're eating at the cafeteria, and don't want to eat the fast food, then you can order a certain dish over rice or noodles, and eat that, though it is a bit more expensive (9-12 RMB) depending on the dish.
This is one of my favorites - dry pot fried potatoes (干锅土豆片) - but it is not as good as the ones I ate last year in the cafeteria before the renovations and new management over the summer!
April 4: It's back to the cafeteria for me this week now, and I wanted to share a bit about how it normally works.
For lunch and dinner, you can choose to get the "fast food" which is essentially just a selection of 6 or so dishes that are already cooked in huge quantities, and you can choose a staple (bread or rice), and as many of the dishes as you'd like. I usually get a bread and one or two dishes, and it costs between 4.5 RMB and 8 RM depending on whether you get rice or bread and whether or not the dishes you choose are vegetarian or meat dishes (complex vegetarian dishes also count here, I've discovered).
April 3: As I mentioned yesterday, the construction is back in full swing, and I took this picture of part of the preparation underway.
I guess the wall is a little bit too tall near the campus, so there's been one man working for the last few hours with a mallet/sledgehammer to knock the top layers of bricks away.
April 2: It's Spring - supposedly, though it doesn't feel like it here in Wuwei yet. Some other PCVs (and my Chengdu host mom) are always posting pictures or talking about how the trees are turning green, and flowers are blossoming ... and I'm hoping that feeling will come to Wuwei soon.
But because it is Spring, it's also time to start more construction near the campus - the other buildings aren't finished yet (the completion date has been moved back 2 years since I first arrived), but new buildings are underway. Nobody I've asked knows what is being built, so I will have to wait and hope that I can figure it out before I leave at the end of the semester.
April 1: It's April fool's day! And luckily, none of my students played any tricks on me... though I did share a bunch of silly English jokes with them in honor of the day... jokes that most people know from an early age back home and it's fun to see how the students here react to some of them!
"Why is six afraid of seven?"
"Because seven is bigger and will hit it"
"Nope."
"I don't know!"
"Because seven ate (eight) nine"
After I explained it, students thought it was pretty funny.
Oh, my picture: it's a bit of homestyle (?) cooking, my take on cinnamon toast for breakfast: a steamed roll cut in half, brushed with oil and toasted in the toaster oven with a bit of cinnamon sugar. It's better than I'd expected...
