Currently Listening Days of Elijah (Time Life Anthems Series) By Various Artists see related

Top Ten Reasons Why Siping Is the Place to Be

Granted, I've only been here a week, but so far, here is a list of the Top Ten Reasons why Siping is “da bomb”!

1. It’s never boring in ol’ Siping.  With a large team of 10 adults (plus one honorary member) and three children, there’s always stuff going on- hanging out with the guys at Korean barbecue or Chinese hot pot, or studying with the girls, or listening to little Josiah’s stories about his day (he’s 5) or watching movies with the gang like “Akeelah and the Bee” (a must-see for all you feel-good movie fans), or watching Sonny and Robb play Scrabble with more intensity than I’ve ever seen…
2. Creativity of the students.  Especially in their writing.  I am teaching Creative Writing this year (Hooray!).  Teaching paragraph formation and how to write research papers can be boring (yes, we all had to go through that back in the day) and mafan 麻烦(troublesome), but creative writing, now that’s something to write about…
3. When it snows here the “man power” comes out.  Even horses help.  Everyone just grabs a shovel and starts clearing the highway.  There are no snow plows here.  Not in “dry” Siping.  Spare shovel, anyone?
4. They speak standard Chinese here (meaning their Mandarin is easiest to understand).  Apparently, the most standard speakers in all of China!    Still can’t understand most of what people are saying, but “Hakuna Matata!” Instead of learning a local dialect (because there’s not really one), I can concentrate on Mandarin—with added Norwegian, Russian, Korean, and Japanese words (for my colleagues).
5.  Benefits: Fridays off from teaching! (and Saturday and Sundays too), we have a maid who cleans our floors and brings hot water to our door every morning, and we are treated very well by the waiban 外办 (foreign affairs office).  The other day he (the waiban) stood with me at the police station for 2 hours (!) helping me get my resident permit!  They would say that they're just doing their job, but it’s so much more than that!
6. Probably the nicest train station I’ve seen in China! I nearly fell over  when I saw that at the train station they made people stand in line single file when waiting to get their tickets checked!  People just don’t do that in China (which isn’t bad cuz they’re cool about it).  Now they have “voluntary stand-in-line day” on the eleventh of each month.  They even have mascots in Beijing that run around saying “stand in line, stand in line” to encourage preparation for when all the laowai 老外 (foreigners) come to town for the Olympics.  Which I think is funny
7. Lesson planning together.  Even after four years of teaching, I still don’t know what I’m doing.  At all.  We have little groups.  For example, those who teach Creative Writing meet in a group, plan together, delegate responsibilities (one person makes the worksheet, another makes all the copies, etc.) and are all on the same page.  At first I though this would kill my individuality, but no, no.  It just allows for me to be a better teacher.
8. Seth’s endless supply of coffee and energy, and Jonny’s and Sonny’s (you’d think their names would rhyme, but they don’t—funny thing about English) endless supply of funnyness on situations
9. Playing “Twister” with the Chinese students was one of the most delightful things I’ve ever done!  Hilarious!  Hee hee!  Left hand green, ya’ll!
10. There’s central heating…you have no idea!

Haven’t had a chance to meet many students yet, but when relationships begin to happen, I know that they will be at the top of this list.  They always are.

                Playing Twister!!

Currently Reading I Dared to Call Him Father: The Miraculous Story of a Muslim Womans Encounter with God By Bilquis Sheikh, Richard H. Schneider see related

Tower of Babel

And So it Begins

My whole team here in Siping has a blog (all 14 of them!  Granted, three of these are children and one is yet to arrive in this world, but big team!  When I first came to China I started out with a team of 2!!).  And because I want to be just like them (cuz they’re really cool), I start a blog too.  Never done the blog thing.  First time for everything, right?  “Blog” is a funny word.

After many airplanes, buses, and trains, I have arrived!  I am in Siping, Jilin province, just west of North Korea.  And on mornings like this I believe it :).  In a usually dry place, there is something of a blizzard going on out there.  Yes, blizzard. Trudging through the snow to class and battling the wind that will blow me over like a stick was a workout.  Welcome back, guys!  Fun to be back in teaching again.  It’s cold, but the fruit ladies bring warmth to this place.  Wherever I go in China, I always love the fruit ladies.  I’m starting to notice the differences between the north and south.  Maybe someday I’ll blog about it.  Maybe not.

I was able to spend Spring Festival, the fifteen days surrounding Chinese New Year, with old friends in Hengyang in the south.  I was able to fight the crowds and get a thirty hour train down, but because of the craziness of the holiday (no matter how poor you are, you travel on this holiday) there were no trains going back.  Bummer!  So I had to reserve a plane ticket.  Funny thing about China (funny in hindsight only), is you've got to completely let go of your expectations and plans because there's no guarantee of anything.  And that’s the fun of it.  Sometimes.  :)  So, I reserved this plane ticket, but the ticket for some reason got mixed up with Shandong (a completely different province!)- don't ask why, I don't know why.  So, I went around in circles getting it changed to Changchun (the place I wanted to go).  I go to the designated hotel to pick it up, but no ticket.  What happened to my ticket?  In fact, no availability any day.  It was a circus of a time getting it figured out- not only the confusion of the airline policies and the craziness of Spring Festival, it was all in a completely different LANGUAGE!.  :)  At the beginning they were rather annoyed that they had to help me, but by the end of this long ordeal it seemed like they were fighting FOR me and we had become best friends. :) :) :)  Finally, they were able to find for me the last possible seat for two days later than I had planned at an unusually high price.  It was only when I got to the airport that I found out it was First Class!  Never been in First Class before. Not quite on my budget, but I gotta get there, right? Ahhh!  After that, getting a train from the airport to my town of Siping seemed like the easiest thing in the world.  Made a friend on the train who patiently talked to me in Chinese for over an hour and made me realize that maybe my Chinese isn't so bad after all.  Still bad, but not SO bad :) :).  Eventually the whole car seemed to be listening in and asking questions and oohing and ahhing over my family pictures.  And we're all about friends, right? :) :)  So, whatever.  It's all good.

I told someone helping me figure out how to get home, "Any way I can get home, I HAVE to get home to get back to work.  I don't care if it's a train, plane, or bus.  I'd rather not go back by plane because of my fear of flying but if that's what I have to do, then whatever.  Heck, I'll even go by donkey if I can just get HOME to SIPING!"  Later that day (no kidding) I was reading a magazine and it said, "every year more people are killed by donkeys than die in plane crashes." !!!! :) :)  Glad I didn't take that donkey after all.  :)  When I experienced probably the worst 30 seconds of really bad turbulence (I don’t say this just for effect because we weren’t doing the usual bouncing, we were DROPPING), I kept thinking about the donkeys.  And I began to chuckle :).  The plane felt like it was going to fall out of the sky, but all I could think about were donkeys.  :) :) :).

May your dreams be filled with donkeys tonight.