Goodbye, Juana!

Over the course of the past semester, I have grown to be really good friends with one of my classmates. Her name is Juana, and she is from Colombia. There are actually a lot of Colombians at Nankai University, and I have spent a fair amount of time with several of them, but I have spent the most time with Juana. We often eat lunch together after class, and we have spent several afternoons shopping and chatting together. Hooray for good friends from all over the world!

However, these are sad days. Juana, like most of the Colombian students I've become friends with, is returning home at the end of this semester. Well, actually, before the end of this semester. She leaves on Tuesday. We've had a series of good-bye events as she has been preparing to leave, because everyone loves Juana and is sad to see her go. Last week we had a good-bye lunch, and many of my classmates attended:

Last night we had a final goodbye party. We went to a bar called Pepper, drank pretty cocktails, danced wildly, and said goodbye to our friend:

We were even entertained a little bit by the staff at Pepper, as you can see here.

As you can see, a good time was had by all. But after she is gone, Juana will truly be missed by all of us. Here's wishing her safe travels and a happy return home. Goodbye, Juana, until we meet again!

Merry Christmas! (Return of the Jedi edition)

(Before you even ask, I don't know what that title means. I was just running out of "edition" names for this series.)

Anyway . . . For Christmas, Ben's parents transferred some money into his bank account so we could go out and have a nice meal together. (Thank you, Nancy and Darrell Wayne!) Last night, we decided to have our nice Christmas meal at a Thai restaurant near Binjiang Dao, one of the major shopping streets in the city. Thai food may not sound like traditional Christmas fare, and I'll admit, it didn't exactly conjure up images of home and holidays for us either. But I have to say it really hit the spot. It was delicious!

Afterward, we treated ourselves to coffee at one of the many nearby Starbucks (there are three within a couple blocks of each other in the Binjiang Dao area), and then we further treated ourselves to a half dozen donuts from a little shop next to the Starbucks of our choice. There was a lot of self-treating going on last night.

Here are a few shots from our evening:

Ben, his pre-dinner gin and tonic, and our first dish.

We almost forgot to take a picture of our meal: Green curry with beef, Pad Thai, and yet-unidentified green vegetables that I love.

View of Nanjing Lu, the main road that runs through the area.

Binjiang Dao, a walking/shopping street: no cars allowed.

Catholic church at the end of Binjiang Dao. This was erected by the French in 1917.

I think that's the end of our Merry Christmas in Tianjin series. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming . . .

Merry Christmas! (the Christmas Day edition)

So, Christmas Day for us was pretty laid-back. Originally, we planned to go to one of the fancy-schmancy hotels here in Tianjin and take advantage of its Western breakfast buffet. We really enjoy some of the breakfast offerings by street vendors here in China, but sometimes you just get a hankering for an omelet, waffles, and hot, crispy bacon made by hands other than your own. The problems with those buffets, however, are: a.) they can be rather expensive, and b.) they're like a box of chocolates: you never really know what you're going to get. When someone says Western breakfast, that could mean "just like home," or it could mean cold bacon and a few strangely filled pastries.


After much thought, we decided that our cravings for Western breakfast would be sufficiently satisfied by a couple of breakfast value meals at the nearest McDonald's. So, we got up and, after opening our gifts to each other, we snagged a cab to Mickey-D's and had a couple of sausage egg McMuffins. What could be more American than that?


After breakfast, we headed back home and called our family back in the States. Then we thought we might head out to...somewhere? We planned to take advantage of the extra day off and go visit some of the local sights. But, after calling our family members, we decided we were just to warm and cozy in our little apartment to go back out into the cold. So, instead of sight-seeing, we snuggled up on the couch and watched a few movies. Maybe not the most exciting day in the world, but it was like heaven to me. It was a very satisfying and restful way to spend our one day off--we both had to go back to school the day after Christmas.


Anyway, here are a few shots of our present-opening and Christmas breakfast:


Me and Ben's creative gift-wrap efforts.




Ben's first prezzie.



Ben's pretty excited about his new travel tea mug! We both got each other cool travel cups for Christmas (you can see my shiny new red tea bottle in the picture at the top).



Egg McMuffins, here we come!



Ben got me this coat, hat, and scarf for Christmas. He's the best ever!

Merry Christmas! (the Christmas Eve edition)

We are really lucky to live in the same city as Sam and Zhou You. The holidays could have been a completely miserable, lonely time for us, even with the friends we've made here in Tianjin. But thanks to Sam and Zhou You, we had a warm, festive (even if somewhat unusual) Christmas Eve this year. We went over to their place, and spent the evening drinking wine, making and eating pizza, and chatting with a few of their friends.

A note about the pizzas: Sam is kind of a culinary genius on this front. He discovered that the flatbreads sold by street vendors (who also sell various meats on a stick, Western Chinese style) make excellent ready-made pizza crusts. Just add sauce, toppings, and cheese, pop them in the oven for about 10-12 minutes, and you're good to go. I didn't get a picture of our pizza masterpieces, but I did get a few good shots from our little gathering (like the one above, of Sam stylin' in his new scarf and Santa hat--ho-ho-ho!) Here are a few of the rest:

Forgive the cheesy grins--we have a couple glasses of wine under our belts.

Zhou You and her co-worker friend

Baker and Wu Shuai

We took a few more pictures of Christmas gift opening, which I'll post in a "part-two." All-in-all, despite missing our friends and family back home, we had a very Merry Christmas here in Tianjin. We hope all our friends and family back home had a very merry Christmas, filled with food, family, lots of prezzies, and a swig or two of eggnog. We miss and love you all!

taste of home

Lately I've been feeling sad about being in China during this season. I've been feeling sad about knowing that I won't be able to spend time with my family on Christmas, of course, but I've also been a little bit down because I'm missing out on the specific kind of energy that permeates American life around this time of year. I'm not just talking about the frenetic "MUST BUY THINGS NOW" energy that overwhelms you any time you walk into a mall or department store. That is certainly part of the Christmas season, but not really my favorite part.

What I'm missing is something else--a certain kind of energy I'm having a hard time describing. It's a kind of crackling in the air that I associate with absolute possibility. School is out. Offices are closed. Finally, you can do all those things you've been putting off doing, or you can take the time to lounge around in pajama pants all day, should you so desire. You finally have the chance to connect with people you haven't seen in awhile. There is the possibility that you may find yourself stranded inside your home for a day or two thanks to snowstorms, but it is okay, because you don't have the heavy weight of work and responibility hanging over your head, if only for a couple of days. It is freedom, and excitement, and hope for a crisp, clean blanket of snow over everything, at least for a little while.

I'm still not getting at it exactly, but whatever it is, I still miss it. I've been feeling lately like this energy simply doesn't exist in China in this season.

That is, until last night. Last night we were invited to the home of some friends to sing Christmas carols and drink hot beverages. After noshing and drinking and singing and chatting for a few hours, we ventured back out into the night. When we walked out of thier apartment building into the crisp night air, it was snowing! The first snow this season in Tianjin! There was something about the snow blanketing the city, muffling the sounds of cars and people, covering all the dirty grayness that surrounds us every day with a clean fresh coat, that made me feel a little charge of that energy that I associate with this season back home.

Today, everything is covered in snow, and there is a cold northern wind blowing across the city. I have several appointments that I should be attending to today, but I just made a couple phone calls and cancelled them all. Today, I'm going to spend time doing the things I want to do but don't usually have time for. I'm going to sit around in my pajama pants all day, because I so desire. I'm going to be free of work and study, if only for this afternoon. It may not be home, but it is a little taste of that energy I've been longing for.

have I mentioned we eat dumplings here?

On Friday afternoon, our class teachers threw a little Christmas party for us. I guess I should first note that Christmas as a religious holiday isn't really practiced by most Chinese people. However, the commercial concept of Christmas is being more and more widely accepted. There are Christmas trees in front of many of the major shopping centers here right now, a few Christmas decorations can be bought at places like Carrefour, Isetan (a Japanese department store) and E-Mart (a Korean supermarket). The idea of gift-giving is pretty appealing to many Chinese people.

Also, our teachers are pretty sensitive to their students missing out on celebrating holidays because we are in China, so they made a special effort to recognize Christmas for us. Our Christmas party's main events included:

1.) all of us going to the kitchen in one of the cafeterias and learning to make jiaozi (dumplings), a process that eventually and predictably devolved into a flour fight,

2.) eating all of the ill-formed dumplings we just made, and,

3.) singing karaoke for hours in a really cold room in our classroom building.

A very Chinese Christmas was had by all.

Here are some pictures. Somehow I didn't get any karaoke shots, but I might get some from others, and then post them soon.

"Chef" Miguel prepares to demonstrate his skills.

Rolling out the dough

One of the cooks shows us how it's really done.

Stuffing the dumplings. These were filled with minced pork and cabbage.


Everybody's pitching in.

The whole day was all a lot of fun, and I discovered that many of my classmates are great singers. But I have to admit: I'm really starting to get tired of dumplings. I think it's time to take a break, at least for a little while. It's going to be hard to do around here--they're pretty much a staple of the Northern Chinese diet. It's going to be even harder to break the news to Ben.

perhaps the strangest thing

I've been wriggling around in my metaphorical seat for weeks, waiting for Ben to post the pictures of our trip to Mr. Pizza to try out potato pizza, which came very highly recommended by his students. Finally, finally he has posted! Check out his entry here.

I have to say that this was perhaps the strangest eating experience I've had in Tianjin. Parts of the pizza were normal: crust, sauce, cheese, ham, onions. And I've seen enough pizza in China not to be too surprised by potatoes or corn on pizza. But mayonnaise? Corn flakes? Pumpkin in the crust? Truly, it must be seen to be believed.

When I told my sister about it, she said, "If I'd ordered pizza, and they brought me that, I would cry. Literally, cry tears." There was no crying involved for us, but I do have to admit, it was a bit baffling.

sleep tight!

I have this photograph from the first time I was in China for any period of time. It was 2000, and I had spent the summer in Dalian with a group of students, most of them from K-State. At the time the photo was taken, we were in a hotel in Beijing, where we had spent a couple of days before leaving the country, and we were getting ready to check out as a group.

(Darn it all, I wish I had a digital version of the picture, but it was taken in 2000, before I owned a digital camera.)

Anyway, there was this guy, sound asleep in one of the chairs in the hotel lobby. When I say "sound asleep," I mean it. There were about 40 of us students milling around, laughing, talking loudly, even jostling the furniture, but he didn't budge, or even twitch an eyelid. We were all impressed by his ability to keep on sleeping, despite all of our noise-making. So, two of the jokesters of the group--Jay and Jeremy--posed right next to this sleeping guy, their faces just inches away from his, while I took a picture. He never knew it happened.

Public sleeping is an artform in China. I am amazed at Chinese people's ability to sleep in places where I can't even concentrate enough to read a book. I've seen people sleeping in markets, on buckets, in wheelbarrows next to construction sites. Everywhere. While messing around online today, I found a site that captures the unique ability the Chinese people have to sleep when- and where-ever the urge may strike: www.sleepingchinese.com

It is incredible some of the places this guy has photographed Chinese people sleeping. If only I were so relaxed . . . .

Tianjin strikes again

Well, Tianjin has brought another man down. Or maybe it has just brought the same man (me) down . . . again. I have spent most of the weekend at home with another cold. I really don't seem to have any defenses against Chinese germs and viruses, despite my best efforts to drink lots of water, eat lots of vitamin-C rich fruit, get plenty of rest, and take my multi-vitamin every day (or at least most days).

The bad news is that I really needed to spend this weekend studying diligently, because on Tuesday I have my third-quarter test. With this cold, I haven't felt much up to that task. I pretended to study for a couple of hours last night, while actually watching episodes of House, M.D. Ben bought four seasons of the show on DVD at the main market on Nankai campus a few weeks ago, and it has provided hours of mindless, American entertainment. Needless to say, lacksidasically scrawling characters while listening to House's sarcastic retorts is not the ideal approach to studying.

The good news is that, while I've been under the weather, I have had plenty of time to "do research" for our upcoming travels. Both Ben and I have about two months off for winter holiday, almost all of January, and all of February. We plan to spend some time with our friend Jen K., who will be here for a couple weeks in January, and then we want to spend two or three weeks traveling with one of my classmates, seeing (some of) the sights of China. We know we want to go to Shanghai and Xi'an, home of the terra-cotta warriors. I really want to go to Guilin to see some of the famous mountainous landscape, although I've heard it can be kind of a tourist trap. We would also love to go to Hong Kong. We just need to figure out where else we want to go, and how long we can afford to travel, both in terms of time, and in terms of money. (It will be vacation time, but Ben has some serious PhD work he needs to attend to during the holiday.) I envision this trip being a fairly open-ended one--we might have a general idea of where we want to go, but not necessarily a set-in-stone plan for how long we may stay in each place. All I know is I want to go south--it's getting far too cold in Tianjin to want to spend an entire winter here!

In the meantime, it's time for me to buckle down with my kleenexes and textbooks (and no House in the background) and get ready for this test. The next few weeks are going to be pretty intense study-wise, between this upcoming test on Tuesday, and my final exams coming up in just a month. I'm just hoping Tianjin won't throw any more monster germs my way.

some cultural experiences

I learned a very important lesson about living in Tianjin today: riding a bike in winter can sometimes really suck. Today was the first time the temperatures have stayed below freezing all day, and the wind was blowing really hard most of the day, too. Riding my bike home, against the wind most of the way, wsa one of the least enjoyable experiences I have had since I've been here. Unfortunately, the temperatures are supposed to stay right around freezing for the next few days. Yay for me.

Another lesson: today, I went with my friend Juana to one of the libraries on campus to study for the big test we have coming up next Tuesday. In the process I learned something very interesting about the way study rooms work here. Apparently, students can put their stuff--books, pencil cases, etc.--on a table and reserve their own study spot all day. It's really crazy. We went into this study room to study, and there were about three spots in the entire big room that were not occupied by people's belongings. However, there were many spots that were not actually occupied by a person: not when we arrived, and not when I left about an hour and a half later. Juana said that every time she has been there it has been exactly like that. If a student did that in America, their stuff would either be stolen, or turned in to the front desk, and their seat would probably be taken. On the other hand, there probably wouldn't be quite so many students studying that hard at the library in the middle of the day in the U.S., unless it were the middle of finals week.

something that isn't food

I realized as I was writing my last post that 5 out of the last 6 posts on this blog have been food-related. I guess that tells you a little something about what I think is important. Or maybe it tells you what I associate with the holidays. Or maybe it just tells you that, right now, food is my primary window into this culture. That's probably the nicest way of putting it.

Anyway, I wanted to write about something that isn't food. And this is the perfect time to do it, since we have a very recent new addition to our family:

My new bike!

We were eating dinner with some of my classmates on Monday night, when Juana mentioned that there were some people selling new bikes at very low prices just down the street. No, not stolen bikes; just new, relatively low-quality bikes. But hey, what do I need a high-quality bike for, anyway? And at $25, who cares if it's quality or not. Actually, having a low-quality bike will probably help ensure that it will be some time before it is "lost." (Of course, it will probably also ensure that I build up some massive leg muscles--this thing doesn't pedal so easy.)

Ben and I engaged in a little christening ceremony after we bought the bike. First, we took some steel wool and tried to scuff up the paint as much as possible. We especially scuffed up around the bike's logo. Ben even took a little time to scuff up my seat. Then we took handfuls of dirt, and rubbed them in all the places where my hands and behind won't be touching. The goal was to try to make the bike look at least a little bit well-used, less shiny and desirable, to try to deter would-be thieves from taking it. I tried to capture our artificial "weathering," but our efforts didn't show up so well on film. Anyway, it seems to have worked so far--two days later, and my bike isn't lost . . . yet . . . .