A walk.

I went for a walk today.

I remember when I first moved to Pittsburgh I'd walk everywhere. It's so nice being in a city and having everything within walking distance. I miss my car's heated seats, but I love being bipedal.

Ren Ren Le is a kind of department store that is about a dozen blocks down the road. I've heard of it, and saw it from afar, but I've never been inside. The weather had been quite nice after the Mongolian sandstorm blew through, so I decided to walk there today.

I like walking down the streets here. Everyone stares, but not in a menacing way; it doesn't make me uncomfortable at all. I really enjoyed watching everyone shop in the little stores along the road. There was a woman selling small pots of daffodils. I would have bought one if I knew how to communicate better.

Everyone seemed so happy today. I think it has to do with the warmer weather.

Ren Ren Le was a madhouse. I went in search of a box of kleenexes and some bobby pins for my hair. The first floor has clothing of all types. The second floor has food. And a pet store. The third floor has some more clothing, cleaning supplies, appliances, and personal hygiene products. I found a pack of three boxes of kleenex for 13RMB (or about $2 American). At home, I can get a pack of 100 bobby pins for about $2. Ren Ren Le was selling a pack of 4 bobby pins for 6RMB. I could easily afford them, but I declined. Even in a country where everything is so unbelievably underpriced, I could not allow myself to buy 4 bobby pins for roughly $1 American.

I bought my reasonably priced kleenexes and went to the open air market across the street. At the front entrance a man sells these tortilla-like wraps that smell like heaven. One day I will try one.

I walk in to the market with the same mission every time: Find my friends and family a cool present.

After about 45 minutes of wandering, I left empty-handed. This woman sells really beautiful beaded necklaces and bracelets. I'll probably buy some for my friends back home. This other man sells army jackets. I want to buy one for myself so badly.

I've managed to save a lot of money so far. Jen and I are planning a trip to Tibet in June. Every time I look at a cute jacket for myself, I think of the Potala Palace and walk away. I've wanted to go to Tibet for over 15 years. I have to make it there before I leave China.

Alex (another teacher), teaches extra classes downtown to businessmen. I'm going to head downtown with him this week to see about teaching there as well. If I end up making more money, maybe I'll go back and buy that army jacket.

Chinese Hospital

I was exhausted after teaching on Monday. Even my students noticed by saying "Where is your smile today, Abbie? Did you leave it in your room?"

"I'm sorry everyone. I just can't find any energy. We will continue our discussions while I sit down, is that okay?"

I find myself waiting for a response from them every time I ask a question. During our class discussions, I try to lead them to some of the possible answers. Slowly they're becoming more outspoken, but their lack of a response didn't matter this time. I sat down for the rest of class.

That night I decided to go to bed as early as possible. Howard was going to take me to the "body doctor" in the morning so they could run some tests to that I could complete my residence visa.

I fell asleep around 8pm.

At 1:30am I woke up crying. Sometimes, if I'm having an especially terrifying dream, I'll catch myself waking up with tears coming down my face, but this time was different. I was sobbing when I woke up. My hands were clenched around my stomach. I tossed and turned in different positions trying to get the pain to subside. "This is the worst pain I have ever felt in my life." I thought to myself. I felt like I had been shot in the stomach.

I grabbed my phone and text messaged Jen. Before she answered, I was at her door.

"Call Howard. I have to go to the hospital. Now."

We met Howard downstairs. "Do you just need some hot water?"

"No, Howard. Hospital." He (and everyone else in China) thinks that hot water and fruit cures everything. While I'm sure this reasoning works at certain times, I was sure that steaming cup of water would not cure this pain.

The next 6 and a half hours are quite a blur. Howard shuffled us from room to room. The doctor listened to my lungs and felt my stomach. I cringed in pain. She wrote a prescription for a muscle relaxer that we then had to buy at the front of the hospital. We walked in to the injection room. (Through the doorways we could see doctors stitching together a man's face that had been hit by a car.)

I stood in front of the nurse, Howard to my side and Jen next to him. While the nurse prepared my injection, Howard pulled the curtain between us. The nurse (in Mandarin) told Howard to tell me to pull my pants down. I waited for instructions while Howard translated.

Howard, while still standing less than a foot away from me, spoke to Jen, "Um. Um... You uhh... tell Abbie that ummm she has to pull her pants down."

Jen peaked around the curtain, "It's going in your ass."

"Yeah, I figured...."

After waiting over a half of an hour for the muscle relaxer to work, I noticed a man that had been following us from room to room since we had arrived. He wore a dingy suit coat, a dress shirt, khakis, and work boots. After I decided that the injection wasn't helping, we returned to the doctor's office and Howard gave me a bottle of hot water. While waiting for Howard to finish speaking to the doctor, I looked up at this strange man and we shared a meaningful glance. The doctor prescribed some IVs. After purchasing them, we walked back to the IV room.

It was an open room with about 50 beds lining the walls. Over half of them were occupied. Jen and I stood at the doorway while Howard talked to the nurse. The strange man had followed us to this room as well and motioned for us to sit on one of the beds.

We named our new friend Clarence after the angel in It's a Wonderful Life. I was sure he was some sort of guardian angel sent to watch over the round-eyes. He chose a bed across the room from us and took a short nap. After waking up, he walked out of the room. I had imagined that he thought we were pretty safe in our current location, so he decided to comfort someone new.

I was on my second IV when Clarence returned - refreshed. He was wearing a green hooded sweatshirt with "HOT" written on the front, jeans, new sneakers, and was carrying a bag full of rolls. He munched on one while offering the rest of them to the three of us. We each declined.

He stayed with us for a while longer until finding someone in more need of his assistance then us. We never spoke, but at times like those I really wish I knew Mandarin. Really really wish I knew it.

After about 5 hours of IVs, we left. I'm not sure what the first IV was but the second was a glucose drip and the third was a very strong antibiotic with some painkillers. I slept the rest of the day away, woke up for dinner, and slept for another 9 hours.

At this time, I'm feeling much better. I still have attacks of pain and some nausea, but each day gets better than the previous. I feel awful that this happened. Mostly because of the worry I must have caused my family. I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry, Josh. I'll be home soon.

The "Beijing Bug"

Jen sent me a text message while I was teaching on Wednesday that she was going to go to the hospital. Howard was going to pick her up and take her around 5pm. My class ended at 4:40, so I ran across campus to Jen's room and went with her and Howard to the campus infirmary.

She had been feeling ill for quite a few days and was getting worse. Her temperature had started to rise and so did our concern for her well-being. We finally found the doctor across campus at an annexed building. After taking Jen's temperature she prescribed some Thera-Flu-like tablets and instructed her to drink hot water.

After a cold shower, some tea, ibprofen, and plenty of liquids, Jen seemed to be over the worst of her sickness.

That night, I fell asleep while watching some television on my laptop. I woke up at about midnight. For the next 8 hours, I couldn't keep a single thing down. I won't go into the gory details, but I felt like my stomach was trying to escape through my mouth.

I was scheduled to teach that morning at 8am. I text messaged and emailed my monitors and Professor Zhang informing them that I would not be able to teach - I was extremely ill.

The next few hours were full of emails, text messages, phone calls, and knocks on my door from concerned students. I really just wanted to be left alone, but I don't think they do that in China.

My students tried to take me to the hospital on many occasions. I told them that I think I just had a bad bout of food poisoning and that I'd be okay. They insisted that I went with them. I resisted and laid motionless on my bed.

My phone rang. It was Professor Zhang. "I just got off of the phone with Grace. We want to take you to the hospital."

"No. no. I'll be okay. I think it's food poisoning."

"They'll give you an IV."

"If I don't get better within the next hour, I'll call you and we'll go to the hospital."

At this point, I was feeling truly awful and my temperature started to rise.

The hospital started to seem like a good idea. "What if it wasn't food poisoning?" I thought.

I heard another knock at my door. Professor Zhang and one of my students were standing there with two very large bags of fruit. "Here. Eat these. They'll make you better."

I was astonished that my advisor - a world renowned economist - was standing at my doorway with a bag full of bananas.

I slept for hours and was able to keep some water down. Jen made some noodles for us.

Like the blind leading the blind....

Howard knocked on Jen's door at about 2pm with another bag full of fruit. I was looking forward to some ancient Chinese remedies or some sort of magical healer. Instead, we got bags and bags of fruit.

Right now I'm feeling much better. Jen is a little better, but is still battling a fever. I haven't eaten much. Just noodles. I feel weak. My lungs are sore - much like the feeling of exhaustion after having an asthma attack. I feel like I have pulled muscles in my chest and sides. I walked a few blocks to the grocery store this afternoon to buy some bread and had to stop on my way to catch my breath. I am completely exhausted, but I am confident that I am over the worst of this.

Post Script:

Here is a picture of a very very sick Abbie. Jen thought that my "sick hair" looked hilarious. Enjoy.

Day One.

I have always respected and learned more from the teachers that have created comfortable and relaxing environments. Their approachability is directly related to my final grades. So, I started off my first class by explaining the laid-back atmosphere I wanted them to experience. "I want you to feel comfortable asking questions during class. If you don't understand something I say, please, stop me before I go on."

The class is about 3 hours long with a 20 minute break in the middle. During the break, I had a line of students standing at my desk with questions. They didn't want to interrupt. Ugh.

We played a few ice-breakers in order to get to know one another. I also used this time to assess their English skills. I'm quite surprised at the disparity between each of them. I asked each student to stand, state their Chinese name, English name, major or area of study, hometown, and their hobby. Cherry is from the (something or other) Province which is known for their pottery and fine china. Sunny loves sports - especially basketball. Marina hates all sports. Sam likes basketball too and hopes that I can get him a Lebron James autograph. Things were going well until the 8th student - Vivi. She stood up and only spoke Mandarin. All of my students started laughing. I said, "Vivi, this is an English class. We must speak English. If I can't understand you, how are we going to work on your English skills?" Cherry spoke up and told me that Vivi is self-conscious of her English skills and would rather not talk at all. I told my students that laughing at one another is prohibited. "We all have things we need to work on. No one here is perfect. Vivi, please say as much as you can in English." She struggled for quite some time. It was painful to watch and listen to, but she worked her way through it. And, no one laughed.

2 of my students didn't have an English name, so they asked me to name them. I now have a "Susie" named in honor of my mom and a "Wendy" a la Peter Pan. They were overjoyed with my choice for them. "Oh, such a pretty name! Thank you, Teacher," they both said.

We spent some time going over American and English proverbs. I split them into groups of 2 or 3 and assigned each group a different proverb.

Misery loves company

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

The grass is always greener on the other side

Bloom where you are planted

They really enjoyed this exercise and made me think differently about a few of them as well. In China, they say "if you share your happiness with a friend, it will be doubled. if you share your sadness with a friend, it will decrease by half." "Misery loves company" seems a little more terse, but I like the mathematical value they have given feelings. They seem so much more manageable now.

Before they left for the day, I asked them to write down what they wished to learn about this semester - specific topics and ideas. Sam would really enjoy a lesson on Obama, Lebron James, Kevin Garnett, and Shakira.

On the same piece of paper, I asked them to write down 3 stereotypes of Americans. Most of their answers are pretty predictable: rich, open-minded, adventurous, patriotic, innovative, diverse, optimistic, etc... Marina has just assured herself an A for the semester with this answer "Americans have their unique ideas about the same thing. They know what they want and do it - just like you!" Well put, Marina.

A weekend in Beijing...

Beijing's population has recently topped the 22 million mark. I'm pretty sure that half of the city's population joined me on the subway on Friday. At rush hour. On a Friday.

After arriving at Sean's home (he lives and works at the Westin), we composed ourselves and headed off to the infamous "bar street".

My previous experience at bar street was after over 20 hours of travel and very very little sleep last October. I felt more able to enjoy the area and the sites. It was bitter cold, so we took refuge inside an italian restaurant. We ordered a meter of pizza. From a French waitress. In the capital of China.

I felt so cultured.

While walking around the Dongcheng District on Saturday, I saw a familiar sight. I forget what the building is called, but I recognized it from photographs that I had taken last October during my tour of the hutongs.

I've become quite accustomed to the constant barrage of new sights, sounds, and smells, so this feeling of recognition was remarkable and quite literally stopped me in my tracks. As soon as I identified the building, I was able to point in the direction of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. I felt an odd sense of comfort in seeing something familiar.

My only experiences with anything foreign has been from the domestic point of view. I have been on the inside of normalcy and have easily identified anything or anyone foreign.

I've been completely fascinated with feeling what it means to be foreign. I'm really intrigued by seeing everything for the first time. I love waking up without knowing what will happen. I find myself thinking "Well, what's the worst that could happen?" on a daily basis. You can't get stressed out about the unknown here. Everything is unknown. The future is unwritten.

Tomorrow will be my first day teaching at TUFE. I am very, very excited.

Work Update

I need to work on my Chinese listening skills.

"Professor John" as previously mentioned is actually my new boss, Professor Zhang. She specializes in entrepreneurship and sustainability in third-world countries. I will be working with her on new project where I will be teaching upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students advanced communication and speaking/conversational skills. We will be focusing on the rhythm and flow of texts and the importance of sentence and paragraph structures. My meeting today was brief, but I think I have a good understanding of what will be expected of me. I'm supposed to compile rough syllabus by Friday and will be meeting again with Professor Zhang, her assistant, Louis, and our class advisors.

I've looked up some of Professor Zhang's previous work and I'm thoroughly impressed. She's done a lot of work with policy making in the Asian-Pacific region. She seemed impressed with my background and would really like to take the classes on a field trip to the rural areas outside of Tianjin so that she could show me what life is like for the farmers out there.

I'm really excited.

Really really excited.

I've been reading a lot about the difficulties Chinese students face when trying to learn the English language and customs. I find it quite interesting. One site has mentioned that the difficulty Chinese students have in understanding English culture (not just American culture) is because they are taught that traditional Confucian culture, Communist culture, village culture, and family culture all come before school and classroom culture. Basically, what has been ingrained in these students long before they ever spoke a word of Mandarin will keep them from communicating in a Western way. Loyalty in traditions, country, and family all come before integration into a classroom setting. In a lot of ways, I can see how this would help in the education process, but I think the value of imagination and adaptation is lost. And this is what I hope to teach my students. The ability to think on one's feet has become critical in our culture and I haven't seen a lot of that ability so far.

I'm sure that I'm hoping to accomplish much more than what I will be able to in such a short amount of time, but I hope to bring some sort of awareness of the world around them to these students. Hopefully I can get that much through to them.

Week One.

I have sat in front of my computer numerous times with complete intentions of writing a new blog. Exhaustion overcomes me and before I complete a thought, I shut down Millie (my new MacBook) and call it a day. It's not even 7pm and I'm already looking at my bed with lustful eyes.

It's hard to believe that it's only been a week since I've arrived. I had imagined that I'd be more adjusted by now.

While writing the previous paragraph, I heard a knock at my door. I thought it was Jen, so I just said "Come on in!" in a loud, obnoxious, southern accent. The door opened and 3 college-aged Chinese girls stood there. "Great first impression, Abbie..." I thought.

From what I gathered, I'm their professor. I'll be teaming up with a "Professor John" (not the same John that lives across the hall from me) and these three magical greeters will be students in my class. They have been instructed to help me adjust to campus life and will be my personal tour guides for as long as necessary.

At first, they introduced themselves as part of a research group, so when they asked me where I was from I said "America. Ohio. Do you know Ohio? It's the state shaped like a heart... sort of. There's lots of corn there. And football. American football."

Ugh. I'm awful at first impressions.

Moving on...

I feel like the past few days have been such a whirlwind of experiences. I'm confident in my directional abilities that I can navigate the subway line and the few blocks surrounding my home. However, my Mandarin needs a lot of help. I don't even know my numbers yet. I'm trying to learn foods and how to order so that I won't feel completely dependent on the other teachers to order for me. As of right now, I can order rice. "mi fan." Yum.

I'm getting along well with the other teachers here. We attract a lot of attention as the only round-eyes in a seemingly thousand-mile radius. Eyes are glued to us as we laugh and walk down the street. People listen intently as we order our meals at restaurants. It's hard not to notice the finger pointing and giggles. Also, I've caught a few younger Chinese girls taking pictures of me with their cell phones.

I'm not bothered by this. If I were in America and people were staring intently at me, I'm sure I'd feel some sort of embarrassment and find something to be self-conscious about. But here, the language barrier allows me to be in this cocoon of not knowing. I'm ignorant to their thoughts - even though I can't help but feel I am only feeding in to their stereotype of American women. I keep my head up high and soak it all in.

I'm excited to be here. Before I left and while I first got here, I felt a great deal of trepidation. But, I'm confident in my decision to move here. Only good will come from this. I'm sure of it.

Well, I'd better get my stuff gathered up for tomorrow. One of the three girls is coming by to pick me up at 10:50am so that we may meet with "Professor John" about the upcoming school year.