Snapshots..

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2452368&id=10003281&l=d449e4def5

Much love.

A Few Feet From North Korea!

(The Yalu River between China, left, and North Korea, right.)

This last weekend, I was able to go to take the train for 4 hours to Dandong. Dandong is a smaller city (by China's scale) and is on the Yalu River, which separates China from North Korea. It was a really fun weekend, and by far, the closest I will ever get to go to Pyongyang or anywhere else in NK.

It was really fun to spend some time by water! After living so close to either Tempe Town Lake or the Willamette, I have missed being by water, and running by water. Not to say I went running on vacation this weekend though! :) But, we spent most of our time just walking along the river looking over to North Korea. In true Bates' family tradition, we made up many stories about who was on the other side and what the soldiers were doing.

(Shaun climbing up on the bridge next to one of the bullet holes.)

The main highlights of the trip were...
*Taking a boat tour along the river. We found out the hard way that binoculars cost 10kuai a person, but, had a sweet pair of binoculars to see NK even more clearly! Mostly all you could see of NK was smoke stacks, small buildings, many many boats, and lots of soldiers walking around.
*There is a bridge that used to span from the China coast to the NK coast, but the Koreans dismantled their 1/4 of it. This is also the same bridge that the US Air Force bombed in 1950 in the Korean War. We got to walk across the bridge and get as close as we could to North Korea...and the bridge was sweet too! There are still bullet holes, or small pieces of the bridge missing from when the US bombed it.
*The next morning, we found a coffee shop owned by a Canadian man. We had an American breakfast and I very much enjoyed a caramel latte while reading Time magazines! It is the little things like that which make for such a relaxing weekend!
*Spending time walking in the sun and wind (it felt very much like the Oregon coast), and just doing nothing but talking and hanging out.

(Doing a handstand on the bridge between China and North Korea.)

One of the great parts about traveling in different countries is traveling by train. I love it. I was able to see a huge part of the Czech Republic this last summer via the train, and it is such a different view traveling with other nationals from the country and getting a pretty sweet view of the countryside. The train ride both ways was during the day, it is always fun to just look out the window the whole way. The ride made me realize how diverse China really is. We passed through mountains and snow, and then ended up in a sunny city...We passed many small towns, where life is definitely a lot different than in Shenyang, saw people pulling carts through water by horses...I love getting a different picture of the country, one that you can't see in the big cities or on airplanes.

I am so glad that I got to go away this weekend, it was definitely a very fun and relaxing getaway and really cool to see a different part of China!

Pancakes, Field Trips, Pizza and T-shirts..

The internet is out at our house again…so this blog may be long due to the fact that I haven’t been able to post all week, so much to say! Sorry for the lack of emails lately…hopefully this blog will give a quick overview of what’s going on here.

Last Sunday, Shaun and I organized a pancake breakfast as a ‘get to know you better’ breakfast for the American and Chinese teaching staff. There are 9 American English teachers, and 10 Chinese teachers. We thought it would be fun to show a bit of America with a traditional pancake breakfast, pancakes, syrup, eggs, bacon and coffee. And, all the Americans were more than happy to get a taste of home. The maple syrup and coffee were hugely popular with the Americans, not so much with the Chinese…I guess there are some things that are uniquely American! It was really fun, everyone had a good time, and as always, it was an adventure to cook a big breakfast on hot plates!

Tuesday was a great day. During Chinese class, we were all a bit lazy and managed to convince our Chinese teacher, Veronica, to take us on a field trip. Oh, how I love field trips! She took us to the biggest bookstore in Shenyang. We all managed to pick up a few things; I found this sweet world map that has both the Chinese characters and English for all the major countries and cities. At the bookstore, there was Langston advertising…haha! We enjoyed taking pictures and posing next to the advertisement for where we already work!

That night, 4 students took us out to dinner at a pizza buffet place. It was almost like Izzy’s…for those Portlanders out there. It was really fun to hang out with them outside of school and get to talk, laugh and eat together. We had a lot of fun taking ridiculous pictures, and just hanging out together.

The rest of the week was spent planning a vacation! Part of our contract with Langston is that we each get a week of paid vacation. There is a 3 day Chinese holiday in May, so I am taking my vacation the last week in April, and in total, will get 11 days off. It is always so fun and exciting to plan a vacation.

Tonight, Rachel and Emily, two other interns, are hosting a Tacky T-shirt Party! We have seen many t-shirts in China where the English makes no sense, or there are hilarious typos, or the lack of copyright laws is made apparent….so tonight, everyone has to wear a tacky t-shirt that they found here. I can’t give away my t-shirt before the party, but I will say, it has something to do with a panda with a comical life-motto at the bottom. I will post pictures next week and let you take part in our tacky t-shirt party too!

As always, I still can’t believe how fast time is going. This week was 4 months until I am home and back in America, spending time with the parents, Emily and Giles! It will be fun, but again, it seems that there is still so much more to do and see here! I hope everyone is doing well…hopefully we’ll figure out the internet and I will be able to get back on Skype and email more regularly soon.

Always an adventure!

For dinner tonight, we though it would be a good change of pace to cook fish instead of chicken or beef. And, as most things are in China, it was an adventure!

To begin, It was a challenge to order the fish. Due to repetition, I have managed to learn how to order beef, ground beef, and chicken breast. But, tonight was a bit of a vocab challenge. We managed to get two small white fish of some kind...the kind is still to be determined.

If you know me well, you know I am a little hesitant to even cut raw chicken, so getting a live fish and watching it be caught and killed, (or walking out of the fish stand while it happened), having Shaun gut it at home, and then finding a way to bake it, was more than I was used to. Haha.

The Chinese are a lot more resourceful and eat all parts of the animal, so there were lots of 'extras' that we didn't need. Once we (by we, I mean Shaun, while Lindsey and I took pictures and watched and gawked) got it home, cleaned it all out and rinsed it...the fish kept moving! What the heck?! Even without a head, too!

After cooking it, the verdict is not too bad. I am not sure that it is necessarily something we will be doing all that often! These adventurous Tuesday nights will always make China memorable!

..Peace Corps & Poverty..

Today is the 2 month mark from when I arrived in China. I can't believe how quickly it has gone, and at the same point, how it feels like we have been settled to a lifestyle here for awhile. I love it. I am so glad that I have gotten the opportunity to come to China and experience and take part in such a different, unique and enticing culture. I am 1/3 of the way through this adventure, and, it just seems like the rest of the time is going to go by far too quickly!

A few days before I left for China, I submitted my Peace Corps application. Earlier this week, I had a phone interview with a Peace Corps Rep, and it went really well. He said that we will start to discuss placement positions, positions which could start as early as October of this year to March of 2010...However, recently, I have been really considering and researching staying in China for another year after I finish this internship. It seems, that it would be useful to stay in China and continue to study the language and get to know the culture...rather than studying Chinese and living here for 6 months and then just leaving, and in a sense, leaving all I have learned behind. All that to be said, even though making decisions is hard, I am glad to have the opportunity and don't yet have to make a final decision or worry about that.

Last night, Shaun and I did a poverty simulation for one of our culture classes. We divided up the students into different continent groups and gave them food (candy) and money (the Chinese equivalent to 10c pieces). The population, food, and money of each continent was representative to how it is in the world. The students could then trade food and money, but of course, at a cost. The purpose of the exercise was to show the reality of the world, that not everyone has enough food or money for basic necessities in some continents, where in others, there is a surplus of both...and to transfer those resources, there are costs for our inefficiencies. The exercise went a lot better than we had expected, and even though the students were less interested in the reality of the situation, they all participated in trying to get enough food for each person on their continent.

With all of the events this week, I am learning, and realizing again, how much I miss working towards fighting poverty. I didn't think I would say this quite this soon, but I miss those classroom discussions where we would talk about economic differences that help/harm poverty, I miss reading about it, talking about it, and most of all, I am realizing again how this is what I get really passionate and excited about.

What to say?

A good friend of mine, Christine, told me last night that it was time to post another blog entry...I don't really have much to say though - but she said that it was time to post regardless.

This last weekend was really relaxing. Thanks to the parents for sending seasoning packets, on Friday night we had a big Mexican fiesta with all of the interns and a few friends. Mexican food is pretty much non-existent here, so it was really fun to make fajitas with everyone and just hang out. The rest of the weekend we just hung out, relaxed, watched The Office and spent time at home. One afternoon we did go explore Jong Jia (Middle Street), which is on a different part of the city, and is a pedestrian mall with lots of little shops, a big amusement park and is also where the Imperial Palace is. We didn't have enough time to go to the Palace, but it was nice to just walk around and look at things.

That's pretty much it from here. Hope you guys are all doing well.

M

More pictures..

Here is a link to pictures I just posted on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2434801&l=7edc1&id=10003281

Will write more soon!