Spring has Sprung

Everyone always says it but I forget how true it is -- when you are in school (especially college), Spring semester always seems to go by so quickly.  Despite this being one of the longest Spring semesters of my life, it is still flying by.

Since going to Tianjin, I started a new job so I think that is part of what is making the weeks pass so quickly.  At the beginning of the semester, I had lots of free time.  Now, I don't have a single day "off" from work or tutoring.  I like being so busy but sometimes I like to just slow down and take a breath.  My new job is really interesting, though.  Maybe not so much substantive-wise -- I am tutoring two high school students to prepare to take the SATs.  What's neat is that I get to spend so much one-on-one time with them and get to know them very well.  They are both so smart.  I really enjoy helping them with their critical thinking skills since I really just get to pick their brains.  It has already been such a great experience.  Plus, the pay I get from doing it just a few hours a week is more than doubling my salary from the school.  Win Win!

One of the first things we did after our trip to Tianjin was have Greek Easter at a Greek restaurant.  We went with some of our Israeli friends.  I have to say, friends here in Beijing have been doing a great job of keeping my expectations very low for Western food -- regularly, my expectations are exceeded.  The moussaka was so good!  As were the lamb kebabs.  Of course, I had to take some photos of the food =)

As April wore on, the weather got better and better.  Here are two photos taken about a week apart.  You can see the leaves starting to come in on the trees!  The sky is so blue… Sometimes, there are so many days in a row where the sky is grey and gross, I forget how blue the sky can get here.  We had quite a few of these days in April.

At the beginning of May there was another national holiday in China, May Day.  I learned that during the May Day holiday there are many music festivals in the city so we went to a folk music festival.  This one was aptly named the Dong Party Music Festival.  Yeah, that never got old.  Ditan Park was already so lush and green.

Another notable event this month was saying farewell to our friend Ethan who left for a six week trip to Nepal.  For his going away party we went out for all you can drink and all you can eat Japanese teppanyaki.  Homerun on both counts.  This night was definitely the drunkest I have been in China so far.  I didn't even realize how many photos I had taken until tonight when I unloaded them =)

 

Here we are with Wun and her fabulous friend visiting from Korea, Henry.

 

Ethan and Ana with Itay and Ethan's other friend (forgot his name) in the background.

 

Cheers!

 

Ana and I.

Itay and Chris at Migas (rooftop bar) after dinner -- you can see the "egg" pod like things in the background.

Last week was my final class with my senior students.  The seniors only have two classes during their last term and they are both with foreign teachers.  So Jack (my fellow foreign Economics teacher) and I joined forces and had the two senior classes come together for the last day to have a little party.  I baked brownies and cookies and made salsa, Jack's wife made cinnamon rolls (so good!).  The students showed videos and photos on the overhead and giggled and reminisced about the past four years.  It was cool to watch -- although I was a little bit lost, not just because of the language barrier but the fact that all the jokes were "inside".  Still, it was cool to see them get excited about their memories.

I love this picture my student sent me, with the sculpture of the first president of the school superimposed in the background of the classroom =)

Now it's time for random pictures.

Our friends Grace and Mike (from Tianjin) came to visit and we went to a Middle Eastern restaurant with our friend who is an Egyptian diplomat.  Here is Grace trying shisha for the very first time =)

Here is my friend and fellow teacher, Jessica, with our neighbor's baby, Pierre.  Pierre is a little half Chinese, half French baby and he is just entering that amazingly adorable phase.

Ok I will apologize in advance for the language in the below photo.  But in fact that is why I felt the need to take a photo of it.  This little blurb was in an English TEXTBOOK in one of my classrooms!!! Can you believe this?  This is what they are teaching these kids!!!  I was appalled.  I mean, my jaw was open for many minutes.  I still can't really get over it…

A couple of weeks ago I went with my friends to this kitchen market across town and there were baby chicks for sale in a brown box…?

Do you remember Magic The Gathering?  Maybe it's still "a thing" in America, but I sort of thought it was a nineties thing.  There is a shop near Ethan's house that kids hang out at and play these card games.  It's quite a tween scene.

Here is a picture of a sign with the word "hold".  Our Chinese teacher told us that the Chinese love to use the English word "hold", especially when referring to a sale at a shop, etc.  For example, there will be a sign about a future sale, all in Chinese, and it will ask at the bottom, can you hold?  But the only thing in English is "hold"; the rest is in Chinese.  It's such a random word to have somehow integrated into Chinese, if you ask me.

Ok I had to include this one.  This is a taxi stopped at a light.  I think there is some kind of game in America, something like a Chinese red light?  I think we have all played that one before -- when you stop at the red light, everyone gets out of the car and runs around it one time.  In this case, at this red light this guy is not running around his car but he's definitely rearranging something in his trunk.

 Here is a random sticker of a transformer on a truck.

Accidental Chinese hipster with thumbs-up hat on.

Sculpture in Sanlitun, aka "the future".

Some street art, "Beijing is Hot" outside a sex toy store.

It's always exciting to get great coffee in China!

Here is one of our most recent awesome finds -- an individual hot pot restaurant right near our school!  Here are Jess and Chris enjoying it…

 
And lastly, here was the omen I saw in my gong bao ji ding…  Sad face!

An Idiot-Proof Trip to Tianjin

Last week was Tomb Sweeping Holiday in China.  During this holiday, people go home to visit the tombs of their relatives.  In China they do not have huge graveyards; instead, they have small plots of land for each family to have tombs for their relatives.  For Tomb Sweeping, they go to this family plot of land and tidy it up by cutting the grass, etc.  They also leave offerings of fruit and they burn fake money.  The fake money thing is really cool because they believe that in the afterlife their relatives need the money so when they burn it they are passing it to them.  When they have dreams of their dead relatives, they believe it is their loved ones contacting them to ask for more money to be burned/passed over to them.  They always want their loved ones to be very prosperous, even in the afterlife.  I think it's so interesting.

For the holiday we had a couple of days off from class (only after working through the weekend... China, I will never understand that about you...) so we went for an overnight trip to Tianjin, which is about 60 miles southeast of Beijing, right near the coast.  Tianjin is a very interesting city because it is also a tier 1 city (like Beijing) with about 13 million people.  During the late 19th century, many European countries wanted to set up trading missions in China but were unable to do so in Beijing so instead they set up shop in Tianjin, which is connected to Beijing by river.  Each of these European trade missions were self-contained towns with schools, libraries, and prisons.  The architecture has survived so now Tianjin is a weird mix of European, Chinese, and modern buildings. 

You can see Beijing on this map, and Tianjin, just southeast.

 

Since Tianjin is just a 30 minute train ride away we figured it would be a good mini-trip for the short holiday.  Plus, it was a great opportunity to check out the high speed trains!  175mph! 

Here is Chris in the futuristic Beijing South Railway Station.

 

 Here we are on the train cruising at 175mph

We were very fortunate to have recently made some friends who live in Tianjin.  Chris met this guy, Mike, at an event at Tsinghua University.  Mike works for a Tianjin municipal government think tank.  He was in Beijing a couple of weeks ago and brought his colleague, Grace, to dinner and the four of us had a great time chatting.  

For our trip to Tianjin, Mike and Grace picked us up from the train station and were our tour guides the entire time!  We were so lucky.

Here is Chris and Mike.  The first day we were there the weather was overcast and dreary.  The second day was gorgeous, though.

 A bridge near the train station.

 Here are some pictures of the Italian Style Area.

 

 There were tons of these Italian sculptures everywhere.

 

This is near a bridge across from the Italian Style Area.

This area is the Ancient Chinese Culture Market.  There were lots of shops selling traditional Chinese trinkets and gifts.  I bought a lovely silk scarf as a souvenir.

Here are some guys pounding some kind of peanut candy with huge hammers

One of the famous local snacks is ma hua, which is this twisty dough snack.  When I heard people describe it I thought it would be soft and sweet.  It was neither.  It was very hard and crunchy, and bland as hell. 

After dinner, Mike drove us to our hotel that he had already prearranged and checked in for us.  It was around the corner from his house so the next morning he arrived at 8am with some local jian bing for breakfast (so good!).

He drove us first to this area called Wudadao, which translates to Five Streets.  This was an area with lots of old mansions used by prime ministers and head honchos from the late 1800s.  There were touristy horse and carriage tours, which of course our tour guides made sure we got to experience.

 Of course there was time for a coffee break!

This is the local Drum Tower with more trinkets shops around.

 We saw some traditional carnival games -- we didn't see a single ring land around one of the targets so we assumed like American carnival games, they are rigged.

 Here was a guy making a sugar snack for kids.  He heats up the sugar real hot then pours it slowly while he makes the design.  Then, at the end he adds the stick.

 Finished product!

Next we went to a temple, where we had a great view of the Tianjin Eye (just like London!).

 

This thing was sort of a good luck charm where you try to throw your coin onto it and if it stays on there you get good luck (versus if it falls).  I think I threw 50 cents six different times and it never stayed on.  I took that as a sign I would have better luck keeping my coin.

 

On the way back to the train station, we stopped to walk over a pedestrian bridge to get one last look at the city.

 Here is the equally futuristic looking train station in Tianjin.

That was the end of our Tianjin trip!  We had such a great time and were able to see so many of the sights thanks to our amazing tour guides =)

As I wrap up this update, I will include some pictures from the last month here.  When we got back from Vietnam, out of necessity we started to cook regularly.  I have to say, we have gotten quite good at some traditional Chinese dishes, yet we keep it really real with some favorites from the homeland.  Here are some pictures of our creations:

Fried dumplings (aka potstickers)

Eggplant with minced pork

Keeping it real:  Penne with vodka sauce (and pork)

 

Yay, happy peas!

 

Here is Chris with our next door neighbor, Tian Zhou, eating some dried duck wings.  In China, they sell tons of meat snacks packaged sort of like beef jerky.  Chris was surprised at how much he liked it, saying it was 75% better than he had imagined.

 

Other photos around our neighborhood..

This is right across from our school -- the sky was so blue that day!

  

We went to a park nearby our school on the first warm day we had, but none of the trees had grown back in yet.  However, there were still people swimming in the canal in the middle of the park!  They must have been so cold.