life is good

holy mongolia. we just got back from inner mongolia. daqing region. i was soo excited for this trip. we were going to ride mongolian horses, sing mongolian drinking songs, go white water rafting, dress up in something (idk what because I couldn't understand that part, but i was in). none of that happened.

we left at 6am because one of our teachers really wanted to take us to a very rarely seen/out of the way mongolian village. but it rained. it thunderstormed. so we arrived around noon, ate, were told we could play by ourselves until 5:30, when we needed to eat again. all we do is eat.

it was great - we went around this city and talked to people, we walked around this lake, it was really nice. the city was flooded, but in a really pretty way.

apparently in china you can't do anything if it's raining/thunderstorming - except: take speedboats out.

no joke. after meeting at 5:30, we went to this mongolian village to eat with the villagers. they slaughtered a lamb for us. we were all starving but had to wait in the bus for 20 minutes 10 feet from the village to see if the rain would stop. it didn't. but first:

we went to...i really can't explain what, where they had horses and a lake. we went in groups of two in speedboats around the lake. no safety precautions whatsoever, which would be fine except that there was thunder and lightning everywhere. it was like the movie 'a perfect storm'. the first group went and it was just thunder and lightning, but not too much and no rain.

i'm a wanderer and tend to always end up in the last group. plus i had to pee. there wasn't any bathroom so the woman taking us around asked me if i could pee by the horses. i said that would be absolutely no problem. she told me to check the cars parked by the horses to see if ppl were in them and i said we were all clear.

mid-pee a tour group and a half come back to their car. and not a family tour group, a largely middle aged men (and some women) tour group. i was in plain sight, but luckily it's china and they couldn't've cared less.  

so i run back onto the last group of ppl going on boats. the sky is black. we start going around that lake - which was huge, we mistook it for the ocean when we first saw it (in our defense we only ever know about 40% of what's going on, including where we are. partially b/c we can't speak this language, but mostly b/c no one bothers to tell us. they just put us on boats).

anyway, we start getting really wet. i'm wondering why the last group didn't look this wet and then we realize it's raining not splashing. it's apparently reached the point in the storm where it's too dangerous even for the chinese boat drivers, so they turn right back.

by the time we reach the docks it's absolutely pouring and everyone's so scared of the ligtening they start running in every-man-for-himself fashion. the dock p.s., is made of bamboo with metal rods every 4-5 feet. we really didn't want to be on that dock. as we're running one of the teachers (the only one that went) shouts to me "thisis by far the most dangerous thing i've ever done".

by the time we run back to the buses we're drenched. i cannot even convey how wet we were. in any language. this was an insane storm.

my teacher told me that i showed good filial piety (big deal in china), because i told him on the boat that if i were gonna die now, i'd want it to be death by lightning on a lake in inner mongolia. he asked why and i said that it'd give my parents a story-starter for the rest of their lives.

what a way to go. but, i did not go. i'm safely back in harbin drowning in work, but liking it for now. we got the results from one of our 4 tests on friday back and everything's very much out in the open here - for example they will write the scores and ranks of students in public places and hang them up..

so he told the entire class what each student got wrong and how they did on the test, and when he got to me (last b/c i sit by the door), he says "gan ni, she didn't have a single problem. every question she got right". the only one. yes, i'm bragging. i need the moral boost that bragging gives me right now. chinese chinese chinese can start making you feel absolutely useless and stupid when you can't speak chinese.

i like the language pledge too. i like it all actually when i understand it/when it's easy for me. and this week things are starting to come easier. one problem i was having is that i have a really great group of friends here, but they speak english when no one's looking. this weekend though i said 'how about for the next four hours we stick to the language pledge', and they were happy to. didn't even make me feel like the one nerd who wants to keep the pledge. we're all nerds here. no one's pretending to be cool.
 
it's really common around here to hear "wu dian yi hou wo gaosu ni": after 5pm i'll tell you. the language pledge is super enforced until 5pm and especially on weekdays, but after 5 if you really needed to say something to another english speaker that chinese just can't do for you, you can use chinglish/english.
so when we're having a conversation and just not understanding, or if someone hears something really complicated and asks you to explain it, you can say 'ask me again after 5pm'.


so after the near-death speed-boating experience (which btw i'm not exaggerating about - just thought i'd differentiate b/c i exaggerate all the time), we went to the mongolians. ate their lamb. drank their horse liquor..which i can't explain but it's kind of like 'baijiu' which translates to white wine but is absolutely not white wine...it's just the hardest liquor..ever. ask a chinese friend about 'baijiu' (pronounced: 'buy joe'). you get drunk just from smelling it.

we had a jolly good time and in the morning about half our group had la duzi (literally: stomach pull, so i'll let you use your imagination). i was not one of them. i am iron-stomach stephanie. also, i don't eat a lot of meat..maybe that was it? i ate pounds of raw veg though..and baijiu. fantastic combo.

and now we're home and back in our routine. tomorrow we have to go talk to people on the street to find out slang terms/street talk. it's our homework. i love this kind of homework.

ok i should go. midterms in 2 weeks. yikes! next up: we spend 3 days in a peasant family rural village. no showers. no electricity. no doors (so mozzies and bugs at night), no beds - just flat hard surfaces, and it's 4 ppl per hard surface. it kind of goes without saying, but no AC, so it gets nice and warm at night. one of the zhuli's said that when she slept in a peasant village she woke up when the sun rose (which we kinda do anyway here) and there was a duck about 2 feet from her face that had wandered in.

i'm pumped. i could go on and on and write forever b/c there's a lot i don't get to say because it's too much to say in chinese, but i've got homework and laundry and such.

sorry this post is probably kind of weird sounding. i think it's a combination of translating things from chinglish to english in my head making them come out weird, and also feeling really rushed b/c i'm worried about getting all my hw done.

i just got back from doing part of the tremendous amounts of hw we have each night.  except this was something that translates to a 'pre-task'..so idk how to explain it. but it was this:

i had to take a public bus to an underground Russian goods store. no taxis allowed, but if i found a place to rent a bike, i could do that. i have no idea which buses go where, the name of any underground russian stores - or even if it's literally under the ground, or if it's black market, or both.

i'm not allowed to ask the mentors or the teachers for help or clarification. and i need to come back and write an essay or tell the class tomorrow about the quality of the goods, how much i could bargain down a women's clothing item, what the bus fare was, etc etc.

i had a freaking ball. and bought a polka dotted dress for 40 kuai. it was originally "538". (they started for real at around 180). the rest of my homework is in books though and i haven't started. i'm going to go to my zhuyi's room to go over it later, which forces me to do it before it gets too late. 

yesterday afternoon our 'class' was tai ji lessons. which was more stressful than it sounds because you can't always see the instructors and if you hadn't studied the tai ji words you'd end up in some weird positions trying to guess where they were directing your body to go.
at one point i turned around and was facing my friend (which means one of us was at least 180 degrees off) who was in a completely different position. we both mouthed 'how did i end up over here' and then the instructor, who was the scariest 90 year old woman you could imagine, came over and yelled at us. tai ji's not my forte. it's also all on film.

homework.

no time to use internet. no internet to use. no time to do anything. they treat us like royalty. too well actually b/c don't get to go off and make our mistakes and be forced to figure things out alone in china.

break downs daily. my brain is being assaulted - speaking constantly, listening, studying, 4-hour classes, intimidating students, and by the end of the day my brain is tired and i'm so fragile and anything leads to tears. embarrassing.

yesterday i decided even though i have no time that i needed to go for a run. it's my therapy. and exercise makes you
remember things better and i needed to get some stress out. went w/ friends to the track to run but they wanted to lift weights after and i wanted to keep running so i told them i'd go back later myself.

i got lost for about an hour. it's mr p's genetics. the track by the way is a 2 minute walk from our dorm. i wandered for 30 minutes before ending up back at the other side of the track. then asked a guard for directions and he told me he'd walk me. i was worried the whole time about not having time and getting my work done, (which i didn't) and that made this even more stressful. they moved me up one level yesterday so i had catching up to do and class got a lot harder.

anyway, these two policemen are walking me back (to the wrong place) and one won't stop talking to me. and he's speaking dialect, so i have absolutely no idea what he's saying and he's getting so pissed that i don't understand something so simple and starts shouting at me (i finally understood that he was asking how china was different than america. it was not a conversation i wanted to have at that point, but i figured if i was talking he might not be).

anyway, along the way we run into my zhuyi, which is kind of like a student mentor. he's a chinese undergrad who's studying to be an english teacher. anyway, this guy already thinks i'm absolutely retarded b/c i don't understand him half the time. and on day one when he told me my phone couldn't call internationally after i had spent all my money on an international phone card, and not to worry b/c i could call all my chinese friends, he saw me flip out in chinese about how i have no friends in china and all i want are my friends and my american family. there may've been a tear or two. not a pretty stephanie.

anyway, when we bump into him i'm 25% relieved and 75% embarrassed as hell. not only can i not speak this language, but i also can't find my way from the track to my dorm which is 5 feet away. he thanks the officers after telling them they were taking me in the wrong direction, and then tells them that i've only been here 3 days. he walks with me and keeps telling me not to worry, that it's not a big deal at all, etc etc and i fight tears b/c that was yesterday's last straw. i cried a little but by this time it was too dark to tell.

it's just so frustrating. humbling to the point of humiliation.  and so constant. 

anyway, my zhuyi is amazing and he walks me back home, then offers to walk me to the track and back again so that i wouldn't get lost next time. we do this, and then bump into more american students. i tell them that i got lost 5 minutes away and we all laugh. my emotions here are crazy.

later i go to my zhuyi's room and he helps me w/ my homework until almost midnight.

anyway i barely made it into advanced. i didn't test too well AT ALL, and when i had my interview (in a room in front of 8 teachers), i lied and said i'd only taken 2 years worth of chinese instead of 4 b/c i was embarrassed at how little i knew. in retrospect, that was an idiotic move. anyway, i'm good now.

it feels like i've been here a year. it feels like i've known these people for years.

it's day 8 of china and day 3 of classes and i'm so worried i'm gonna burn out. it's the pace and intensity - which wouldn't be so bad if we had afternoons to study, but we don't. we don't even have a single weekend. going to the grocery store to buy fruit is a time luxury.

we are being spoiled rotten though. in the beginning they told us so much about how selective this program is, that they spent 120 million $$ on it (not just china - 500 kids total), that we're amazing - but there's a catch. they make us feel oh so good about ourselves for a little while, b/c if we are the "amazing kids" they've put so much faith and money into, we had better step up and prove that we're worth it all.

we have private tutors, we live in a ritz-carlton that they call a 'dormitory', we have huge flat screen tvs we'll never watch, chinese students to take us anywhere we need to go and help us with anything, etc etc. - ie, we have absolutely no excuses to not excel.

except maybe time.

anyway, i'm still amazed by it all. i really need to go.

on day one we took an overnight train from beijing, slept for 6 hours, got up at 6, took our luggage to our rooms and then took a 2-hour written exam. then we waited in a room together while they interviewed us one by one and reviewed our written exams. while they discussed our results and divided us into classes, the zhuyi's made us dance to backstreet boys and russian techno (i'm not lying, i have it on film), to keep us from sleeping. we also had to sing (also on film). and not in a group - one person up front w/ a microphone. i sang 'head shoulders knees and toes' in chinese. it was by far the least impressive performance, except for one guy who sang happy birthday in chinese.

then we slept and the next day was class day one.

ok i really can't put work off any longer. internet's nice though. it's probably really bad that i have it. i'm sure it won't work by tomorrow though.

sneaking in some yingwen

last night i had burritos with a billionaire. the night before that i had microwaved eggs while the girl from down the hall ate spam lite from the tin (yes, apparently spam is aware of its weight-conscious consumers) with a diet coke to wash it down. made my eggs look - and *smell* really good.

but back to last night. i talked to a mind-blowingly intelligent man for about 3 hours, then went and got burritos and continued the conversation. this man took a topic i thought i knew a significant amount about - i teach this topic to classes and student organizations, - and made me realize how much i have no clue about the industry.

this week was one of the most amazing and most exhausting weeks of my recent life.

we hosted my supervisor from last summer, the founder of the company i worked for and creator of the village banking model, and a multi-billion dollar investor/oil company owner/author-turned-microfinance advocator this week.
i haven't checked my email or caught my breath in 3 days. in a good way, but i'm about to pass out. also when you're organizing and hosting, you're not eating, sleeping, or participating too much.

i learned so much - about microfranchizing, collateralized loans (burrito topic of conversation), planning, organizing, coordinating, speaking...

the conference ended at 5 today and then a reception/book-signing/photo-taking until 6. i ran home b/c i could not be in those shoes anymore, and changed into the only ones i could find amongst the chaos - my purple shower shoes. i threw those on with my business suit (quite a look) and walked to my car to come to work.
i was upset at first that i had to miss out on happy hours and celebrations and time with the speakers, but honestly, i'm microfinanced-out. well, maybe not - but i'm okay coming to nanny. it's great - you feed, bathe, put the boy to sleep, then sit down and check email, relax, etc.

i walked in to three additional babies and kids who definitely have not been here the past 8 months. surprise! the cousins are in town. adorable adorable cousins. but tonight? really?
we wrestled and played with cars ('played' at this age = put in mouth) and had some good talks about my day (they're gonna think i'm such a freak when they watch the nanny cam..), had a bottle and a burping and everyone's asleep.

sigh.

and i'm sitting downstairs sprawled out on the floor with baby monitors and delicious leftovers from this family that i adore. the extra kids were actually probably a blessing b/c they kept me on my toes and kept me awake. plus i think 8 months is around the perfect age for the type of conversation i can handle right now.

ohh this week is over. finals are here. less than two weeks from today and i'll have finished my last undergraduate class. one month from today and i walk dressed in a light blue robe (if i find out where to get the robes..kind of behind on life right now..), see family, eat good food, pack up, and move on.
yowsa.

In the beginning of June I head back to the land of two dollar massages and daily yoga (I will find a yoga studio). This also happens to be the land of concrete-hard beds and constant stares, but I'm absolutely pumped.

Unlike last time, I will be in an icy icy tundra of a city, but I am confident I will survive. And pretty sure I'll return much closer to fluency than this out-of-practice lbg is right now.

And jiaozi. I'm going to be in the jiaozi-center of the jiaozi homeland. I will get to study and live in the region where dumplings were born. How could that possibly be bad? Fattening, yes. but China's always fattening for Westerners. Jiaozi pounds are welcome pounds.

I love new experiences. I'm so excited.

there are screams and violent noises coming from the lounge across the hall. if there weren't music in the background and periods of dramatic singing here and there I would be worried.

but that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I read an article about how thinking about a positive part of each day not just makes you balanced and happy, etc, but also benefits your health in concrete measurable ways.
so I just wanted to say that yesterday, I went to see a professor read. This professor is amazing and so talented and the place was packed. I stood at the back and said 'no thank you' when people offered seats in the front because I wanted to be able to sneak out if I needed to and because a ton of other people were standing.

Right before it began a guy from one of my classes brought a chair to the back of the room by the shelf that I was half behind, put it behind me, tapped my shoulder and pointed to the chair and smiled. It was amazing. Idk if this is just the southern way that I'm still not used to, but it was nice and friendly and so small but it made my day. well, a good 12 minutes of my day. and I sat. thank you friendly guy from class.

Today I stopped by wholefoods because I had to get gas and was right next to it and I wanted sparkling water. The sparkling water selection at wholefoods is kind of intense and I decided to look at the different kinds. I had spent 10 minutes in the sparkling water section staring when this guy came up and asked what difficult decision I was making. I told him how sparkling water costs a pretty penny and I didn't want to mess up and choose the wrong one. We talked flavors and brands etc for a minute and then he grabbed one out of a pack and put a 'paid' sticker on it and told me to come back and tell him what I thought. He was the manager.

Anyway, these aren't amazing stories just little things that could restore bit by bit someone's faith in humanity. should  it need restoring.

just answered the phone to hysterical crying. just found out i am the world's most useless friend to call when you're hysterically crying. when you don't know what to do. turns out i don't know what to do either. i'm calm, i'm a rock, but i'm a completely useless rock. 'it's gonna be okay' just doesn't cut it in real life like it does in lifetime originals.

being 1,000 miles away doesn't help.

my roommate on the other hand is amazing at dealing with these situations. she's currently got me hysterically laughing over her stilt-walking skills. which meant talking about her family and her mom who passed away last year. so now she's gotten me happily distracted picturing her jogging on stilts and she's crying a little bit while we switch subjects...

i'm so bad at sad situations. so useless. and now with her i feel like an idiot for getting so upset over something that comes nowhere near losing a parent. i think for now we'll just keep talking about people and presidents until there's no more sniffling in this room... 

there's so much pressure in my ear right now that i can't hear or walk straight. it sounds so stupid - 'ear ache', but last night it woke me up for 4 hours til 5 am with the most unbearable pain in my recent life. it apparently gets worse at night. damn homey.

i had a rock midterm today and have 4 more next week. would be 5 but i'm dropping one just to not take the midterm.. i feel like death. at least i don't need my earbuds to block out the library-talkers.

this wouldn't be so bad - except that in 1 week i get on a plane with a 1-year old to CA and i can't be on my deathbed when we get there. they're nice ppl but they would kill me. at least it would be a ritz-carlton death bed..

there's so so much i need to do.

last week during the soup swap with the other neighborhood mothers, the woman i work for and i realize we have pretty much the exact same taste in food. i took home a container of fresh homemade butternut squash soup that lasted me many a wonderful meal.

friday night there was 'just some chicken pasta salad' in the fridge in case i was hungry. and it was in tupperware in case i wasn't hungry then, but maybe got hungry sometime this week. this 'just some chicken pasta salad' turned out to be orzo and capers, sundried tomatoes and all things farmers market. and enough for about 5 meals.

i walked in last night after a hearty 12-hour library session (of which i did work for at least 8) and my roommate gets excited and hands me lasagna from her church ladies - they always cook for her (her mom recently died) and when they found out she had switched to a new roommate who wasn't crazy who she liked - they made me food too. they baked her cookies and b/c she told them she thinks i 'eat healthy' - they baked me low-fat lemon bread.

it'll be a fridge-stocked full-belly week. i love food.

i also received an unmarked brown box of individually packaged spices. it was a very aromatic box by the time it got here. now i need to find recipes and use my pot and spoon. i went for the expensive one b/c it was a pot/pan/wok/etc. and i need to make something other than wonton soup. though my wonton soup rocks.

okay back to work.

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.


Conclusion. I have it. Kept thinking that if I could just change my mind and like Y that that would just be best for everyone. An added bonus - staying together even longer would really upset his parents. I thought I must be crazy for turning away someone so good to me. All anyone had ever said about Y were good things. amazing things. I started to believe that he must be perfect and I must just be crazy. all it took to break this long era of self doubt was one mutual friend who - after spending 5 days straight with Y - expressed some mild annoyances. the same stupid things that had annoyed me. and they were stupid. and they were minor. and it was a brief fleeting moment of our night. but it felt so...redeeming.
not to say that I need someone to share my feelings in order to make them valid - but seriously - 2 years of hearing about his flawless selfless amazingness would make anyone crazy. and desperate to hear some criticism. ugh. i want more.
I'm also hoping things are good there. but i'll wait to check til after finals. which are killing me. not really, but they're not adding much to my quality of life. had my two hardest today. no idea how i pulled them off. it doesn't stop for the next week but it won't be as bad as today. managable. sleepless though. finishing sentences has gotten a lot harder in the last hour or so. i'm thinking sleep would be the best decision right now. gonna go see if it's around.