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