Today we went to Dashang and ate at Tomato (Aliren). We then went into Dashang and got groceries and while we were in line waiting to check out our picture was taken. If you stand in place too long… so anyway I took a picture of the people that were taking our picture.
Chuck got back yesterday and we were busy unpacking his bags for most of the morning. Chuck brought Nate some Dorito’s and he brought me a phone holder for when I charge my phone at night.
Today we went to Dashang and ate at Tomato (Aliren). We then went into Dashang and got groceries and while we were in line waiting to check out our picture was taken. If you stand in place too long… so anyway I took a picture of the people that were taking our picture. Back to Boobear for us today, our internet worked for a few days with the new router rand then this morning it didn’t. Actually I’m not really upset as we both got fruit juices and I need to update my resume and see about getting some more music ordered through the piano store here.
I am actively working to teach piano here so I want to update my resume with my year of teaching on it. Ok so this is officially weird, we get home from Boobear and the internet is working again. I got another book of piano music today, C.L. Hanon’s ‘The Virtuoso Pianist’ all 60 exercises’. Nate is playing with his online friends and I am able to update my blog from home. Remember when I told you about the demolition on Yihe Lu? Well that project has been completed and the new area looks great. Some of our favorites from our first months here have come back like McDove’s and some new places have come in like a new print shop. Check out my before and after pictures. I will hurry our internet is out again. Nate and I came to Wanda Plaza and had breakfast at Starbucks then we went to LIU SHIKUN PIANO ARTS CENTER where Yang Ting had a copy of Chopin Preludes for me. It is an Urtext and if you are a classical music person you will understand what that is. It is in the familiar blue book and is published by G. Henle Verlang. He allowed me to go into a room and play and I played number 15, Raindrop Prelude and Nate applauded me after I played. After I don’t know how many years that just came back like a very good old friend! I am on a classical music high right now!!!
After that we came here to Boobear Coffee to get online. More from home if we have internet. Tuesday, Nate got up very early today and is napping right now. I tutor today from 3-5 this afternoon but this morning I went and got copies made for class today, put money on my phone, got my passport(YEAH) and Nate’s and my health certificates, and we started the day off by getting breakfast at KFC. Funny in the states KFC isn’t known for breakfast but here that seems to be one of the busier times for the restaurant. Oh yeah most important, I got two tubes of Anti Itch Cream at the drug store and it says Anti-Itch Cream on the box; far out right? Well I did some exercising today, I did a Zumba workout. I will do that every other day and on off days do some straight exercise. I figure just because I can’t teach it doesn’t mean I have to forget about what I learned doing it; I can still benefit from what I know.
I had planned to attend a webinar but the time difference kicked me in the butt today. I figured the times wrong I am hoping that because I was registered I might be able to get a recording of the webinar. That is my hope! More later… I taught today and we had fun with speaking English. Not much else today, I need to get a map of the United States so I can show Li Yihan the different states we talk about in the dialogue from Voice of America. Hard to believe that we have been in China for almost a year; a little more than a month we will be at our anniversary of coming to China. It would be neat if we could celebrate in Beijing the city we first landed in or maybe we could start a tradition to be in a new China city on that date.
Anyway it seems that our internet is back and working again. You have no idea how happy I am; don’t get me wrong I really like Boobear Coffee but being home and online is way better. Today we went to Gongren Market and got Nate a much needed small umbrella, men’s face wash and a new alarm clock that will talk in Chinese to wake him. Our first stop when we got to the market was to go for lunch. It was late for lunch 2pm but then we haven’t been on a schedule much at all this summer. I’ve noticed that color here in China tends to be the lighter hues of the color wheel. Sure you see someone in acid green shoes or a shocking pink outfit but normally you see pastel shades of blue, pink, purple, yellow, etc. Nate’s new umbrella is soft blue or baby blue and mine is lilac/lavender. Well everything is back to normal here, Nate is on his MineCraft game with his friends from all over the world and I have been typing away trying to post a new blog today. Back to Boobear for us; the internet tech was at the apartment and we had internet for like 5 minutes before it died again. Internet here is good, not much to report although Nate and I have tried to new places for food; across from Boobear is a great crepe place they just moved in. Yesterday we tried a place near our favorite pizza place that sells ‘hot dogs’ and yes they were good. I tried a mushroom ‘dog’ and Nate had a fish dog that tasted like a tuna sub or so he tells me. Today I got a VIP card from Boobear and can get discounts on my purchases.
Well for right now our life revolves around getting online at Boobear and connecting with Chuck in America. Life isn’t good there and he is hoping to be able to come home early. More as it happens. July 18, 2013
This day started with our first water delivery. I messaged Qi Yan this morning that we needed water and before 10 am water was here. Nate and I rode our scooters to Vanguard to get waterless hand sanitizer then to Dasheng Supermarket for lunch and cereal. I got water saved for flushing but forgot about dish washing. When we got back I tried to do some computer stuff but the internet is out so I gave up and took a nap. Today was the second lesson for Li Yihan, she has two a week we talked today about politically incorrect speech, I felt bad; a 7th grader learning to speak English doesn’t really need to learn about ethnic slurs does she? I’m going to write my own dialogues now. We just got water today the second time today. The water guy came back and delivered a second bottle of water which is good since I had to use some of the bottle from this morning for washing dishes. We had tuna fish salad for dinner tonight and we each made sandwiches. It was a nice taste of America. In the morning if we still don’t have internet we are going to Boobear, the coffee house/internet café at Wanda Plaza. Unlike Starbuck’s it doesn’t have a huge following and tends to be easier for us to get on and stay online there. July 17, 2013 Today is the first full day of Chuck being gone, because he had an early flight this morning from Zhengzhou to Beijing he stayed near the airport last night because there is no good way to get down there in the very early am hours of the morning. Since he was in a hotel he asked me to call him this morning at 5:15 to make sure he was up and going that hour is not one that I see often and it made having my Chinese lesson this morning more special, I embraced nap time today! Speaking of my Chinese lesson, it was nice to share it with Nate today. His tutor is away for the summer so he is taking lessons with me. We learned about family names and where English has one name for ‘aunt’ Chinese has names for your mother’s sister both older and younger; your father’s older and younger sisters then uncles have names like the aunts and then cousins. We walked around after on the new campus but didn’t find any food stalls open so we got some snacks from a vending machine and then caught the bus to the old campus and had lunch there. I just got a visit from our neighbor across the hall; she wanted to let me know that water to the building would be turned off at 9pm tonight until the 20th, three days without water. I am glad that we get water delivered and both Nate and I just did our clothes so we are good there as well. I filled two buckets with water and hope it is enough to flush the toilet with. Now would be a good time to be on vacation! Today is Monday, a busy day here as tomorrow Chuck is going to America and he is doing his last minute packing.
Yesterday Sunday, we opted to not go to the English Corner. In my case because I thought it was just a little creepy of one woman who didn’t know me to be saying she was waiting for me to come. Ummm! Funny thing, Chuck who usually has a much higher tolerance to what ‘creeps’ me out was also ‘creped’ him out. Instead of the English Corner, we went to the Zhengzhou University Bookstore on University Road/Da Xue Lu大学路. I’ve got a private student that I tutor in English and I was searching for something to use with her. She is 13 so books that work with university students aren’t age appropriate. I looked and found something that seems to be geared toward a 7th grader so I am very happy. I also found another easy Chinese book for me to read and it dawned on me why I’m having a difficult time with Chinese and that is because like that Star Trek Next Generation show dealing with a culture that spoke in metaphors (Darmack and Gelad at Tenagra) Chinese tends to also use metaphors. So where in English we might say ‘You have a lot of books’ in Chinese a literal translation might me ‘You have book mountain’, now while we know there is no mountain made of books (Nate and I think that would be cool though) we get the idea. Anyway back to the book I bought it has Chinese characters and pinyin and it is helping to read books like these so I start to recognize the characters when I’m out. I am able to translate a few things now I am taking pictures and ask my tutor not to translate, but to tell me if I translated and understand what something says. Today we stayed in the apartment until lunch when we rode our scooters to DaShang Super Market and ate at the food vendors on the street. My tutor would have been proud of me because I asked for fried rice for all three of us. However, we either asked for something that foreigners don’t ask for or the cook just wanted to come out and see the foreigners for himself; he came out with a plate of noodles and indicated that those where what we were wanting and Chuck said bu which is no, he then got some rice and Chuck nodded and said fried rice and pointed to each of us. He understood and we got our fried rice. We then went shopping for some snacks for Chuck’s trip and some things that we need here. High up on my list was some type of bug repellant for me. I’ve used Off all summer and am running low so I wanted to get something so that I can remain protected. I didn’t get more Off as they didn’t have that but so I got a Chinese brand, store clerks are super helpful and in no time I was able to get what I needed. Something that I have been thinking on lately well more of an ‘ah-ha’ moment was the real use of a for poster bed. Sure lots of people think they are romantic and all, but those beds had a purpose in the winter time heavy drapes were put on them to keep heat in when houses didn’t have the central heating that we enjoy today. Perhaps more importantly in the summer time the same frame around the bed was fitted with mosquito netting to keep those bugs at bay and allow the person to sleep in peace. I also found out why some people (ME) seem to get more than their share of bug bites and others (Chuck & Nate) don’t seem to attract any attention. It is all about your blood type and unfortunately I seem to have the favorite blood type of mosquitos. Our scooters are charging in front of our apartment building. We will go down later and get them Chuck is going out to dinner with his friend Joni and Nate and I will go out to eat. Today was is a special day, Nate and his dad went on a white water rafting trip and they booked it for today because I was supposed to be in Hong Kong. I’m not so I got a day to myself and it started early. The guys had to meet the tour bus at 6:30 this morning and there was a 30 minute walk from our apartment to the bus stop, so we all got up around 4am this morning. They got dressed and I stayed in my pj’s and as soon as they gathered their gear and were off I headed for the shower and washed my hair. It was funny, because it was early the hot water didn’t run out and I got my hair twisted in record time finishing before 8:30. After doing that I read a story on fiction press this morning then I went to Gongren Lu Market where I did some personal shopping and had lunch.
After lunch I came home and did a little cross stitch and then I napped. During my nap I also messaged back and forth with a student Apple. She was one of 19 teachers at the university to win a trip to the UK to study English in August. She is happy to be going but she has a little one and this is her first time abroad and she will miss her son. When I got up from my nap I played my farm frenzy game and downloaded pictures from this morning to my flash drive. I plugged my scooter into the electric this morning and rode my bike to the market and when I came home after lunch it was still charging so I left it plugged up and came upstairs. After playing on my computer I went out for dinner and got my scooter off the charge. I went to KCF for dinner tonight and then I went to Vanguard where an amazing thing happened, I read the sign that says supermarket entrance 超市入口chaoshi rukou. You have no idea how good that felt, however, that was quickly squashed while I was checking out when an older gentleman came up to me and was talking in Chinese and I didn’t understand a thing he said. While my reading seems to be coming along beautifully, my hearing spoken Chinese isn’t so great. That actually helped me think of where I want to go with my tutor student. Her written English is wonderful but her spoken English while better than my Chinese leaves room for improvement. I decided that I would write up some dialogs for her. Tonight two girls about her age carried on the ‘traditional’ English conversation with me and I think that is where we need to go from. Now I am back in the apartment with the air cooling things off nicely here and even though it is mid-July today wasn’t scorching hot but a mellow day with a thick cloud cover keeping the temps in the upper 70’s-low 80’s but because of the humidity it feels about 10 degrees hotter. I defiantly prefer dry heat to this sticky heat but any heat is better than the cold in December and January. Here is a short journal blog for today. Our power was out at our apartment so we packed up and came to Boobear Coffeeshop. It is less crowded than Starbucks and it also has Wifi is free. I took a few pictures here. Nate and I are enjoying fruit smoothies (me black currant and him mango) and Chuck is drinking a latte. The family that stays plays computers together stays together.
Well our power is back on! We had a nice day out today after Boobear we went to look for lunch/dinner. We enjoyed the meal it was good and not spicy but it was the after dinner show that was most disturbing. A grandmother put her infant grand daughter on my lap. I have forgotten how wiggly babies are I was worried that I’d drop the baby. Add to that my added fear of a baby going to the bathroom on me; babies here usually don’t wear diaper equal to me being very happy when mama came and got her baby. We also saw a drum group, these are popular here and businesses have them play in front of their store for good luck. Usually the occurrence of a band is at the same time as a sale or promotion of some sort in the store and because people will stop to hear the drum group, more people will wander into the store where I am sure helpful clerks will tell you all about what is for sale. |