Moon cake: not as tasty as it sounds.

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Aloha again! So much is happening here it’s hard to keep up. I mean, life is pretty steady now but plenty busy and there’s so many adventures to write about that it’s hard to choose those special few who make it into the coveted limelight of the blog. Once again, things might not be chronological but they will be interesting 😊

Last post I mentioned an opening social/concert that the international department was putting on where we were press-ganged into singing. That was an adventure in itself, trying to find music, get karaoke tracks, get those tracks to play on Chinese equipment, etc. However, to top it off, they asked me (forcefully) to be the emcee. I think we’re going to get lots of opportunities like that here just because we’re white. I asked, “Why did you choose me?” They said, “Your Chinese is really good!” I said, “Come on, I can’t even read this script, and there’s loads of more advanced students than me.” They shrugged and said, “You’re handsome.” Whatever…

Anyways, when I agreed I didn’t realize how seriously they take stuff like that. I was given a script and they helped me learn how to say all the words, but when I got up to go home to practice on my own, my teacher said, “Whoa! Sit down. Read it out loud to me ten times.” Once finished with that, she read through it with me three or four more times, then finally let me go. I was later assigned to read it 100 times at home. I declined, haha. Well, then last Sunday we got a phone call in the afternoon and I had to go to the office. There I was presented with my costume: a sparkly black suit coat complete with a pink feather corsage. I could only laugh; my objections were not tolerated. After all, the corsage was absolutely necessary for me to match the teacher who was my cohost, in her dazzling Chinese-style pink sequined dress. When I tried to ditch it just before the show they were furious. In the end though, all went well, the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese viewers loved us (Kaylee sang “A Moment Like This” and I sang “Everything” in addition to hosting). A huge tress was taken off our backs and we became very popular. The teachers were even pleased with my emcee-ing (there was some ad-lib in there). The rest of the show vacillated between very impressive and absolutely hilarious. There were some incredibly talented Chinese dancers and a kid from Kazakhstan who played a sweet traditional instrument, but we also heard Asian karaoke favorites like the love theme from Titanic. Not to mention they had random effects like a smoke machine that would go off at random intervals and a machine that flooded the stage with bubbles. One poor Japanese guitarist in a band was positioned next to both and kept getting blasted throughout their entire performance.

In other news, we have two English teaching jobs now. The teacher who interviewed me for the placement test thought I was really nice I guess and asked us to come speak English with her five-year-old daughter. The girl’s name is “Snow” and she’s adorable. She’s also very bright and speaks a surprising amount of English, but she has the attention span of a Chinese child (for those of you without experience, that’s somewhere between a goldfish and a hummingbird with ADHD) so it’s an exhausting adventure every time. We go over twice a week for ‘half an hour.’ I say that dubiously because with Chinese hospitality it always takes way longer. When we arrive we have to sit down and have something to eat and drink, and then before we leave we sit and rest and have something to eat and drink while we chat. Really, though, they are a super nice family and we love it. For future reference, their last name is Zhang. The first night we went over they invited us out to eat with them (they were celebrating the marriage of her brother) and we had great food. They are so kind in every way.

We were also hired by the art department to teach a class of art major volunteers who will be working with a group of Australian students visiting the university in November. It’s just a conversational English class, but we have twenty-some students for two hours a week in our own classroom. Our first class was last Wednesday and it went well. They’re so cute and it’s a lot of fun, but we definitely have a lot to learn! There (like everywhere) it is hilarious to see people’s reactions when they learn our age and that we’re married. They’re incredulous, but hopefully in the end we’ll make a good impression! Honestly, I’m not too worried. As long as we stay cheerful, light, and happy, we’d stand out in a crowd here even if we weren’t white and married young.

So this week was Mid-Autumn Festival. By asking around I learned that the dates are based upon the lunar calendar, which explains how mid-autumn was celebrated on Thursday when by our reckoning fall didn’t even officially start until today. As a national holiday, Thursday had no school! The university even tried to make the holiday more enjoyable by giving everyone Friday off as well. Here’s the kicker though: since Friday is not a holiday, that school day has to be made up. When, you might ask? What a silly question! Sunday, of course. So everyone went to school today (except us. We told them truthfully that we had a previous engagement and our teachers are super chill and willing to work with us). It’s funny that something unthinkable in the U.S. or really the whole western world is so matter of fact here. I think there’s a couple more weekends like that coming up…

In any case, to celebrate the holiday we were invited out to lunch by the Donohoes, our branch president and his wife. They are absolutely delightful (we live close and see each other often) and we had a fantastic time (and some American food! They know a good restaurant… let me tell you, hamburgers really are some of the best things in the world!). From there we caught a bus and met up with a new Chinese friend of ours, Da Wei or David. He’s just a year or two older than us and runs a small shop where we bought food a while back. He loves us and gives us free stuff all the time. It’s not always good, haha, but it’s given generously and we love him. For example, last week he offered us ice cream. Sounds good, yeah? Well, this is a special Chinese kind. It’s a sort of fruit sorbet which was delicious… but it had all sorts of things in it, including but not limited to: peas, raisins, dried apricots, and maybe carrots. To cap off that evening another friend of his offered us something that looked like bread dough. She said clearly, however, that it was fruit. Even the other Chinese onlookers watched with mild disgust, but heck, we’re here for adventure, so we tried it… I can’t think of a better way to describe it except to say that Kaylee almost threw up, haha. We learned later that it’s called Durian, or stinky fruit. Great. Apparently it’s something that you either love or hate. Well, we found out which camp we’re in! Our friends were great sports though and just laughed; most of them don’t like it either.

Anyways, on Thursday Da Wei invited us to go to the large Wild Goose Pagoda with him and his friend. It was a blast! We didn’t go up the tower because it was packed with people, it being a holiday and all, but we saw the largest fountain park in Asia, toured a strange modern art museum (I guess that’s a redundant description), and generally enjoyed the company of Chinese friends. It was great fun and he’s said that whenever we have free time we should go hang with him. Talk about a great way to see the city and learn Chinese! One funny story from that park: at one point a man approached us to sell us flowers, but being in a crowd we didn’t notice him until he shoved a rose in my face and said, “Herro!” Before I could even figure out what was going on, Da Wei shoved himself between me and the man, pushed him back with a dismissive wave of his hand, and said, “No sanks!” We almost died of laughter… he’s a great friend J

Ok, last story for this entry. Thursday night we decided to go out for hot pot at a cute little restaurant nearby that is clean, friendly, tasty, and loves us (they always give us discounts; we don’t know why. Probably that white thing again). To explain what it is, every table in the restaurant has a hot plate in the middle of it. After you order, the waiter brings over a clean pan and some Tupperware containers filled with vegetables, meat, oil and sauce. They pour it all in, turn on the burner, and you wait for it to cook. Once it’s all done, you serve out tiny bits at a time to eat with rice. Also, if you order additional vegetables or whatever, you stick them in yourself to cook as you go (kind of like fondue). In short, it’s good food and good fun. Well, next is an example of why tones matter so much in Chinese. The waitress asked us how spicy we wanted it and gave us a couple of options. I recognized the word “zhong” which, when said with a first tone (your voice doesn’t go up or down), means “medium.” I thought, “Great, I like some spice, let’s do that one!” The waitress was like, “Are you sure?” which should have been a sign, but I was overconfident. Well, as we started eating it, it was a lot spicier than I expected or can even comfortably handle. I eventually remembered that “zhong” with a fourth tone (voice drops) means “heavy.” So… we’re not sure, but I’m convinced that we accidentally ordered heavy spice. It was good, but… let’s just say it was a misunderstanding I regretted more than once over the next twenty-four hours 😊

Oh, one more thing I almost forgot, in reference to the title: moon cakes are a traditional gift for local holidays. They look so good! Don't be fooled, they're usually filled with bean paste (and that's if you're lucky! One we had the other day had salty yellow something in it that we're trying hard to convince ourselves wasn't hard boiled egg yolk).



Well, that’s all for now!

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Photos

A Moon Cake
Don't be fooled!

Emcee... Chinese Style
Quelle joie...

Despite it all, I did manage to smile at least once!

Proof
Look! Blue sky does occasionally exist in China!

More Chinese signage
At least something in this sign makes sense, I guess!

The Largest Fountain Park in Asia
...so they say :)

It really was amazing; the fountains are all choreographed to music.

Dragon Fruit
Lots of color, quite tasty actually. Well worth the experience. This is NOT the stinky fruit I wrote about...

Moonlights
The Mid-Autumn Festival has a lot to do with the moon, so there were these great lights showing the phases of the moon along the moat around the city wall.

Comments

[Grandma Osburn]

So fun to read about your adventures!
I'd love to be a mouse in your pocket and go on some of your adventures with you! Sounds like your having the time of your life! Sure hope your keeping up your journal......but I guess the blog sort of serves that purpose. Can you give us some landmarks to get some idea how close you are to someplace we'd recognize. I've looked on the map but it's a little hard to tell how far it is from one place to another. G'pa is doing much better. I am only giving him IV's 3 times a day now instead of 5 times. One anti-biotic was every 8 hours around the clock. and the other one was 8 AM & 8 PM. Life is much easier now that it's only 3 times a day! Wish you could see the pictures I posted on FB. I picked a gallon of raspberries and most of them were the size of a quarter. Yummy! What kind of fruit can you get in China? Have been canning.....24 pints of salsa! Oh so good! Dill pickles, peach & raspberry jam, bread and butter pickles, peach jam and have tomatoes to do tomorrow! It's late and I need some sleep! Have to be up and funtioning by 7 AM! Love you !! G'ma