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Published: March 17th 2007
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Getting Ready for the New Year
Businesses do a lot to get ready for the new year. This is the year of the pig, so you see pigs everywhere. Hello all,
Not as much news this week. I really opened a vein on
the last email. Ely and I are doing well.
Food last week:
We started eating a lot of oranges. They are really
cheap, about 8 cents a piece. We also started eating
Watermelon. There are lots of fruits that don't look
familiar here. I suppose we will try some of those in
the future. Apparently the fruit is horribly out of
season, and we think it is really good. I am excited
to try the fruit when it is in season.
Sweet and sour pork--
Our fall-back food. There is a restaurant near our
flat where we go often. It tastes pretty similar to
the dish back home--a little bit better though.
Grilled Cheese---everything American has never tasted
so good. We have made this often.---Cheese is super
expensive here. Not something that is used locally. It
has to be imported (and taxed). 12 pieces of
"artificial cheese food" cost $2.50. It was worth
every penny.
Pigs feet. This will haunt me for days to come. My
boss, and his boss, took Ely and I out for dinner. We
went to
a restaurant that had both Western and Chinese
food. We opted for Chinese. A terrible mistake. The
first couple of dishes were ok. Sweet and Sour Pork, A
desert corn, rice crispy like cake, fried tofu, tofu
soup (not so good). However, the last dish took us for
a loop. Pig's feet. There were 4 pigs feet, and 4
people. Obviously, Ely and I dug right in, trying not
to be disrespectful. Normally when you order pigs
feet, they give you a plastic glove so that you can
really get after it. This wasn't the case. Our bosses
went right after it, chowing down using only their
chopsticks. It is very difficult for us to eat it with
chopsticks. My boss suggested that I just use my hand,
so I did. Once again, a mistake. There is not really
any meat on a pig's foot, just fat, skin, tendons,
ugggg. I went in for it, picturing that it was a
fantastic rack of ribs from a steakhouse back home.
After the first bite of skin/fat, this fantasy was
gone, and all I was left with was a terrible
nightmare. I then proceeded to rip off the bones, or
metacarpals, or feet, so that I could try to get some
meat. None was to be found. I was working/trying to
eat furiously. All that I had eaten was the 1 large
piece of fat skin. By this time, both our bosses were
done. They had taken everything to the bone, without
use of hands---only chopsticks. I worked for 5 more
minutes, acted like I was biting something (really
just phantom meat), until I retired. I looked over to
find that Ely's foot was chowed down as well. I later
found out that she secretly hid the large fat skin
piece in here soup bowl. Man do I love her. She is so
sneaky, and smarter than I.
That is about all I have to say about Pig's feet. I am
not sure if they are any better where we are from. I
will leave it up to someone else to do the research.
Yesterday I was alone for most of the day. For some
reason we got different schedules this week. Not a
whole lot of fun. We only have 1 day off together. I
talked with our boss and he will try harder in the
future to give us identical schedules (we will see).
Anyways, yesterday I went out alone. I took a bus and
rode it until the last stop. I was expecting that I
could just stay on the bus and it would loop back to
our home. This wasn't the case. So I got off the bus
and attempted to find my way back home. Along the way,
I found several of the famous gardens. The most famous
garden is called, The Humble Administrator's Garden.
This is a large tourist site. There were loads of
buses, food vendors, and carriage drivers. These
carriages aren't by horse, just a man with a bike.
I felt like a celebrity. Maybe some of these buses
were coming from more indigenous or rural areas, I
don't know, but 2 people asked to have their picture
taken with me. Apparently in some of the village many
people have never seen a white person, or blond hair.
The vendors and carriage drivers always expect white
people to be wealthy. They really heckle me sometimes.
The only word they know is "hello, hello, hello." That
is pretty much the end of our conversation. I
sometimes say "boo-yao" which means something like "I
don't want, or I don't need." It usually gets them to
stop.
So I walked for about 5 miles yesterday I think. I
felt adventurous.
The Spring Festival is starting soon. The Chinese
celebrate the lunar new year, I think sometime around
Feb 18th. This festival is kind of like our winter
vacation. It is for adults too. Ely and I get 2 weeks
paid holiday, which is nice. Apparently some foreign
teachers have told us to ask for more, and that they
were getting 6 weeks off. I don't think we have a lot
of pulling power just yet.
It is just a huge party. Fireworks, drinking, lights,
wonderfully sculpted gardens, and many other great
things I am sure I have never heard of.
Most people return to their home towns. Luckily, our
boss asked us to come home with him, where he is
offering us "lots of beer," free food, and free
vacancy. Pretty hard to turn down. I have heard that
many families serve 12-16 course meals some nights.
How exciting. He lives in the Fu'jian? province, which
is south of Suzhou about 12 hours by bus. He says it
is much warmer and very mountainous. Ely and I are
quite excited. Our round-trip bus ticket will cost
$90, however. We plan on leaving around Feb. 12.
Tonight we are going back to Harry's Bar. We met some
of the Filipino band members on the bus the other day.
They said that they were impressed with my singing and
that I should "jam" with them some time. Ha! so I
wasn't that bad. Ely thinks they were just being
courteous. I still plan on redeeming myself sometime
in the future.
On Tuesday's, Harry's has a special deal for teachers.
Half off or something. Then we will go next door to a
Western-style restaurant where they have 10 yuan
($1.25 Taco Tuesdays. It has a dash of home in it I
guess.
Tomorrow we are meeting with our Realtor. She has more
places to show us (we might move). Our school gives us
3000 RMB ($375) to live per month. The place we live
at now costs 2700. We get to keep the difference. Our
realtor showed us a couple of places last week where
we could live. One was 1300. It was closer to downtown
and in a little bit of a sketchier area. We would also
have dial-up internet if we lived here. The next place
was 2400. It was downtown, perfect location. It was
pretty run down. The area around it looked like a
slum. The third place was in a high rise, near
downtown. It was on the 18th floor. Everything modern.
Everything new, nicer than our place here with a great
view. It was 3000. We hope to see a couple more places
tomorrow before we make our decision. Apparently you
can even barter with these people for how much you
will pay in rent, so it should be pretty interesting.
The last time we went with her, the driver got a
ticket for going the wrong way down a 1 way street.
Yikes!!!.
I will try to keep these interesting. Please share any
thoughts from home with us. And forward my letters on
to anyone I have left out if you think they would be
interested in hearing about our adventures.
Sincerely,
Aaron and Ely.
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