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Published: February 3rd 2008
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My Beijing Home
Comfortable and quiet Dear Friends and Family,
After a 13 hour (!) flight and no sleep at all we arrived January 31 and were all met by our host families. Big bouquets of flowers, photo op.etc, ! My family is a Dad and Mom and their 15-16 year old daughter- so sweet and cute! The Dad is Dai Guijiang, Mom is Chen Feng Yan, and daughter is Dai Chen Chun. They do not speak English well, but much better than my Chinese! So far we have been able to communicate well enough.
My family owns a car, and both parents work in the Beijing People's Art Theater. His job is costume design and hers is set design! (How cool is that-!!??!!) She has been around the USA with a performance of Teahouse of the August Moon and he was in Tokyo with Lion King last year. In March we will see a performance of Hamlet in English at their theater. He showed me drawings and a book with costume swatches for all the characters. Their apartment is about a 1/2 hour drive southeast of the school on the second floor of a building in a gated complex outside the 4th ring road,
another view
My Beijing Home 3 br, 2 bath, very comfortable. Large screen tv in sunken lr, wireless internet. -all the comforts of home though the bed is a bit harder than I am used to but I am getting used to that. They have "labeled" many items in their home in Chinese and English to help me learn: (air conditioner, wine cupboard, refrigerator.) The commute to school, when that starts on the 25th, will be 1/2 hour to 40 minutes by car in the morning (arriving by 7:00 am!) and a somewhat swifter bus and train trip home in the late afternoon. I have already ridden the Beijing bus and found it excellent in every way. (fare is all electronic!) The parents' schedules are such that they work at the theater (except Monday) so Chenchun and I will have the evenings together frequently. She is delightful company and I am already holding her hand in Chinese style as we walk down the street very comfortably.
We all know and love the delicious and varied Chinese dishes available everywhere. I have been treated to plenty of those and even practiced MAKING the traditional Chinese dumplings (jiao zi) yesterday with the grandmother (lao lao) of
Me with my Host Family
In front of The Beijing People's Art Theater, where they work my host family! Breakfast with my host family consists of coffee (whew!) oranges, (yum) and what I can only describe as spam sandwiches with butter on white bread. Those are tastier to me than the dish we had this morning: called tang yuan, it is a dish served in hot water in a soup bowl, consisting of globs of sticky dough that surrounds a teaspoon or so of peanut butter! These come in frozen packets and I see lots of them in the freezer! 😱
Yesterday we drove to the north to see the Olympic stadium and complex under construction. These buildings are mind boggling but even more so are the unbelievable number of skyscrapers we passed along the one hour journey north, (with a stop at IKEA for shopping and lunch (!) I had heard there are 175 skyscrapers under construction in Beijing alone right now but it took seeing just a small percentage of these to pretty much overwhelm me. The air here is crisp and cool and fine to breath and the sun is shining. In spite of reports of big snowstorms in the south east none is here.
I mentioned making jiao zi with
Welcome dinner party photo
On the first night, with family and friends the my family's "lao lao" or grandmother last night. Her home is in a "hu tong" which means an old street, near the Jingshan School and the center of the city. Chenchun whispered "My grandmother's home is not a good home, but it is filled with love." as we were arriving there, and what she meant is that unlike their sparkling new apartment complex this it is the old style Chinese home: quaint, never remodeled or repainted, tiny rooms. It was CHARMING, and the full of love part was very obvious! Many of her numerous grandchildren make her home theirs partially or visit regularly. The central location (and the love!) makes it perfect for that.
Today was a quiet day, until Spring festival fireworks could be heard after dark. It's weird to see the weather report with a map of China displayed behind the metorologist. Tonight a Chinese version of American Idol was playing on TV...it was not necessary to know a single word in Chinese to fully understand everything that was going on. It's EXACTLY the same!
I have included some photographs you may enjoy. More of these to come:
Bob will be arriving on Wednesday.
The Jingshan School
Teachers' Meetings February 21 and 22, 2008. Classes begin February 25, 2008. Our hotel is across the street from my host family's theater, and on Saturday we will depart with six of our seven American students and my co-teacher Brian, his wife Nancy, and their children Hannah and Christian on a vacation to Kunming and Lijiang. Should be wonderful!
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Jason Holzheimer
non-member comment
Does it get any cooler?....
...Than Mom blogging from China? Well, perhaps the Pats winning their 4th Superbowl in 7 years. But that's about the only thing that could compete. Looks amazing, Mom. Miss you. Lovejjjjj