Xichang wasn't as remote as we thought!

We went to Xichang! What a wonderful time! We thought we were headed to a tiny little village with nothing there, but turns out it was so fun and charming and met so many nice people. It was awesome. Click -->here<-- to see it on the map!

Since it was the Labor Day holiday last week we all went to go hang together. I think I have mentioned in one of my previous posts how crazy travel during holidays are in China, but I would just like to reemphasize this via a brief anecdote: there were so many people in line that me and vicki missed our train! We got to the station about an hour yearly, like normal, but we just couldn't fight our way to the front of the line to get our tickets in time. We were so upset! There were literally lines like I have never seen at the train station, and those lines are ordinarily plenty long! You live and learn: next time we will make sure to be early on a holiday. We hopped the next train in the evening.

So we left around 7pm, and arrived in Xichang at about 3am. We got the "hard bed" so I could sleep most the way there.  Xichang is located in Sichuan province in southwestern China, in the Liangshan Yi Tribe Autonomous reigon. Liangshang means "cool mountain" in Chinese. As you walk around, you can see people in traditional dress, and doing traditional rituals. My friend +Shayn Stephens explained to us that there are many social problems in Liangshan: drug use and crime like robbery is unfortunately widespread. She told us to be careful not to step on needles when we were walking on an unpaved road. She said some of these problems come from the resentment of the Yi people towards the Han Chinese for their takeover, and that they feel like their disobedience is almost a form of payback for their hardships. I'm not sure what the initial situation was when they took over, but I can imagine that it wasn't pretty.

Anyways, most crime occurs after dark, so we just took care to make it back to the hotel in a timely manner. We ate Xichang style BBQ, went to the ancient city, bartered at the street market, and saw a traditional ritual performed by a shaman! We met Shayn's coworkers, celebrated Jacob's birthday with cake, played majiang, and made it back to our overnight train on time! Vicki, Shayn and I had girl talk until late into the night, and (tried) to help Jacob on his online jazz test. Overall, it was just fantastic.

Take a look at all the fun we had:

Slow on the update: moving is hard.

Dear Everyone:

Greetings! I've taken a small hiatus recently to basically get my stuff together. Moving and working every day and getting used to everything has been a bit of a process, but I am finally feeling ready to get back in action.

Moving to Nanjing was such a breeze. I was immediately welcomed into a community of students who were my age, my country, and of similar interests. We ate western food and hung out at western bars and listened to jazz and went to class and it was basically just like back home. It was wonderful! I feel like I can say I avoided culture shock for a good six months!

But ever since I moved to Kunming, things haven't been as cozy. I think the most obvious difference was that my group of friends split up! I have lamented about this endlessly, but it was really hard to let everyone go! In Kunming, I have two classmates who are wonderful, but they unfortunately work at a different office than I do, and live quite a ways away, about an hour by bus. We haven't done much hanging out, just because of sheer distance.

The obvious cure for this would to go and make some friends (duh!). My coworkers have become the best friends I have here. They have been really sweet and fun to be around. They help me correct my Chinese, I help them with their English, and they take me out to eat at cool places sometimes. I feel really lucky that my coworkers turned out to be so welcoming and open to sharing and talking with me.

Meeting other people outside of work has been sort of hard though. Like in the US, I feel like it is not uncommon to meet people and have a genuine connection. Its different here though. First of all, less people talk to you, because they just don't think you speak the same language. Second, if they do try to talk to you, they are probably just a dude trying to flirt. Just, no. Third, I find that a lot of cool girls I meet are just passing through, traveling. It's fun to finally feel connected, but a bummer to have to just say, "kay bye" so much. And lastly, I find a lot of people are weirded out by my foreignness. It's a bigger divide than a lot of idealists would like to think: "We're all just people, right man?" But it really is more than that.

Another obvious cure would be to be with the friends that I've got! This has proven really useful. Travel here is SO convenient, and so having a get together with friends from Xichang and Chengdu has been really easy, and has really made me feel so much better. We are all converging on Xichang this week again for the May Holiday to be together and check out where our friend Shayn lives. I am really looking forward to that.

Anyways, I am beginning to feel a bit lighter and open than before. I'm just a little slow on the uptake, okay! You can expect some more regular posts from me in the future, I'm looking forward to putting out some good articles. Cheers everyone.

Vacation, on my own

I am so glad it's vacation. I am calling for a moment of silence here to celebrate:

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No but really this is awesome. I have been off school for about a week now, and not much has happened since then. Hung out with some friends, watched a whole lot of movies, ate a hamburger...

Most of my friends have split for wherever in the world they call home, their next vacation destination. And today I realized that for the past month or more I have been absolutely surrounded, almost 24 hours a day, with friends. Between the Flagship office, hanging out at Craft Beer, and meeting up with people for meals, this entire semester has just been constant face time with my awesome awesome classmates. I think that today was the most time I have spent on my own in weeks, and it's only been like 20 hours.

It's coming as sort of a shock to me. I used to spend all sorts of time on my own. I would just like walk around and go places and study and eat, just all on my own, for like days. I never found it strange until today, when suddenly my usual pals have left, and my life has swung back to its polar opposite. Its like this recent past has put the farther past into better perspective, but all that does is leaves me here in the present, wishing for either my friends back by my side or the independence that I used to be able enjoy.

This is a good thing though. It's time for everyone to go and take care of themselves, take a break. That's true for me, for sure. My apartment is a filthy mess, I'm moving out in the middle of February, and I've got a half-read novel that needs my attention. I'm melancholy, but I get it. And I cannot wait for the next time that we can all be reunited--that goes to everyone: my classmates, my family, and friends back home. Now that it's vacation and I'm without a set schedule, I am feeling more deeply the fact that time stretches on for a long long time, and that we really do have a lot of time, and I have faith that during my personal little slice of eternity, we will meet again, and it will be wonderful.

But for now, I'll be missing you, yes, I do mean you, my dear friend. Thanks for reading, peace and love ~

Thanksgiving in China, or Life is a Crisp Apple

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Wishing so bad that I was back in the states eating turkey and stuffing with everyone right now. Boy, I do love Thanksgiving. Usually, at some point during the meal, I get to mention what I am thankful for, but since I have no turkey dinner, I will just mention it here! But before I do that, let me tell you a funny story.

On Thanksgiving day, China time, I went to class, and took a test, and then came back starving, and like wolfed down a whole bowl of hot clay bowl mixed rice in like five minutes flat. I didn't even think about it being Thanksgiving for like even a second while I ate dinner! Later while talking to a friend, she asked me what I was going to do for Thanksgiving dinner, and it dawned on me that I have just zoomed right on through it! It was so odd, do think that I had actually forgotten to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Anyways, despite the fact that I am a horrible person for forgetting thanksgiving, I was able to talk to my whole family that morning, which was such a treat. They called me on Skype, and I got to say hi to my mom and dad, sister, uncle, grandpa, and great-aunt. Very cool.

And now, I'd like to take a second to share all the things that I am thankful for. So many things, where do I start?

My family! How lucky I am am to have such an amazing group of people that I get to share my life with! How lucky I am that my parents love and support me enough to put me through school and let me go halfway around the world, and who help me navigate all sorts of stupid problems that I get myself into. Check bounces in a foreign country--call Dad. How to make pie dough--call Mom. Feeling tired and/or confused, don't know what to do, and need a pep talk--call my parents. For times to marvel in wonder at the universe--call my sister. Haha, it makes me sound like a baby, but I just really love my family, and I feel so blessed by them.

I feel grateful for the getting the opportunity to study and get an education, especially here in Nanjing. This experience has been absolutely 100% positive, empowering, eye-opening, fun, and challenging. I feel like my Chinese is improving, I am making wonderful friends and connections, and that I am getting to know a part of myself. Its as if this world is my home, and I am simply getting to know areas of my home that I have had yet to explore. I cannot express how important a role education has played in shaping me as a person, and is such a gift.

I am grateful for my healthy body. I wake up in the morning happy, pain free, fully abled. My body lets me walk to the bus station, lets me read and write papers far later into the night than is reasonable, lets me stay up late and have fun, and still doesn't keel over. I did recently discover that I have a cyst in my liver which I am being urged to handle as swiftly as possible, but oddly enough, these days I feel better than ever, and I feel like this cyst thing is just unimportant in light of all the good things that I have going for me. Maybe not the most practical though, but hey, I'm just saying.

I am thankful for my sweetest, nicest boyfriend, Will, who is working his butt off in SF, doing all manner of jobs, and films, and acting companies. I just couldn't be any happier for you baby. I am grateful that you are doing so well. I am grateful you haven't keeled over yet from all of your 18hr work days!

In short, I am grateful to be alive, to feel the cold air on my face in the morning, to get tongue-tied speaking bad Chinese, to dance Zumba class with all the onlookers looking-on, to drag my ass out of bed every morning and to the office, to eat delicious delicious chinese breakfast burrito that may or may not be cooked all the way. This life just couldn't be any more delicious, like biting into a cool crisp apple and crunching it all up with juice running down your fingers. I say, so what if it's getting a little sticky, to hell with it all, because this apple is just so delicious! And this apple is my life. So thanks Mom and Dad for having me, thanks SF State for teaching me, thanks to China for taking me in, thanks to my friends for loving me, and thanks to the universe for letting me exist here, right now.

Love, Rachel.

光棍节--Happy Belated Single's Day, Everyone!

"Being single is eating wontons in the cafeteria, alone."

Hello Everyone!

To all of my single readers, I would like to wish you a happy Singles Day, and that you soon are able to not be single!

On November 11th, 11/11, this holiday is celebrated by singles across China, popularized by the number of one's in the date. You are supposed to eat 4 油条, "oil sticks," a fried donut type thing shaped like the number one, to signify the date, along with a baozi for the dash in the middle. Singles day in 2011 was especially well received, I'm sure that you can imagine.

If you are single, then people will send you all manner of text messages to wish you a happy holiday and that they hope you will be able to not be single soon. I thought that this phrase in Chinese was particularly funny- 早日脱光, "early day take off your single-ness." A friend in one of my classes is single, and she said she was plagued all day by texts from friends sending their wishes to her. Singles can sort of celebrate being single, but it seems more sad in a way, more like a reminded that you haven't yet found a 对象, a target for marriage.

Another aspect to singles day is, like all great holidays, consumerism! Some people have asserted that this holiday was only created by companies so that they could have Singles Day related shopping promotions. Online shopping websites, ahem, Taobao, 淘宝, have big promotions starting at midnight the day of. Some of our roommates here I heard took advantage of this to pick up some stuff, haha.

Anyways, just wanted to share this silly holiday with you all. Cheers!

Wonderful trip to Hangzhou!

Hi all!

Last time I posted, I was complaining about having class on Sunday, but now I feel very refreshed from a really nice vacation. Betty and I had a lot of fun, walked around the lake, took a boat ride, ate delicious dinners, went shopping...

The only hitch we had was with the hotel. Apparently it is common for some hotels to be unable to accept foreign guests, and the hotel that we originally booked ahead of time online was one of these. After several calls with CTrip, the online booking agency for Asia that we used, everything seemed to be sorted out; once we actually arrived at the hotel though, they weren't willing to let us stay. Good old China though, usually if you just refuse to leave and make a big enough fuss, someone will help you out, so, that is exactly what I did (in a nice way of course). Eventually, the workers relented, and helped us out by finding a way around the regulations, and we had a place to stay! So just a word to my fellow travelers, Pod Inn 布丁酒店 is not recommended for foreigners ;)

I took some great photos! I decided that I don't like the way photos display on my blog though, so I posted the on my photo bucket! Please take a look by clicking here. I hope you enjoy!

-R

Going to school on Sundays--Seriously??

Right at the start of the semester here, we have had quite a few days off. We had the Mid-Autumn Festival, with a four day break, and now it is National Day, with a whopping seven day break. But in China, when you have a break, a thing that makes sense is that you should make up for the days that you had off, right?? RIGHT??

When I first heard that we would be required to make up all Fridays off by holding class on SUDAY instead, I was surprised, to say the least. First of all, there is the logical thing of, why would we make up only Friday's class, and not do anything about Thursday's missed class? And what about all of the other days we miss for longer breaks? All of this Friday class make-uping has actually given us a surplus of Friday class sessions, and now we've attended it two times more than classes on other days of the week, and a week of attending class six days in a row!

And then the little anglo-christian deep inside of me was like--"You can't do that, Sunday is the day of rest!" I felt it so clearly, sort of like a violation of the sanctity of Sunday or something. I have not considered myself a religious person for a long time now, so it must have been something left over from way back in my childhood, when my family would go to church.

When we asked our program why the class schedule is arranged this way, we got a few different answers. It turns out that the holiday schedule is different every year, and that schedule does not get published until after the school year starts; this makes it impossible to know exactly how many class hours you will have when you pay your tuition. So that whole making up class things is so that you can what you paid for as far as class hours go. But there is another questions too, which is why isn't the holiday schedule the same every year, and why does it take so long to get it published?

 But its not just schools that are affected: government organizations are making up the days too. That means that thousands of people are living with uncertainty of their vacation time, and without the benefit of a fixed schedule. This creates problems as far as traveling, and creates a rush to buy tickets for the holiday. For example, if you're going to visit relatives, you have to either take a gamble on the dates to buy tickets before the rush comes on, before the dates are announced; or wait until the dates are announced and fight for train tickets and hotels with the rest of 'em. I have a classmate who decided to try and get plane tickets before the travel rush, but he got his dates wrong and had to miss a week of class because of it.

These are just the facts of life in China: waiting on government bureaucracy, odd regulation... No one bats an eyelash when this type of thing happens. Most people just shrug and say "It's just China," and get on with it. And it is a rather trivial matter...

Anyways, food for thought! Happy National Day everyone! Cheers~