The Poncho Wearing, Bike Riding Locals

Unlike us Northwesterners, the Chinese are not as fond as pulling out the goretex rain jackets, rain boots and water resistant pants. In fact, since I have been here I haven't seen any rain boots and very few quality rain jackets. The Chinese prefer the umbrella, for which they have created contraptions to connect to their bikes in order to stay dry while riding. The Chinese also are quite fond of the poncho, but not normal sized ponchos, ridiculously large ponchos that are designed to fit over one's entire bicycle. Underneath these rain barriers people dress as they would for any other day. I see people dressed in suits, high heels, and dresses all braving the rain under their umbrellas or ponchos. This is the way of the Chinese when it rains. I remember experiencing these behaviors during our first rain in China, thinking these people were crazy as I ran around in my flipflops and tank tops, thinking I would never join these poncho wearing, umbrella carrying locals...
Well, today that all changed! After biking through multiple rains over the past week and sitting through several meals in wet, soggy jeans, I decided this gigantic poncho thing might actually make sense. So today after waking up to rain yet again, I mounted my bike and headed down to the corner store to buy a beautiful burgandy poncho.
I have already gotten my moneys worth out of it by cycling all over campus and all the way through town to the PSB. I am now a proud member of the poncho wearing, bike riding locals.

Today also brought the good news that I will be able to get a Visa (hence me biking across town) in time to meet Christy in Hong Kong next Wednesday! WOOHOO!

Embaressing moment of the day: Every once and a while I mix up my Chinese phrase, but todays case was probably the worst. While shopping and not paying attention to my surrounding I ran into a chinese girl who was quite startled by the intrution to her personal space bubble. In tending to quickly apologize I blurted out "Duoshoa qian?" (How much does it cost?) rather than "Dubuqi!" (I am sorry). This created a more awkward situation with nasty glares. Although I was rather startled at the time, I have been laughing about this incident all day long!

Things to Know When Traveling China

(The World's Largest Buddha in Leshan)

Things to Know When Visiting Leshan and Mt. Emei

(Or Any Chinese Tourist Destination)

• Do not expect the sunny weather you see in the pictures in guide books or on TV shows. These destinations are in fog all but a few days of the year.
  
• Be prepared for crowds and do not hesitate to shove your way through them. In order to see the Giant Buddha at Leshan you had to get in a line and then queue down a set of stairs. If I wasn't fallowing the crowd quick enough, the people behind me would quickly shove their way in front of me.


• Bring Toilet paper and be prepared for nasty, smelling, squatter style bathrooms. We have gotten used to the squatter styled toilets here, but some of the most horrendous bathrooms we come across are during our travels around the country and NONE of them ever have toilet paper.
• Always walk clockwise around Buddhist temples, stupas, and alters. It is important to know local customs such as this to be respectful to the local people and their traditions.


• Tour buses are TINY. Be prepared to have NO leg room.
  
• Take snacks with you. Locals can get by with selling snack foods for 3 times their actually price at these tour destinations because there is no competition. Also on an organized tour there is minimal control over choice of restaurant and food so you never know what or how much you will be served. Luckily, as a vegetarian, they always brought out an extra vegetarian dish for me so I was satisfied after most meals.
  
• "Wild" monkeys are actually quite tame. Beware, they will attack you even if they think you have food. They have no problem jumping out of no where onto your arm or climbing up your body just to get a tiny piece of food you may hold in your hand. I was never personally attacked, but my roommate Erin was climbed by a Monkey the instant we entered the monkey area. Fortunately she was not physically injured, just a bit traumatized. As long as you hold the food out to them and don't tease them, they should leave you alone.

(Blurry, but gets the idea across)



• As a white person you are a celebrity. People will constantly be coming up to you asking to get a picture taken with you. Just smile, stand next to them and put the peace sign up and they will be happy and grateful.

• While you are photographing the monkeys (or any tourist attraction) Chinese will be photographing you. Sometimes they are discrete about it, sometimes they are not. Some Chinese love taking pictures of groups of white people and will not necessary ask for your permission.


• Travel in a group for packing purposes. I only brought one light jacket for a very cold destination. However, I was always warm because there was always someone who was too hot that would give me his or her jacket, hat, mittens, etc. I must have had three different outfits on throughout the day.


• Know the phrase "Bu Yao!" This means "I don't want!" This should be said to all the vendors that will constantly be pestering you to buy their products. Saying this usually gets them to leave you alone.


• Jumping Pictures must be taken at every single stop along the tour. You also must be creative with this and do a pose in the air that relates to the current attraction. At the stupa on the top of Mt. Emei we did our "Enlightened Buddha" pose mid-air.



• Lastly, use every moment of freetime to explore your surroundings. You never know what you might find. On our free night in Leshan we went exploring and found a fountain full of half naked women...hmmm...the things they have in China!

Teaching Chinese Students

In the past 2 weeks I have had many opportunities to work with Chinese students of all ages, from 2 to college level. Each experience has been interesting and unique and very different from teaching in America.
As some as you may know, after talking to Kay and Thom (our site directors) about my desire to pursue event planning as a career they appointed me the official event coordinator of this program and social committee chairperson. My first big event was working with a local health club to organize a trip to DuJiangYan, a city severely damaged by the earthquake. My role in the planning process was organizing activities for 100 high school students at a temporary school for two hours! YIKES! The rest of the day was planned by Health and Power club and in traditional Chinese fashion involved changing details until the last minute. I received the correct schedule the night before we left and since the departure time was 50 earlier than I had originally told I group I had to quickly spread the word around--not the first time this type of thing has happened, Chinese are not know for doing much planning ahead.

The day started out at 8:10am at East gate and our entire group was on time! (probably the first time ever!) We boarded joined the health club members on the bus and took off in a 5 vehicle caravan to Dujianyan. Our first stop was at one of the 200 temporary housing compounds in the city. The area was made up of rows and rows of temporary buildings where 11, 000 people currently reside. I was impressed to hear this compound had been erected on May 19th, only 7 days after the earthquake. The city was very quick to provide housing for all of their homeless. It was great to hear how well China took care of their residents but it also felt a little disrespectful to be walking through these peoples community to look at them and their homes. After the visit we went to see the ancient irrigation system DuJiangYan is famous for. The system was developed to route water to Chengdu, but provide for an outlet during the wet season so there is no need for the dam. This system has been successfully working to provide water for Chengdu for over 2000 and was very minimally affected by the earthquake. It is quite a phenomenon and a tourist attraction in Sichuan Province.

Next we had lunch at a local restaurant and like most every meal we have here all the dishes were spicy and full of prickly ash (or flower pepper--A special spice unique to Sichuan province that numbs your mouth). The restaurant was right across from the school so we headed there next.

When we arrived at the school we once again were surrounded by the temporary buildings we had seen at the housing compound. We wandered around to get familiar with the area and quickly discovered we only had a mini amphitheater, basketball court, and about 100 feet of cement road way. The first problem was there was no field or classrooms like we had we promised, but we quickly adapted to what we had. Suddenly there were over 100 students setting up in the amphitheater and I was told told to go up and explain our activities. The next problem was the students spoke very little English and I speak very little Chinese. Once again I adapted and recruited a translator from the health and power group. I went up and explained we would have 7 activities: friendship bracelet making, martial arts, song singing, capture the flag, Frisbee, basketball, and cards. I introduced a leader for each activity from my group and asked the students to divide themselves up evenly between the 7 leaders. To my astonishment they actually did an amazing job dividing up very evening. Each group went off and started there activities.

Erin and Ashley were surrounded by 20 female students all wanting to know how to make bracelets and handled it really well.

Tyler and Joey had 20 students who were all eager and ready to play an American card game and they did an amazing job of dividing them up and teaching go fish.

Anna and Andy's Frisbee activity didn't go over so well and they ended up writing letters to the students who all came prepared with their English notebooks.

Lexi and Colin made a great use of space and played capture the flag in mud between the classroom buildings. All the students loved learning this new American game.

Tiara took the main stage and taught songs to the students using her guitar and ipod and speakers. They sang "You are My Sunshine" and "It's been a hard days night" which radiated among all the activities. After they were done learning those songs the students requested to hear songs such as Averil Lavine "Girlfriend" and Britney Spears. It was hilarious.

Luke met his match teaching martial arts or perhaps it was the students doing the teaching, regardless they appeared to all have a good time.

Dylan, Raeder and John took over on the basketball court to form a 3 man team that competed against many teams of Chinese students.

Overall, everyone, our group and the students, seemed to enjoy themselves and get sometime from the experience. I spent alot of time talking to the students and they told me about the earthquake and they told me about their earthquake experiences. They had been in their classroom when it hit and they recalled hiding under the desks. Their school was actually not destroyed in the earthquake, but was damaged so badly that it had to be torn down. They are in a temporary school now, but they pointed to where there new school was being built. All the students really wanted was to practice their English and make American friends. They were all so nice and just wanted to be our friends.

We celebrated the end of the day with a group picture of our group, the health and power club members and a few of the students from the school. There were so many cameras everyone was looking a different direction.

We then had a picture with all the people who helped make our visit to DuJiangYan possible, including the leaders of the Health and Power club, a DuJiangYan city official, Teachers from the school, Thom and Kay (our site directors) and me! Everyone was happy the visit went so well and benefited everyone

Since this experience I have also had the opportunity to volunteer teaching English at a kindergarten. The kids are ages 2-5 and absolutely crazy. 30 of these little animals were brought into a room smaller than my bedroom, sat down and told to repeat what I said. Of course being 2-5 year olds this is not exactly what they did and they were constantly running back and forth across the room and their teacher was constantly grabbing one child and moving he or she to another seat so he or she would stop chatting. Besides all the chaos we all had a lot of fun and I was able to teach them words such as mommy, daddy, grandpa, grandma and bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen using silly bear paper dolls and a house drawn on the board. I look forward to visiting these crazy youngsters again this week.

Looky! Looky! Cheap Cheap! It Tibet!

So it has now been a week since we returned from Tibet, but I have been procrastinating on blogging about it. Since I took sooooo many pictures in Tibet, I have decided I will share my adventures by a commentary on a few of my favorites.

This is the first view of Tibet we had as we left the airport! It was spectacular because we had not seen blue skies in weeks and they do not have mountains like this in Chengdu. Our flight to Lhasa was uneventful. I didn't sleep the night before I left because I decided to procrastinate on packing so I took a nice nap on the plane.

This was our first stop on our way into Lhasa. It was the first of many Buddhas we saw during our time there. It was also our first encounter with the many rich colors that you find all over Tibet in monasteries, in houses, and on the sidewalk. In this photo we all wearing white scarves, which were given to us when we boarded the bus. These scarves symbolize greetings and good wishes. They can also mean safe travels and are a sign of respect so we received them again as we left Tibet.

This is Erin, Lexi and I in front of Jokhang Temple, one of the biggest and most important monasteries in Lhasa. This temple is also surrounded by a huge market, where you can find just about anything you want. As a group we probably spent the majority of our time in Lhasa at this market and shopping was a common theme of the trip! I got all my Christmas shopping done! YAY! At this market it was essential to bargain and as the shop owners only knew few English words, such as "Looky, Looky, Cheap, Cheap," I got very good at my Chinese numbers. I also mastered a few bargaining phases, my favorite being "Tai gui le!" which means "Too expensive." It is fun to say and sometimes I would forget to even ask how much something was and immediately resort to using it. I got some wierd looks when that happened.

It was very interesting interacting with the shop owners. They would do anything to get you to look at there booth even if that meant grabbing your arm and pulling you in. Also to prove their items were genuine they resorted to methods such as scratching beads on the hard concrete ground, or banging metal items on the ground repeatedly saying "It Tibet! It Tibet!"

On our first full day in Tibet we went to the Polata Palace. This is the former residence of the Dali lama and is full of temples and Buddhas. It also used to be a monastery as well.This is in front of one of the temples in the Potala Palace. This was the traditional architecture that we saw on most buildings in Tibet. The black tapestries were also very common and found in all colors and with different significant symbols. Also notice we are all wearing scarves. Tibet was a little chillier than Chengdu and scarves were sold at every other booth in the market so they became our group uniform.Here I am all bundled up in one of my new hats in front of a temple at Drak Yalpa Hermitage. I am still not entirely sure how a hermitage is different than a monastery, but I think it has something to do with location. This hermitage is located up in the mountains about an hour outside of Lhasa. As you can see all the temples we went to were decorated with rich colors in very intricate patterns. It was beautiful!This is a stupa at the hermitage. Stupas are a very holy type of burials that important monks and lamas are buried in. Whenever you come across a stupa you must walk around it clockwise. In this picture you can see Colin holding money. It is customary at temples to give small denominations of money to each Buddha. It is mostly locals and Buddhist that do this, but Colin decided to try out the custom as well.

After wandering through the temples at the hermitage a few of us decided to climb up the mountain above the buildings. It was a steep climb and involved a little slipping and sliding. However, we knew others had been there before us because the mountain was covered in prayer flags.

After four days in Lhasa full of visiting Monasteries and shopping, we took a leisurely trip to Guiantsie. We drove through beautiful mountains. At one of our stops I got to ride a yak and pretend to be a Tibetan for a few minutes. It was quite a hoot!

We had lunch right next to this beautiful lake. This is turquoise lake and is the most sacred Buddhist lake in all of Tibet. After this picture was taken Lexi decided she wasn't satisfied with just wading in this lake and decided to go for a little swim to soak up more of the sacredness (or rather she slipped on a rock and fell in).

Our day of travel was full of animals. At another one of our stops there were baby lambs for tourists to hold for a small fee. Someone in the group paid and we all got a chance to hold this adorable little sheepy!

In Guiantse we went to Baiju temple. This monastery is famous for its giant stupa with 180 temples. It was at least 4 stories high and this picture is Lexi, Tyler and I on the 3 story.

From Guiantz we traveled to Shigantze and visited one last monastery. Ta Shi Lhun Po Monastery is home of the biggest sitting buddha which is made of gold and copper. This monastery is also the home of the Panchen Lama and the Stupas of the 5th-10th Panchen Lama. This temple probably had some of the most beautiful Buddhas we saw the whole trip, but it was also about the 6th monastery we visited so we were quite monasteried out by the time we arrived.

The drive back to Lhasa was a little shorter and had less stops. This was taken at one of the stops and shows how beautiful the scenery of Tibet is. Everywhere we looked we saw mountains, blue skies and bodies of water. An interesting fact about the roads through the mountains is that every vehicle that passes through must stop at checkpoints to be given a time to get to the next checkpoint. If you arrive before your given time you are fined. This policy was set in place after there were large amounts of accidents on these roads with the intention of slowing down drivers. Due to this policy we would always have to make stops right before checkpoints because we would be too far ahead of schedule

The food in Tibet was amazing. Being so close to India, Indian food was very prevalent. I got my fill of curry, spinach paneer, and naan. Tibetans are also very good at making momo (dumplings) and I tried many different types. This picture was taken at one of our favorite restaurants in Lhasa called "Snowland Restuarant." I went here at least three times and lived on the naan featured in the pictures. Yaksong (our yak friend) also makes his debut here. Lexi bought him to remind her of all the Yaks we saw in Tibet and he has been on many fabulous adventures since.