Guest Entry from my Sister

Another Little Canadian’s thoughts on Beijing

I am very much a list person, so here is a list of the highlights and interesting tidbits from the Dignin’s first Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year) in China.

· People (and animal) watching: This was one of my favorite things to do while in Beijing. I was greatly rewarded for my wide-eyes: a poodle donning baby blue pajamas and catching a ride in a bike basket, countless children with butt-less pants, children using parts of pagodas as slides, a mule that likes apples, a guy collecting Valentines blessings for his girlfriend, a flock of sheep in the woods and plenty of ladies in leather shorts.

Apparently people-watching is cross-cultural, as many Beijingers thought we were interesting (or more likely funny-looking) enough to watch and photograph. One man even took video of us eating at a restaurant on his phone and texted to share the laughter. And I thought we were doing alright with our chopsticks.

· The GREATEST part: My favorite part of the trip (besides seeing Steve, of course) was the Great Wall. It was so majestic and old and impressive and steep and…great. We even got to see it decorated with snow (after the Chinese government shot chemicals in the clouds to make it snow to alleviate the drought). Steve has some great pictures on his Picasa site.

· Security: Every subway stop has an x-ray scanner machine that you have to put your bags through (I can’t even imagine such a scenario in Chicago). The morning after New Years the man watching the bags go through was definitely sleeping on the job, literally. He didn’t even stir when we sent our suspicious-looking bags through.

· Fireworks: Everywhere. Everyday. In the streets. On the sidewalks. Under cars. If the purpose was to scare away evil spirits in the new year…I don’t think the people of Beijing have anything to worry about. They did add a festive feel to our visit though.

· Steve’s new abode: I loved getting to see Steve’s apartment (and neighborhood and school as well) so that now when he talks about different places, I can picture it. His new apartment is pretty great. The best feature of Steve’s new place might be the light fixtures. The living room has this twisty-ended chandelier and Steve’s room has a moon and star made of wires. It casts some terrific shadows on the pastel pink walls.

· Food: Ordering food was always an adventure. Twice the wait staff recruited an English-speaking diner to help us order. Some favorites included a haystack pile of potatoes, spicy green beans, this swirly bread that tasted like a croissant, sweet potato chip-thingys, this crunchy wrap with egg and onion from the cart on the corner, and warm milk tea. I have yet to feel any regret for passing on the squirming scorpions on a stick.

We took the noodle class at the Black Sesame Kitchen. If you happen to be in Beijing and enjoy cooking I would highly recommend it. The afternoon featured four types of noodles and two tasty sauces, the chance to play around in the kitchen (But not with the cleavers. You don’t play around with cleavers), views of my dad in an apron and a chef named Chairman Wang would offered a coveted “very good” from time to time.

· Toilets: There were public restrooms all over. The facilities offered varied in amenities offered (toilet paper or not, Western toilet or squatty potty, barriers between users or not) and odor. But it was nice they were there, especially after enjoying some of that delicious milk tea.

· REALLY old buildings: We saw scores of historical sites (the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, the Drum and Bell Towers, the Ming tombs and Llama Temple). While they all had their own features, purposes and importance, they most impressive part of all of these sites was how OLD they are. They gave us a little window into ancient Chinese culture. And since it was festival time, we got to see lots of people making their offerings at the temples.

Obviously this list doesn’t describe every moment of our Beijing adventure (although you might be thinking it couldn’t possibly longer by this point). I’ll just conclude by saying if you happen to have a chunk of time off work and some bonus money for a plane ticket, Beijing is a brilliant city and Steve is a great host!

Lunar New Year

Once again I realize that I am terrible at writing here consistently. After break I have decided to make it my new goal to write at least one blog post a week. That said, It is Lunar New Year Break and my family is visiting me here in the great ol’ city of Beijing.

I have been very busy trying to show them all the cool places. I am not going to say too much about that now because I have asked my sister to guest blog an entry when she gets home so I will leave the detail to her and her notebook.

My dog was supposed to be kenneled but after a day of not eating or drinking anything the vet called a family friend who has taken her home and gotten her eating and drinking again. Thank you so much. I really worry about my little puppy even though I know she is not a puppy any more.

I also received the news that a beloved member of our church has passed away. My prayers and condolences go out to the Peck family.

Here is a link to my pictures from Lunar New Year Break:

https://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/LunarNewYear2011#

End of the semester

well, the end of the semester approaches and I have not written anything since I was home for Christmas. I have to say that though I have been busy, I have not really been busy with things that are that exciting so I will sum up everything important from the last month here.

School has been the largest part of my time (it being my job and all). For the most part I have been really pleased with the work my students are doing and I am looking forward to working with them in the new year (lunar new year). I am having my Chemistry students write a formal lab as their final project. I think this is a really important skill and many (I think all but one) have never done it before. Other then collecting that and the final test tomorrow, I am done with all my work for the semester so I am taking some time to relax and enjoy my new apartment.

That brings me to topic 2. I moved apartments. When my roommate’s girlfriend started to moving in after Christmas break, I decided it was time to move out. I asked a coworker if he was interested, I looked around and finally signed on a place this past Friday. It is a little further from the school but it is right on a subway line.

My family is coming to Beijing over the lunar new year break so I will finally go to a bunch of the touristy places I have missed out on so far.

There was something I was going to add to this but…oh well. Hopefully I will have exciting things to post later this week.

Home for Christmas

I booked a flight home for Christmas in early October and there were many points that the gleaming light of that trip was the only thing getting me through the stress. Then recently I began to get worried about all the passport issues I have been having. Since my last post, things changed again with my passport instead of canceling the visa application when I showed them I needed to leave, they expedited it meaning I did not get my passport until 4:30 Thursday (less then a day before I departed). I spent most of this week stressing about it and trying to talk the trip down in case I did not get it.

Now, I have cleared customs and am on my flight from San Francisco to MSP. I am so excited. I have been missing MN so much the last few weeks. I have all of my trip home booked up. I will spend Christmas at home before heading down to Iowa to celebrate my Grandmothers 80th Birthday (Happy Birthday Grandma, I have missed you and I love you and am so excited to see you in a few days). Following that, it is out to WAPO for the reunion. I of course think that WAPO should sue Disney World for the rights to be called “The Happiest Place on Earth” so that will be great. Round out the week with a show at the Old Log and New Years Eve.

I fly back to Beijing on the 1st so it is a quick turn around but sitting on this plane, not having slept in 21 hours, I already think it was worth it.

My family is coming to Beijing for Lunar New Year and I am looking forward to doing some planning for that as well as some lesson planning and grading during all the down time this week.

Hopefully I will see all of my readers (except for the random hits I get from Korea) this week but if I don’t I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Also, to Val and Evan, Congratulations on the wedding next week; sorry that I cannot make it out to Georgia to celebrate with you.

Rent and such…

So this morning I woke up early because my landlord was coming over to collect rent. He is a nice guy but it was a bit painful because over here you pay rent 3 months at a time. On the up side he consolidated our payments and had us pay him for gas and water for the last 3 months. I was really pleased with how little that was. So far I have paid about $50 total for utilities (Gas, Water and Electric). For 3 months I feel like that is good.

Lets see, the internet in my apartment has been out for a week so I have ended up spend a lot more time at school because I cannot work at home. I have started taking Chinese classes at school because I felt like I was progressing too slowly on my own. I am going 2 times a day and then am doing private tutoring 2 times a week. I am starting to feel a little more confident after just a week.

I had kind of a bad week with some parts getting better at the end and others getting worse. I got told that I might not get my passport back in time to go home for Christmas (it is at the police station getting my visa changed) but then I got the great news yesterday that they think I should get it on the 19th after expediting the process. Another bad thing that happened, while grading homework I found that for one of my students, copying someone else’s homework was just too tedious and cumbersome so he had broken into the copy room and made a photocopy of someone’s homework that he then turned in for my to grade. I was very upset and gave both students Zeros on the assignment. I began to realize just how widespread this cheating problem is yesterday when I was giving a test. I have 2 versions of the test because my room is so small I can not separate. Every other student has a different test. Yesterday I watched as one student held up their test so that another student could copy their answers and then trade tests with the person next to them to complete his test. I could not believe what I was seeing but I decided not to stop them and then I gave them all zeros for academic dishonesty.

I am getting observed in that class next week which could be interesting. Anyways, I am going to continue preping for my lessons next week so I can do well (students willing) on my observation.

In Case you Thought I was Dead

Well, I feel like I have not had the time to post anything here in a long time. I thought of it today after I got a little ahead on lesson planning and thought I would put up at least something. When I got into the program I use to write my blogs I found one that I had started about a month ago that was half finished and made no sense.

Lets see, a lot of what I have been up to lately has been school work. I have been pushing my Chemistry students really hard and we are about to finish Chapter 10 of a 24 chapter book. I guess I will have to start thinking about what we are going to do when the end of June comes around and we are out of book.

This past week the school celebrated Thanksgiving with the “Festival of Nations.” Each of the Advisories was assigned a country (my kids got Argentina) and we had to turn our classrooms into the embodiment of  that country. I found it really stressful because none of my kids wanted to do any work for it because it was not a graded activity. Finally I told them the principle was coming around to judge and I was not going to do the work for them. We did get something done in the end but lets just say we did not win any of the awards.

I got to talk to family on Thanksgiving (Midwest time) which was really great. I am really looking forward to getting home at Christmas to see everyone. and then I spent the rest of my long weekend in bed with the flu. Not the most fun but at least it happened when I didn’t have to take one of my 5 sick leave days.

Hopefully I will find some time to post some more happenings soon but for now I need to get to bed.

The Great Wall and Beyond

Hello everyone,

Again it seems that I have gotten a bit busy and behind in my blogging. I am going to post links to a bunch of pictures from the last few weeks to help update you all on what I have been up to. First is some random ones including the pictures from field day.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/RandomChina

http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/FieldDay

Field day was basically a giant track meet and our team really cleaned up. I was really proud. One of the teacher put together a really great video that I am trying to get a hold of so I can put it up hear so you can all watch.

The day after field day was National day (happy 61^st birthday China) and one of my co-workers, Stu, hired a van and a bunch of us went out to the great wall here are the pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/GreatWall

It was a really great time. I plan on going to a couple of other places on the wall but I really liked the part I went to and feel it is a great one to start at because it is not the part that has been extensively repaired and really fits my image of what the Great Wall should be like. I am going to try to get to the section that is here in Beijing (maybe next weekend) which is repaired quite a bit so that it is “how it used to be.”

Then there was a regular week of classes nothing too exciting. I gave a test. After that it was time for our delayed golden week (golden week is the week that follows national day). The first day of break, I went down to Wodaoko for a surprise birthday party for Laura planned by her husband Stu. We went to a placed called Grandma’s Kitchen and had an American style brunch. It was a really good taste of home. The best part was watching Philip, the Chinese staff that helped me get my apartment, eating with a fork for the first. He claimed that it was much harder then eating with chopsticks. That night I was able to talk to some Luther people on their way to home coming. It was really strange to think about homecoming and not being there.

Sunday I went back to the electronics mart with someone who needed to get a USB thumb drive. I really enjoy it over there and like wonder in it and see what they have to offer. Anyways, the friend I brought with me (he had never been) found a USB drive for 100 RMB (about $14) and I thought it was a great deal so I decided to get one as I had been thinking that I could use one. They ran my card but instead of hitting the 0 button on the machine, they accidently hit the 00 button charging me $1500 or at least they would have if the credit card company had put the out of country notice on my card like I had asked them to. Instead they had put it on only on my debt card and so the purchase flagged the fraud prevention and stopped the purchase. I then got angry with the woman selling me the USB drive and got her to give it to me for half the price so 2 failures (credit card company and stall worker) ended up with a really great deal.

I then stayed up late watching coverage of the Chicago Marathon and looking for texts of when my sister passed major milestones. I was so proud when she finished that I had trouble getting to sleep but as I needed to get up at 3 AM the next day I tried my best.

Monday, I got to the school at 3:30 AM to commence my role as school trip chaperone to Inner Mongolia. I should have know it was going to be interesting when the other chaperones started arguing with the volunteers organizing the trip but I stayed optimistic. That optimism faded slowly throughout the trip. One chaperone immediately accused them of violating the contract that I know he never read so how did he know that? Overall, I really enjoyed the trip. It was a little disorganized but the kids were mostly good and once I tuned out the wining teachers I enjoyed it.

The trip was switched to be by bus instead of train last minute and as a result, all the Chinese kids dropped out of the trip. We all thought they were over reacting until we got on the road. We had a van and a bus and I was riding in the van. There were many portions of the trip that I literally had my hands over my eyes. We were zig-zaging between semis and using the shoulder as a lane. All the the roads are tollways that can get kind of pricey so there were portions that we left the highway to use side roads. At one point we ended up on a dirt road dodging semis as we looked down the side of a mountain. I really was thankful to get home alive.

We spent the first night in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia at a traditional yurt village. They served us bijio (moon shine) as we got out of the vehicles as part of a traditional welcoming ceremony and we were told that if we refused it would be really offensive to our hosts so all of our kids had some alcohol. Not sure how that will go over with mom and dad… Then they gave us a traditional meal of roast goat (I didn’t eat any) and we had a bonfire while they played us some music. I slept in an unheated yurt which got very cold when it dipped below freezing that night. In the morning we rode horses (they were small and more like ponies) in the grasslands.

We then drove across Inner Mongolia to the edge of the dessert with a stop at a factory that made all things Mongolian for a tour and shopping spree. At the dessert we got in some vehicles that reminded me of sand cruisers from Star Wars and went speeding across the dunes to where we could ride some camels and go Dune sledding.

After the dessert we dinned and slept in a four star hotel but I am unsure how it got its rating seeing as I did not even have hot water. The next day we explored Ordos, a city with only 3% occupancy. China seems to have taken a field of dreams approach to the city but he has not yet come. We saw Asia’s largest musical fountain (it wasn’t on) and Genghis Khan’s Mausoleum before heading back to Beijing.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/InnerMongolia

Well, that is all I have for now. I hope all of you are doing well back home. Congratulations to my amazing sister for completing a Marathon. I am so proud I keep telling anyone who will listen.