Healthy again

Last Monday I started feeling sick with sore throat and achy. I canceled tutor time on Monday afternoon and took the day off on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday I went to class and tutor time but still was feeling bad. Thursday after studying at a friend's house on the way home I decided to stop at the pharmacy. In China, you can just go to the pharmacy and tell them your symptoms and they will give you the right medicine-no need to go to the doctor's office. If serious enough, you go the hospital (and almost always get an IV-that is the solution to most problems). I explained my symptoms, paid my $1.75 and headed home with my new medicine. My medicine actually had English instructions and I was pretty impressed with the translation. Here are a few quotes from it-not bad for an English translation in China!

-It is forbidden to take it when the property of the product changes (not just recommended, forbidden!)
-It is forbidden for persons who are allergic to the drug. Allergic persons should take it carefully. (how do you define an allergic person?)
-This product is non-recipe medication for cold (I like to make non recipe things too)
-This product is hard capsule, the contents are little yellow pills. it is odorless and slightly bitter in taste" (and is among the deadliest poisons known to man? )


I think the combination of rest, thoughts, and the medicine together did finally get rid of the sickness by Sunday night. I am still recovering somewhat this week but doing much better. I realize I definitely take my health for granted here and am thankful I am not often sick!

In other news-Obama is meeting with China's leader, Hu Jintao about the economy problem. This is the first time for Obama to meet with Hu Jintao and so is very important for the future of China and the US's relationship. Please be remembering this time of meeting and their talks about the economy.

跟上课有关系

(related to class)

I love my Chinese department class teacher. She definitely keeps me smiling. She is always telling us things to do to stay healthy. Today she spent a long time talking about how there are a lot of colds going around so we need to make sure to wear plenty of clothing. This is a very Chinese thing to be saying as well. She has told us to make sure to eat plenty of green vegetables to keep us thinking better and smarter (including telling Korean students that even tho almost all Koreans hate cilantro, they should still try it because it will help them study). She also told us this story of people being killed by being hit by a car by the main gate of our school and ended with “注意安全”　-be mindful of safety!

We have this one student who only comes to class half the time and when he is there he is usually falling asleep. At first the teacher was so concerned, asking him what he did the night before, to drink water, to get more sleep, go in the hall and walk around a bit. Then we started to make sample sentences about him when he was asleep and repeating them in rote. Pretty funny and slightly awkward. Today she just started to say "wake up" 起床 which is usually what you say when you wake up in the morning. The kid just kind of smiled awkwardly. It's like there is no shame.

Monday we were reviewing the four seasons in class. My teacher asked my Japanese student what season it was. He replied, "winter." This would be the logical answer seeing that the high is below freezing and it was in the teens that day. However, of course he was wrong-it is spring. In China, seasons have very specific days. She proceeded to tell us that we can start shedding layers the first of May. Pretty much we are supposed to put on long underwear the first of October and take them off the first of May. Conveniently, there are also national holidays these days.

Unrelated to class-below is a picture I wanted to share. This is after our Saturday small group last weekend. Just goes to show-some things don't even change when you move to the other side of the world...

...boys love video and computer games

St. Patrick's Day Spud Party

There was definitely not a potato famine at my St. Patrick's day party! I decided with us being so busy studying the last few weeks we needed to have a night to have fun and relax a little so I decided to have a St. Patrick's day party. We had an awesome potato bar (complete with green sour cream and beer chili), green snickerdoodles, and beer bread (yes all the alcohol cooks out of these!) It was a great night. Everyone wore green (Amy won best costume and got a prize!). We ate until we were so full. I also prepared a (I think fun) St Patrick's trivia game that required everyone to guess interesting facts about St. Patrick's day and the meanings of some Irish slang words! (FYI-Peeler means police!) We ended the night with a crazy game of Catch Phrase (no Chinese allowed)! (FYI-"Irish goths wear these..." answer: leather skirts) Below are a few pictures as well as on my flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chinamegan). Check them out!

waiting for potatoes!

Amy and me

my tutor and me making snickerdoodles and dying water green!

making their potatoes!

我第一次经历地震！

(my first time to experience an EARTHQUAKE!)

Today I experienced my first earthquake. I was sitting talking about the meaning of 因此　when all of a sudden i felt like someone dropped something super heavy on my floor then the whole apartment seemed to be shaking! It only lasted about 3 or so seconds but we were both a little shaken up about it. I asked my tutor what that was and she said there was no way it was an earthquake because they don't have earthquakes in the NE of China. We then hear dogs barking and people in my stairwell talking/yelling. I called my downstairs neighbor who also felt it and she said it must be either an earthquake or big explosion. (you should have seen me try to explain "explosion" in Chinese. My tutor thought I was describing a volcano and looked at my like I was crazy thinking a volcano went off in Changchun.) We thought maybe it was just our building. We then start hearing that people all over the city felt it!

Because I live on the 7th floor, the movement was bigger than people lower and my neighbor told me I should get out of the building. After thinking about the fact that my building is not the newest building, my tutor and I finally decide to end 15 minutes early and leave the building! I shopped around then went to my friend's house to hang out for a while (she lives on the 2nd floor-I felt more safe there for some reason. However thinking back, I don't know if that is actually safer-more floors to fall on top of you.) My friend (who went to college in CA) was not impressed and told me it was not a big earthquake (I had no idea I just thought it was scary!). We looked it up and found out it was actually a 5.1 earthquake off the coast of Japan (supposedly felt like a 2.0 here in Changchun). Anyways, all that to say, I survived my first earthquake! It definitely got a lot of people nervous though and I heard all the students in universities all left the buildings and were just wandering outside their campus. After last spring, they have good reason. Another good reminder to continue to remember the rebuilding and mourning of loss from last year's Sichuan earthquake in China.

To read about my earthquake, check out.... http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009ekaf.php#details

流水了

(leaking water)

This morning is my one day to sleep in every other week. Every other Sunday I am starting to go to Chinese fellowship but this is my week to stay home and rest. I was enjoying a nice morning of sleeping in, checking email and starting to study. Then my downstairs neighbor calls to tell me there is water leaking from my floor (I live on the 7th floor-top). I go outside to see the pipes for our radiators are leaking down the stairs (all the way to the first floor). I knocked on my neighbor's door (he is an American as well with amazing Chinese language skills). We both go down looking for a number for a building manager. There is none. Finally we run into some people who live on the 3rd floor. They look through notebooks they have with bunches of numbers and we start calling them-all say that they either aren't responsible for it, don't know what we are talking about, or one even was a pizza restaurant. We both called our landlords who said they would make some calls. The people on the 3rd floor were pretty helpful but you could tell they thought, as probably the whole stairwell of people thought, that it was our responsibility to get it fixed because we lived on the top floor. Finally we found a number for someone who could fix it but they don't get back from lunch until 1.30 so we waited for that. Eventually around 2 a man came, borrowed my step ladder, changed out a little part and said ok and it was all fixed. That easy to fix yet so hard to find the right person whose responsibility it is to fix it. This is life in China. Thank goodness for helpful 3rd floor neighbors and my American neighbor who could describe the situation better than I could.

the pipe after it was fixed (yes these are our radiator pipes in our stairwell)

the problem: the silver thing on top had to be replaced

the result: water leaking all the way to 1st floor

我非努力学习不可

(wo fei nuli xuexi bu ke--i must study very diligently)

my textbook, practice notebook, and some of the flashcards I am studying and will study this semester

Today I started my second week back to classes. It feels like I have been back in classes for months when its only been one week. I am pretty excited about the semester and have already learned so much within the first week. This semester is definitely going to be much more challenging which I am very excited about.

All of us Americans in my organization usually have all of our classes together. However, this semester one of my other classmates and I are taking classes in a different department, the "Chinese department." We both came in with more Chinese than our other classmates and have been doing writing (characters) so we are taking classes with other foreigners this semester. It is sad to not be in class with our other American friends but also exciting because we can meet other foreigners and it will be more of a challenge.

I have enjoyed our class so far. Our teacher is very ambitious and has very high expectations of us. On the first day she explained what "preview" and "review" meant-in her view. It means no playing at night, no resting in the afternoon, nothing but study!! I am excited though-I work best when challenged. Last semester I only had to learn a few new words a week to be prepared for class each week. It is definitely going to be an adjustment as each lesson we have has 40+ new vocab plus many words in the lesson text and homework I don't yet know. I am also trying to keep up with learning how to write (and remember) all the new words I am learning (this entails me writing them all many times and using flashcards). Thankfully I have a great tutor who has been helping me a lot in understanding meanings and the usage of my new words and grammar patterns.

Fireworks

The other night, I guess in honor of Jason's parents visiting, we set off fireworks off of his roof. The great thing about China is that anyone can buy any fireworks. During the Spring Festival Jason bought a ton of fireworks and stored them until Thursday night. We all go out on to his balcony outside, shovel some snow with a dustbin and start bringing the fireworks out. We can actually get up onto the roof by climbing the bars on the windows so a few of us got up there to start out. Eventually though only a few boys stayed up there and us girls went down on the balcony for safety. It was crazy to be so close to the fireworks-a little too close at times! Great memory though.

climbing up to roof

handing fireworks up to roof

watching in wonder

all the fireworks before

watch video of fireworks here