Easter

I have always given up something for lent every year since high school. I am not Catholic, I just think it is such a valuable practice. It is amazing how much more it helps me focus on the coming of Easter and the importance of it. It helps remind me about the meaning of Easter. This year with lent I gave up watching tv and movies by myself. It was definitely one of the hardest things I have given up. Because I tend to watch a lot of tv to relax after classes or a busy week, I was constantly reminded of the coming of Easter this year. Also, I worked on learning how to tell the story of Easter in Chinese which also makes the story so much more meaningful. This Easter was definitely one in which I was much more mindful of the reason for celebrating the holiday. For that I was thankful.


On Easter night, I had two of my previous tutors and close friends over to celebrate the holiday. We had dinner together and then dyed eggs. It was their first time to dye eggs and we had so much fun! Their eggs were so beautiful (mine not so much-definitely don't have the artistic touch). So great to hang out with these friends and talk about the holiday.



That weekend for our small group meeting on Saturday my group had childcare (every week a different group takes turns taking care of the children). I got "Pandas" aka the small kids. They were so cute so I just had to take some pictures of them. After childcare my group went to our favorite Indian restaurant to eat lunch together. A great Easter weekend!

Noah-"Got Milk?" (At Indian dinner)

Another great trip to Harbin

train station in Changchun-about to head to Harbin

Last weekend we had a long weekend (no school on Monday) so I decided to take a trip to visit Harbin friends. I got to help celebrate my great friend, Erika's birthday on Saturday night which was way fun. On Sunday, I met with other internationals in the city for a time of singing and learning and wen to lunch with them. Then I was able to stop and see a great friend from HIT from last year, Zouyan and a few other of the independent teachers from my old school at a new fun coffee shop. They are so fun and I am hoping to make another trip up soon again to hang out with them more!

Zhiwei and me hanging out

Zhiwei

Isobel and her daughter!

After about an hour with them I finally got to see one of my old tutor/friend from Harbin's new baby-who's not so baby anymore! It is so fun to see my friend Isobel as a mother and her cute kid! After playing with her daughter for a while (who pretty much just stared at me the whole time-strange foreigner!) we headed to meet up with my other great Harbin Chinese friends for dinner. So great to be able to get together with them and talk. I always talked with them in primarily English before but this time we talked only in Chinese. So much fun and encouraging to be able to carry on conversations with them and talk about things going on in their lives. It is so exciting to be able to communicate with people on deeper and deeper levels. They were quite suprised I could converse as much with them as well! There were definitely times I didn't know what all they were talking about which is just another challenge to keep learning. It is amazing-the more I learn the more I am constantly reminded I don't know!

Masen (Maria) and Tianyu (Alex)
Tangke (Catherine) scouping out leftovers
Maria and me
David doesn't want his picture taken
Tangke (Catherine) and me-great friends

All of us after dinner (Isobel had to go home to take care of her baby)

Tutor Game Night

playing Chinese monopoly

We had our first tutor game night a while back. We try to have a tutor game/fun night once a month (as I talked about last semester). Our first one was a great hit-a ton of tutors and other Chinese friends game to hang out. It is such a great time to hang out with tutors outside of our required tutor times each day. There was a showing of Wall-E (the kids movie) and many games being played (including Settlers of Katan, Sorry, Uno, and others). My table played Chinese monopoly (the places are cities in China-Boardwalk and Park Place are Shanghai and Beijing!). We had a lot of fun (even though my tutor and I did not win)! It's so fun to be able to play tese games and hang out in Chinese now! Here are some fun pictures from the night.

my tutor and me

(Some fancy Settlers game-yes they know all the words for it in Chinese too!)

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