Going Home Today

Well, this is the last 6 hours before I leave for the airport. I guess my take-aways would be:

1) great food, I am quite adept at chop sticks now and of all the food I have been offered, I like all except chicken feet and dove heads. Even the Pig stomach wasn't bad. You have to try the octopus on a stick. I have had it twice so far.

2) friendly people from the co-teachers, vice deans and deans to the two families that Wangping had me meet.

3) The students are hard workers once they understand what to study. My final test grades averaged 80% in Materials with 3 students failing and one got a 100. That is they get one more chance to take a similar final next semester and if they fail again they retake the class. In my Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing class everyone passed with a 88% overall average. One person got a 100.

4) The extreme contrast between China and America will have a lasting impression. There are no grossly overweight people that I have seen. In fact 98% are trim. Most women dress very stylishly and the guys too to a lesser degree. Few people own their own home and even fewer have a vehicle. When they ask about my living and I say a 3,000 ft^2 home and 3 cars, I am humbled. Many chinese men and young men smoke.

I didn't get this sent off in Shanghai because I lost the connection. Actually I am in the Portland airport at the moment waiting to get the last leg home and the internet connection and speed are amazing. Here are some misc. pictures and movies that are downloading extremely well. One movie is a great picture of the octopus tenticles, the other a pet store I stumbled on. Pictures are of a bike rack and my last dinner with the co-teachers. It was a Chinese Muslim restaurant. They said this type of food was eaten mainly in western China. The beer was dark (they called black beer). I would campare it to a US micro brew versus the other stuff I have had here. The most popular beers here are similar to coors, or bud.

I'll have to think about some other stuff. So long, it has been a blast doing this. I will have to print it out and keep it for prosperity.

Dinner and a Movie??

Tuesday after work, my Chinese co-teacher, Dr. Li, said he would pick me up and we would go out. I arrived back at my guest house at 6:15 pm after a grouling day at the office (that is 6 hours of teaching) and he was waiting for me. Here is another picture of this fellow. Really nice guy, married, with one 13 year old (who recently hurt her knee and is on crutches) who will be taking her "exams" next weekend to get into high school. Very important for her and her family because it means getting into a more prestegious high school if she does well.

Well, we go out to a restaurant on campus and he orders 4 dishes. This time nothing that was too gross, eggplant, some kind of beef that had a lot of fat on it (very flavorful though), fish (of course, fish is very important to the Chinese and they eat lots of it, they say very healthy), cucumbers in some kind of milky sauce (best I have ever had), lotus root, along with peanuts on the side. And to drink he ordered Chinese wine (53% alcohol) - tasted and looked like vodka. We drank the wine out of tiny shot glasses (with stems). He says this is very much a Chinese tradition to eat and drink this way. Well, the way they drink is that every drink is a toast of some kind...degrading to "cheers" after about half the bottle. The problem is that you need to participate drink for drink. I'm glad it was a small bottle!

On the way back he says we must get our feet massaged.....a Chinese tradition, of course. I don't really want to but I go along. Well, I now see why people get massages. They start out by soaking the feet, then put some kind of therapeutic salts in, then go to work. I even documented the event for you as you can see. This lady supposedly was a healer of some kind. It was great. Probably an hour worth and it cost 40 RMB (RMB and yuan are used interchangeably) or about $6.50 US. I'm beginning to think many things this fellow enjoys doing is a "Chinese Tradition." As he rolls his pantleg up, I notice he has leggings and long underwear on. That along with the sweater and coat he always wears elps to explain how he and others might cope with the cold building we teach and have our offices in. I would guess that maybe the home apartment is cold also. The temperature has been in the 50's but always a little damp.

I also found out today that when a Chinese says yes to a question that it means that they understand the question. It does not mean that they are answering yes to the question. Now I understand all the mix-ups when I first started teaching and the students were not prepared with homework like I thought we had agreed to the day before.

To finish out, let me show you my typical lunch (5 RMB). One lady on the right is the other co-teacher, Shangguan. If you remember I went to Hongzhou City with her husband. She and I had the same dishes, rice, shrimp, and two kinds of vegetables that they did not know the English name for.