High School No More

I remember when I became a high schooler.  More or less.  Being the precocious homeschooler that I was, I decided I wanted to finish eighth grade early.  So I did.  The day I finished my last eighth grade homework assignment I bounced around the house declaring "I'm a high schooler now" in a loud, sing-song voice to my mom.  I was at a new school in New Jersey sophomore year, and was very keen to have people realize that I was NOT a freshman, but merely new to the school.  I decided I didn't want to be a new student my senior year, and almost didn't even look into Fort Walton Beach High School.  But through a phenomenal series of God-driven circumstances, I have for the last year been taking two classes at FWBHS.  And tonight, I graduated with them.  I may not have graduated "with honors" or worn the fancy summa cum laude stole with the snazzy gold tassel, but what would that really have changed?  I took every opportunity offered to me to be the best I could be, to take the hardest classes and earn the most college credit.  I did my very best in everything, and completed high school (actually all 12 years of grade school) with "all As," in "honors classes" when possible.  I have been accepted to a great college, which I will attend at no cost to me.  I have a guaranteed job in the US Army when I graduate.  My future could not be brighter, my past could not have been done better.  During high school I have spent more than three months overseas in seven different countries.  I flew alone to China and back, went on a mission trip to Ecuador at the age of fourteen without my parents.  I took three AP tests, have earned more than thirty college credits, and will have many of my introductory level classes completed before I arrive at college.  I have moved twice and thus attended high school in three different states.   I have learned when to bow to bureaucracy  and when to refuse to jump through meaningless hoops to check pointless boxes.  I have learned to appreciate friendships and learned how to say goodbye.  I have very few regrets for these past four years, and look to the future with only anticipation.  High school was not the best years of my life, but it has certainly prepared me to meet my best years head-on, whenever they happen to be.  So tonight I farewell grade school.  I look back with no hard feelings, no regrets, and no longings or desires.  I look forward with excitement and anticipation on a future ripe with possibility and opportunity.  Tonight, I am a high school graduate.

Routines Are Hard to Break, Easy to Establish

It took about a week for me to rediscover the patter of my daily life here at home.  School every morning, homework, running, enjoying the sunshine outside.  Church on Sunday.  I've decided that time passes far too quickly.  Each day ends before I've done everything I'd wanted to, every day something gets moved to the back burner because I simply don't have enough hours of daylight to get them all done.  The month of April has come and gone.  I've visited with a grandmother, welcomed a good friend to share my southern paradise for a week, gotten caught up on schoolwork (more or less), helped the family run smoothly while my mom took a week off with a few of her own friends.  Just yesterday I turned eighteen years old, just two days after getting my first speeding ticket.  Yes, time passes indifferently, steadily, inexorably.  I still haven't posted any pictures to facebook.  I don't know why.  It just seems... well, too late now.  I suppose I still ought to, but it just hasn't happened yet.  Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.  Maybe not.  Ah, but the future.  Now that is exciting.  Graduation, summer, college.  I can't wait to finally be off for Calvin!  But before I get ahead of myself, it is important that I stop to remember that today can be just as much as an adventure as last month, as next month, as next year.  I live in the present; it's time I enjoyed it!  Just two more weeks and two AP tests between me and summer!  Ah, the sweet smell of freedom...

The Briefest of Images of My Trip

Pictures take a long time to upload to the blog, so I'll be brief.  But I felt the need to share a few of the pictures I took during my trip to China.  So, for your viewing pleasure, here is a small sampling of what I've been up to:

 A panoramic view of the village we stayed at

Sitting with our host in front of the fire

Visiting the market

 Sunset in Dali Old Town

 Visiting the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi'an

 Xi'an Downtown

 The Forbidden City

 Standing on the Great Wall

 Shopping in downtown Beijing

 The Temple of Heaven

We went to a lot of places, saw a lot of things, had a lot of new experiences.  I'd love to tell you all all about them, and show you all the rest of my pictures.  It has been a wonderful trip, and I was sad to leave.  But it's time to go home.  I have a redecorated house, my own wonderful bedroom, the beach, and family and friends all waiting for me.  It's time to be home.

And My Trip To China Ends...

Well, it's over.  After almost two whole months, I have official bid the People's Republic of China goodbye.  On the plus side, this means I am now completely free to go to any website my little heart desires, including facebook and my blog.  But I had to say goodbye to my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and I won't be learning any more Chinese for a while.  Shoot, just when I was starting to get good, haha.  This morning my uncle was teaching me the general idea behind character reading, which is a ridiculously complicated system.  Thank God written English is phonetic (even if it does break every rule it lays out for itself).  My last few days in China were pretty laid back.  After all, once you've visited the great wall, what else is there to do, right?  We visited a place called the Temple of Heaven, where emperors used to offer their yearly sacrifices, and we did a lot of shopping.  The other night we even went to go see Chinese acrobats do various strength, skill, and flexibility tricks that are pretty unfathomable to me.  We walked around the Olympic village and the Bird's Nest, and ate shish kabobs from a street vendor.  This morning my aunt escorted my aunt and uncle to the airport for their early morning flight to Anshon, in northern China.  My uncle, cousins, and I watched TV and ate noodles till it was time to join her for my flight and theirs.  They saw me safely  past customs and immigration, then I was on my own.  The flight to Seoul was pretty short, less than two hours.  The plane was pretty full, but by some stroke of luck I managed to not have anyone sitting next to me.  The man in the aisle spoke Korean so we didn't talk much.  I went through customs and immigration here in Korea without a hitch and got my official Korean entry stamp.  I'm actually allowed to be in Korea 3 months without a visa, but I think I'll stick to my original plans and fly home tomorrow.  I got to my hotel easily, where I have a very cute, very well set-up room with far too many beds, free sodas, and a huge jacuzzi tub.  I think I know what I'll be doing here!  But first I'm gonna check out the restaurant and see about some dinner.  You know I have a lot of pictures, and before I go to bed tonight I'll post another update with some of my best.  As for the rest, I can't wait to show everyone!
~Monica

When Someone Says "China" what Comes To Mind?

I avoided updating my blog in Kunming because there really wasn't anything to say.  I got up each morning and taught Chemistry and Geometry until 5:30, when we took the bus home for dinner at the dorm house.  While busy, my days just weren't all that interesting.  On Friday, my aunt, uncle and grandparents arrived from Xiaguan and we met them for dinner at a Japanese restaurant with some friends of theirs who had spent time in Beijing.  They told us some good places to eat and gave us some guide books to help us on our trip.  After dinner, my cousins wanted to go to youth group, but I had a lot of repacking to do before the next morning.  So I opted to go back to the dorm.  Which meant I had to go alone.  It may not seem like such a big thing, but it was momentous to me to be traveling alone by public bus in a Chinese city of more than 3 million.  I was alone, the sole caucasian on the bus, unable to communicate with anyone else.  But I felt comfortable.  It was the same bus route I took home every day after MSG and I had been the only caucasian before.  It went just fine.

The next morning we left for the airport with all of our bags.  It was a fairly short flight to Xi'an- we arrived late in the afternoon.  After a mix-up involving our driver, we ended up taking taxis to the youth hostel we were staying at.  The hostel was a quaint, cute little place.  When we checked in, they warned us Saturday nights at the bar were pretty loud and that we might want earplugs.  We nodded and laughed to ourselves as we went out for dinner.  We ate Xi'an style noodles- wheat noodles with soggy bread crumbs.  I was about the only one who liked them.  Mostly my family thought the bread didn't go so well with the noodles.  The hostel gave vouchers for a free beer for everyone each night, so after dinner we all sat in the bar and drank our free beers.  It was pretty quite, and so we figured the women at the counter had been exaggerating about the noise.  But when we were showered and getting in bed, all of a sudden the music got louder, someone started beating on bongo drums, and the karaoke began.  Since we had first floor rooms directly over the bar, the music was incessant and impossible to ignore until nearly 12:30.  We had to wake up on time in spite of that, because we had made plans with a driver to visit the Terra Cotta Warriors.  It was a couple hours from Xi'an to the Warriors.  The driver obligingly agreed to wait for us in the van, and we went out to buy our tickets.  We ended up hiring a tour guide at the ticket counter, who took us around the three different pits and telling us a bit of the history.  The site was the tomb of the first emperor of the Qing dynasty- the man also responsible for the Great Wall.  Shortly after his death his tomb was burned and partially destroyed by a peasant revolt.  Thus most of the warriors were found in disrepair and had to be pieced back together.  They were found by farmers digging a well in 1974, and since them a huge amount of tourism has grown up around them.  After visiting the warriors, our driver took us to the factory where the replicas were made, from the actually clay found inside the pits.  They showed us how they molded them, touched up the details, and baked them in a huge kiln for a week.  The shop there also had lacquered tables and screens, silk embroidery artwork, carved wood, and silk carpets.  The next day we were able to take it easy (fortunately the bar had been much quieter the next night) and get a late start to our morning.  We rented bicycles and rode them the full circle around the ancient Xi'an walls.  The ride would have been quite enjoyable if not for the rain.  We also walked through downtown to the Muslim quarter, which had a myriad of roadside snack stalls and restaurants.  We were looking for a mosque, but it took us until nightfall to locate it.  The next day we had to get up even earlier, as we had a plane to catch.  But on the way to the airport we stopped at a newly discovered tomb called the Yangling Mausoleum.  On the site were two burial mounds: one for the emperor, one for the empress.  Radiating from the emperor's tomb were long pits of varying length.  Each contained various different items depending on the government official buried there- clay animals and now-carbonized grains for the emperor's dietician, clay men, women, and eunuchs for the man in charge of the harem, and so on.  The mausoleum had been made into quite a nice museum.  We enjoyed walking through it.
The flight to Beijing was even shorter than that to Xi'an, but it took almost an hour to make it to our hotel from the airport because of the city traffic.  Beijing is a phenomenally huge city, I discovered immediately.  One taxi driver told us 8 million inhabitants, another 13 million.  Either way, the city is enormous.  We're staying in apartment-style rooms at a hotel called Lido Place.  It was too late to do much on Tuesday when we got here besides get dinner.  We ended up sleeping in Wednesday morning, so it was after 11 by the time we made it to Tiananmen Square.  For such a huge area, Tiananmen is surprisingly barren.  Mao Zedong's tomb is in the center, and there are huge television screens showing patriotic Red propaganda, but for the most part, the Square is just empty pavement, filled only by the large number of tourists milling around almost purposelessly.  Directly across from the Square is the Forbidden City, with it's huge portrait of Mao hanging in the center.  After a quick walk around the square, we went and explored the once-forbidden home of the Emperor of China.  While in many ways grand and majestic, in a lot of ways the place seemed sparse and lonely.  For the safety of the Emperor, as well as to preserve is god-given divine right, many places even inside the already restricted fortress were off-limits even to the princes.  Only the Emperor and those he expressly called could enter some of the courtyards.  Even in the common areas, things were so lonely.  Each building was surrounded by its own wall like layers of an onion, and separated from every other building by long, empty courtyards of paved stone.  I wouldn't like to live there, not for all the riches, power, and prestige of the Emperor.  We went back to the apartment after seeing the Forbidden City, and went out for dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant down the road that a friend of the Blackburns recommended.  The food was superb.  This morning we hired a driver to take us to the Great Wall.  The drive took us way up into the mountains.  At the base of the wall, in the parking areas, wait shop after shop of men and women all hoping to sell their souvenirs to you.  "Hello.  I have hats and gloves."  "Hello.  Cold water."  "Hello, souvenirs $1."  "Hello.  Do you like?"  Each time you shake your head, smile, keep walking.  "Hello, hello, hello."  Grandma and Grandpa took a gondola to the top, but the rest of us wanted to say we walked up.  It was a lot of stairs up, but the view was worth it.  In about 2 or 3 weeks, I hear the trees will start to bloom, and I can imagine the view from the top must be marvelous then.  But it was marvelous now, even dry and mostly brown.  The wall is pretty impressive in its sheer size and location.  Imagining carrying those bricks up that entire mountain, building mile after mile of wall...  Incredible.  After the Great Wall we visited the Emperor's Summer Palace, a lovely Asian castle beside a man-made lake, with trees and pagodas and covered pathways and buildings with lovely sounding names like "Pavilion of Birdsong" or something similar.  The number of tour groups here was incredible, and we all expressed our wholehearted thanks that we were not part of such a group.  Traveling by tour group would be no way to travel!  Now that the Great Wall and the Forbidden City are over, we have two days here to see anything else we're curious about.  We've talked about a place called the Temple of Heaven, talked about seeing the supposed embalmed body of Mao in his tomb in Tiananmen, talked about seeing the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium.  Who knows what else is in store in my last few days in China, but I'm sure I'll love them.

Final days in Xiaguan

My grandparents were going to join us here in Xiaguan just a few days before I left the Blackburns' house for the first time.  My grandparents arrived yesterday; I have only three days left in Dali.  They're going to have to be rather busy days if I'm to get done everything I want to do here.  Tonight, we're going out for a hotpot dinner (at my request).  I understand it's a concept similar to fondue- everyone gets their own hot pot to cook whatever raw foods in that they order.  Tomorrow afternoon we're going into Old Dali a final time (I have a few more present to buy).  Grace, the Blackburns' house helper, invited us Saturday to her village for their meal.  It's a holiday for them during which they spend the entire night singing and dancing.  I'm not sure whether we're going to go.  Apparently Grace's village is a very traditional one, and all of the songs they sing, while having very complex lyrics, all are sung to the same tune.  They have only one dance as well, a slow shuffling dance apparently.  I think it would be interesting, but my cousins assure me I'll be bored.  I guess I'll find out later if we're gonna go or not...

Last weekend my cousins and I were in Lijiang (I apologize, but I've been spelling it wrong in my blogs, I found out recently).  We traveled by train- a new experience for me.  I've heard that day-style trains (with rows of seats) are horribly crowded, with no space for luggage and far too many people.  Night-style trains (with bunk beds three high), which we took, are supposed to be better, because you sit on the lower bed and store your bags on the upper ones.  It was very hard to find our seat due to a ticket misprint (our ticket said car 6 but the seat number was in car 8), but afterwards it went well.  The trip was much faster by train.  We stayed at the Pinson's house.  Their daughters met us at the train station and we took a half-hour bus ride to their house on the other side of the Lijiang Old Town.  We arrived in time for a lunch of noodles made by their house helper, and then the girls took Maggie and me to Lijiang Old Town for shopping.  It was similar to Dali's Old Town, except bigger.  The minority people group in the Lijiang area is different than Dali, so the minority costumes people wore were a bit different.  Also, Aden explained to me, Lijiang Old Town was a bit nicer and cleaner because it was new.  In Dali, the buildings look a hundred years old because they are a hundred years old.  In Lijiang, the buildings were built to look a hundred years old, but all the real ones had been torn down.  Lijiang, I was told, is known in China for it's waterways.  The streets were lined with little brooks set deep under the road level.  It was quite pretty.  Lijiang is a very large tourist city and nearly all of the stores and signs had English.  Or more realistically, "Chinglish."  I saw the "celebrity underwear soft" store, the "meat by naxi boy" yak meat shop, and a sign telling me "not to step on a head."  The Pinsons and we spent a long time playing card games, board games, and Sardines at night in their compound.  Sunday afternoon we took their dog on a walk through a nearby village to a large man-made lake to give him a bath.  We saw men fishing, women working in the fields, and even babies using split pants.  Rather than spend money on paper diapers or spend time washing cloth diapers, Chinese mothers put their children in split pants.  As the name would suggest, they're basically just pants with a huge split inside.  Every hour or so, mothers hold their children up and tell them to pee.  In the grass, on the sidewalk, wherever.  There's a reason no one in China wears shoes in the house. 

Meanwhile, I've still been talking my Chinese classes.  My uncle tells me that I'm learning incredibly quickly, and that my tones are already better than some people's he knows who have been here for years.  He said that if I were here for six months I would likely be able to speak to locals quite easily and pretty fluently.  But unfortunately, I only have one more day, as I won't be able to get lessons over the weekend.  Although, Uncle Pete said at some point he might spend a half hour or so with me learning the underlying basics behind character writing.  I spent two hours with him today practicing pronunciation and tones.  They are so hard for me to hear and repeat, and there are certain sounds that I have a very hard time pronouncing quickly.  Chinese has two forms of "sh" and "ch" sounds.  One is a lot like English sound, a bit back in the mouth.  The other requires you to stick your tongue against the back of your teeth while you make the sounds.  I feel like I'm lisping, because my tongue keeps getting in the way and making an unintentional "th" sound. But I'm getting the hang of it.  Days of the week are really hard, because they have both of those sounds, one right after another.  But after Sunday I'll have to be a teacher again, as we're going back to the MSG.  I've kinda enjoyed it, but I always feel like I'm not really explaining myself very well.  My cousins say I did alright, but they're my cousins so they have to say that anyway...  And after MSG, it's off to the north, where we get to be real tourists!

hello! nihao!

Of the six trips I had planned between Dali and Kunming I have now completed 5.  When I next go back to Kunming for my second MSG, I won't be coming back to Dali.  This week and next are my last weeks here at the Blackburn's house.  It's hard to believe my time here is already half over.  I've really been enjoying my Chinese senior trip, and I'll miss the food, the culture, and the people I've met here.  Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my day-to-day schedule here in Dali.  I go running every morning, sometimes with my cousin, sometimes alone.  The weather here is beautiful for running, for being outside.  It's already much warmer than when I got here.  The Blackburn's house helper, Grace, makes us Chinese lunch everyday, and after lunch I have been studying Chinese with my uncle and his colleague Molly, whose village I visited a month ago.  I've learned a lot, in light of the fact that I've only had 5 lessons.  I believe I'm up to like 40 or 50 words and comprehension of quite a few more.  I try to do homework too, but it's pretty hard to focus on schoolwork.  I'm keeping mostly caught up though, which I'd say is an accomplishment.  My adversaries are strong- senioritis and the excitement of being in a foreign country.

Interspersed with the daily schedule I've been able to do some pretty fun things.  Last weekend I went with Aden and Maggie to Permeate, a youth retreat for the Kunming youth group.  I spent a lot of time with the kids I'd met at the MSG, and got to know them a lot better.  It was a really fun trip.  The weather was beautiful- hot and sunny- and we stayed in an Asian hotel by a man-made lake with a sandy beach and luscious green grass.  I had my first experience with buffet-style noodles for breakfast.  The first time I tried to get a bowl of noodles, I wound up putting far too much soy sauce, but it still tasted pretty good.  I did much better after that.  Noodles are apparently a typical Chinese breakfast fare, but several of the foreign kids at Permeate weren't too fond of the custom.  I thought it was delicious!  We weren't the only group staying at the hotel, and the beach was one of the only ones nearby, so the hotel (Fascinating Nature Garden, it was called) was pretty crowded.  A lot of local Chinese would make day-trips to the lake, setting up tents, going swimming, and using umbrellas to keep the sun off.  In China, it is the height of fashion to be pale; no one would dream of tanning or laying out in the sun.  In fact, most lotions, shampoos, etc. come with "skin whitening agents" to try to lighten Asian skin.  There were also a huge number of brides having their wedding photos taken by the lake.  It would have been a very picturesque location, were it not so windy.  The poor brides were trying to keep their dresses smooth and their hair pretty while the photographers ran around snapping pictures and the wind blew everything around.  The wind was also annoying for those of us trying to play poker in our free time.  We had to find locations sheltered from the wind before the cards would stay where we put them.

Another thing I did last week was go out to dinner with a large group of foreigners in Dali.  We had those Chinese dumplings whose name escapes me.  They're a lot like potstickers, except filled with all sorts of different meats and vegetables.  Everyone makes up their own dipping sauce out of soy sauce, dark vinegar, ginger, spicy dried pepper, oil, and whatnot.  I really like those things!  I also have found that I really like eggplant.  I don't know that I'd ever had eggplant before coming here.  It's not really something we eat too often in America, besides in eggplant parmesan from Italian restaurants.  But man is it delicious!  I would love, before I leave, to learn at least one way to cook it, so that when I come home I can have it there.  It has a slimy texture, but a fantastic taste.  Really though, all vegetables taste good here.  Something about the way they're cooked, vegetables are delectable in China.  I saw Grace, the Blackburn's house helper, in the kitchen yesterday, preparing a chicken.  It was strange to see a dead chicken, with it's head and feet and all, being prepared in a normal kitchen.  I mean, it was weird in the village but I just sorta accepted it because it was a village and that's different than a normal house, right?  So it was just strange watching her washing this plucked dead chicken in my aunt and uncle's kitchen sink.  Of course, it was also weird seeing plucked dead chickens lying in the meat area of Wal-Mart too.  My aunt took me to Wal-Mart last week, and in some ways it was familiar, but in others it was totally different.  Like the dead chicken, and the huge pig thighs, complete with hooves.  And the abundance of vegetables that I've never seen or heard of before.  And all the t-shirts with English phrases that make no sense at all (apparently, this phenomenon of poor English translation is called "Chinglish").  Another difference about shopping here is that you only can buy what you can carry at one time.  Because people don't own cars but take taxis or buses, you can't just bring a cart out to your trunk and fill it with groceries and drive it home.  You have to carry it all back home.  Plus, most people live several floors up, and there are almost never elevators here.  So if you're on the seventh floor (like our dorm at the MSG) and you have groceries, you have to carry it all the way up.  If you had two trips, you'd have to carry it all up seven flights, walk back down seven flights, then come all the way back up.  So people pretty much only buy a few things at a time.

This weekend Maggie, Aden and I are going to visit some friends of theirs in Leijiong, a city north of here.   The area is supposed to be very beautiful, and, as it is something of a tourist area, will have a lot of opportunity for shopping and gawking and the like.  Although, last night I heard there is currently an uncontrolled forest fire in the area.  I wonder how that will affect our trip...  So far, it's still on.  Today, I believe Aunt Laura is taking us out shopping.  I'm hoping to buy some DVDs and boots.  Everyone here wears such cute boots, I want a pair of my own!  Next week my grandparents are coming in from California.  They'll be traveling with us to Xi'an and Beijing after MSG at the end of March.  That will be the end of my time here in China, and as excited as I am to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, it will be sad to have to say goodbye.  Or, in proper Putonghua (Mandarine), to say "zaijian."

Fireworks, Buses, and Really Long School Days

Dali Old Town pretty much looked like I remembered: elaborately carved Asian architecture covered in a layer of grime and full of vendors selling everything from upscale clothes to stone vases to hand-dyed tablecloths.  It's really a beautiful tourist set-up.  Narrow cobbled streets intersecting each other, lined with legitimate shops and hopeful, roadside tables spread with everything from antique coins to silver costume jewelry.  As the center of the area's tourist district, the culture is a blend of Asian, Indian, European, and American.  To me, it was exhilarating.  The babble of languages, the colorful array of merchandise, the lovely arched roofs and ornately carved doors darkened by years of smoke, dirt, and smog.  But to my cousins, I'm afraid being a tourist is a pretty miserable experience.  The locals see a white face and assume "stupid foreigner, I can really scam these ones."  My cousins have to display an impressive array of bargaining ability, Chinese language skills, and local credentials before the shopkeepers are willing to take them seriously enough to give them a fair price on their wares.  We attract a lot of stares, especially outside of the tourist areas, in their hometown of Xiaguan.  It's a bit strange to be the object of so much curiosity and attention, but I've found in general that if I smile at them, they smile cheerfully right back and then go about their business as usual.

Sunday after church Aden, Maggie, and I got on the bus for Kunming, where there Modular Study Group (MSG) meets once a month.  Because the MSG meets only one week out of four, they meet each day for nine and a half hours.  The out-of-towners (comprising of me, the Blackburns, and a Singaporean girl named Jessica) stay with a British family called the Mathers.  We eat breakfast with them at 7 and leave for the MSG.  We get back to the Mathers' between 6:15 and 6:30, after a long, crowded, and incredibly jerky journey on public bus 181, just in time to join them for dinner.  In the evenings I Skype in to my physics class as usual.  It makes for a pretty long day.  I wasn't sure how useful I could be here, or what it would even be like.  There are about 15 or 20 high schoolers that meet here.  The school is in an apartment on the 7th floor of a complex here in Kunming.  The first day their teacher, Mr. DeMoss, told me what some of his classes were doing and asked if I'd be willing to help teach a chapter in both Geometry and Chemistry.  I like to think I've been helpful.  In any case, this week Mr. DeMoss hasn't had to spend nearly as much time running back and forth between his two math classes and two science classes, both which meet simultaneously.  Today's their test on the chapters I taught, so I suppose the grades will show how effective I've been at communicating the information. Today is the last day of MSG for the month, which means tomorrow morning we can take the bus back to Xiaguan.  Tonight, we're going to a youth group of a bunch of kids from the Kunming area.  Most kids who live in Kunming attend the Kunming International School, so there will be a lot of kids I haven't met before.  But that's nothing new, haha.  Last night the city of Kunming was lit by the lights of a hundred fireworks.  As the last night of Spring Festival, the two weeks after Chinese New Year, last night marked the last night it was legal to light fireworks in the cities.  The holidays are officially over for the Chinese, which means schools and work all start back up again after their New Year's breaks.  All the business that have been closed since I've been here will open back up, and hopefully I can get some of my shopping done.  The week after next we're spending some time in Leijiong (I have no idea how to spell that properly...), a tourist city north of Dali.  I hear there's some great shopping there too!  Can't wait!
~Monica

Living in China

I know it's only been a few days, but it turned out I had another convenient opportunity to use the VPN at the neighbor's house.  So, I suppose it's time for a short update.  All the rules still apply- pictures take too long, this whole thing took forever to load in the first place, I can't promise when I'll next be on... You get the idea.

Over the past few days, I've been establishing the schedule that I will hold for most of my time here.  Wake up and work out in the morning with my aunt, breakfast, shower, do schoolwork.  Go out for lunch, or eat leftovers.  Do schoolwork.  Have dinner.  Watch a movie or hang out with my cousins.  Get on Skype and go to Physics class.  Go to bed.  Not a bad schedule.  It's full-time school at the Blackburn's house now- my cousins have even more schoolwork than me to keep them busy.  But we still have time to do fun things.  We've gone out to lunch several times this week to small restaurants around their complex.  Noodles, fried rice, Chinese raviolis (as they were described to me.  I can't remember what they're called).  So good.  Yesterday, Maggie, Aden and I went to the Bird and Flower Market.  Basically, the markets around here are content-specific.  So the Bird and Flower Market sells pots, plants, dogs, fish, fishing supplies, birds, gerbils...  Anything alive or having to do with living things.  I've also been to the fruits and vegetables market and the hardware market.  I hope to find the clothes market soon.  Everyone here wears such adorable high heeled boots, I can't wait to get a pair!  Today, we rode our bikes up the hill to a really fabulous piece of construction- a glass tower, Space Age looking.  It was built by the government to serve some unspecified purpose, but I think it would have made a fabulous viewing area.  Sorta like going to the top of the Empire State Building or Rockefeller Center, just to look around.  It had a great panoramic view of the city.  But it was decreed "bad luck" when it disobeyed some rule of fung shue and several construction workers had accidents, so the building was never used or even completed.  Such a waste of money, space, and construction.  It was really a gorgeous building.  But that's the power of superstition at work.  Too bad, really.  Tomorrow, we're taking the afternoon off to go to Old Dali and visit a friend of the Blackburn's who has a personal library we can use.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to do a bit of tourist shopping in Dali, and go out for dinner.  Exciting!  That's pretty much what's going on so far.  I understand we leave Sunday for Kunming to go to the co-op.  I'll try to keep you posted- thanks for keeping up with me.  Can't wait to show some pictures!
~Monica

A Week in a Village

You don't even want to KNOW how long it's taken me to get this posted.  It's been 45 minutes thus far, and it's not even uploaded yet.  I apologize for the time gap between entries- China blocks a large quantity of websites, blogger being one of them.  Facebook is another.  So, to update this blog I have to visit a friend's house with a VPN and suffer through the slow loading process.  So I'll have to make this a good one.  Oh, and it would take too long to put in pictures, so you'll have to wait till I get home for those.

Well, to begin, I arrived in Kunming safely on the night of the 28th (China time) and my aunt met me at the airport and took me to a friend's house for the night.  The next day we took a bus to Dali and arrived at my aunt's house.  My cousins and I took a short trip out to buy a plunger, so I got a small opportunity to see some of the city before we left for the village. We left on the afternoon of the 30th and took a bus to a city where we met Molly and her family.  Molly is a Lalo woman who speaks Lalo (her minority language), English, and Mandarine, and who works for my aunt and uncle.  We then took a second bus to her village.  From the bus stop to Molly's house we had to walk about an hour.  Typical Chinese village houses are built around a central courtyard.  There is usually a barn or stable on one side, a kitchen on another, rooms on another, and a fence making the fourth.  Meals are served on low square tables, everyone sitting on low benches.  Everyone gets a bowl of rice and the dishes are placed in the center of the table, within reach of everyone.  Everyone helps themselves to what they want with their chopsticks.  Guests, however, are usually offered more food than they can eat, all the best dishes.  Everything is fried in fatty oil and tastes delicious, although the meat is very fatty and bony, and is very different than carefully cut meats in America.  Anything you don't want gets dropped on the floor for the dogs to eat.  On the 31st, they killed a big black pig for the New Year.  They wrestled it to the table, tied it down, stuck a knife into it's neck, and let it bleed into a basin until it died.  Immediately, they shaved it, beheaded it, and began to cut it into pieces to be sorted and cooked.  I've never seen anything like it.  We were not allowed to do any work- the Lalo are hospitable to a fault.  So instead we sat on low stools before the charcoal brazier and ate seeds- sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and marijuana seeds (no, they don't get you high).  I got to try a lot of interesting pig parts, including liver, brain, and tongue.  I don't recommend them.  We visited the market, where were sold pig meats, bean curds, sugar cane, noodles, and so much more.  There was even an outdoor dentist who fitted the willing with dentures to replace their rotten teeth.  We also went walking to pick Chinese olives, which were so sour they tasted sweet after you'd swallowed.  The illusory sweetness was even greater when you dipped the olives in salt.  I almost couldn't stand the flavor, but when it was gone, my mouth tasted sweeter than honey.  Maggie and I taught several of our hosts how to play Crazy 8s and Egyptian Rat, which helped pass a lot of time.  For New Year's, we ate lit firecrackers and ate tangyuen- sticky rice balls swimming in brown sugar soup.

It was the most incredible experience, being in the village.  But knowing that we could come back and shower and change clothes was what got me through it.  We used the bathroom in an outhouse with a hole in the floor, washed our feet, faces, and occasionally hair, in basins in the courtyard, and didn't change clothes in the 6 days we were there.  In the mornings and at night the air was frigid, but during the day we burned in the sun.
It was a different experience than any I had before had, and one that I was glad to have had.  But I really enjoyed my shower after the walk (uphill at 5:30 in the morning) and two bus rides back.  We have a lot to be grateful for, we Americans.  We just don't even know how much.

I can't guarantee when next I'll be able to post.  I'm back and my aunt and uncle's house in Dali.  Next week, on the 15th, my cousins and I leave for their co-op in Kunming.  So far, I'm enjoying the food, the culture, and the people immensely.  I'd love to say more, but I don't know how long this will take to upload, so I'd better stop.  I have so much more I'd like to say and share, but it will have to wait for a faster internet or a face-to-face encounter.  Love you all!
~Monica