Things

1. Ok, so, I didn't get to part 2 of the Hong Kong post. The moral is, we did and saw and ate many things and it was a very successful, enjoyable trip.  HK is cool. 
2. Then last weekend my wallet was stolen on the bus.  That sucked because I know exactly how it happened and just didn't realize it was happening at the time.  How did I travel all through sketchy parts of Europe for five months and retain all my belongings, and then come to China and have my phone and wallet stolen in the city where I live within two months?  
3. Then a few days ago, Thanksgiving, the school took us to this five-star restaurant for a "Western-style buffet".  It was hilariously weird.  First of all the Chinese idea of "fancy" is bordering on tacky, like what we think a fancy shopping mall should look like.  And there wasn't anyone else in the restaurant, so it was just all this food and all these waiters for like 20 Americans.  And the waiters are all a little uncomfortable looking, like they're not sure what they should be doing - which I've noticed to be common in Western-style restaurants but I thought would be different in a very shmancy place.  The food was Western-like but not Thanksgiving food - OK, a turkey - but they also had egg rolls, and sushi, and strange gelatinous desserts.  Hehehe.  I mean I enjoyed it.  But it's like, why can't this upscale restaurant manage to make appropriate and delicious American food?  Is it that they don't know how? Or that they don't bother to? Or that they don't want to?  What is the reason for the strangeness?   I'm not complaining - I don't expect to eat the same things I always do, of course.  Just wondering. 
4. Then yesterday, I decided to venture into the realm of cooking.  When I arrived in China I knew it would be a while until I felt ready to go there - just the thought of going to a supermarket seemed overwhelming.  I mean it is overwhelming.  But I miss cooking and I have enough Chinese to buy produce at the markets and my roommate has been wanting to, also.  And Cheikh has been bugging me about it, too, like he's so surprised that I haven't been cooking when we have this perfectly good (except...not really) kitchen.  At first I was a little offended by this, and reminded him that I was not his wife and didn't have to cook for him, but he was like, "whoa whoa, I don't mean you should cook for me, you should cook for yourself.  This dining hall food is not so good and you shouldn't eat it every day."  And he is probably right based on the number of students who regularly cite MSG as an ingredient when describing what's in a dish.  So anyway I went to Tangjia, the rundown part of town right by campus, and got some produce and stuff, and then later went downtown to this department store with a Western-ish grocery section and got a lot of food.  I mean, going to the grocery store in the states is a little overwhelming, so many choices, you never know where stuff is, etc.  Grocery shopping in Vienna was another level of stressful, because of all the unreadable labels and strange-looking things.  So grocery shopping here is just...difficult.  I went by myself which was one problem.  I should have taken somebody.  It's easier to make decisions when you can talk through the options aloud.  It was fun though, a little.  And it's just the same as most things here - you never know what stuff is, so you just choose, and hope it's what you think it is, or hope it tastes good.  For instance, the meal I was going to make sort of depended on me finding couscous, and I found this stuff that looked like couscous, but when I cooked it, it turned out to be this sticky, gooey grits-like grain.  Not quite what I was looking for, but it worked I guess.  But I managed to get everything (or a version of everything) on my list except for chickpeas, which I still can't find.  Then I got home and stuck everything in our rice cooker, and it worked out pretty well.  I made chocolate no-bake cookies in the rice cooker too, which have some consistency problems but overall taste good.  And today we bought a hot plate and a wok, and we have a bunch of spices and utensils, and although I hate that we will just have to leave all our purchases here at the end of the year, I think the investment will be worth it.  I didn't even think we needed the hotplate, as the rice cooker functions just like a pot, but my roommate is a little too concerned with making this place as comfortable as our American apartments.  I don't think she gets that it is going to be impossible to make this place feel like a normal apartment.  The other day I had to hold her back from buying a loveseat, which would have been her whole month's rent plus the trouble of finding a moving company to get it to our fifth floor apartment.  And her boyfriend really wants to buy a puppy, which is not allowed and impractical.  Geez. 
5. So I am doing well,  chillin', but I don't feel great.  I feel always a little down, like I don't want to do anything but knit or shop do rosetta stone or sit at the cafe or wait around for Cheikh to come over.  I don't feel dazed anymore, like I did at first.  I feel awake now but a little...I dunno.  I really think a lot of it has to do with the lack of music in my life.  I think it just zaps my energy to have to live, day after day, without an instrument.  So hopefully that situation can be fixed soon.   Also it was really really sad not to be home for Thanksgiving.  I mean it didn't feel like a holiday at all.  LIke it would have been quite easy for me to forget that it was a holiday.  Even at the dinner, we didn't say a prayer or say what we were thankful for or talk about thanksgiving or anything.  We just ate strange combinations of mediocre food.  And, I was telling Cheikh last night, I feel weird because I didn't anticipate being so homesick.  I just didn't anticipate that it would be this difficult to adjust and transition.  I knew that would be a major problem of course but I guess I had never experienced it so I didn't understand what it would feel like.  Because when I went to Vienna, I wasn't homesick at all.  I never missed the states.  I never craved American food or cried or even thought about it too much.  Part of it was probably that I loved Vienna so much, and I think China is not so immediately loveable.  For me, that is.  And when I was living in Vienna, I would think about all the changes I was experiencing, all the cultural differences I was noticing.  But now, when I think about it, those differences were nearly negligible.  The differences I'm living with here are so much bigger.  And before I came, I thought, yeah yeah yeah there will be differences, it will seem like a whole different world, it will be difficult and stressful, yeah yeah, but I have done that before, I know how to adapt because I did it in Vienna, no problem.  Well...yeah right.  This is not like living in Austria.  So anyway, I guess I just still feel shaken, and not myself.  Every single day I miss the states, which is a totally new feeling for me, and it was really really hard to think about everyone else at home on Thursday.  Also, in Vienna, no one stared at me.  I wasn't this celebrity.  It's hard just to be out in public here, because heads turn wherever you go.  In Vienna if I felt afraid, I put on the Viennese stern face outside, and whistled a happy tune inside, and pushed through the feeling.  But here, it's like I have no privacy, like people are watching my every move, and when I'm out alone I feel vulnerable.  So when I'm out, it's tiring, because of all the attention focused on me, and I'm afraid if I whistle a happy tune in my head that will interfere with my real listening and I'll get hit by a motorcycle, and if I put on a stern face people will think I'm mean and try to cheer me up by being friendly, but it is even more draining to be friendly back, and if I try to fight my fear with adventurousness, I will buy something that looks like fruit and turns out to be a disgusting something-er-other, and then be disappointed, and next time not have the courage to try the weird-looking fruit, etc.  Can you imagine if Americans looked at every non-white person inquisitively?  Like if Chinese immigrants were stared at by white people?  No way.  Whatever. 
It's not actually as bad as I make it sound.  No, sorry, it is, but I mean, I don't feel discouraged as that made it sound.  I'm having fun.  I just wish Harry Potter could lend me his invisibility cloak once in a while. 

Trip to Hong Kong

I am tired and not exactly in the mood to write but I've been meaning to do a post about Hong Kong all week and I think if I don't do it soon I will forget!  So this past weekend Cheikh and I went to Hong Kong because we had a three-day weekend and because Dad notified me of a harp concert happening on Sunday.  Actually originally I was going to go with my friends Sandy and Steph, but then Cheikh decided he could come, so we were all four going to go and I was thinking it would be really good that way so that it wasn't just me and him alone trying to figure shit out.  Also, Steph has a friend that lives in Hong Kong so he was going to find us a place to stay and show us around and stuff.  So I did not do any preparation or planning, because I was expecting I would be a passive traveler.  But then we got there and the guy had not booked us rooms in the same place, and then Steph and Sandy went out drinking and slept all morning, and the same the next night, so me and Cheikh never actually met up with them.  At first this pissed me off, as the whole idea of going was that we would all be together, and the boys could go do something while us girls shopped, etc.  But then C and I were doing really well, so I forgot about it and ended up being glad it was just me and him.
So, Friday when we got there the friend took us to a restaurant in a really busy, lively area full of night markets and prostitutes.  I have gotten used to seemingly dirty, scary restaurants but this was the dirtiest, smokiest, loudest, most chaotic one yet.  Like the kind of place where garbage (bones and shells and napkins and things) go straight on the table, and there may as well not be plates or bowls or cups at all.  This doesn't bother me anymore, of course, but while we were eating I was thinking, "If Mom comes to China, I think I should take her to a place like this right away without easing her into it and see what happens."  It would be sheer panic and disgust.  Hehehehe.  Anyway we ate really well and by the time we were done it was close to 11PM, and C and I being the good clean fun loving folks that we are, generally, wanted to just go to our room and sleep.
So the friend and the girls took us to the place that the friend had booked for us, and when we got there, it was like....uh uh.  This ain't gonna work.  But we didn't really have a choice because it was late and we didn't want to offend the friend, so I sucked it up and dealt.  I mean, the place wasn't that bad when I think about it now, but for some reason stuff always seems sketchier when you first get there.  Like, dirty places always seem a lot scarier when you first arrive than they actually are.  The place was just this apartment owned by an older couple who lived down the hall, and there were a bunch of chopped up rooms with bunk beds and a dirty bathroom.  The couple seemed creepy at first but I think they were just wary of us non-Cantonese speaking mixed race couple, and the second night C stayed up and chatted with them for a while and made friends.  So they were actually cute.  And the room itself wasn't dirty, and it was a good size.  The beds were uncomfortable but there weren't any other guests in the other rooms, so we didn't actually have to share the bathroom with anyone.  And it was loud at all hours, but the location was great, right in the center of town, and the energy outside felt sort of neat, like we were sleeping in a cocoon with all kinds of crazy stuff happening outside.  And I mean I might have felt less comfortable if I had been staying there with another girl, but it's not like some little Chinese dude or the 70-year old innkeeper is going to try to mess with a tall African-looking guy.  So in the morning I felt OK about the place and then by Saturday night, I was happy to be there.  And it was really cheap considering the size of the room and the location of the place - everybody complains about the price of staying in HK, and a bunch of the other American teachers that went stayed in the famous Chungking mansions and paid more for smaller rooms that they had to walk through crack dens to get to.  so...I think we did alright.
By the way, Mom, you remember that book you bought me about the two girls who go backpacking after college and start in China?  I read it this summer and it was just about these girls having a terrible terrible time.  Well the first place they go is Hong Kong and they stay in the Chungking mansions because their guide book said it was the best deal, but they are horrified by the condition of the rooms and end up paying a lot for a nicer hotel.  My friends who stayed there were not horrified, because I think they were expecting it to be nasty, but how crazy that I had read about it.  C and I didn't venture up into any of the guesthouses in the building but we went there and I tried to explain to him that I had read about it, and we walked through the bottom level which was all these Indian people with shops and restaurants.  This was actually one of the scariest parts of the trip, because you know what? Indian men, and Italian men, and Mexican men, look at women differently than Chinese or American or Northern European men do.  This is a generalization obviously but it is mostly true, I think.  I have never, not once, felt like a Chinese man was looking at me with any sort of sexual curiosity.  Maybe they are but they don't show it.  I even smile at Chinese men and receive innocent smiles in return.  But walking through Hong Kong, there would be sections of town with certain ethnicities of people and when we walked through a group of Indian guys, I immediately felt uncomfortable and like I should put a scarf over my hair.   Like even walking with my arm linked with another man's, I felt the intensity of those guys' stares, and was suddenly conscious of how covered my breasts were.  The same thing happened last night at the bakery - I was going to meet C for an English/Arabic lesson and when I walked in, he was sitting with his friend Mohammed, from Saudi Arabia, who I met once and who has that dark swarthy thing about him.  C didn't see me at first but his friend did, and without him doing or saying anything crude, I felt offended by how he was looking at me as I walked toward the table.  And I almost didn't want to sit down with them because I felt like he might as well have slapped me on the ass, with how he was looking at me.  What is it about those kind of men? What are they doing to make them seem so crude?  It's kind of like the difference between the Chinese girls and the Korean exchange students here.  One time I was talking to Sandy and I mentioned that I saw this group of girls who looked Chinese but...didn't look Chinese.  I said they had sort of...shorter skirts and more makeup.  And she said, Oh, they must be the Korean students.  The Koreans carry themselves differently than the Chinese do.  And that was exactly what it was.  It's like that with creepy guys.  Without really doing or saying anything differently, they just make you feel differently by how they are carrying themselves, or something.  Because the Chinese stare at me constantly, obviously.  I mean I am always always being stared at, by everyone.  And while it's obnoxious, it doesn't feel intrusive, like it does when some big darkish Turkish-speaking guy does it.  My C is big and darkish and Arabic speaking but he does not have this skeezy thing about him.  I think this is good.
Men.  Creepsters. 
This adventure will have to be told in two parts, as I am desperate to nap because I had to be at the teaching building at 7:15 AM this morning to lead "Morning Campus," the cultish activity in which students gather to read English loudly together.  Hehehehehee.

Hong Kong Photos

http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2787886020/a=159104078_159104078/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

First Thought in Chinese

Today I walked out of the cafe and after a few seconds realized I had left my umbrella by my seat, at which point I thought to myself, "Ah, wo de yü san," instead of "Oh, my umbrella."
Progress. 

Winning Sentence of the Day

Me: So, do you eat this food for breakfast or lunch? or just for snack?
Student: Snack.  I just...I just very very like some snacks. 

Creepily Small World

Today I was in a bag store downtown with a friend, and some Chinese guy started talking to us because he heard our American accents.  He asked where I was from, and I said New York State, and he asked where in New York, which is surprising, so I said well I grew up in Binghamton, and he said....dundundunnnnnn...His son is currently attending Binghamton University!  And he has a daughter at SUNY Albany and knows of Skidmore, and another daughter at SUNY Stonybrook, and another daughter living in Cleveland.  He has lived in Brooklyn for thirty years but grew up in Zhuhai and so still visits when he has some vacation time.  Hahaaaaaa!!!!!  His son's name is Kent Li, and he is tall and thin and probably Chinese-looking - anybody know him? 

Halloween!

Halloween!  I have to say, I am satisfied with the quality of festivities that happened in this strange land in honor of our American holiday.  Friday night Mary put together a movie night in the teaching building, so a bunch of us and our students gathered to watch Hocus Pocus, my favorite.  The best part about that was not the movie but listening to the reaction of the Chinese students to the movie.  Chinese folks are the best "oooooh"ers and "aaahhhhh"ers in the world.  It's like they have all predetermined which slapstick humor bits are worthy of laughter, or which surprising parts deserve an audience-wide gasp.  This happens in class too - it's like, as a group, they have learned how to synchronize their audible reactions.  And rather than stifling laughter or hiding surprise, they emphasize these things.  I guess it's good for group bonding to act like that.  I mean I guess it's like those laughter clubs, where people get together and just force laughter until it becomes real laughter.  If you laugh together at something only mildly funny, just hearing everyone else laugh makes it actually funny and then everybody ends up happier. 

Anyway, Saturday night there was a party at the apartment of two of the Austrian exchange students.  They have this apartment in this beauuuuutiful new complex, ten minutes away from campus.  When I walked through the gate I swear I felt like I was in Florida.  (Not that I find Florida particularly beautiful, but in this case the cleanliness and...nice-ness was just so shocking!)  You know, rows and rows of generically-schmancy-looking apartments with ponds with bridges and palm trees and stuff.  So me and Cheikh went dressed as a yin-yang and had a lot of fun at the party, but probably even more fun was the process of getting there and back.  People stare at me when I'm dressed normally - him too, because he's about a foot taller than the average Chinese dude and black.  When we're together, the attention we garner is about twice as much as usual which is overwhelming.  So imagine us dressed like freaks in black and white! Me tottering in heels and him in a crocheted cap!  It was hilarious. 
So the party was your standard drinking-smoking-chatting-college kid Halloween party, except that the guests were from: US, Mexico, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Mauritania, China, and Korea, with about an equal number of languages necessary for all to participate.  It makes me feel like maybe we should add "costume parties" to the list of things everyone in the world can relate to, along with music and touch and things. 
Then last night, on actual Halloween, I went to the Foreign Language Association party, to which I was invited by about five different students and three different emails.  For some reason everything at the party happened in English, although unless I'm mistaken English is not the only foreign language...and the students take Spanish and Korean and German and Arabic in addition to English...I dunno.  Anyway this was a really interesting thing: I got there, with two of my American but Chinese-looking friends, and was immediately swarmed with people ushering me into the room and giving me programs and telling me to eat the snacks and giving me masks and wanting my picture and asking me where I am from and showing me their costumes and wanting me on their team for the such-and-such game.  (This party was in a big event room above one of the dining halls, with a stage in the middle and speakers and lights and so on.  Not an intimate gathering.)  I took about a hundred pictures with Chinese students I don't know and I'm pretty sure the reason was that for the first twenty minutes of the party, I was the only white person in the room.  Have you ever experienced that?!  So weird! But eventually the other Americans showed up and the party started.  First the MCs gave a little introductory speech, then there was a little (hilariously terrible) dance performance, then there was a little Romeo-and-Juliet-meets-Halloween (also quite terrible) drama performance, then Brad, the American teacher who was here last year, gave a little speech about the history of Halloween, and then there was this incredible beat boxer, and then I left partly because I wanted to go to this other talent show thing and partly because I was getting overwhelmed by the amount of people in the room and the strobe lights and the attention.  It was really fun though.  It's like the Halloween party Skidmore has every year, except substitute coke and orange soda for alcohol and weird little candies and lemon-flavored potato chips for pizza,  and with lesser-quality musical/dance performances, and more technical difficulties with the microphones and things.  Hehe.  After I left I went outside to this square where they had a stage set up and there were a lot of people gathered to watch what I think was a talent show.  Not much talent happening at this show, but a lot of happiness.  I think maybe the Chinese aren't as concerned with the quality of things.  As long as the thing is positive, and people are having fun, and nobody is left out, then it is good.  The people singing some sappy love song are not the greatest singers and go out of tune when they try to break into harmony, but the message of the song is cute so it is good.  I could tell that the piano on stage was the one with the broken pedal, which makes it nearly impossible to create a nice sound, but the pianist didn't seem to mind, so it is good.  During the Romeo/Juliet/Halloween play, the microphones kept squealing, so we couldn't really understand the dialogue, but we could tell that the message was nice, so it is good.  My freshman students probably haven't actually learned anything in my class, because nobody is enforcing that I teach them specific things, but the classes are generally enjoyable and positive, so it is good.  I also get the impression that this university is lacking in the feeling of competition between students that exists at American universities.  Like at Skidmore - and Skidmore is not exactly the most cutthroat place in the world - people are constantly trying to get ahead, do more, get better grades, be the president of the most clubs.  Organizations are always trying to improve things, hold meetings, create subcommittees, have discussions on issues.  Whose thesis is going to be the best?  Who is going to win the music department honors awards?  Whose schedule has the most credit hours?  Who will get written up in the newspaper for doing this awesome humanitarian progressive crunchy thing? 
I feel like that kind of thing doesn't happen here, or at least to a much lesser extent.  Nobody cared that every single one of the talent show acts was sort of shitty.  Maybe the whole thing was just for fun anyway, or maybe it is perfectly acceptable to be a shitty performer, or maybe they don't know it was shitty.  I think this is a big difference.