Email 3:
Well, seems like it is time for another
email. It has been way too long and I apologize for that. Life here
is always moving, always busy. Since I last wrote I have seen the
Summer Palace and it is amazingly beautiful, and I took a weekend
trip to Shanghai. I will go to the summer palace many times while I
am here, I would like to see it covered in snow.
Speaking of snow, it we had our second
snowfall this week. It was only a centimeter and wasn't a heavy, wet
snow. So it isn't a big problem. The temperature has been very cold,
and it is also very windy which just makes it worse. It hasn't been
as cold as Bulgaria but it is still very early in the winter.
Apparently the worse month is also the one where I get a 2 week
vacation. YAY! February is going to be very crazy.
My birthday falls directly in the
middle of the 2 week vacation schedule. I am hoping to go to
Chongqing and Sichuan for my birthday. It is supposedly very
tropical, and therefore WARM. Time to keep up the tradition I started
in Peace Corps of going someplace warm during February. Best part of
this one is that I don't even need to leave China. Sichuan is the
area of China where the great panda is indigenous to. Near the city
of Chengdu there is a large nature preserve for the pandas. There are
also lots of hiking and monasteries in the area.
In other news I am learning a lot about
cooking. I had a dinner party with a former colleague and her family
and I learned how to cook duck leg, Chinese eggplant, Lotus root, and
a fish they call “river fish”, and a couple other dishes.
Everything was very delicious. I also learned about hot pot. It is
just a pot of boiling, or near boiling broth (usually very very
spicy) and a lot of raw vegetables and raw meat. To cook them just
put them into to pot and viola, they cook. Then you dip it into a
sauce which seems similar a Thai peanut sauce. I wish there were hot
pot places in the States, but I am sure that it would be a very
expensive place to insure because the customer cooks everything. If
someone gets food poisoning it would be difficult to find out who was
the cause. Additionally, I taught a couple of coworkers how to cook
pancakes. They turned out alright. I think I bought the wrong kind of
flour. They tasted alright, they just didn't look like white, fluffy
pancakes. I think they will be getting a toaster oven and then I will
teach them how to make chicken pot pies, regular pies, Mousika (a
Bulgarian dish), some other dishes as well. And if we have a day of
doing nothing, perhaps I will even teach them a couple of soups, such
as leek and potato soup, split pea soup, and simple chicken noodle.
And that is only the beginning of my
culinary exploits. I found the best coffee in Beijing last week and
am now composing this email there. It is run by a couple of guys from
California. The place is called Ocean Grounds and is run by two
Q-Graders named John Lewis and Jim Lee. I finished a cupping class
(coffee tasting class) here about an hour or two ago. They are an
awesome couple of guys. They focus on relationship coffees (direct
trade) and roast in house. It is amazing. The coffee is top quality
and roasted very well and always to best suit the coffee. I got some
Ethiopian coffee that was roast just past what is called a cinnamon
roast and it bursts with lemon blossom, blueberry, buttery mouthfeel
and crisp finish. It is the best coffee I have had since I left for
the Peace Corps. The class felt a bit abbreviated and rushed, though.
Mainly because the man leading the cupping was flying to Panama and
Nicaragua to search for new coffees. After finding this place I am so
jazzed and excited by coffee again it feels great. I am looking
forward to spending a lot more time here (they even have beer on tap,
if they served lunch and dinner I would never leave) and talking with
them about the current state of the coffee industry and learning more
about what is going on at origin (where the coffee is grown) and
about more opportunities for work, or volunteer work, at origin. I am
very excited about this.
Email 4:
Sorry it has been so long since my last
email. I have been very very busy. Work has been work. Teaching and
working with kids is fantastic. If it weren't for them I would have
quit long ago...in fact I probably wouldn't have even taken the job
in the first place. I recently went through a 2 day training on how
to be a “Disney Trainer” which basically means that I get to
teach other people who work for Disney how to do their jobs better.
Which is nice and an honor, I guess, because I have only been working
for them for 7 months. Because of that I have been working on
developing a training for how to deal with cross-cultural
relationships with a specific focus on working relationships and
communication styles. It seems very similar to the trainings I went
through in Peace Corps...in fact I am stealing a lot of ideas from
those trainings. I am also organizing the second Academic Idea
Exchange for Beijing as well. So, my plate is pretty full with extra
work on top of my 10 classes. Also, I recently had one of my classes
observed by our Regional Language Learning Director (RLLD) as part of
a promotion from “Foreign Trainer” (foreign teacher) to “Senior
Foreign Trainer.” The promotion is basically being a Shift Leader
where others would come to me for advice and instruction on aspects
of their job as well as leading official trainings at the center and
being the person in charge when my boss is out of the office. Weee. I
am not really holding my breath about this promotion because it
usually means a year extension on my contract and I don't really want
to continue working for Disney longer than I have. But we'll see.
Outside of work life has been...well,
stressful inasmuch as I would like to be with Whitney and it looks
like I won't be able to do that before my contract is up. The
location transfer process is long and frustrating. It is always
difficult when you want to be with someone and you cannot. It is also
frustrating because it seems like I have been in this situation for
the last 3+ years. But we are working on it and we are both being
positive and hoping for the best. Otherwise, I am doing fine. I think
I will be buying a bicycle soon. As the weather is getting nicer I am
finding myself wanting to be outside more but in order to get to
anywhere I have to go to the subway and therefore not be outside.
Don't worry, I won't die (famous last words, right?). I will buy a
helmet.
As for my vacations (yes, plural) they
were great. My first one was to Chengdu and Chongqing. This was with
Whitney for the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) back in February.
Chengdu is a great city and I hope they are doing well there. In case
you hadn't heard, they were hit with a 7.0 quake last week and I am
not sure how many people died or are injured. Anyways, while I was
there I got to see the Giant Panda reserve, and ancient village, the
Sichuan Opera, and Mt. Qing Chen—or something like that, it is the
“birthplace” of Taoism. The giant pandas are cute but not as cute
as red pandas. Seriously, they look like a panda and a cat had a
baby—well, they are more like racoons, but whatever. Chongqing was
fun as well. There was less to see outside of the city but the city
itself was very beautiful. We went to an ancient portion of the town
and it was so crowded we could barely walk. We ended up finding a
little tea shop and drinking a lovely pot of Pu'ar and playing a lot
of табла (backgammon).
Overall is was a wonderful trip and I found it hard, not only to say
goodbye to her, but to head back to Beijing in general (it was still
winter and very cold).
My second trip was to the
lovely city of Ningbo. The city itself is very nice and small (only 8
million people. HA!) and has a beautiful lake within a short (45
minute) bike ride from it. Also, the lovely Whitney lives there. This
trip was only for 4 days. But it was great to leave the still dead
looking Beijing and go to a place that had flowers and I could wear
shorts. There weren't any adventures, just lots of bike riding and
getting to see all the places she goes to regularly so I can get a
feel for her life there. It was very nice and comforting. For being a
“small” city it has a strong ex-pat community.
Lastly, I figured
out what my last name is in Mandarin and how to write it in a
simplified for. So, Siu is Xiao (first tone for those of you who know
what that means) and is written like this 萧
. I hope you all can see that okay.
Now the trick is to get mom and dad to send me a picture of my middle
name (the characters, duh) so I can know what my full Chinese name is
in Mandarin. Man Cheung doesn't mean anything in Mandarin, plus the
way of writing Chinese with Latin letters has changed a lot over the
years.
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