Final Wednesday

Halfway done with finals! Today was the speaking final I had to memorize eight sentences on the topic of “taste.” I then thought it would be cool to write them up in the blog with a translation!

我喜欢吃辣的菜。我觉得我喜欢吃辣的菜。。。我来中国以后，美国辣的菜不如中国辣的菜辣。上个星期我吃方便面。这代方便面好吃是好吃，但是太辣了！所以我要点清淡的菜。我喜欢胬肉盖饭因为又便宜又不辣。我每天都可以吃胬肉盖饭！

So that in English as close to literal as I can make it:

I like spicy food. I thought I liked spicy food...then I came to China. Last week I had some ramen. The Ramen was very taste, but too spicy! Now, I order food light in flavor. I like to eat beef fried rice because it is not only cheap but not spicy. I could eat beef fried rice every day!

Not exactly inspiring, but I used a lot of funky grammar constructs we learned! So that’s something. Anyway, the written portion is tomorrow and then I’m home free! Well, grade-free, for the rest of the trip. Tomorrow is also the day we find out of Brandon, Alec, and my international business idea placed in the competition so fingers crossed!

Saturday night was a little bit odd. We decided to do a little more exploring and ended up in an Irish bar owned by a Belgian man who is the distributor of Guinness in Kunming...and has also never set foot in Ireland. I personally just found it funny he decided on an Irish bar of all things, but he told me about how Irish bars are really an International brand without trying to be: and he’s right! We were drawn to this bar because of what we expected to be inside. No one sees Belgian bars far outside of Belgium and would be less likely to try it. His name is Tim and he’s been in China for seven years, only took him three before he learned Mandarin though! Anyway eventually he had to leave us and actually run the bar, but not before I drank a raw egg! That was an experience. But if you think that’s the weirdest thing I’ve had this week...stay tuned!

Sunday we visited this beautiful temple a few hours outside of Kunming called the “Anning Sanhe” Temple. It holds places of worship for Buddhists, Taoists, and followers of Confucius. We were only able to see the temples to Buddha and Confucius, either alone would have been worth the drive! The Buddhist temple had three massive incarnations of the Buddha and our guide was able to explain the differences between each. From right to left, they stand for Karma, the Head Teacher, and the ability for man to reach Nirvana. Moving over to Confucius I learned that a lot of Confucian temples are dedicated to education as opposed to just worship. Sure enough, just in front of his statue was a small library and classroom built to honor the father of Chinese education. After that, we learned how incense is made and headed back. I ate quickly so I could study for my test on Monday that Brandon and I had pushed back from last Friday in order to better prepare for our presentation.

Monday was relatively mundane, we took the test and class was focused on more review than anything for the finals coming up this week. In Taiji we were able to take pictures with our instructors as a sort of swan song and we finally completed a form! Emma, think like Tae Kwon Do forms, just…harder. I think I could perform like half of it well, and the other half was just making sure I was in the right position when the teachers looked. Monday night I studied for as long as I could, writing down my responses to all the possible speaking prompts...and then when I’d had enough, I blasted Viking metal and played Mad Max. Twas a good night.

Tuesday was very high stress for me. I’ve been far more worried about the speaking final rather than the written because the class has just been a lot harder for me. In some respects, not having to remember how to write each character is easier but at the same time, I have no safety net for pronunciation. So, I buckled down and every opportunity I could I looked over the materials I had written Monday night.

During culture class, we found out a little more about our time in Beijing although not much...I don’t think our professor will be with us for almost any of it, leaving us in the hands of a tour guide. I wasn’t filled with confidence when our professor told us “make sure to remind your tour guide about your flights on Monday!” But we’ll see!

Tuesday night...I ate duck intestine and cow stomach. So. That was interesting. More than anything, they tasted like rubber but the cow stomach was like this prickly gray thing and I had to close my eyes when I put it in my mouth. It started innocently enough, Alec asked his language partner if she wanted hot pot for dinner and apparently she responded with “only if we order weird stuff.” This stipulation was not made public when he convinced me and Brandon to go so we were completely caught of guard when the usual supply of beef and pork were substituted for...innards. I can easily say those were the weirdest things I’ve eaten this trip and while I won’t seek them out again. Should you ever find yourself in a situation where they are offered, there are worse things you could be eating.

I Should Never Be A Gambler

This Wednesday there was a lot of relief when we could all speak English again which manifested into taking it easy and napping often. I, of course, didn’t partake in such frivolities like “naps.” It was the day that I fell to the pull of Western food though and for dinner ended up with a plate of what I had originally thought was Spaghetti Bolognese (which I ordered), but when the name translated to “Spicy Beef”...I was concerned. It was definitely one of the better pasta dishes I’ve had, just hard to eat at times. It stayed very true to the name “Spicy Beef.” Later that night we gathered again in Jonathan and Brandon’s room to play some Dokopan Kingdom, which is that strange version of Mario Party. We all spent the next couple hours laughing our heads off and then went to bed,

Thursday, Brandon wasn’t in class. Generally this wouldn’t have been an issue. Sure, Chinese classes are small but the difference between ten and nine people isn’t a whole lot. In Kunming though my class is two people: Brandon and myself. So the difference was definitely felt. I went into the day a little apprehensive and expected the usual rigor just with no partner to share the pain, but it turned into one of my actual best days here. My first teacher and I didn’t progress very far in the text book and she instead took every opportunity to tell me about particular cultural aspects in China. We talked about fashion, technology, even giant Pandas! I tried my best to talk about similar topics about America in Chinese, but sometimes had to resort to English. All in all though it was a great class. We spend so much time here under the guise of “Language and Culture” but apart from weekends, the “Culture” aspect is severely lacking. We have a two hours each week with something China-like, but our other days are filled with things we could do anywhere. It just seems like there’s more we could do, so doing some of that and learning about Chinese youth was really cool. What I found kind of scary though is the College admissions process.

In China, there is one state-produced test given annually for kids trying to get into College. It’s over two days, and entire streets shut down with extra police presence focused solely on making sure cars don’t honk and upset the students. Taxis give free rides to students taking the exams, people come out in droves to cheer them on….where was my SAT procession??

Second class was more traditional in nature. It started with a discussion on the vocab words but then the teacher and I spent a long time discussing what would help me the most in learning Chinese. I definitely struggle to keep up with Brandon and I’m so happy she noticed. It turned into a 1-on-1 tutoring session and I went back to the room that afternoon with a bunch of new ideas on how to study. Best possible outcome.

I went out to lunch with Alec, Brandon, and Jonathon. We actually ended up at the restaurant Kyongnam, Bradon and I went with a bunch of language partners a couple weeks ago. It was delicious and had a lot of the same artwork as the other location, which was kind of crazy because it wasn’t exactly the same. Instead they opted for blown-up segments of the art. Odd, but still cool. In the afternoon, Alec and I tried the Chinese card game I’ve been obsessing a little over: It’s called Seer, and there is no English translation. So, I had made my own. There were still a few holes in my understanding though so I was hoping to iron those out. Instead, we just sat with our “duel mats” and our decks feeling like children and trying so hard to stay serious when one of Alec’s cards told him to yell “Happy New Year!” and it would get more powerful.

That evening Alec and I headed to the Amor Cafe close to the hotel for some consistent wifi that would help us complete our International business project for the presentations on Friday. I think we were there for a solid five hours...we put out a very solid minimalist power point, and spent a lot of the time hashing out ideas that we think could be good if we can actually put time and money into making the idea a reality. I come home wiped at eleven and just passed out.

Friday. Brandon and I were able to avoid a test on top of our presentations but class dragged along real slowly in the morning. I just couldn’t wait until the afternoon and in the meantime I just wanted to get through class. When it eventually did end, we left quickly and met Alec again at the Amor cafe so I could email our power point to Jonathan. They actually have decent food for a cafe, and because I kept my order simple I was able to order entirely in Mandarin! I may or may not have ordered a Coke just because I knew I could…After that we rehearsed for a little bit and then it was presentation time!

So these International Business presentations I think are supposed to be one of the final projects of the Culture class. Brandon, Alec, and I did one together so it was in front of the rest of the dialogue and a panel of 4 judges. Each group gives their idea of a product or business that could create a relationship between the United States and China with three winning teams receiving cash prizes. Grades have gone out, but they’re not going to tell us who won until “graduation” next week. It was a little nerve-wracking, but a lot of fun.

After all of that, Alec and I taught our language partners how to play Texas Hold ‘em and we just played games until the afternoon time was up. I quickly realized the gambling life isn’t for me, and went bankrupt twice in the time we played. Or maybe I just need more practice…Either way, it was fun to do something other than work with the language partners and just relax for a little bit. A great ending to a stressful day. After that, we took a little break before dinner. Julie, Mary, and I went to the Korean Restaurant where I finally tried this thing called Bibnbop? It’s basically a bunch of random ingredients with an egg on top in a hot bowl. It turned out better than I thought it would! We met up with Brandon for drinks at Salvador’s right after and Julie told the rest of us all about upper level Comp Sci at Northeastern. She actually walked at Graduation last May, but needs this dialogue for a comparative cultures credit. So really she’s a wealth of Computer Science information and has offered to reach out and talk to the various companies she has connections with for future co-ops. Woohoo connections!

The night was pretty tame after that, we came back and met up with a couple other people and just talked for a while, then Duncan and I caught Pirates of the Caribbean on TV.

Potatoes

Week four has been a blur. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact I’m coming up on 30 consecutive days in China. I’ve settled into such a routine I feel more like I’m in intensive class with a little extra practice on the side more than anything else. It’s crazy different this feels from Italy last year, but I think that’s because in Italy the culture was at the forefront of every lesson and every excursion while here in Kunming, the focus has been language above all else and the culture is the what you make of it. It’s definitely a better approach for teaching, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve missed some critical things or experiences. This has lead to a more gun-ho philosophy these past couple days of making time to walk around and try new things above winding down or spending more time in the hotel with friends.

Monday I felt pretty awful in the morning, which confused me because my food choices were pretty mundane on Sunday...nevertheless I opted to stay home instead of attending morning class. Not a whole lot of new material was learned that day which made it easy to catch up. I didn’t want to pass up language partner time though because I was still assigned homework so I felt like I should definitely get the help I need when I have the two hours to get everything done. This was a fantastic move on my part because only an hour in Brandon and I had finished the light workload and were deciding what to do. Feeling adventurous, we decided to walk around and show our language partners the really cool shirt store Duncan and a couple others had discovered a week or so ago. That, and we had a hankering for some milk tea.

When we found the milk tea place we wanted to try was closed, our language partners discussed in rapid Mandarin for a moment before 韩晓康 simply said “Potato?” I had yet to eat a potato in China and was immediately on board. Brandon spent another moment or so deciding whether or not he’d rather find another place for milk tea but eventually he was in too. We walked down Wenhua street, which is where most of the restaurants we frequent are, and then at an intersection where we’ve only ever walked left or right... 韩晓康 took us straight, and the street just kept going. Brandon and I saw a bunch of cool shops we’d like to come back and visit at some point but for now our mission was guided solely by, “potato.” Eventually we came to a small hole-in-the-wall place with scantron-esque menus. No pictures rendered Brandon and I mostly useless besides our limited food vocab, but luckily we had the aide of the native Chinese speakers with enough English to explain to us what was going on. Together we settled on Papaya water, rice pudding thing, and sweet and salty fried potatoes. When the food arrived, Brandon and I were a little confused. The papaya water had come in bowls and I don’t think either of us were expecting to drink it with a spoon. Basically, it was water with a slight hint of papaya and a couple bits of rose chock full of grass jelly and molasses. It was delicious, and for the equivalent of $0.50, well worth the investment. The rest of the meal arrived shortly after and the potatoes were delicious. Think like small bits of potato covered in a sauce not entirely unlike ketchup but spicier and a decent amount of salt. The rice pudding thing was hot, which was not what I was expecting at first and it took me a little while to come to terms with that fact. Overall, probably some of the best food I’ve eaten for just shy of $2.

Tuesday, the majority of our group decided to spend the day solely speaking in Mandarin. Considering we are all at different levels, each person held out for a different amount of time. My trouble mostly came from other students who understand more vocab and grammatical structures than I do trying to communicate. They only know very specific vocab and grammar structures so the common tactic to try and reiterate would be to just increase in volume when I didn’t understand. Meanwhile, my teachers could try and phrase things in different ways til I caught on. This got really frustrating really fast particularly because it was hard for me to even voice that that was a problem. I did my best and held out until about 3 in the afternoon. I had to try and explain a card game to someone who was still only speaking Mandarin and at that point I decided I would rather play the game than just frustratingly point and hope the person understood. I did pick it back up again in contexts where I could understand most of the vocabulary...but it was really hard. I did have an awesome lunch break though. Instead of sticking around campus or grabbing food at one of our favorite lunch joints, I decided to grab a quick bite and go for a walk. I ended up at the beautiful park that borders Yunnan Normal University’s campus and spent about an hour weaving in between the trees and crossing incredibly scenic ponds. The walk also allowed me to create a fully circular map of the streets surrounding the University where before I only knew about the pockets and not the connecting roads. It was also in my trip around the lake for which the park is named, Green Lake, that I stumbled upon a giant yellow palace thing. It wasn’t until I left the palace that I found a sign explaining what it was, but from the outside it just looked like a big old building with a barren courtyard. All the signs were in Mandarin so for some of the historical significance I’m going to ask my language partner today, but it appeared to be a military museum with various areas dedicated to Chinese involvement in world conflicts. I found this awesome room about World War 2 and the “Chinese Expeditionary Force” that from the pictures I was seeing I think teamed up with the Americans against the Japanese. I’m not entirely sure so I’ll definitely find some time to translate the captions to the pictures I found. The place was officially called the “Yunnan Military Academy Museum” which made a lot of sense after watching old war footage and trying to decided what was going on. After that, I showed 韩晓康 pictures of Nikka and BB to pass the time with another light homework day. We didn’t do very much of excitement that evening, we went to our favorite Japanese restaurant for dinner and then Jonathan showed us this really cool video game a little bit like Mario Party that kept us up far later than it should have.

Over the Hump

With the third week behind me, that leaves only two weeks of class and 4 days in Beijing before heading for home. This week ended, as always, with another test. The focus of which was dormitory vocab. While useful should I ever need to tell a graduate student that I have chosen to live on campus because it is convenient and there are washing machines in the building....otherwise the vocab didn't do much to expand vocabulary here in Kunming. Luckily, this week's lesson includes a lot of food vocab and cooking styles. While I'm not sure if menus carry these words are not, I am excited that I can definitely apply some of them to daily conversation!



Friday we went rock climbing again. I think I'm definitely getting better and Alec, Matt, and I attempted most of the V2s in the gym. Some are still really hard to get while on an overhang but they seem to be getting a little easier...we were able to convince Duncan to leave a little earlier than last time and ended up going to a bar with one of Duncan's friends from the gym. After that, we headed back, showered, and set out again in search of a place to play cards. We ended up settling on the craft beer pub we had found the first weekend, playing poker for hours. I'm not sure how we discovered it, but the pub had a Chinese version of Blokus! It seemed to be published by another company...but it was definitely the game Emma and I spend a while trying to avoid on game night! I was hoping my experience would lead me to victory...but I was beaten early by the TA. Poker was more my thing until I ran out of chips. So all in all I didn't win much but it was a lot of fun.


Saturday Duncan ditched the rest of the group to go serious rock climbing with some other guys he had met at the gym (it helps to be able to fluently speak Chinese in China I suppose.) while the rest of us headed to "Blue Chicken Mountain," home of the "Dragon Gate." We had the same tour guide as last week, and the bus ride to the mountain was full of random tidbits about Chinese culture. While I do enjoy the cultural aspects of the stories, I wish they were a little more associated with the place we were going. The mountain itself is covered in shrines. We learned that each individual God has a level on the mountain and he/she shall judge your worthiness once you reach it. A lot of Chinese people associate this to a degree with climbing the mountain to the shrine, a sign of determination. We took a golf cart up the base and as far as it could go. From there, we saw the Gods of Wealth, Mercy, and Honor I believe...towards the end we were suddenly in a rush and frankly I’m not sure if we ever did see the Dragon Gate. At about halfway through the door we never stopped walking until we reached the cable-car descent point. I have no idea where we ended or if I saw all the cool stuff...it seemed like we needed to be in such a rush to get to a Spa we weren’t able to enjoy the beauty of the mountain. All things considered, my general complaint is still that we try to do too much too fast or there isn’t enough freedom for those of us who’d rather take the incredible opportunity to see the homes of Taoist Gods along rocky cliffs and ancient steps...as opposed to spending six hours in a Spa.
We had lunch at “Wang Fu Spa” and dinner was provided, so if we toughed it out...it would be free. Otherwise, we were allowed to leave whenever we chose. A lot of us took advantage of the time to really relax and unwind. I think everyone in the group got one type of massage or another! I curled up in this big comfy chair and read for a few hours before learning how to play Mahjong from Alec. There were also these great roman style baths...that took some getting used to. All in all it was fun, but a little long. I think in retrospect I should have left before dinner and just gotten it back at the hotel or something. Maybe done some personal exploring...anyway that’s the plan for this week! I have a pretty good mental model of the big streets surrounding campus but I definitely want to get out in the city a little bit more. So, I’m thinking from now one I’ll use my lunch break to go exploring and try and build a bigger city image. It beats taking naps for sure!

 ("Blue Chicken" is the literal translation of "Peacock" in Chinese, this is their mountain)

Today...I cracked, and got a Western breakfast. After three and a half weeks I needed the pick-me-up of a bagel covered in fried egg, jalapenos, and cheese. It was heavenly, and served with a cup of coffee. Until now I’ve been avoiding the Western restaurant on the nearby food street as has most of the dialogue but you can only eat dumplings for breakfast for so long...I went with Duncan, Julie, and Mary and we all felt like it was a well-deserved treat. After that, everyone on the dialogue was split by classes and went back to Teachers’ houses to make dumplings. That, was an experience. Brandon’s and my class was put with Advanced 2 so generally conversation flew way over our heads. Nevertheless it was a great time and I even made some somewhat decent looking dumplings. Now, one cannot live on dumplings alone so lunch was a multi-dish affair...of some things I had been avoiding thus far. Probably sensing my fear, the teachers decided to award points for every new food we tried that day. So, I left lunch full on century egg, pig foot, quail egg, and lychee root.

(From left to right: Brandon plays Mahjong while Professor Cai looks at Alec's tiles)