Shui Jiao, Shui Jiao, Shui Jiao

errr...I dunno. I couldn't think of a better title.
Sorry we've been a bit slack in the posting department. After persistent nagging of friends & family we've decided to rejoin the blogging world.
As you might not be all that aware...let me remind you that learning Chinese has its moments of great difficulty. It also has its moments of ridiculousity (if you will). And if there were some area of our lives that needed complication, this area is certainly not one. However, it seems that it is inevitable. Let me introduce to you: Shui jiao. (shway jeow) This is an everyday word in Chinese, but on average not one regularly confused with much else in the world. That is...for normal people. It is our luck however that this word is regularly confused for different aspects of our life.
Shui jiao-
1. To sleep. (at night...not to be confused with at rest) eg: I like to sleep.
2. Dumpling (aka jiaozi) eg: I like to eat dumplings.
3. Wrestle (as in the sport) eg: I like to wrestle.

So...if you never sleep, never encounter dumplings, & never participate in any sports remotely close to wrestling, you'd be in the clear when trying to communicate with Chinese people. However, given our current location in one of the biggest dumpling producing cities in all of China, given Brandon's newly acquired nickname of Dumpling King (his new favorite dish), given the fact that we enjoy sleeping, & given Brandon's history with the sport of wrestling, you might understand where this word proposes a problem. So this past week at two of our Christmas parties (more to come on this subject in our next update) Brandon had a heck of a time communicating to our neighbors things that he enjoys. It's never dull seeing him act out "wrestling." I still think a few of them came away thinking he just really enjoys sleeping.
I'm sure this won't be the last time we deal with confusing language issues.

Hey!! Merry Christmas!

Things You Should Know...

For this post we thought we'd compile a list of things that our friends and family back home should be aware of...you know, after going four months without seeing someone, they tend to change a little. So here are some updates on our life here, how we've changed, or random stories we'd like to share. So here it is: The Things You Should Know (in no particular order)...

- Before coming to China we never EVER ate eggplant (at least not that we were aware of). Now, it is a common staple any time we eat out.
- We love our apartment. Considering what we have to work with, we've really grown attached to our little concrete abode. For example: we may never go back to the showering with walls concept. Trust us, if you've never showered in a wall-less shower where you get water on the entire bathroom floor, toilet, & washing machine (yes our washing machine is in our bathroom too) you should definitely try it. It's so freeing. And our little contraption that we hang clothes on so that they can dry is brilliant! No more shrinking sweaters in the dryer folks!
- We accidentally told our friend yesterday that last week our home town got 18 kilometers of snow. Centimeters and Kilometers, sheeeesh, crazy metric system!
- We've got five Dr. Peppers sitting behind several cans of asparagus in our kitchen. We're rationing them for really special occasions. We thought hiding them behind the canned vegetables might take our mind off of them...but we're both fully aware of their existence.
- We wish we would have had our camera with us last night. We went out to eat with a friend and she ordered mashed potatoes! We didn't even know we could order that here! Much to our surprise though the mashed potatoes came with a heavy cream on top tasting much to similar to vanilla icing and on top of that were pink, blue, & white "sprinkles." It looked like a cute little cake, but it didn't taste like a cake. It tasted just like mashed potatoes with vanilla icing & sprinkles.
- Our favorite restaurant back home would never be one where you eat boiled beef or boiled lettuce. I know, sounds weird. However, it's our favorite restaurant here. It's delicious! Find some thinly sliced beef, some boiling water, and a concoction resembling peanut butter, olive oil, & sesame seeds & you've got yourself the best Hot Pot Restaurant ever!
- We've not driven a car (or well, anything for that matter) in 4 months. May not sound that long, but when you go from doing it every day to nothing at all, it's a little strange. So yesterday when Brandon heard our taxi driver say, "Would you like to drive my car?" (only in chinese), Brandon said, "YES!" But alas...when the taxi driver got a strange look on his face, we realized we'd misunderstood him saying, "Have you ever driven a car before?" Surely it wasn't because Brandon misunderstood him. We think it's just because he's going through car-driving withdrawals & is hearing things. bummer
- Fu Mart started playing Christmas songs a couple weeks ago. We've even heard the little kid version of Silent Night played a few times! But our favorite song we've heard in there goes a little something like this: "Mamasita, donde esta Santa Claus?" Really flew us for a loop when we heard another different language!
- As long as we're on the subject of Spanish, it seems it's trying to creep it's way back into our lives. Yesterday our taxi driver had stickers all over the dash with phrases in Spanish. We asked if he understood them but he didn't...so we did some translating. It probably wasn't all the way right, but what does he know! Anyhow, we had tutoring the other day and one of our words was "juan" (roll, as in a roll of toilet paper). So she asks us to read through our vocab words and we come to this one and both say, "Juan" (huan) as in Juan, Jose, Jorge, you get the idea. But in chinese it's pronounced jhuan. So she thought we were a little retarded for a second there but after giving her a little spanish lesson it was all cleared up. And then as we were leaving class she asked us how to say bye in Xi Ban Ya (spanish) and we seriously could come up with nothing. All of our spanish had disappeared at that moment and the only thing that came out was still Chinese.


ok sorry that was a little long for a post...but oh well. if you read it all..."Muy Bueno!"

O Christmas Tree

I, Brandon, am going to capture your imaginations by updating our blog all by myself. This may be the first time that I have ever "blogged." From time to time I have some original thought and I let April know of those original thoughts and she decides if other people need to be informed. This is because my thoughts need to be closely monitered. This time I am solely going around her to let you know what an amazing job she has done preparing our house for Christmas time. Just the thought of going out to a foreign environment and trying to find decorations in a totally different language is not an easy task. I'm just so greatful for a beautiful wife who helps the holiday's away from home have some kind of familiarity. Anyways, I just wanted to let everyone know how good of a job she has done, and just show off her decorating skills.

Here is our Christmast tree. April wanted to go with the silver and blue theme!

April found those red and green ball decorations at a local whole sell market, and April's mom sent us the stockings and Frostie.

And here is a wreath April found, I'm not sure how. She also bought the ribbon and made it look fancy. April also put a big bow on our door and is thinking about making some for our neighbors.

We hope you all are having fun decorating for Christmas. We both want you to keep in mind why it is we celebrate Christmas. Have a good one,

Brandon

A Post to Tide You Over

Taking a clue from the Rivers-s, we thought it about time to post a "Tide you Over" post. You'd think living in China would bring about daily post-worthy stories...maybe it's because we've been here almost four months and we're getting used to day to day chinese idiosyncrasies, or maybe it's just because it doesn't seem like a whole lot has happened in the past week...but we apologize for being slackers in the blogspot world.

So here it is: Our first entry of "Tiding you over" posts.

We got our first package of Christmas presents this week, and well, Brandon couldn't wait till Christmas day to rip into his. And boy was he glad because our apartment has been FREEZING lately!! Thanks D&E!

Is he excited? I think so! I just thought the picture was too good not to post.

I'm not sure if this was technically a "Tide you over" post since it does in fact still pertain to our goings on here. For excellence in "tiding-over" click here.

Not A Clue...

Seriously...no idea. We just walked out our front door yesterday & there was this big styrofoam dragon being painted over with what looked like yellow icing. Not a clue what it was for or where it was going or why it was being done, but for some reason they chose to do it in front of our apartment complex. We've gotten to the point in our stay here where we just don't ask questions anymore, though this time mostly due to the fact that we haven't yet learned how to ask, "Why are you painting a large styrofoam dragon with yellow icing?"

We just smiled, took a few pictures, then went on our way and by the time we returned it had vanished.

Our Thanks

This Thanksgiving we feel we have a lot to be thankful for...so we thought we'd do the second-grader type thing and compile a list of all of our thankfuls:

First and foremost, we're thankful for our Father & his Son. He's called us to a remote place where everything else in our lives seems very different except Him.

We're thankful for our families & friends of course. Though we haven't seen their beautiful faces in a few months they are the most special people to us on the planet. We miss you and we hope you ate a lot of Thanksgiving goodness on our behalf!!


We're thankful for eachother. We're so thankful for this time in our lives. If we were in the U.S. we'd each have our own job to get up and go to each day, but here our job is the same and we get to spend almost every hour of every day together. It's been the best thing for our marriage; going through culture shock together.

We're thankful that this Thanksgiving we were able to eat Turkey! After tracking one down in our recent nearby city trip we found a hotel here in town with an oven big enough to fit it in so that we had some turkey to eat in celebration of Thanksgiving day.

We're thankful for our teammates here who made it truly feel like Thanksgiving. It felt so much like thanksgiving that when we went outside to go home we were shocked to still be here!

We're thankful for the men who dig through our trash every day because it reminds us not to be wasteful.

We're thankful that we found real fresh cow's milk at Fu Mart! Makes cereal so much better!

We're thankful for our teachers because learning the language on our own would be soooo much harder!

We're thankful for our pr supporters back home because we know that the reason good things are happening here is because of their petitions!

We're thankful that the postal system does work (even though it took over three months to get one airmailed letter.) But most of the mail does come on time!

We're thankful for the water man who so promptly brings us clean water when we call him, even when we accidentally call him on his day off.

We could probably go on and on about things that we're thankful for...but we won't.
Hope your Thanksgiving was as fun as ours! Tell us what your thankful for!

Dian Fei

Yesterday from noon until approximately 5 p.m. (we're not quite sure because we were checking out new Christmas decor at Fu Mart) our apartment had no electricity. In several countries through out the world that's really common...and it might have seemed usual to us if just previous to the outage a lady hadn't shown up at our door. We received a knock at our door just after noon by a lady who apparently knew nothing else to say except, "Dian Fei!" repeatedly. We didn't have a clue what she was talking about until she stepped over to our breaker box, unlocked it, and shut off all our electricity. At this point we naturally assumed she shut off our electricity because we missed paying our bill this month. Before you go off on us and call us irresponsible let me explain how the "billing" system works over here (to the best of my knowledge.) We pay our phone bill between the 5th and the 12th of every month, the electricity bill between the 10th and 20th, gas bill is paid whenever the lady shows up at our door...which in the past is around 9 p.m. at night on a Sunday, heating is paid 4 months at a time and should have been turned on yesterday yet still we're without heat, and then there's water...well I really have no idea how we pay water. You can't pay them early, likewise you can't pay them late. (or I guess you can if they show up at your door and shut everything off) Well apparently we missed paying our electricity bill, maybe you can see why we might get confused though, and they showed up and shut it off. Instead of letting us pay her she made Brandon run down to the office and pay up at which point they told him that they'd promptly turn it back on within the next three days. Luckily we have a friend that knows all the bill paying words who informed them that we'd prefer it if they could turn it on a little sooner. So around 5 p.m. yesterday we returned to a home with electricity.

Coastal City

This past weekend we took a short vacation to a nearby coastal city to relax a little from language learning and to eat some American food. It was a much needed vacation & and a long overdue visit to Starbucks. Despite how beautiful the city is, our favorite part was the eating! We visited Pizza Hut, Starbucks, & Haagan Dazs all in one day! It was truly a spectacular day! This city makes our city seem so small & country-ish. There are a lot more foreigners there because it is one of the biggest port cities in China. Plus it is growing and expanding so much because it is playing a big part of the 2008 Olympics. The sailing competitions will be held in this city & there are signs & posters everywhere in the city preparing people for the upcoming event. Our hotel was very close to the beach front boardwalk so we had easy access to some very pretty sights. We took several pictures while we were there so get ready for another picture + caption blog.

Here's Brandon enjoying his Haagan Dazs ice cream!

The Pizza Hut we went to was the nicest Pizza Hut we've ever been in. They carried all sorts of pizza including some not so tasty sounding ones with corn on top. Luckily they had the "American Special" with cheese & pepperoni.

And now just to go along with all the hype all over the city, we're posting what apparently is a new symbol of the Olympics. He's everywhere...billboards, taxis, grocery stores, commercials, and he's even been inserted into the sidewalks lining the launch point for the sailing competition.

This is the pier for the launch point. It might be hard to see but there are flags lining the pier the extend even further to the left of numerous countries...unfortunately we couldn't go all the way out there because there is so much under construction getting ready for it all!

Old City Streets

On Saturday we visited another district of our city which has some incredible sights. There is a section of the city with some really old "really china" looking streets. It was so pretty and it felt like we really stepped back in time. Time to overload you with pictures again.

This is a lady in the silk market:

The entrance to the Old Streets:

And then we were serenaded...

And then Brandon got to talk with them for awhile...

And then I asked this guy if I could take his picture, he asked "how many?" So I told him just the one...and he gave a little smile:

Amazing Race

First story:
Due to a wonderful mother-in-law we've recently acquired the first 4 episodes of this season's Amazing Race. Woohoo!! Well, we watched them all the other day and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. If you are up in this season's AR you know that the first episode took place in Beijing. It was so exciting for us to think about a bunch of American's rushing around Beijing, eating fish eyes, and raiding Tiananmen Square. You also should know about some of the competitors, (or should we say "characters") on this season. There are the token frat boys, the cheerleaders, & the couple "struggling" to stay together, but this season there are a couple in there who we think highly entertaining. There are two black girls who speak ebonically perfect and a married couple who...let's just say they must come from the deep south of Kentucky. Up until today they were our votes for "who should be eliminated next." (I'll explain in a moment)
Second story:
Tonight one of our best chinese friends came over for a visit. He's an english teacher so we usually speak english to him. Tonight though we thought we'd practice some of our chinese on him so he could help us with pronunciation. (This being the same guy whose in-laws can't understand him because they speak a different dialect. Let me also interject...those in-laws only live about 2 hours away.) After we discovered that we didn't stand a chance of understanding him, we transitioned into us helping him with his english pronunciation. After getting bored with going through the entire alphabet, practicing saying America instead of Americ, we got a new idea.
Merge two stories:
Why not introduce him to ebonics, hicks, & airheads all in one simple episode of Amazing Race?!We popped in the newly acquired AR DVD and fast forwarded to the parts featuring the couple from Kentucky saying "I ain't never been to China", the cheerleaders saying "like", the frat boys saying "dude!", and the black girls saying "oh, nuh uh, she not gonna do dat." Before you jump all over us for being stereotypical, examine the beauty of educating some of China's finest on the multi-faceted language that English is. ALL IN ONE EPISODE!! He thought it was hilarious that only the hicks had English subtitles explaining to other English speakers what they were saying. Of course he couldn't follow along quite as quickly as most of the people were talking, and couldn't read the English subtitles as quickly as they were flashing up there for the hicks, but he sure enjoyed watching all of them use two hands (one hand per chopstick) to eat the fish eyes. And even more so when all of them butchered the pronunciation of Xie Xie (thank you.) So thanks mother-in-law for not only being a our provider in time of AR need, but for providing some educational resources as well.
This is him trying to make sense of it all:

a BIG thanks to my mom & dad for providing the BIG HUNKS laying on the coffee table.

Sports Day

This last friday our university took a break from classes and had a big sports festival! We were obviously thrilled to have a break from classes but had no idea what a sports festival might look like. So, thursday afternoon we headed out to the university's track field to take a gander. We entered through the main gate (still quite a ways from the field) but already could hear the madness going on at the track field. As we walked closer and closer to the "stadium" the ruckus grew louder and louder. We heard a bunch of shouting in unison to large base drums with elaborately dressed drum beaters. The track field is an 8 lane track with a large stadium seating apparatus on one side and an iron fence on the other. We approached from the iron fence side thinking we'd avoid most of the crowd. That was definitely not the case however. It was crowded all around. And this is what we saw:

The view of the track is still a little blocked. But what was going on was basically like a school wide track meet with students & teachers competing. While we were there we saw about 7 heats of the 400m. It might have been a little more entertaining had we gone and sat in the student's section:

I know, you're wishing you had a matching outfit too. The picture may be too small, but if you look closely you can see the big red drums on the bottom row. We've uploaded a lot more pictures of Sports Day at our picture website over there ------>

This is about three o' clock in the afternoon on sports day...and that's the sun (a common day to day sight in our city). Say it with me now, "mmmm pollution filled lungs."

This next one is also a common site. Sadly, it's customary here for the grandparents to play a bigger parental part in children's lives than the actual parents. The grandmother's do most of the raising of the kids. They came out to watch some of the events at sports day as well.

We just thought this one looked kinda cool. They're not quite as excited about sports day as everyone else.
And this is part of the crowd headed to the stadium to watch.

Nephew Galore

Before moving to our new country, we had zero nephews.

Since moving to our new country, we've acquired three nephews! Count them with us folks 1,2,3. In just two months! Granted, two of them are what we'd like to call "nephews by association," none the less, we're still Uncle Brandon & Aunt April all the same!
A little more than one month ago our "official" nephew, Judah, was born to my brother & sister in law. We're finally uploading a picture of him! Woohoo! (along with some of my brother's boots, timberlands of course...long story)

What a cutie! Wish we could be there to see you in three dimensions buddy!

Then there came our firstly acquired "nephew by association" Ezra. Again, another cutie. But something that Ezra gets quite a lot living over here that I'm sure Judah doesn't have to deal with is the comment, "He's got a double eyelid!" Meaning: well, we're still not all that sure, but we think it means that he's got a fold in his eyelid rather than the chinese look. (Which makes sense because he's not chinese.) Anyhow...here's Ezra!

And just when you think it can't get any better, along comes Elijah! Yep, another nephew by association! He arrived just in time for us to celebrate his birthday. And we went all out, chinese cake, awesome firecracker-type exploding candles, real cake with sprinkle icing (thanks erin!) and everything. Here's Eli:

And guess what came to China with Eli? His little sister. (oh well and his parents) So we now have our first "neice by association!" Welcome to China Hannah!

At this point of course we'd put a picture of Hannah. But since our internet has spontaneously started rejecting any effort to upload pictures, we'll wait til next time. Just picture the cutest little blonde cabbage patch doll ever made, and you've got her. See? no picture needed!

Two Months!

Today is our two month anniversary of being in China. We can't believe how quickly the time has passed! Over the course of the last two months we've kept a record of quotes that we've entitled, "Things we never thought we'd say." As a tribute to the two month achievement, we thought we'd post the best of "Things we never thought we'd say" and their accompanying story.

1. "I've already got a husband, but thanks anyways."
I said this one after a nice lady in a furniture store offered to help me find a suitable husband in our city. Actually, since my chinese isn't quite up to par it came out like this, (pointing at Brandon) "My husband. Thanks." (smile and quickly walk away)

2. "Those are the people waiting in line for eggs."
Eggs here are sold a little differently than back home. Lots of people stand in a really long line in order to get up to the front and tell the person how many eggs they want. At that point the cashier person turns to a big crate full of eggs, grabs however many, places them in a plastic sack, ties it up, and slaps a big sticker price on it after weighing it. I guess it's cheaper to buy them that way rather than in the already packaged plastic cartons. After being informed of this strange phenomenon, we saw a really long line at Fu Mart and that's when I said to Brandon this quote.

3. "Man it's only 7:30. I'm ready to go to bed."
Brandon said this one. Not much explanation needed if you've ever experienced jet lag...

4. "Man those Germans sure can make Jam."
We actually can't take credit for this one. This one was said by our supervisor's wife, but we thought it was blog worthy. Trust us, out of all the jam here, the German's is the best!

5. "That tv almost got ran over by a bus."
It really did. It was a close call too. And not only did the tv almost get ran over, Brandon & our supervisor were right there along with it. It was one of those slow motion moments where your adrenaline starts pumping and everything seems to be all blurred. They were safe though, and so was the tv. After the harrowing experience, Brandon calmly stated this quote.

So it's not an exhaustive list, but we thought you'd enjoy hearing a few of the random quotes we've uttered during the last two months. Though we tell a lot of strange stories about how backwards this place seems sometimes, and though most of the time we feel incredibly out of place...there's no where else in the world we can imagine being right now. Most of the time we thoroughly enjoy living here. We're getting to know our neighbors more and more and all the people we pass outside our apt. seem more used to us now.
This picture is of some ladies that are always outside near our apartment. They live near us we think. They especially like Brandon! :) Brandon asked to take their picture. You can see the one in the purple giggling.

If The Shoe Fits

Our baomu (house helper) came today. She comes twice a week (6 hours total) to help us do those pesky routine chores like vacuum, mop, dust, do the dishes, you get the drift. She's such a cool girl, an adult by the way for reasons we'll explain later in the story, and has great chinese so that makes her easy to practice with. Today she even made us some tasty banana bread! Mmmm yum. Anyways, not the point of the story. So she showed up today with a sack in hand from the local Silver Plaza (although a neat store, not quite as fantastic as the name might lead you to believe) She bought herself a pair of house shoes to wear while she's in our home so she doesn't track in all the stuff off the streets and carry it all over our floors. "How nice!", you say. I know! Then she takes them out of the bag and Brandon and I just about fell to the floor in laughter. Let me show you why:
(her's are in the middle, our's are on each side)

They may look like a 9 year old's pair of shoes but I assure you they fit perfectly on the foot of a 28 year old chinese lady. Need I elaborate more as to why we cannot find shoes that fit our feet in this country?

Call Us Crazy...

We've found a new appreciation for commercials. I know, sounds ridiculous, but when the only commercials you ever hear are cheesy "real-wood floors" commercials or the daily countdown to the Olympics, you'd appreciate a good commercial every now and then too. Our friend's blessed father mailed him a recording of a Monday Night Football Redskins vs. Vikings game. Though the game was a few weeks old, and though we knew the outcome, the MNF renowned song was music to our ears. Every other American in the world would have fast forwarded through those commercials, but man was it nice to see a huge red Chevy truck barrelling through mud again. Sad to admit it, but it really made it feel like Sunday with football all afternoon.

Feast your eyes upon...

In an attempt to keep you coming back to our site...we're dedicating this blog solely to pictures, no stories. (not that we've run out of them though!)

Brandon got some new sunglasses. He now prefers to be called Jack Bauer.


Here are our fellow Korean classmates (not all of them though). Our laoshi (teacher) is in the middle in the navy shirt. The guy furthest on the left is the one we think looks like Jackie Chan.

decide for yourself......

mmm hmmmm. We thought you'd agree.

This is one of our friends that does calligraphy. This beautiful piece is now hanging in our apartment. This is is Gal. 2:20-21

This is The Little Man Restaurant. Or at least that's what we call it because we don't know the name in Chinese. It's the closest thing to chinese fast food.

Lo and Behold...the foreign food aisle at Fu Mart. PTL for imported Del Monte Garlic & Herb canned spaghetti sauce.

Two New Arrivals!

First and foremost...
Brandon and I have a new nephew! Audrey now has a little brother Judah to play with. My brother's beautiful wife had him on the twelfth...though technically speaking he arrived on the thirteenth here, so don't think that won't be brought up on every one of his birthdays from here on! We've seen several pictures and he is quite the cutie. At this point I would show you a really cute picture of him but since I've yet to ask his parents if that's ok I don't want to go floating their new baby's picture all over the internet. You know how it is. Stay tuned for further updates on this new and exciting addition!

Second blog worthy update...
We have cheese! Now this may not sound so exciting at first but I assure you, try going six weeks without said sandwich staple and you'd be jumping for joy when Fu Mart started carrying it too. Monterey Jack, Cheddar (mild, tasty, & light), and even American Land O' Lakes individually sliced cheese. Here's how it went down: We were sitting around our apartment saturday afternoon studying chinese (as usual) when we received the call. Our supervisor had just made a quick trip to the local grocery store that is so gracious to carry certain tasty American items. He called to inform us of this new arrival and we literally stopped everything, threw on some shoes, and were out the door in less than five minutes. You have not lived until you have rushed to the grocery store, pushed some chinese children out of the way, fought off the Fu Mart saturday crowd, all to be able to stand in awe at the wonderful sight of cheddar cheese. It was such a glorious occasion that we took the camera...and I think this picture is safe to post, though it's not quite as cute as Judah.

Hopefully the image is clickable, just in case you wanted to enlarge the cheese. You can see the good ole American flag label flying below the Land O Lakes. That's so they know we're all clear about how hard they worked to get that cheese on that shelf. Notice how much cheaper the chinese "cheese" is. (liberal use of the word cheese)

By the way, just joking about that chinese children tid bit. There was no pushing involved...at least no pushing children anyways.

Basketball Differences

Yesterday Phoenix, our friend who treated us to the Chou DouFu, took us to play basketball at some public basketball courts. This place was crazy. There were sixteen half-courts each of which were covered up by a bunch of sweaty chinese men attempting to play basketball. On top of that there were just as many on-lookers who were waiting their turn to play. When we showed up everyone was obviously staring at us because we're whities but also because I don't think they've ever seen a girl play sports in person. It was literally like the circus had come to town because we quickly drew a crowd when we began to play. Phoenix, Brandon, and I were on one team with two other guys. We played five guys, two of which had one too many Tsingtoa beers. (Phoenix told me to "be careful" seven times before we started this mad-house of a game.) So we start playing, and let me assure you, talking smack sounds the same no matter what language you are talking smack in. I was not sure what this one drunk dude was saying, but I knew it wasn't too nice and probably something his mommy wouldn't appreciate. So I shot a three in his face, swooshed it (well it would have made that sound had their been a net) and boy it was all downhill from there. He started calling fouls on us for everything in the world. Well, if you know Brandon and I at all you know that we're just a tad competitive. (I mean we've taken typing tests to see who can type the fastest if that tells you anything.) Luckily before our temper got the better of us, we both noticed something: none of the guys we were playing with were showing any sign of remote frustration whatsoever, and right as we noticed this Phoenix comes to us and says in a slight whisper, "Oh, I am so angry." But by the tone in his voice, the way he said it, and his demeanor when playing we never would have thought he was frustrated. That's when it began to make sense to us...
You see, playing a pick-up game of basketball on street courts in America causes riots and gets people beat up. Things aren't like that here in China. You've probably heard of the ultimate chinese expression: 'saving face.' This term didn't make much sense to me until we played basketball yesterday. These guys weren't getting frustrated, or at least weren't showing their frustration. By slamming down the basketball or throwing an on-court fit would only cause them to lose dignity and respect (amongst the basketball community I guess, I don't know). At least that's what we've chalked it up to anyways. The game was rough that day my friends, but at least we all came away having saved much face!

Of Jackie Chan & Ping Pong

We are official Chinese Language Students! As of today we've sat through four days of classes = 16 hours, 5 teachers, & 9 fellow Korean students.
Our first day of class we were scheduled to take Spoken Chinese and Beginner's Reading; 8 am to 12 pm. Knowing we'd have trouble with the reading course because, well, we don't know any chinese characters, we knew the speaking course would be beneficial so it sounded like an O.K. morning. So we get our classroom, which by the way is in the same building as the Korean student's dorm (interesting tidbit of information for later on in the story...), to discover we are enrolled in Beginner's Chinese with nine Korean students, all of whom speak some english and a lot of Chinese. Since they've been learning characters in their own language for all of their life they've pretty much mastered Chinese characters as well. So of course they along with all of our teachers are baffled that we can't read chinese characters. The first class might have been more beneficial had we not been on the wrong page for the majority of the class time. We just thought we were having trouble following along, only to discover when called upon to read the chinese characters that we were on the wrong page. The Korean's, though really nice and helpful, unfortunately are at the maturity level of a 14 year old so they just point and giggle and ask us if we know Tom Cruise (to which Brandon replied, "Do you know Jackie Chan?") The second class is being taught by a guy who doesn't speak any english, loves to talk about beer and has a tendency to ramble on about stuff we can't understand...but then again sometimes we can't really tell he's rambling because at this point it all sounds like mumbo jumbo. This class is the one that is by far the most pointless for us because it's all about reading characters. For the majority of the class he had the Koreans reading the same paragraph over and over. Then after they read through it 13 times or so he called on one of them to see if he knew it by memory, which of course he did. Then the teacher calls on Brandon to recite it from memory! (I guess it wasn't obvious to the guy that we didn't understand what was going on when we weren't reading it any of the 13 times) So then Brandon laughs and says, "Bu keyi." Meaning = No, I can't. And then in a desperate and pleading voice he looks at the teacher with puppy dog eyes and says, "Look, I just wanna know how to tell the taxi to turn left." And of course at this point all the Koreans just giggle and point.
It's not all that bad though. We do have three classes that will be really helpful and we just don't show up for the other ones because they'd be a waste of time. The Koreans think we're a bunch of slackers. However, we have managed to impress them with our food ordering skills and expertise in Ping Pong. We went out to eat lunch with all of them yesterday during which I mentioned that Brandon was a wrestling state champion. They now prefer to call him "Texas Champion" haha. Then afterwards we went back to their dorm/classroom building to have a little game of Ping Pong. I totally thought we were gonna get smoked, because everyone knows that Asians are killer ping pong players. Lo and behold...we Americans are moving up in the Ping Pong world. I now am the chosen favorite when we play doubles.
It's been an interesting week and we really have learned a lot in just four days. Yesterday I successfully had a 2 minute conversation with a five year old! woohoo!

Ni zhidao Zhongwen ma?

你知道中文马？

Another Food Story

Over the course of the next few months it may seem as though we tell tales often concerning food. As unentertaining as the subject may be, it seems to be at the center of our most adventuresome outings.
Though this food tale doesn't contain a hilarious story, the pictures may be what grabs your attention. While dining in a local restaurant the other day, we simply had no clue as to what we might should order. Thinking surely that this was a safe idea, we asked the waitress to just serve us whatever she likes. She told us of a tasty chicken dish and we said, "Sure that'll be fine." This, my friends, was no ordinary chicken dish. Served right on top of the big bowl of chicken parts and potatoes was the following item. If you were ever wondering what a boiled chicken foot might look like, well there you go. It's declawed of course. Needless to say, it somewhat ruined our appetite for anything else that this delicatessen might have in store. I'm not sure we'll ever return there. But before we left we saw the cutest person in all of China.

She brought her mom over to us, pointed at us, and in what she must have thought was a whisper said, "Mommy, look foreigners." (in Chinese of course) Then her mom knelt and did her best to explain what we were, meanwhile, Brandon snapped this picture.
Deciding we couldn't handle anymore local food for the day, we gave in to the magnetic pull of Magdonlao (McDonalds). We had our first foreign cooked french fries and hot fudge sundaes. Boy were they tasty.

And...for some odd reason our computer has stopped uploading pictures. (it's tempting to blame everything on govt propaganda, so that's what we'll go with here) So no pictures of our local McDonalds, sorry. But check out our link to the right to see the rest of our pictures.

A Tale of Cho DoFu

The adventure began two days ago, while strolling the "shopping street", we wandered into an Adidas store. I (April) started looking the shoes over and innocently wondered whether or not they might have my size. I asked this guy standing next to me if they had a U.S. 11. He said, "For him?" and pointed towards Brandon. I said, no, me. And he just laughed in my face. Anyways...moving past my humiliation, I urge Brandon to start up conversation with this guy because rarely do we find someone that speaks a little English. So Brandon introduced himself to this guy who turns out is named Phoenix. (English name of course). Brandon successfully communicates to him that we'd like to have dinner with him on Saturday. We exchange numbers, he tells us to call him on Saturday with a time and place and we'll meet up with him and his girlfriend.
Moving to Saturday (yesterday)... We're walking around this nice little shopping mall and decide that it's about time to call Phoenix. So Brandon calls...next thing we know Phoenix comes and meets us in this shopping mall at 3 in the afternoon and says he has a surprise for us. He persuades us to follow him out of the mall. So we follow him, being a little reluctant and curious as to what is going on. We get to the door and he says, we're going to get a snack. Confused a bit, we make sure that we're still on for dinner that night as well. Phoenix says, "Yes Yes dinner good. Come with me for snack." Then the next sentence out of his mouth is what stopped us in our tracks. "I'm taking you to eat Cho DoFu." Literally, we stopped following him. Let me explain...Cho DoFu translated word for word is "Stinky ToFu" translated loosely, "Smelly, molded, old ToFu."
So Phoenix comes over, wraps his arms around Brandon and begins to shove him out of the door of the mall and towards the sidewalk. Brandon then begins his best defense of why we can not go eat Cho DoFu explaining to him that he's already tried it in Taiwan, our stomachs are still not doing so good, we're terrified of what is in it...blah blah blah, etc etc etc... Phoenix just laughs and says, "oh it's my favorite and you will try." So knowing at this point there's not way around eating Cho DoFu if we want to share with this guy, we begin what feels like The Death March. We only walked about 100 meters but let me tell you, the journey to this little street shop felt like hours upon hours because of what was going through our heads. We're thinking, even if we can manage to force feed ourselves some of this "food", our bowels are still not in the appropriate condition to handle some more authentic Chinese food.
None the less, we get there, he orders three plates full of Cho DoFu (one for each of us of course) and places it in front of us. The stuff on top is cabbage.

So being a little scared to try an entire square, Brandon does his best job of cutting a piece in half using his chop sticks, while Phoenix is shoving down his plateful. Phoenix then says, "No No No, you must eat a whole piece." Then he reaches over, uses HIS chopsticks to grab a piece off Brandon's plate, picks it up (still using HIS chopsticks), and shoves an entire piece into Brandon's mouth. USING HIS CHOPSTICKS! I about fell out of my chair laughing. It was quite a scene to see Brandon being fed by another man. I compose myself, and then he attempts to do the same to me! Brandon looks at me with huge eyes knowing I'll freak out if he tries that charade on me, and starts mumbling (because he's got a mouthful of Cho DoFu), "Just lean back, lean back! LEAN BACK!" Anyhow, Phoenix stops his feeding frenzy, I choke down a small piece of the stuff and try to occupy Phoenix while Brandon spits out his DoFu wad into a napkin.
We then successfully persuade him that we've had quite enough so he proceeds to eat all three plates of the DoFu.
This is Phoenix and Brandon before the feeding frenzy.

This is the kind lady that cooked up the Cho DoFu concoction.

And this is Phoenix working on the second of three plates full of Cho DoFu.

We did have dinner last night at a place that we prefer and luckily did not have to eat any more DoFu with Phoenix!

Modes of Transportation

We took a trip around the city yesterday snapping a few photos of the different types of transportation the people of our city choose to take. Here are a few...

This is our preferred choice of transport...the ever popular Taxi Cab. They are everywhere in the city, easy to flag down, and only cost 6 Yuan (about 70 cents) a trip. They do sometimes smell extremely bad inside, but we've learned to deal with it.
















This is...well, we're not real sure. But they're pretty popular.
















We like to call this one the backwards tricycle. We're not real sure how it works or how she steers but I'm sure she's learned to deal with it.
















Here's a nicer scooter. These are popular among the younger generation. This girl is covering her mouth because of the pollution and covering her arms so she doesn't get a tan. Most of the time the arm coverings just look like really long gloves.
















And the scooter-truck...

















But nothing beats the plain-ole-bicycle, as you can see, they are running rampant here...
This is outside of one of the dorms at our university.
































Young or old, rich or poor, nothing beats the bicycle. By the way, the thing she's wearing that looks like a welder's mask, is multipurpose: sunglasses, windshield, bug-screen, and to cover up when you pick your nose.

















So as you can see there are several ways to make our way about the city. Regardless of what method we take, it's a daily risk getting out amongst the bikes/taxis/buses/scooters/walkers. We just decide how daring we are and get out there and face the traffic!
But whatever we do, we must never take our tractor, truck, or horse down this street.