Hi all, sorry I've been MIA so long!! Because of various sensitivies I needed to get some clearance before posting anymore here. The keyboard of the computer that I'm on right now is awful so I'm just mostly going to cut and paste from a few emails I've sent the last few weeks in order to catch this blog up a bit. Sorry to those who've already read some of this:
7/4 : Chengdu is hot and humid!! And the food is super spicy. Having never included anything remotely spicy in my diet, and being totallly unaccustomed and sensitive to the taste, the sheer heat of Sichuan food had been my biggest challenge so far, though the eats are plentiful and delicious so it's not as though I'm going hungry. In two months though, when I go to my site and meet my colleagues and university department, I very much want to be able to at least try everything that shows up at the welcome banquet. That said, today I decided that instead of avoiding everything with the tell-tale specks of red peppers on it or in its sauce, I dove right in. Lunch and dinner were spent with sweat, tears, and snot pouring from me... a fellow trainee told me that after about 6 weeks of this I'll be used to spicy food in general, though I think the intense taste is inescapable for all of us. That said, ALL the food is delicous, and NOT all of it is spicy. Tonight for the 4th, a few of our VFs (6 PCV's from China 10 who are helping with our training as they finish out their time here) took us out to a BBQ place (don't think american bbq... it's more along the line of spicy shishkabobs). Sadly, there were no fireworks.
7/8: I'm at my homestay right now, in a neighborhood just north of Sichuan Normal University (Chuan Shi Da), which is on the outskirts of Chengdu. I'll be here for the next 8 weeks (minus one week in which I'll be visiting my evenutal site, which I don't know the location of yet). My host family is very considerate although it's sometimes stifling to be so worried about and fussed over. I practically have my own upstairs apartment within their "pent house" apartment. I call it that because it's on the 6th floor (no elevator of course! I'm going to have a killer ass before I leave here! ) -- it is beautiful and quite spacious actually, with two stories and a patio garden. The family is a mom and dad and 2 year old little boy. The mom is a professor here and I think the dad is also. Also in residence is the mom's older sister who helps take care of the baby and cook, and the mom's younger cousin who is a 1st year english major here. She is staying at the apartment while I'm here in order to practice english and to help with all of our mutual communication. They are all so kind, and very understanding about cooking with a little less peppers for the time being, though I think the father misses the spicyness a lot and will be very happy when I can eat it.
All of us in this group training at Chuan Shi Da will eventually be placed in sites either in Northern Sichuan or in Gansu province. Gansu does get pretty cold, with a little snow in the winter, but it also contains the only Peace Corps apartments with heat, so it's a winter-time tradeoff with the more southerly sites which don't have heat and still get down to freezing for much of the winter. Gansu can also be quite dry, with the more northern parts of it getting a lot of dust from the Gobi. However, Gansu has simply spectacular landscapes, and was the "mouth" of China during the days of the silk road, which went right down the center of Gansu province to enter the heartlands of China. This means that not only is it full of spectacular scenary and very interesting peoples (including Tibetans and Kazakhs), but it is also just littered! with Buddhist grottoes and other major historical locations that grew up around the silk road. Very cool. Southern Gansu is a little more pastoral (as opposed to steep gorges and rushing rivers), but it is considered a pearl of western China. Some of those sites are 1-2 day train rides from Chengdu, and some of the schools are much less advanced, like technical training schools instead of full universities.
7/15: This week my life has been 4 hours of language every morning, and 4 hours of technical sessions every afternoon (exceptions being the vaccinations-- 3 more of a total 16 -- and an enlightening "diarrhea dialogue" by med staff). In the evenings we sometimes go out for a beer or pingpong, or I watch TV with the host fam. It's sort of funny actually, I live in the farthest neighborhood from campus, with a 20-25 minute walk either to class OR to the South Gate where most of the bars, restaurants, and other volunteers' homestays are. It's like being on JPA all over again when it comes to going out or meeting up with people. Luckily a couple other cool kids are also way out the North Gate in my neighborhood, so we often make the trek together. Between them, my ipod, and the people-watching to be done along the way, it's actually a pretty great walk, buckets of sweat aside. Outside the walk, my days here are sortof defined by stairs. I live on the 6th floor of my building, I have class on the 3rd and 4th floors of two buildings, and teach on the 4th floor of another.
Starting on MONDAY I will be teaching model school! Well, it's model school for me, but for the students it's a real course and I'll be giving them final grades. I only have 15 students actually, which is unheard of for China. While I'm excited about all the things I can do with them that maybe I can't with a larger class, I'm afraid that getting to site and standing up in front of my regular classes of 30-100 kids will still be a bit of a shock! I can't WAIT to meet my students and start muddling through! All I know about them is that they are freshman and not english majors so their english level could be quite low.
We'll still be having language every morning, and I've started keeping a journal written in characters for my teacher to correct each day which I'm hoping will help my chinese improve since in-class language acquisition is focused on oral and listening comprehension.
Just wanted to mention that I can post on here, but I can't see it because China has blocked blogspot -- so I can't see comments and the only way that I can find out if something hasn't posted right is for you to email me. I love hearing from you all anyway :)
Much love,
Kristen
PS: until I'm on a computer where I can see webpage options in english, I can't post this disclaimer in my info, so I'll just do it here for now --> Anything posted in this blog is my opinion only and does not represent the official stance of either Peace Corps or the US government.
7/4 : Chengdu is hot and humid!! And the food is super spicy. Having never included anything remotely spicy in my diet, and being totallly unaccustomed and sensitive to the taste, the sheer heat of Sichuan food had been my biggest challenge so far, though the eats are plentiful and delicious so it's not as though I'm going hungry. In two months though, when I go to my site and meet my colleagues and university department, I very much want to be able to at least try everything that shows up at the welcome banquet. That said, today I decided that instead of avoiding everything with the tell-tale specks of red peppers on it or in its sauce, I dove right in. Lunch and dinner were spent with sweat, tears, and snot pouring from me... a fellow trainee told me that after about 6 weeks of this I'll be used to spicy food in general, though I think the intense taste is inescapable for all of us. That said, ALL the food is delicous, and NOT all of it is spicy. Tonight for the 4th, a few of our VFs (6 PCV's from China 10 who are helping with our training as they finish out their time here) took us out to a BBQ place (don't think american bbq... it's more along the line of spicy shishkabobs). Sadly, there were no fireworks.
7/8: I'm at my homestay right now, in a neighborhood just north of Sichuan Normal University (Chuan Shi Da), which is on the outskirts of Chengdu. I'll be here for the next 8 weeks (minus one week in which I'll be visiting my evenutal site, which I don't know the location of yet). My host family is very considerate although it's sometimes stifling to be so worried about and fussed over. I practically have my own upstairs apartment within their "pent house" apartment. I call it that because it's on the 6th floor (no elevator of course! I'm going to have a killer ass before I leave here! ) -- it is beautiful and quite spacious actually, with two stories and a patio garden. The family is a mom and dad and 2 year old little boy. The mom is a professor here and I think the dad is also. Also in residence is the mom's older sister who helps take care of the baby and cook, and the mom's younger cousin who is a 1st year english major here. She is staying at the apartment while I'm here in order to practice english and to help with all of our mutual communication. They are all so kind, and very understanding about cooking with a little less peppers for the time being, though I think the father misses the spicyness a lot and will be very happy when I can eat it.
All of us in this group training at Chuan Shi Da will eventually be placed in sites either in Northern Sichuan or in Gansu province. Gansu does get pretty cold, with a little snow in the winter, but it also contains the only Peace Corps apartments with heat, so it's a winter-time tradeoff with the more southerly sites which don't have heat and still get down to freezing for much of the winter. Gansu can also be quite dry, with the more northern parts of it getting a lot of dust from the Gobi. However, Gansu has simply spectacular landscapes, and was the "mouth" of China during the days of the silk road, which went right down the center of Gansu province to enter the heartlands of China. This means that not only is it full of spectacular scenary and very interesting peoples (including Tibetans and Kazakhs), but it is also just littered! with Buddhist grottoes and other major historical locations that grew up around the silk road. Very cool. Southern Gansu is a little more pastoral (as opposed to steep gorges and rushing rivers), but it is considered a pearl of western China. Some of those sites are 1-2 day train rides from Chengdu, and some of the schools are much less advanced, like technical training schools instead of full universities.
7/15: This week my life has been 4 hours of language every morning, and 4 hours of technical sessions every afternoon (exceptions being the vaccinations-- 3 more of a total 16 -- and an enlightening "diarrhea dialogue" by med staff). In the evenings we sometimes go out for a beer or pingpong, or I watch TV with the host fam. It's sort of funny actually, I live in the farthest neighborhood from campus, with a 20-25 minute walk either to class OR to the South Gate where most of the bars, restaurants, and other volunteers' homestays are. It's like being on JPA all over again when it comes to going out or meeting up with people. Luckily a couple other cool kids are also way out the North Gate in my neighborhood, so we often make the trek together. Between them, my ipod, and the people-watching to be done along the way, it's actually a pretty great walk, buckets of sweat aside. Outside the walk, my days here are sortof defined by stairs. I live on the 6th floor of my building, I have class on the 3rd and 4th floors of two buildings, and teach on the 4th floor of another.
Starting on MONDAY I will be teaching model school! Well, it's model school for me, but for the students it's a real course and I'll be giving them final grades. I only have 15 students actually, which is unheard of for China. While I'm excited about all the things I can do with them that maybe I can't with a larger class, I'm afraid that getting to site and standing up in front of my regular classes of 30-100 kids will still be a bit of a shock! I can't WAIT to meet my students and start muddling through! All I know about them is that they are freshman and not english majors so their english level could be quite low.
We'll still be having language every morning, and I've started keeping a journal written in characters for my teacher to correct each day which I'm hoping will help my chinese improve since in-class language acquisition is focused on oral and listening comprehension.
Just wanted to mention that I can post on here, but I can't see it because China has blocked blogspot -- so I can't see comments and the only way that I can find out if something hasn't posted right is for you to email me. I love hearing from you all anyway :)
Much love,
Kristen
PS: until I'm on a computer where I can see webpage options in english, I can't post this disclaimer in my info, so I'll just do it here for now --> Anything posted in this blog is my opinion only and does not represent the official stance of either Peace Corps or the US government.
posted by Kristen at
Saturday, July 15, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home