Things that have happened since Monday:
1) painted my dining area bright orange. shades of UVA... (happy Homecomings!)
2) met all my students
3) bought a DVD player, but no DVDs
4) had my window and door fixed
5) discovered my washing machine is broken
6) broken my toilet. fixed my toilet. (okay, Ben actually did both of these things, but they are very symptomatic of my apartment as a whole)
7) started getting to know these bus routes: 139, 111, 141, 142, 137, 6 ( 6 of some 25 odd routes)
8) found the black-market cheese provider. okay maybe not actually black-market, but by far the most random and sketchy adventure I've been on so far in China
+ As it turns out, no tape + China-quality paint = interesting paint job. Perhaps a little brighter than planned as well. It's growing on me though, and is a far sight better than the dirty white walls from before.
+ My classes are great, and I only teach a total of about 90 students in my 12 credit hours this semester, so I should be able to get to know all of my kids really well. My two senior classes have very high English levels, so the biggest challenge there will be, well, to challenge them! I definitely expect to have a good time with these advanced students, though. My sophomore class, which I have 6 hours each week, is still a little intimidating at 35 students, but there are a large handful of kids in there who I am already really enjoying! Several have been volunteering in class (almost never happens in Chinese classrooms), and several others took me across town the other day to buy paint. As a class they're really rambunctious, but not many Chinese classes are so lively, so I think it's going to be fun.
+ They've cracked down on illegal DVDs lately, so DVDs have been hard to purchase! Still, with no tv and quite a bit of free time on my hands (at least for the moment), I'm happy to be able to watch what movies I can get my hands on.
+ Without the gaping hole in my window, and without the large square cut-out in my door, I'm feeling rather warmer and safer than before. Yay!
+ The hose to my from the faucet to my washing machine is full of holes (does an awesome immitation of a sprinkler), there is no top, and the water won't stay in the machine. Still, with a little ingenuity and hands-on interference in the machine-spasming spin cycles, I have one load of now dry clothes which smell like detergent, if their actual cleanliness is still debatable. I may just take some clothes into the shower with me next time.
+ My toilet has a definite and fairly obstinate personality.
+ My biggest Now-I-Actually-LIVE-Here goal is to figure my way around this 3.1 million person city that runs by bus. Some days this is quite a job since the combination of hectic intersections, train crossings, and completely torn-up sections of the road leading to my university can turn a 10min home-stretch part of any journey around the city into a 1 hour, stop & go, exhaust fume-y ordeal. Still, it's a very cool city with an immense mix of Han, Hui, and other minority cultures and a huge Muslim presence. I love getting instructions on which buses to take to certain locations, and then people & neighborhood watching all the way there. I try to make mental notes about where certain things, like flowers, or tools, or books, are to be found.
+ So, cheese. I miss it so much. Matt, one of the China 11s in Lanzhou, told me that there is a place where large blocks of cheese are to be found at prices that we can more-or-less afford. His instructions were as follows: "Take the #142 East. After it gets through the downtown area, it wil go through a bunch of small twists and turns. When it hits a T in the road and turns left, get out, and backtrack about 100yards West. Go into a sketchy-looking building and look for a door with western-food advertisements on it. Knock on the door." A little vague to be sure, but this is cheese we're talking about. Ben came to visit for the day, and after picking him up at the bus station, we set out on the search for cheese. After a half-hour bus ride looking for a stop like what Matt described, and 15 minutes of wandering through a mechanic-shop neighborhood, we spied a promising door around the back of a building, down an alley. It was padlocked but through a crack we could see a shelf full of McCormick spices and suspected that we were in the right place. No one was around, however. So we circled the building and came out by a dusty set of apartments. Seeing an open door, but uncertain and fairly confused at this point, we were about to leave, when a neighboring lady, face hidden behind one of those germ-blocking masks, gestured us to go on into the open door. We did, and seeing another open door, proceeded back into a ground-floor apartment where we found a two men knee-deep in sales paperwork. One of the men led us back to the padlocked door, opened it, and showed us (in addition to the spices), fridges full of mammoth blocks of cheese and cuts of meat. Twenty four hours later and I'm still pretty pleased with myself for such a successful mission!
1) painted my dining area bright orange. shades of UVA... (happy Homecomings!)
2) met all my students
3) bought a DVD player, but no DVDs
4) had my window and door fixed
5) discovered my washing machine is broken
6) broken my toilet. fixed my toilet. (okay, Ben actually did both of these things, but they are very symptomatic of my apartment as a whole)
7) started getting to know these bus routes: 139, 111, 141, 142, 137, 6 ( 6 of some 25 odd routes)
8) found the black-market cheese provider. okay maybe not actually black-market, but by far the most random and sketchy adventure I've been on so far in China
+ As it turns out, no tape + China-quality paint = interesting paint job. Perhaps a little brighter than planned as well. It's growing on me though, and is a far sight better than the dirty white walls from before.
+ My classes are great, and I only teach a total of about 90 students in my 12 credit hours this semester, so I should be able to get to know all of my kids really well. My two senior classes have very high English levels, so the biggest challenge there will be, well, to challenge them! I definitely expect to have a good time with these advanced students, though. My sophomore class, which I have 6 hours each week, is still a little intimidating at 35 students, but there are a large handful of kids in there who I am already really enjoying! Several have been volunteering in class (almost never happens in Chinese classrooms), and several others took me across town the other day to buy paint. As a class they're really rambunctious, but not many Chinese classes are so lively, so I think it's going to be fun.
+ They've cracked down on illegal DVDs lately, so DVDs have been hard to purchase! Still, with no tv and quite a bit of free time on my hands (at least for the moment), I'm happy to be able to watch what movies I can get my hands on.
+ Without the gaping hole in my window, and without the large square cut-out in my door, I'm feeling rather warmer and safer than before. Yay!
+ The hose to my from the faucet to my washing machine is full of holes (does an awesome immitation of a sprinkler), there is no top, and the water won't stay in the machine. Still, with a little ingenuity and hands-on interference in the machine-spasming spin cycles, I have one load of now dry clothes which smell like detergent, if their actual cleanliness is still debatable. I may just take some clothes into the shower with me next time.
+ My toilet has a definite and fairly obstinate personality.
+ My biggest Now-I-Actually-LIVE-Here goal is to figure my way around this 3.1 million person city that runs by bus. Some days this is quite a job since the combination of hectic intersections, train crossings, and completely torn-up sections of the road leading to my university can turn a 10min home-stretch part of any journey around the city into a 1 hour, stop & go, exhaust fume-y ordeal. Still, it's a very cool city with an immense mix of Han, Hui, and other minority cultures and a huge Muslim presence. I love getting instructions on which buses to take to certain locations, and then people & neighborhood watching all the way there. I try to make mental notes about where certain things, like flowers, or tools, or books, are to be found.
+ So, cheese. I miss it so much. Matt, one of the China 11s in Lanzhou, told me that there is a place where large blocks of cheese are to be found at prices that we can more-or-less afford. His instructions were as follows: "Take the #142 East. After it gets through the downtown area, it wil go through a bunch of small twists and turns. When it hits a T in the road and turns left, get out, and backtrack about 100yards West. Go into a sketchy-looking building and look for a door with western-food advertisements on it. Knock on the door." A little vague to be sure, but this is cheese we're talking about. Ben came to visit for the day, and after picking him up at the bus station, we set out on the search for cheese. After a half-hour bus ride looking for a stop like what Matt described, and 15 minutes of wandering through a mechanic-shop neighborhood, we spied a promising door around the back of a building, down an alley. It was padlocked but through a crack we could see a shelf full of McCormick spices and suspected that we were in the right place. No one was around, however. So we circled the building and came out by a dusty set of apartments. Seeing an open door, but uncertain and fairly confused at this point, we were about to leave, when a neighboring lady, face hidden behind one of those germ-blocking masks, gestured us to go on into the open door. We did, and seeing another open door, proceeded back into a ground-floor apartment where we found a two men knee-deep in sales paperwork. One of the men led us back to the padlocked door, opened it, and showed us (in addition to the spices), fridges full of mammoth blocks of cheese and cuts of meat. Twenty four hours later and I'm still pretty pleased with myself for such a successful mission!
posted by Kristen at
Sunday, September 17, 2006
1 Comments:
Okay- You MUST take us to the cheese place when we come to town! Remember, we are there to "stock our fridge!" So, how was the cheese? I am so jealous right now. How much did it cost? I must have all the details! (How sad is that?)
By
Michelle, at 6:43 AM
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