Fall Holidays in Guizhou

Hi everyone,
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Well, we've just finished two significant holidays here: Halloween and Thanksgiving. And Christmas is right around the corner. I've got a lot of planning to do for that, but I thought I'd take some time and fill you in on how we celebrated in October and November.
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For Halloween, we traveled 7 1/2 hours by taxi and train to Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou. In Guiyang, we celebrated with about 20 other volunteers at a costume party hosted by a volunteer couple. After much costume deliberation, we decided to go as a plug and outlet, an idea Jacq found online. With her engineering background, she was confident she could make the costumes for us, and so she did. It was a little challenging traveling with our costumes, especially because it rained the entire weekend, but we managed to make it to Guiyang and to the party. Our costumes were a hit, though most people had to see us together to understand us. At the costume party, we snacked, drank, danced. We managed to make it to a club in Guiyang the night before, but we didn't get to do much else because of the rain.
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For Thanksgiving, we played it more low-key. We decided to forgo the big Thanksgiving party in Guiyang, prefering to celebrate in Kaili with our couple friends, Holly and Marc, and Jayne and John. Holly and Marc live in Kaili, a small city (but bigger than Tongren) 3 hours from us by bus. There are a lot of minorities in Kaili, especially Miao and Dong, so we were able to visit a market where I bought a little jewelry.
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Our meal was incredible. For lunch, I made us a butternut squash and apple soup. For dinner, we had a pretty traditional meal. We had chicken and duck (no turkey in this part of China), stuffing, mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, corn, broccoli, cucumber/pomegranate seed salad, pumpkin pie, and apple crisp. We even splurged and bought some decent wine. It was a Chinese-made Cab, really good by China's standards. Overall, it was a great holiday, and I'm glad for that because Thanksgiving is my favorite.
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For Christmas, we might host the same two couples in Tongren, but we have't decided yet. But first, there is some decorating that must be done. Some of my students want to sneak up the mountains behind campus to cut me down a Christmas tree, but I don't want anyone getting arrested! Ha! So we might just have to buy a plant to decorate as a Christmas tree. And I know I can find plastic garland and tree lights in Tongren, so that's my next purchase. I'll send pics as soon as I get my apartment decorated. But we're thinking we might really splurge and have a hotel room Christmas with Western toilets and indoor heat! We'll see...China is always an adventure.
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Love and miss you all,
Jennifer

Introducing My China Family

Hi everyone,
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I thought I’d take some time to let you know about the people who mean the most to me here in China. I have been very lucky to be placed with Jacq, the best Peace Corps sitemate ever, and two other foreign teachers who are very devoted to teaching.
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Let me start by talking about Jacq (Jacqueline Simonis). She is currently serving her third year in Peace Corps; for the last two years, she served as a water sanitation engineer in Mali. Her educational background is in civil engineering, and she has an MBA. So teaching English is something quite different for her, but she likes the experience of living in China. She’s 26 years old, grew up in Connecticut, and went to college in Massachusetts and New Mexico. She has a wacky sense of humor and a confidence that I am trying to emulate.
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She’s such a great help to me because she has already gone through what I am going through now. So she understands when I get homesick or have a really bad day. If I need to just talk, or splurge on dinner, or share some brandy to keep my spirits up, she always says “sure.” She encourages me to go running with her, even though I really hate it. And she is taking yoga with me (although her main reason is that we are both madly in love with our yoga instructor). Occasionally, she has a bad day, too, but she rarely complains. She keeps a positive attitude and often deals with problems by joking about them.
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I think, by now, we are turning into an old married couple. We usually eat together once or twice a day. We hang out just to chat, we work out together, we party together. We just came back from a Halloween Party in Guiyang with many other volunteers, but we both agreed that we’re happiest hanging out together. We’re just waiting for the day that we get sick of hearing each other’s stories. But till then, I’m very, very pleased that she is my friend and sitemate.
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I also have the very good fortune of having the Gregs as part of my life here in Tongren. They are affectionately referred to as Greg Number One and Greg Number Two. Greg Number One (Greg McCann) has been in Tongren for about eight months now, but he has been living and teaching in China for the past ten years. He’s 61 years-old (about to turn 62). In his life, he’s had a lot of adventures and plenty of occupations. He’s been a teacher, a cook, an AIDS caregiver, and I’m sure several more things. He’s about the most jovial person I’ve ever known, and he is tremendously caring. He rarely eats out, preferring to cook in his own apartment, so on a few occasions, he’s invited us over for dinner and makes us a fabulous Western meal. And he’s always up for a chat and a glass of brandy. When I don’t feel well, he takes care of me by bringing me food to my apartment. Just today, it’s rainy and I have a cold, so he brought me a dish of rice, pork, potato, tomato, and onion. Yum. I’m really thankful for his food.
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Greg Number Two (Greg McEnnally) arrived shortly after we did this semester. He, too, has been teaching in China for a number of years. I’m not sure what he did before teaching; I’ll have to find out. Greg is 65 years-old, and he was a bit of an athlete in his day. Even now, he has a small, fit physique. He used to be a girl’s running coach, and claims that women are capable of being great runners (I’m just not sure that applies to me). He’s not much of a cook, but he makes occasional attempts, and we’re happy to try whatever he makes us. Greg is a bit of an expert on many topics, and Greg Number One says it can be quite annoying because Greg Number Two is almost always right about whatever it is he’s discussing. I’m getting to know him better, and I’m discovering that he has a very compassionate heart.
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The Gregs have known each other for about forty years. They are both from Sydney, Australia, but they followed different paths for a while, finally meeting up at a teachers’ training college in Sydney where they became friends. Afterwards, they both moved to Papua New Guinea to teach, moved back to Australia, and finally moved to China. And now they are here together in Tongren, happy to have each other’s company once again. It’s fun talking to them and hearing about their past experiences. We like looking at their pictures, especially considering that Greg Number One was quite a hottie about twenty years ago. I believe they have also taken quite a liking to us, as well. They respect us as teachers and believe that we, all together, can do a lot to improve this university and its relationships with its foreign teachers.
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Well, I guess that’s it. For all of you who are so important to me at home, I wanted to give you some idea of who the people are who are taking care of me in China.
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Love you and miss you all,
Jennifer

Food...Finally!

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Hi everyone,
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I've been promising a food blog, but thinking about actually writing one has been overwhelming. There is just so much to share about the food and the food culture here. As many of you know, I hate Chinese food! Well, I don't anymore. In fact, I've found foods here that I absolutely love and will really miss when I eventually leave China.
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Let's start with the unusual and downright gross. So far, I've eaten intestines, brain (see happy photo above), stomach, chicken feet, pig feet, pig ear, whole fried fish (head and all), chicken bone (really the black skin around it). I think that's it. There's a lot I'm willing to try, but the one thing I refuse to eat is the congealed blood. I just won't do it. I didn't try the insects on a stick (shown above), but I'm not opposed to it. Maybe when Anna comes, we'll give it a go. On the not gross but unusual list, I'll include red bean frozen popsicle, green jello popsicle, fried corn, pickled egg, seaweed soup FOR BREAKFAST...THREE DAYS IN A ROW!!!,
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The thing about eating in China is that it's hard work. Eating isn't easy. I think that's the main reason why a lot of Chinese people are pretty thin...it just takes too much time and effort to eat much. For example, almost all meat comes on the bone, so you have to gnaw around the bone for just the tiniest amount of meat. The picture above shows how meat often comes still put together; the animal is just cooked whole. So disassembling it is a task. All fruit is peeled, so even having an apple requires effort. All kinds of nuts and seeds are sold in the shell, and de-shelling them is often pretty challenging. I've even eaten lotus flower seeds that are sold still inside the stem, so you must pop them out of the top of the stem and then peel them--hard work for just a little seed.
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I, however, have managed to gain a little bit of weight recently because I eat so much rice. I love rice! I can eat it a couple times a day (which I usually do), and I never get tired of it. I'm trying to limit my rice intake, but it's pretty hard. People in the south of China eat rice, and people in the north of China eat noodles and dumplings made of flower. Rice noodles are popular here; some I like and some I really do not. I haven't had as much jiaozi (dumplings) here in Tongren as I had in Chengdu, but I can still find them pretty easily.
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In fact, Jacq (my sitemate) and I have started buying frozen jiaozi from the grocery store because they are so quick to make. And I buy frozen baozi (steamed bread filled with pork) which I absolutely love. Other than that, we usually eat rice and vegetables.
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It seems that the main style of dining in Tongren are these little restaurants that serve rice and vegetables. The vegetables are laid out raw in plastic containers. You take a plate and with provided kuaizi (chopsticks), you take a little of each vegetable and/or tofu you want and put it on your plate. The laoban (boss) then stirfries it up for you, adding a little pork, which is the main meat in this part of the country. Then you eat your stirfried vegetables with a bowl of rice. This meal costs 5 kuai, which is about 75 cents. So this is my normal lunch and sometimes dinner.
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The popular regional meal in this part of China (especially in Sichuan) is Hot Pot (huo guo). The first photo above is Hot Pot, which is essentially a boiling pot of oil and lajiao (the local red pepper). It is spicy and greasy as hell. In the hot oil, we drop meats, vegetables, tofu, noodles. After they are done cooking, we fish them out with our chopsticks, and we dip them in another bowl of oil, garlic, vinigar, and cilantro. In the morning, after a night of Hot Pot, I have what I like to call a "Hot Pot Hangover," essentially laduzi (diarrhea). So I try to avoid eating Hot Pot. But whenever a group gets together, it's usually Hot Pot that everyone wants to eat.
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I should also talk about banquet culture. At a banquet, you can spend several hours, but not much of the time is spent eating. Most of the time, people talk and play mahjang. The time for eating is just for eating (and drinking). A few weeks ago, Jacq and I were sent to another town several hours away called Sinan to give speeches at two local high schools. This meant that we had two banquets with the respective English departments and administration representatives. At the banquets, we ate A LOT (see the aftermath in the photo above), and we drank beer. We made a bit of a faux pas by toasting our own school adminstration representative before we toasted everyone of our host school's members. Oooops. Well, we're still learning. And apparently, we drank too much the first time, so it was recommended that we stop drinking for the evening. Drinking culture is confusing. We didn't know where the line was exactly, but perhaps we crossed it. Apparently, neither volunteer before us drank at all with other school members, so I think our school's foreign affairs officer was surprised. (But we found out later that he thought we did a good job on the trip, so I think we're okay).
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The thing about drinking at a banquet is that if you are toasted, you are supposed to toast back. Well, since we're the foreign guests, everyone wanted to toast us, and some people toasted us more than once. So we had that many toasts, and then we had to reciprocate, doubling the amount that we were drinking. On a side note, the two toasting rituals we know are (1) if you are toasted with "gambei," you have to down your entire glass, and (2) you should always touch the top of your glass to the bottom of the other person's glass as a sign of respect. Sometimes, people will have a contest and take their glasses down to the floor.
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Back to food, here are some foods I have grown to really love and will absolutely miss when I leave: lotus root (already missing it because I can't find it in Tongren), fungus, yuxiang qiezi (eggplant in fish sauce), bean paste pastries, pumpkin cookies, scallion egg pancakes, smoked tofu, stirfried water spinach, cantelope ice cream cones, peach popsicles, breaded and fried bananas.
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I'm not missing food from home that much anymore, but sometimes I would kill for a big, greasy plate of Mexican food and some delicious curry. But I'm adjusting well to the food here and to eating with chopsticks. I'm pretty good, in fact. In the photo above, I had just gotten to China, so you can see I'm holding them in the middle like a beginner, but I now hold them at the top. I'm still learning more foods and how to ask for them. Jacq and I want to expand our diets, so we're learning how to read menus and how to order a bigger variety of dishes.
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Eating here is really very cheap. As I mentioned earlier, our regular meal of rice and stirfry costs 5 kuai (about 75 cents). Our cheapest dinner was boiled vegetables at 2 kuai (about 30 cents). A week ago or so, Jacq and I splurged on a dinner of dishes which cost each of us about 20 kuai (about 3 dollars). A big bottle of beer is usually 3 or 4 kuai (50 or 60 cents). Sometimes, we go all out and get a bottle of Chinese wine (not very good) or Chinese brandy (pretty good) for about 35 kuai (about 5 dollars). Imported alcohol is usually out of the question. For example, our closest grocery store sells imported Italian chianti (which is pretty cheap in America) for 140 kuai (20 bucks!!!!). There's no way I can afford that. So good wine will be out of my diet for a few years. Oh, side note, the imported American beer that the same store sells (in great quantity) is PBR!
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Okay, I think that's enough for this blog entry. Sorry if I overloaded you with food talk, but it has been quite an experience for me, and I'm happy to say that I'm doing pretty well. (But I'd still like that Christmas care package, Connie!).
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Love you and miss you all,
Jennifer

Finally a Volunteer

Hi everyone,
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Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I finally got my computer back, and I'm settling io my permanent site. After ten weeks of training, I've passed my Chinese exam, sworn in, and moved all my stuff to Tongren in Guizhou Province.
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All the trainees took the LPI, Language Proficiency Interview, a few days before the end of training. It was a day of stress for everyone. There were a few blow-ups, but we all came out of it okay. I ended up getting an Intermediate Mid, one level above what we needed to pass, so I was happy about that. But I was a little embarrased by my performance during the exam. I realized that I kept using the word "fangbian," which means "convenient," instead of using the correct word "fangjian," which means "room," when trying to make a hotel reservation. So I kept asking questions like, "Do you have any convenient available?" "Does your convenient have air conditioning?" Oh, well...I passed.
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Then we moved out of our host families' houses and left the university to move into a hotel where we all stayed and had sessions. It was one last chance to see a lot of each other before we moved to different parts of the country. I was surprised by the emotions I experienced in those last few days with my new friends, and now I find myself really missing some of them.
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Our swearing-in ceremony was at a nice hotel in downtown Chengdu. Many of us had qipaos made for the occasion (you can see mine in the picture above). The national director of Peace Corps came to China to swear us in, which was a nice surprise. At swearing in, we heard some speeches, had a slide show (which my friend Harley put together), and sang a traditional Chinese song. The song is a Tibetan love song, which was used in the opening credits of Survivor China, I believe. If you're interested in hearing a Western Folk rendition, use the link below. Overall, swearing in was a good celebration...they even fed us lasagne!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LTMuLS9tqk
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The same evening we swore in, we gathered our things, took a taxi to the train station, went through the painful process of checking our bags (never do it if you can avoid it), and took the overnight to Tongren. Our counterpart teacher, Sherry (previously named Miselle), met us in Chengdu and came back with us; you can also see her in the photo with myself and Jacq, my sitemate.
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Finally now, we are in Tongren, settling in and adjusting to our new lives here. I'm continuing to learn more about my new town, and will post soon about it.
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Love you and miss you all,
Jennifer

Studying at Sichuan Normal University

Hi everyone,

As you already know, I am living near and studying at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu. Apparently, there are several Sichuan Universities, the Normal so named because it is/was (?) a teaching college. It is a large college, I believe, founded in 1938. If you are interested in reading more about the university, here is a webpage in English:
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http://web.sicnu.edu.cn/en/AboutSNU_1.html
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I spend most of my time on campus, most days from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. In the morning, I attend Chinese class. I've been placed into the advanced class, so there is a lot of pressure from my very smart classmates to keep up with the language. I'm not the best in the class, but my language is progressing. At this point, we are learning pinyin and not the Chinese characters. Peace Corps's focus at this point is oral fluency. During training, they might start to teach the advanced class characters, but I'm not positive about that. At this point, probably 98% of our language instruction is in Mandarin (putonghua). We rarely ever switch to English. Day by day, I add new words to my active vocabulary, but I'm still only able to order a few dishes, so I eat the same foods day in and day out. I really have to learn more vocabulary for food. I eat a lot of dumplings and noodles, but that is in part because they are so cheap.
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Some days, we have language until noon, but other days, we have a health/cross cultural/TEFL session from 10:30 to noon. Today, we talked about the dangers of alcohol. Peace Corps is very strict about alcohol consumption when it causes problems with the host country nationals. If we get into a problem with a Chinese because we are drunk, we will be sent home. The problem is that, in China, there is a lot of pressure to drink. So we have to learn how to establish our drinking boundaries without ruining guanxi between ourselves and others. (Guanxi is the most important thing to Chinese. It is the system of relationships that the entire country works off of.) If we damage guanxi, we not only make our own lives more difficult, but we might damage the relationship between our school and its contributors. Drinking plays a large part in building guanxi, so we have to learn to balance drinking in order to build guanxi with drinking in moderation. I think it's often a tough call.
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Other seminars we have had: managing a multi-level classroom, dating in China, Chinese holidays, diarrhea, how to put out a fire, bird flu, brief history of China, etc. Some of them are quite interesting and some are a bit tedious, depending on the presenter. So far, I've like putting out a fire (we really did) and the health seminars best. We were supposed to get to STD's today, but we ran out of time. Also, we have weekly vaccinations, but I believe we are done except for one more Hep A/B before we leave for our permanent sites. We've had shots for Hep A/B, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, and maybe something else. There is a large rabies problem here, so we have to be really careful around animals. In fact, we are not allowed to own any pets except for fish during our two years here.
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After noon, we have an hour and a half for lunch. We then have some time to prep for model school and then teach model school. After model school, we usually have an optional Chinese tutoring time, which basically means an extra 45 minute class, but we have some influence over the content. Yesterday, we learned a cheesy, but kind of romantic, Chinese love song. I'll write another post about model school later. I'll post a picture of our students, as well. The last day of school is tomorrow, so we'll throw a party; I think it will be fun.
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Overall, I'm having a good time. I have a hard day here and there, but I'm very happy to be here. Sorry if I worried you by not posting for awhile. I've been very tired and busy and a little sick. I'm trying to get over a pretty wicked cough. I really like the people in my language class; we laugh a lot in class which I find absolutely necessary to maintain mental sanity. There is an ongoing joke about "chi doufu," which literally translates to eating tofu, but figuratively means making out. We also seem to have found a training theme song, "Strangers in the Night." I'm on the committee to plan our performance for the swearing-in ceremony, so we're trying to figure out how to include that song. We recently found out that the national director of Peace Corps is coming to China and will be the one to swear us in, so that's pretty exciting. There are also a few of us who daily work on a puzzle. It's amazing how fun a thousand piece puzzle is when you're trying to decide between puzzle and studying more Chinese.
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So hi from China. We're all very excited about the Olympics starting tomorrow. I'll write more about them later and how important they seem to be to the Chinese people. I hope you are all doing well. I love you and miss you.
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Jennifer

My Host Family

Hi everyone,

A few of you have been curious about my host family. I moved in with them last Saturday. It's been good so far. The pictures you see are of my room, my Western-style toilet (hurray!), and the view from my bedroom.

The house is about a 10 minute walk from campus. It's off the North Gate, down a little street divided by a river/sewer. It's actually kind of pretty. The neighborhood I live in seems like a fairly tight-knit community with a lot of children. There are six volunteers who live in my complex.

I live in the very corner building of the complex. My site manager lives downstairs on the second floor. I live on the sixth floor. Apparently, the law in the China is that an elevator is required in buildings with seven floors, so our complex's buildings fall just under that mark. What that means is that I get to climb six floors every day. I figure that with all the walking and all the stairs, I'll get in shape pretty quickly!

I'm not sure if I should post my family's names, so on this blog, I'll call my host family by their initials: my host father "LL," my host mother is "YY," my host sister is "TT," and my host grandma is "grandma." LL and YY are probably in their mid-thirties, maybe late-thirties. LL is an engineer, but I have no idea where he works. YY is a Chinese teacher at the elementary school located on the university campus. Because she teaches Chinese, her Mandarin is very good. There is a Sichuan dialect most people speak, and it's very difficult to understand.

LL and YY have an eight year old daughter, TT. I haven't met her yet because she and grandma are on vacation visiting family near Beijing. I'm looking forward to her return, however. According to YY, TT always asks about me during their phone conversations. She wants to know my hair color, eye color, and where I am (usually at school).

LL and YY are both a little bit introverted, so the house is pretty quiet most of the time. They both speak a fair amount of English, so right now, more than half our conversation is in English, but as I learn more in my language class, we are speaking more in Chinese.

YY is a pretty fair cook, and she makes me breakfast and dinner every day. It's pretty nice to be cooked for like that. I offer to help, but she doesn't allow it. So far, I'm allowed to throw my trash away in the kitchen (trash is part of the counter), I'm allowed to put my dirty dishes into the sink, and I'm allowed to put leftovers into the refrigerator (located in the dining room). I'm not to help cook or do dishes. I'll push a little harder next week to see if she's just trying to treat me as a guest this week. Our host families are supposed to treat us as family members, but it's not happening quite yet. I get the feeling that YY doesn't want my help, but it could just be cultural. I'm not sure.

My living accomodations are pretty nice. As I mentioned, we live on the sixth (and top) floor of the building. This means that the apartment is two-stories and that we have the rooftop patio/garden. My room and bathroom are on the top floor, and I have them all to myself. My room is a good size, and I have a Western-stye toilet. Hurray! The only problem is the heat. I have an air conditioner in my room, but I don't use it overnight because of the amount of electricity it uses. The problem is that I don't have a fan or cross breeze in my room, so I usually wake up a few times a night, drenching my pillow and sheets with sweat. This means that I'm quite tired in language class the following morning.

Downstairs, I use the washing machine to clean my clothes, and I hang them to dry on the patio upstairs. The apartment doesn't have wireless, so I have to use an ethernet cord in the study downstairs. (I think my harddrive is dead on my laptop, so I'm using my family's computer right now).

Overall, I'm happy with my homestay experience. I do hope that my host daughter comes home soon. I thing she will help lighten the mood of the house a bit, but she might not return for a few more weeks.

I hope you are all doing well.

Jennifer

Happy Fourth of July!

Hi everyone,

Happy Independence Day! Today, I celebrated by having red, white, and blue silly string shot at our group by Chinese PC staff. I then skipped this carrot cake (not my favorite), and I finally had a burger, fries, and bottled water at Red Tomato, a Western-style restaurant near the hotel.

Some of the group went out together and will go clubbing later, but I'm still a bit jetlagged. I also had three shots today, and I'm supposed to stay hydrated and get to bed early. My shots were: first series Hep A/B, rabies, and Japanese encephalitis. My right arm is getting a little sore.

The big news of the day was finding out our training site and our host family. I'll spend the next nine weeks at Sichuan Normal University going to class everyday. My family is Lan Lin and his wife Zu Yunyan. Also living with them is Grandma and an eight year old daughter. From the age of the child, I'm guessing that my host couple might be approximately my age, but I think I might be expected to call them mama and baba. Not sure. They are teachers and live within walking distance of campus. Their hobbies are "reading, go outing, table tennis." I move in with them tomorrow, and I'm extremely nervous.

I think I'll commemorate this fourth of July by sharing some general facts/information about my Chinese experience here:

Chengdu has about 12 million people in it. Some of the city is very flashy with lots of neon lights. Some of it is very run down.

I haven't seen the sun since I've been to China. I knew the pollution would be bad, but I didn't quite understand that it would block direct sunlight. Maybe it's just overcast...I'll let you know as the weather changes.

There is a lot of honking on the streets. But my street's sweeping truck plays beautiful, relaxing, zen-like music as it drives by.

There is a huge rabies problem in China.

China has a dish of fried corn.

There is such thing as a Leather Engineering department on the Sichuan University campus.

A lot of women wear high heels walking around the streets of Chengdu, and many young women walk arm in arm with one another.

Men are often shirtless, even in restaurants.

Restaurants use rolls of toilet paper hanging on the wall to dry your hands on. They also put them on the table as napkins.

The Chinese say "bye bye" as an informal goodbye.

Babies in Chengdu do not wear diapers. Instead, they wear pants with the crotch cut open, and they are free to pee/poop whenever and wherever.

The people here are very friendly. They seem pretty enthusiastic to see foreigners and are always willing to try to help us.

Chengdu has mosquitos. I think I have about seven bites so far!

All in all, I'm having a fantastic time. I'm still tired, so hopefully I'll get a day to rest soon. Oh, I ate intestines and brains at "hot pot." I'll write more about food soon.

I hope everyone is doing well. I miss you all.

Jennifer

Getting to Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Hi everyone,

What a journey to Western China! From D.C., I had a 13 1/2 hour flight to Beijing. We flew United which is sorely lacking entertainment. We did not have individual screens, and the large screen we did have for the back section of the plane wasn't working most of the flight. Oh well. I got a bit of sleep and used my new, beautiful iPod. (Thanks to Michael for helping me load it up...twice :) )

The Beijing airport is really extraordinary--so beautiful. I heard that it just opened a couple months ago in preparation of the Olympics (some of you may know for sure). I wish I had taken some photos of the ceiling which was really lovely. Our flight time to Chengdu was changed from 4:30pm to 6. So we waited for awhile at the airport and changed into our business casual clothes, which we are expected to wear during training and to our jobs once we start. Our flight to Chengdu was a short 2 1/2 hours, but Air China still fed us my first in-China meal, which consisted of:

pork/rice/carrots & green beans

a sweet role filled with a date paste (?)

something like pear jello (a melting jello with fruit and seeds floating in it)

I loved the roll, but I'm not too sure about the jello. I'll do a separate food entry later.

Interesting note: when I arrived in D.C. and in Chengdu, there were firework displays that I could see out of the plane windows. I wonder if they were for me.

Jennifer

Peace Corps Staging in Washington D.C.

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Hi everyone,

Thanks to my mom, Cindy, Anna, and Nicole for seeing me off at Burbank Airport. My flight to D.C. was fine although I had an hour and fifteen minute delay in Dallas. I arrived in D.C. at National Airport at 10pm and was to my hotel by 10:45. My roommate Rebecca had already checked in, so I was able to meet one fellow volunteer my first night.

As a side note, our trainer Kathy lives in Paso where she and her husband own a vineyard. She used to sell her grapes to Tobin James!

Training lasted for a day and a half. It was pretty exhausting since I was jetlagged, but Peace Corps clearly tried to make it as interesting and interactive as possible. According to Peace Corps, my group might be the most educated and experienced group that Peace Corps has ever sent out. So I think that was an ego booster for all of us. After training on Saturday and Sunday, I had the opportunity to go to dinner with some returned China volunteers. They gave us a clearer idea of what we could expect, so it was nice to hear those first hand accounts. I even met Adam from the Peter Hessler's PC memoire River Town.

Overall, staging was a good experience. It was nice to finally meet all the people I'll be spending the next couple years with. I hope everyone is doing well!

Jennifer

Packing My Life Into 80 Pounds

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Well, as you can imagine, packing up my life for twenty-seven months was a bit of a challenge. Thank you to my family for allowing me to make such a mess of the living room, as you can see in the first photo. And thanks, mom, for packing up a little more after I left.
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Eventually, I fit everything into two suitcases, a school-sized backpack, and a laptop bag. I was allowed to check eighty pounds, and I think I managed to pack about seventy pounds into my checked bags. But that means that I loaded my carry-ons with heavy books and electronics. My shoulders are paying for it.

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The books I packed:

Yoga book

An ESL teaching book

A couple journals

Three Buddhist books

Pride and Prejudice

The Poems of Emily Dickinson

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The weirdest thing I packed:

A portable, metal fork/spoon/chopstick set (it's awesome!)

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What I wish I had packed:

My yoga mat

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One guy from my group packed his mat. He said that he had a made a commitment to himself to bring it. I tried to fit my mat it, but it just didn't work. Maybe I'm not as committed.

Packing has been an interesting experience. It told me a lot about myself, primarily that I love, love, love my shoes and clothes! I'm more shallow than I thought! :)

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Love you all, Jennifer