I have had great success getting my students to be creative with Haikus (given some good brainstorming structure). Thinking if my students can do it, my daughter should be able to. Here are her results:
Children
Love mommy daddy
Swing and jump on the playground
Nap with Little Cow
Silk
Running in silk clothes
Feel shiny, cool, beautiful
Thank you to the worms
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
Our First Visitors
We felt so special to have our first visitors, even if we did have to share them with Heather and Patrick, the other foreign teachers placed by the Colorado China Council. Part of the overall program support provided by the Colorado China Council involves a personal visit from the Director Alice and her Assistant Ellen. Ellen and her husband taught in Lijiang two years ago. We met them and their 6 year old adopted daughter from China at their home in Laramie, WY this summer.
We were spoiled with some excellent meals and excellent company. Our eating highlight of the weekend had to be Ellen's birthday dinner at a vegetarian restaurant that got excellent reviews. The first task was finding the restaurant, the second task was convincing them to let us eat. All of the lights and light fixtures were missing and the restaurant was completely empty. We found ourselves seated in a beautiful alcove and the staff placed about 20 candles on our table. We ordered to the best of our ability and were most amused by the faux chicken feet made out of a tofu product. Steve bicycled by the restaurant today and discovered it had moved! I guess you take your lights with you when you leave.
In addition to eating we spent time wandering the markets, visiting Lashahai Lake (where Steve finally saw an Upupa Epops-a bird that has been on his life list-and Shana stepped into mud up to her waist), and debriefing the idiosyncracies of the Chinese education system.
We promise to treat all future visitors nicely, so come on over!
We were spoiled with some excellent meals and excellent company. Our eating highlight of the weekend had to be Ellen's birthday dinner at a vegetarian restaurant that got excellent reviews. The first task was finding the restaurant, the second task was convincing them to let us eat. All of the lights and light fixtures were missing and the restaurant was completely empty. We found ourselves seated in a beautiful alcove and the staff placed about 20 candles on our table. We ordered to the best of our ability and were most amused by the faux chicken feet made out of a tofu product. Steve bicycled by the restaurant today and discovered it had moved! I guess you take your lights with you when you leave.
In addition to eating we spent time wandering the markets, visiting Lashahai Lake (where Steve finally saw an Upupa Epops-a bird that has been on his life list-and Shana stepped into mud up to her waist), and debriefing the idiosyncracies of the Chinese education system.
We promise to treat all future visitors nicely, so come on over!
Saturday, November 3, 2007
The Ice Cream Truck?
A word of caution to those who associate the sounds of a singing truck with memories of summer ice cream treats. When you hear that sound in China, watch out for the locals coming outside to dump their garbage in the singing garbage truck. It still gets me every time.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Beijing 2008
We found out this week that we are one of the lucky few who received Olympic tickets in the lottery. We did not get everything we asked for, but now possess tickets to some: Gymnastics, Wrestling, Beach Volleyball, Fencing and Table Tennis. We also managed to book lodging in Beijing (at 8x the normal price, pay in full please). We are also going to try for tickets available only to Chinese residents and foreigners living in China. We don't hold out much hope though. Apparently China's official purchase date was Monday. People were lining up all night to get tickets. Within a few hours of opening they had to close down sales around the country because the computer system was overwhelmed and crashed. They are working to fix it and will try again on Monday November 5. Even if we don't get more tickets, we are excited for the 7 events we will attend. The whole thing is going to be a madhouse!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Picture Site Address Update
After an afternoon of frustrations with technology, we have modified our picture site address slightly. From now on you can use: http://picasaweb.google.com/sltsjp. Check out the new pictures from our Lugu Lake adventure.
Lugu Lake and New Brakes
At least we hope the vans we rode in had new brakes. It is possible that they wore out their current ones on our 7 hour drive. Imagine bad shocks, poorly padded seats, multiple thousand foot cliffs, cobblestone roads with hairpin turns and, of course, no seatbelts, and you will get some sense of what travel is like in this part of China. About half of the road is paved which is convenient for the local farmers. It is harvest season and an asphalt road makes an excellent surface to dry your corn or hay. It also reduces things to one lane of traffic, but apparently this was only considered an issue by us. Fortunately we avoided serious mishap and spent a wonderful weekend at Lugu Lake.
Lugu Lake straddles the Yunnan/Sichuan border and is quite stunning. The locals are mostly Mosuo and Pumi-both Tibetan. We stayed at a wonderful guesthouse on a small island run by a family of three brothers. The two younger brothers enjoyed singing, dancing and beer, while the older brother was the responsible role model with his wife and two small children. A Tibetan monk was staying with the family as well. We spent many hours with them eating, drinking, singing, laughing and rowing across the lake. The language gap was significant, but nothing a good natured cheers! couldn't fix or a resounding "beautiful!". The brothers and monk were fascinated by our UV light water purifier.
Morning and evening meals begin with yak butter tea. We decided this was similar to drinking buttered popcorn. Li loved it. Both nights we ate barbecued vegetables, lake fish and yak meat under the full moon not 5 feet from the water. The brothers joined us for after dinner drinks and singing.
On Saturday we watched the sun rise from above our guesthouse and were treated to a traditional ride in the "pig trough"-a wooden canoe with all the maneuverability of a barge. We paddled out to a small island with a Tibetan temple perched on top and a lone monk, dog and cat in residence. Li and I hung out by the water for the rest of the day to the amusement and wonderment of the locals. Li built castles from rocks in the water and I answered the ubiquitous inquiries about yes, she is Chinese, no her father is not, yes she is my daughter. I really should learn the word for adopted.
Our trip home was delayed by an overloaded truck that got itself stuck in the mud on a hairpin turn. The apparently uncoordinated efforts (at least to us) to get it unstuck, deal with the line of buses and minivans that were backed up and avoid hitting one of the many gawkers was quite a feat. The other three stops we made were clearly to support the relationship the bus driver had with a local restaurant owner and with fruit vendors at a bridge delay crossing the Yangtze.
Pictures to be posted soon. Technical difficulties at the moment. Grrr.
Lugu Lake straddles the Yunnan/Sichuan border and is quite stunning. The locals are mostly Mosuo and Pumi-both Tibetan. We stayed at a wonderful guesthouse on a small island run by a family of three brothers. The two younger brothers enjoyed singing, dancing and beer, while the older brother was the responsible role model with his wife and two small children. A Tibetan monk was staying with the family as well. We spent many hours with them eating, drinking, singing, laughing and rowing across the lake. The language gap was significant, but nothing a good natured cheers! couldn't fix or a resounding "beautiful!". The brothers and monk were fascinated by our UV light water purifier.
Morning and evening meals begin with yak butter tea. We decided this was similar to drinking buttered popcorn. Li loved it. Both nights we ate barbecued vegetables, lake fish and yak meat under the full moon not 5 feet from the water. The brothers joined us for after dinner drinks and singing.
On Saturday we watched the sun rise from above our guesthouse and were treated to a traditional ride in the "pig trough"-a wooden canoe with all the maneuverability of a barge. We paddled out to a small island with a Tibetan temple perched on top and a lone monk, dog and cat in residence. Li and I hung out by the water for the rest of the day to the amusement and wonderment of the locals. Li built castles from rocks in the water and I answered the ubiquitous inquiries about yes, she is Chinese, no her father is not, yes she is my daughter. I really should learn the word for adopted.
Our trip home was delayed by an overloaded truck that got itself stuck in the mud on a hairpin turn. The apparently uncoordinated efforts (at least to us) to get it unstuck, deal with the line of buses and minivans that were backed up and avoid hitting one of the many gawkers was quite a feat. The other three stops we made were clearly to support the relationship the bus driver had with a local restaurant owner and with fruit vendors at a bridge delay crossing the Yangtze.
Pictures to be posted soon. Technical difficulties at the moment. Grrr.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Cha Cha in China
To clear our minds of the incessant rain trapping us indoors, we followed a few of our students downtown to sign up for Cha Cha lessons. Why not? After two lessons we realize that the range of motion of our hips is significantly less than that of our tight-jeaned Chinese instructor and that our oblique muscles need some serious exercise. But the teacher is excellent and we have made incremental progress and can now hum the cha cha beat while walking to class. It really is a small world!
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