Catherine's Facebook Notes

Catherine's Facebook Notes

Leaving

Monday, May 19, 2008 at 3:41pm
I have just a short time to write today. We are getting ready to go to the train station to buy a ticket for me to Shanghai tonight on the overnight train. I fly out tomorrow afternoon for San Antonio, via Atlanta. I am excited about being at home but I will really miss Barry.
We moved on Saturday down to a very good location. Instead of an hour commute to just about anywhere we want to be, we now have a 10 to 15 minute commute for most things (some less and some more). We are only ten minutes from our doorstep to Barry's work. We are rooming with two very lovely girls, Cora and Sherry. They are each warm and friendly and know a bit of English. Last night we got in about 11:00 pm and were starving. We were planning on dropping our stuff off and going back out to find a place to eat. When we told Cora this she insisted that we not go out but instead let her fix us something and eat in the apartment. We tried to protest but to no avail. Within about 20 minutes, during which time we were settling in, Cora and Sherry called us to come eat. They had ordered out for a huge amount of food for all of us. We sat down to eat with the two of them and also Cora's boyfriend, whose name I could barely pronounce and have, since last night, forgotten. We had a lovely dinner together. There was a lot of trying to explain what each of us meant in our own language and a LOT of laughing (mostly Cora and Sherry laughing at Barry and me). We seem to have fortunately found wonderful housemates.
Sleeping last night was much better than the night before. We realized our first night that we had box springs but no mattress. This made for a somewhat uncomfortable night's sleep. It was too late to go out and buy anything until Sunday afternoon. Last night, though, was much better as we had gone to get the equivalent of a mattress. We have hung up the batiks that Cathryn gave us and our room is getting quite homey.
Let's talk for a moment about Barry's birthday. Our plans did not quite work out. We had lunch with Billy and then, because we wanted to be downtown for the opera at 7:00 and because we did not want to add an extra 3 hours of commute time, we decided to just stay downtown all afternoon instead of going back to Bryan and Cathy's for a rest and a change of clothes. So, about 6:45 we started to head towards the opera house. We got into two different taxis who refused to take us there. Our third try seemed successful though, until our driver could not find the place. We had called the opera house so a person there could give our driver directions (a very common practice with the language barrier). Our driver also stopped and asked for directions. The guy he asked kept saying that it had closed and was no longer there. We were pretty sure it was there because someone had answered the phone. We finally just got out of the cab and went to look for it ourselves.
After much walking and map reading we realized that we were not going to get there in time. We still wanted to find it so that we went the next time we would know how to get there. We walked a lot more and finally ended up walking into a print shop to ask for directions. We found three very helpful people (or at least, people who wanted to be helpful). We talked and tried to use our dictionary and finally, through the painting of pictures, we understood that the place had indeed closed.
By this time it was 8:30 or so. We decided to find someplace to eat. We ate and then afterwards we took a wonderful walk and got kind of lost back in a huge maze of hutongs. We were always kind of aware of where we were generally (though not quite specifically). We walked up and down through the little alleyways. A lot of the hutongs were in the process of being gutted. A lot of them were tiny little stores where one could eat dinner, buy a cold drink, or get your hair cut. The streets were full of people, which seemed slightly odd because of how late it was and because I think I had thought that the hutongs were mostly dwellings and had not realized how much of one's life could be spent inside the hutong alleys. We were definitely in a neighborhood similar to what one would find in the US in pre-WWII cities--a place where one could live one's whole life and get everything needed without having to go far from home.
Barry and I really have to get to the train station now. I am not finished with my story but it will have to wait.

Thursday

Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 2:20pm
We're still having computer problems but our friend, Billy, has graciously let me use his computer for a little while. He is a bass player and he and Barry are in the living room playing jazz together. We have just finished a wonderful meal of spaghetti and meatballs and have enjoyed some good conversation as well.
I don't think I have mentioned this before--forgive me if I have--but this is quite interesting to me. Last week Barry and I had to go to the bank to take of some business. We noticed that there were several guards in the lobby that had weapons for protection. One had a billy club out--not hanging on his belt clip but in his hand the whole time. Another had a COW PROD!! Yes, a cow prod used to shock a cow. I can't imagine that ever going over with either the boss or the customers at a bank in America. But it was very effective--I am pretty sure I would never rob a bank where a cattle prod might be used on me. Another odd thing we saw at the bank was a teller transporting five or six stacks of currency bills that were each about three inches thick. But instead of carrying them from one place to another, she instead put them on a rolling chair to move the money. I don't know if that was bank policy or if she just felt like doing it that way.
One note of interest here is the number of employees at every single place we go. It is as if one would figure out how many people would be needed and then multiplied that number by three. I feel bad for a lot of the employees. They stand around a whole lot with not much to do.
Barry and I are getting ready to move on Saturday. We have been at Bryan and Cathy's for three weeks now and it is time to get our own place. A big reason for waiting is that we wanted to live close to where Barry is going to be working to cut down on the commute. Barry is working Wednesdays at the JW Marriott and it looks like very soon he will be working (possibly!) Monday through Friday. I have gotten in touch with an agency through which I will find people to tutor. I like Rebecca, the agency woman, and am looking forward to getting some work.
Today is Barry's birthday. We are planning on going to a Beijing opera tonight to celebrate. It will be nice to dress up and go out and enjoy the opera, during which we'll have dinner and enjoy some real Peking Duck.
Last night we got in pretty late from the hotel gig. It was after 11:00 and we still had not eaten dinner. We ran upstairs to change clothes and then headed back out to see if our favorite little local restaurant was open. We had little hope that it would be since we were not sure when they closed and by this time it was 11:30. To our surprise and joy all the lights were on and all of the tables were full. A little bitty old woman got up and offered her table to us. We tried to say we could all share the table but she wanted us to have it to ourselves. We found out shortly thereafter that she was the owner, not a customer. (This restaurant has become our favorite because it is about a 60 second walk from our front door, because the food is fabulous, and because the waiter has become a friend of ours.)
We ordered a lot of food, more than usual. We got sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, and a whole lot of jiaoze. Then our waiter asked us if he could give us a lamb skewer. We accepted and he brought out a plate of boiled peanuts and a plate of *something*--cold spicy vegetables, jelled pieces, vegetables marinated in a foreign liquid of some type. It was all delicious and we figured that we had misunderstood what he wanted to give us and that there were no lamb shishkabobs involved at all.
We continued eating and when we had finished he then brought us four skewers of lamb meat. (Shishkabobs have very small pieces of meat on them so this wasn't as much food as it sounds like.) We bit into the extremely hot and sizzling lamb pieces and instantly loved them. They were so delicious! After a couple of bites I noticed that the spice they had put on the meat was somewhat spicy. At first it felt kind of like an intense but yet very mild burn on the tongue. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was I was feeling, until I remembered something Bryan said on our first night in Beijing. He said that there is a nut that is used in cooking that numbs the tongue. I realized that was exactly what it felt like. My tongue was somewhat numb and starting to have that waking up feeling. It was a strange sensation. My tongue wasn't numb like after a visit to the dentist. It was more like a tingling sensation mixed with a mildly spicy burn. Yes, that is exactly what it was like. I realize it now that I am writing about it.
I see that I have written quite a lot--maybe more that some of you want to read. I'll say goodbye and I will write when I can find a computer to use.

Myanmar

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 3:30pm
It is Wednesday and Barry and I are getting ready to head out for his gig at the Loong Bar. As many of you know there was an earthquake in China this week that registered a 7.9 on the Richter Scale. We did not feel anything and most people in Beijing felt very little. Thank you for all of your (continued) prayers for us and for the Chinese people. Please also keep in your hearts and prayers the people of Myanmar who have suffered a disastrous cyclone. Between 60,000 & 100,000 are now expected to have died. Relief funds are having a difficult time getting to the people and the people are suffering but a church here looks like they might be effective in bringing help and hope. If anyone would like to contribute to the Myanmar people feel free to send me a check to my parents' home in San Antonio. I will be home next week and can take funds back with me. My parents' address is:
128 Bluet Lane
San Antonio, Texas 78213
I will be home for a week, soaking up time with family and friends.
I have to go now. I had planned on writing much more but the time has gotten away from me and we now need to head downtown. We are having some computer problems which limits my ability to write, but I will write as soon as I can.

Watch out for ground injustice!

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 1:09am
That was a sign we saw yesterday at the Yashow market where we had gone to get a suit made for Barry. (Granted, the ground was a bit disheveled.) That made us laugh a lot. There are a lot of signs like that, even though Beijing has been working hard to eliminate "funny English" signs to save face when all the people come for the olympics. Barry and I were at the JW Marriott, just sitting in the lobby and looking at a menu for drinks and snacks and we, without much thought or work put into it, came up with 20 English mistakes. There would be a lot of money to be made if one could only talk people into hiring a native English speaker to look over what has been written in English and to make corrections. In fact, we are making a bit of money by doing exactly that. Barry is polishing some promotional material put out by the Chinese olympics committees. The guy who hired Barry told him, after his first set of corrections, that it didn't look like he had made too many changes. He had decided that it wasn't worth the money to hire someone but, after talking to Barry about the changes he made, then told Barry that he "marketed himself very well" and thus decided to hire him. Reading what the guy had as his English translation that he thought was good enough to use and distribute to the public, all one could think was, "oh my goodness--you seriously, seriously need some help here." I think he will never quite appreciate all that Barry has done for him in the many subsequent polishing projects. We have laughed much over the "good enough" translations, as would the many who would have read them if not for Barry.
So the past week or so hasn't been too different for us from our American lives. We are sleeping in until we are rested and then reading/internet "stuff" for a couple of hours. We do then usually go into the city for the mid to late afternoon and the evening and come home anywhere from 10:00 pm to 2:00am. We are enjoying the jazz scene here as well as just being in Beijing. We haven't done too much sightseeing though. We have visited Tienanmen Square and the outer courtyard of the Forbidden City; we know where the American embassy is and have been there briefly; we are getting familiar with the subway and the areas of town in which we find ourselves most often. Basically, I guess you could say that we are acclimatizing ourselves. Neither of us has experienced culture shock at all. We are trying to get a feel for the language and its pronunciations and tonal qualities. So often I will tell a taxi driver where we want to go and I say the word with an American questioning inflection. Like, "Yashow?" This is how I would speak to an American taxi driver if I wanted to go somewhere and was not sure if he knew the place. The problem with that here is that the questioning tone I am using as a replacement for, "Do you know how to get to ___?" is actually the second of the four tones for that word and is likely not the correct tone for the place I am referring to. Barry keeps reminding me to just say the name of where we want to go and see if the driver understands. I am practicing on my tones but it is not so easy.
There are a couple of changes in myself that I have noticed. The first is that I don't mind so much walking into and sitting down in a smoky bar. There really is no such thing as a smoke-free place. I think the combination of having no option for a smoke-fee atmosphere, along with the fact that I have brought very few clothes with me, has allowed me to resign myself to the fact that there is nothing I can do, and thus, somehow, I don't feel as frustrated or bothered by the smelly clothes that come as a result. The fact that I can't go and change clothes afterwards in order to smell less smoky is quite liberating. At home it is a huge hassle having to pick something else to wear as well as having to launder my stinky clothes. Here, no matter what I do I am going to be surrounded by smoke in just about any public place; I'll air out as much as I can walking around, and that's that. I will probably wear the same thing tomorrow.
Another change that seems to have come quite quickly is that I really enjoy eating soup with noodles with chopsticks. I have always thought that a spoon is so much better in these circumstances but now I favor chopsticks. It just feels good to eat the noodles and then drink the broth.
A couple of things I will never get used to or like:
1. The continual spitting by people all around me.
2. The allowing of children to pee on the ground absolutely anywhere they feel like it.
3. The often seen picking of one's nose unabashedly.
I hope that tomorrow is a much cleaner (air-wise) day than today. It was pretty dusty but I have high hopes for tomorrow.

Funnies

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 7:00pm
Two quick funny stories:
Last Sunday before Barry's audition Barry had asked the two guys to wear suits to the audition. (He had seen them both play and was a bit disappointed that they had not dressed for the gig.) So he clarified that he wanted them to wear a dark suit, white shirt, and no tie. He even had the translator stress this to them. He mentioned it several times. Both of the guys agreed and one of them made sure that Barry did, indeed, want a black suit. So we showed up at the JW Marriott and what were they wearing? One guy was wearing kind of normal, not-so-nice-but-not-too-bad-clothes (basically a short sleeve shirt and pants), and the other guy was wearing a hoodie. A hoodie! It was hard to believe.
Tonight for dinner Barry and I went to a new place not far from us. We ordered sweet and sour pork, fried rice, and sour hot chili soup. It was all very delicious. The pineapple in the first dish tasted like a pina colada in my mouth. I am not sure how it was made, but the pineapple tasted like coconut pineapple. Really yummy! But that is just a side note to my story. I really wanted to mention that we were a bit surprised that the pork came out way before the soup did. I wondered why that would take less time than dipping up some soup for us. Finally, after the rice came, the soup finally came out. It wasn't just a cup of soup though. It was a giant pot of soup in a very large bowl. Quite comical. It cost less than a dollar and it was the largest bowl of soup I have ever seen served.

You smell like. . .

Monday, April 28, 2008 at 12:58pm
Jeannie, the four year old daughter of our host family has just informed us what we all smell like.
Barry smells like a dog.
I smell like sugar.
Jeannie smells like a flower.
Cathy smells like corn.
Darren (Jeannie's two year old brother) smells like a dump truck.
Hhmmmm. . .this might be a somewhat biased observation.

On Our Own

Monday, April 28, 2008 at 11:46am
A very sad thing happened yesterday--Cathryn went back home to Dali. We have enjoyed her company for the last few days and are already missing her greatly. Not only did she make everything easier as she speaks Mandarin, but she is a sweet, funny, gentle, loving, crazy, gracious, and ebullient friend.
So Barry and I are on our own now. Cathryn left very early to fly back to Dali. We slept in and woke up in time to leisurely get ready for an audition Barry had. From where we are it takes about an hour to get downtown on the subway. On days we are lucky we get a seat. On days that we aren't we end up standing all or most of the way. You have to be really, really quick in grabbing an emptying seat. If you aren't, you end up continually looking around for someone getting ready to exit his chair. We are getting quicker and more aggressive in grabbing empty seats. It is crazy how crowded the subway can be. Yesterday when we were coming back home for the evening we couldn't squish into the first subway that came, and that is saying a lot. We decided to head the wrong way on the subway line to try to catch it nearer to the beginning of the line so that, not only could we get on, but that we could also possibly get a seat. Our plan worked. We only lengthened our trip by about 30 minutes but we got to sit the entire way back.
So, back to the afternoon. . . . Barry had found a bass player and a drummer for his audition. (I feel stressed out by what it takes to get players on such short notice in a city we have been in for only a few days but Barry is always confident and calm with this kind of challenge.) On Friday and Saturday nights Cathryn, Barry, and I went to several jazz clubs where Barry sat in and played and also made some connections. It was through these connections that he found players.
Barry and I went in search of the foreign language bookstore. We wanted to pick up a taxi book, which is a book that has lots of places with their addresses and directions both in English and in Mandarin characters. So you can decide where you want to go and then show the page to your taxi driver and skip the whole part where you repeatedly say the address until finally, on your twentieth try the driver finally understands you. (We had this problem in Thailand--We would say a place over and over in Thai with seemingly no comprehension on the part of the tuk-tuk driver. He would repeat what we said, confused. And then, miraculously, the driver would understand us and repeat the address exactly as he had said it fifteen times over. So somehow our minute changes of tone, inflection, or pronunciation finally brought clarity even though we could detect no real change in how we said it.) The Taxi Book makes all of that go away and gets you where you want to go.
We decided to make an early evening of the day. We had been out until 2:00am the past couple of nights and I was a bit tired. Also, we realized that we did not have the address of our place and thus it would be kind of difficult telling a taxi driver how to get there. We would have to take a taxi if we were out after 11:00pm when the subway stops running. So, after a relaxing manicure, we came back to the apartment complex and stopped for dinner on the street near our place. This was our first meal out by ourselves and we were wondering how it would go. We ate at a place we knew had pictures on the menu (otherwise it would have been impossible for us to order anything with understanding of what we were ordering and that can be very dangerous). We ordered a sweet and sour pork dish and were able to substitute chicken. We also ordered a dish that ended up being carrots, corn, peas, and walnuts. The difficult part came when we wanted to ask for flower tea, which is the most common type of tea. Barry drew a picture of a flower and a teapot without much understanding on the part of our waitress. Then the waitress asked us something and we had no comprehension of what she wanted to know. We thought she maybe wanted to know if we wanted rice but it could just have easily been that she wanted to know if we wanted a plate of grilled chicken necks. So we decided to not say yes. As it turned out, she did indeed bring us some tea and she also brought us bowls of rice. It was a great meal and we ordered all by ourselves. Quite an accomplishment, I think.
We are taking it easy today. We are doing a short bit of babysitting for Cathy and will get some reading in. I think we'll go to some jazz clubs tonight or out for dinner or something. I hope you are all doing wonderfully. Drop me a note and let me know what is going on with you!

Friday Morning

Friday, April 25, 2008 at 9:58am
This is the second morning we have woken up in Beijing. It is early and I have been awake for some time now. I feel like I have slept quite late and yet it is not quite 9am because the sun rises about 5:30. It is nice to sleep in and yet still get an early start on the day.
We arrived the day before yesterday. Cathryn met us at the airport and took us straight away to Bryan and Cathy's house. Bryan and Cathy are friends from Indiana. Bryan grew up in Brazil, Indiana and dated Sarah Fine for a short while. Our hosts were very welcoming and very nice and friendly. We settled in before heading back out for dinner around the corner. Jet lag didn't really set in until after we had eaten and by the time we walked back home at 8:30 we were just about ready for bed. (Beijing is thirteen hours ahead of San Antonio--just add one hour to your time and change am to pm or pm to am.)
Yesterday morning we awoke and were out of the house by 8:00. We headed first to the local police station where we had to register. Bryan was a big help and so was Cathryn. I don't think the officer spoke any English. Amber decided to stay one day before heading back to America so she was with us as well but did not have to register because she was staying less than 24 hours.
Cathryn, Amber, Barry, and I then headed to the subway station so we could get some sightseeing in before Amber had to catch her flight home. Before I go on I should explain a little bit about Beijing. Beijing is gigantic. It is hard to describe the enormousness of this city. It is like being on another planet or in the future. It has no comparison to anything I have ever experienced before. The city is not just like ten San Antonios. That would be large. But it is large on another scale.
For instance, let's just take the apartment complex we are staying in. How many people do you think a very large complex would house?
Get a picture in your mind of a LARGE apartment complex.
Do you have one pictured? Now double that.
Do you have that pictured in your mind?
You are not even close yet. There are 800,000 people in this complex. Eight hundred thousand!! There are three subway stops just for this complex. When we were driving on Wednesday in a Taxi I asked if we had finally reached downtown (when we had really just reached this apartment complex). The area was larger than any downtown I had ever seen. The buildings were huge and there were SO MANY of them. I didn't just feel small in comparison. I felt odd in that I felt like I was in a movie we'd watch about life in the future on another planet. Nothing here is on a human scale. And this is just where we are living at the moment. It is a very small part of Beijing. I'll try to upload some pictures this week for you to get an idea.
After catching the subway we headed down to the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square. We didn't have too much time before Amber had to leave for the airport but we did get to see the Square and the outer court of the Forbidden City, which was beautiful.
We really stand out here as foreigners. Everywhere we go people stare at us. A couple of people even started conversations with us. One girl told me that from behind I look like I am Chinese. We are tall here but northern Chinese people are somewhat tall themselves so we aren't much taller than most people. And yet everywhere we go people watch us. They even turn around after passing us to watch us a bit longer.
After walking and walking and walking miles and miles yesterday we were worn out. We came home for a brief nap and were planning on going out to jazz clubs later in the evening. Unfortunately, instead of waking up at 8:30pm we woke up around 11:00. So I guess you could say that we went to bed at 7:00 last night. We are well rested this morning and are getting ready to head out.

The Journey Commences

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 1:44pm
I am sitting in our hotel bedroom and it is 1:30am. Barry and Amber are here with me and we are winding down and getting ready for bed. We got to Newark with no problems and were even able to spread out a bit on the flight. Tomorrow morning we board our flight to Beijing. It looks like we are going to make the flight--there are still quite a few seats available and there aren't too many people ahead of us on the standby list. This is the first international flight I have taken that has not required a 3:00 or 4:00am wake up call. We'll be able to sleep until 9:30 and then leisurely make our way to the airport. This is certainly the way to travel.
This trip has already been a treat--I have gotten to spend more time with Amber than I have in a long time now that she doesn't spend much time in San Antonio. And tomorrow, following a very long flight, I will get to see my dear friend, Cathryn.