Jenny invited me to go to Hong Kong with her to meet up with a friend and go hiking. It was a great time! First we met up with Abe, a HongKongian who the G/Jens met through some returners. We hear about him all the time so I was excited to finally meet him. We then went to a small Hong Kong diner and got some lunch. After food we stopped by a temple on the way. Jenny and I tried out a fortune telling tradition the Chinese do. You get a bucket full of sticks and kneel down and shake them, thinking really hard about a question. Each stick has a specific number. Once one falls out of the bucket you take it to the fortune teller and find out what the number means. Unfortunately the teller was 40 kuai and since both Jenny and I are on the cheap side we decided not to find out our future. But my number was 39 - which I'm pretty sure means good things. Next was the mountain - Lion's Rock. It was a really good climb. All of the mountains in China usually have cement stairs built in from the bottom to the top. This one had a few sets of stairs but a lot of natural trail too. Plus we saw monkeys on the mountain! The day was really foggy so sadly once we reached the top we couldn't see anything but mist. So we just walked around the peak taking pictures. Abe suggested that Jenny climb onto this rock for one and it seemed like a good idea so she did. What we didn't know was that the rock was moss covered and the mist had left a slight layer of water on top of it. Halfway down the rock Jenny slipped and almost fell way too close to the edge which was a sheer drop to halfway down the mountain. We all decided she should get off the rock right then and there and luckily she was safe and it was only a scare that we had to deal with. Afterward we got dinner at an Italian place that gave free bread refills - awesome. Then Jenny and I headed back home and met up with some people at the Windows beer garden.
For the past two months I have been teaching these ten Senior 3s with Fuat. They are moving to Singapore to go to college and needed excessive amounts of English help to be able to pass their English entry exam. I was told that the group were students who weren't good enough at school to get into a really good Chinese college and not good enough at English to go to America and their parents have a lot of money. So they are being shipped to Singapore to go to a two-year college and then going to Australia to get their full degree. It's pretty cool. So I had these students three days a week for awhile and Fuat taught them the other two. We got to know them pretty well and I'm glad I got the chance to know them. They've now gone on to Singapore and are doing well and I'm in email communication with three of them.
Fuat and I had the entire week off of school this week for Midterms. I took advantage of the time and went to DaFen, Shenzhen's art village in Longgang. I needed to buy some presents for people and it is just crazy how cheap you can find stuff there! I didn't even feel like bargaining because I felt bad that they were getting so little money from me.
Chinese stores have a habit of having manikins in the strangest positions. I saw this one and couldn't help taking a picture of the perfect example. I can't tell if the hand placement was to show that she feels bloated in that outfit or wants to point out the crotch of the jean skirt she is wearing.
April 19th - sad day. When I went home to America for the funeral, I brought back a bunch of stuff including my Playstation. I was super excited that I was going to get to play video games. But I finally found an adapter that would fit the Playstation's plug and....the electricity of China fried the entire machine. It smoked for quite awhile which was pretty cool though.
Went to the post office the other day. I commented on this in an earlier post but wanted to visually show it. It still amazes me that China is on its way to becoming the next super power and they still do things like use a dirty bottle of glue to put their stamps on envelopes.
I know this is a terrible picture, but oh well. So on Sunday I go and tutor. I was really tired from the weekend so I decided to close my eyes on the bus. When I opened them again the world had gone black. Seriously, it was 2 in the afternoon and it looked like it was 9pm. Storm clouds had just rolled in from out of nowhere. When got off the bus it had started sprinkling a little but not too badly and I still had a couple minutes to wait to get picked up by my tutoring family. I got to our meeting destination and it down poured. Luckily there was a nearby tree so I took shelter. Then this nice Chinese woman was standing down the way from me and took one look and walked over and let me share her umbrella. About a minute later the family showed up in their car and during the run from the sidewalk to their car I got completely drenched. There was so much rain that a river had started in the street and an umbrella was just floating down it on its way to who knows where.
After our breakfast in Longgang, we all headed to the Hakka houses. The Hakka people are famous for their architecture around China. There are Hakka villages all over the country. The G/Jens, Marie, Jess and I went exploring and got to learn a lot about the people. One funny thing that is in the museum is America's interpretation of the buildings. Some Hakka houses are building is circular houses that sort of look like mushrooms with a big hole in the middle. Well a US government official was visiting China and saw these houses and wrote immediately to our President that China had these strange structures and that he was pretty sure they were nuclear weapon storage areas. Of course they were.... Anyway, after that Marie, Jess and I headed to Xili and met up with Andrew to go rollerskating! It was a blast, but really hard! I haven't roller skated since I was probably 7. But it was a lot of fun and the rink put on a good show with fun music and interesting Chinese skaters to stare at. Afterward we went to dinner and met up with Cliff, Greg and Christina (Greg's Chinese girlfriend that we met for the first time who was very nice).
The girls up in Longgang hosted a breakfast party for the G/Jens, Cliff and I. It was really good food, but even more exciting was that Jess hand made a crocheted sling for Cliff's arm! It was very stylish and helped him out a lot.
This is the day after my Chinese medicine treatment. The thought is that the more purple the circles turn the more bad stuff that is in your body. The edges of my circle were getting close to a good shade of purple. What it felt like was I had somehow wound up with two large bruises on my body.
Tracy, one of the Chinese English teachers at my school, was very excited when I said I wanted to try Chinese hot cups, a Chinese medicine for removing pain from your body/getting rid of colds/taking away anything that is bad in your body/etc. She had a "do it yourself" kit and was willing to offer her services so that I could experience the health remedy. We waited for a day when my body was sore or hurt or felt bad at all and tried it out. The true version of hot cups is they have glass cups and put fire under them next to your skin and then quickly take the fire out and press the cup against your body. This takes the oxygen out so the cup sucks in your skin instead. The 'at home' version uses plastic cups and a syringe to suck out the air. The first one I tried was a big one on my lower back. It hurt! The Chinese keep telling us that it is annoying but doesn't actually cause too much pain. It hurt enough that I almost asked her to take it off and but wouldn't let myself, instead I just stood very still. They are supposed to be left on for 5-10 minutes to officially work. Tracy still seemed excited that I was doing this so I allowed her to try a smaller one on my shoulder, figuring that the area would be less sensitive. This one didn't hurt as much but was still uncomfortable. Plus it just looked really gross. That is so much skin up in that cup!!
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