The Long-Trip Bus

About 3 weeks before Golden Week I had already decided I wanted to visit Hunchun but I was beginning to worry because the implications of a whole country on vacation was dawning on me concerning the travel. Of course, it just so happened that during my second day of office hours a student came to visit me who just so happened to be from Hunchun. Seriously. Considering the fact that my students are from all across China the probability of that happening is pretty scarce so it was a rather beautiful moment and I still feel inspired thinking about it.

My student was thrilled and promised to help me figure out transportation suggesting that I opt for the Hunchun bus instead of braving the overcrowded train that would only get me to Tumen (45 min drive from the farm). From this point on everything was taken care of by Li Peng and I didn't do anything besides continue to assure him that whatever happened I was fine and he needn't worry. In the end, the bus was sold out (you can only buy the ticket the day before or of) but his sister's friend was a relative of the bus driver (oh connections in China!) SO of course there would be a seat for me, somehow! It is amazing.

I packed my Josh and Wiens family hiking backpack (thanks you all!!!) and headed out with Li Peng around 3:30pm on that Friday wondering if I was going to go or not but perfectly happy either way. The bus was a Long-Trip bus; which means a bus with bunk beds instead of seats. Yep. Pretty cool. You get in, take off your shoes and deposit them in a little bag to take with you and then sort of shimmy down either the left or right hand aisle two bunks high for each row. The beds are narrow and just barely long enough for me so about average Chinese height. Each holds a mattress and a thick blanket with a small rectangle pillow filled with some kind of bean or bead and there is just enough room to sit up and only have to bend your head a little. I wouldn't recommend it for a very claustrophobic person.

I boarded the bus and was given the farthest bunk in the back corner, due to some switching around to allow the pitiful foreigner (that's me) a real seat instead of something less official. I protested and tried to point out that I was strong and would be fine anywhere, not wanting to deny someone of a seat, but seeing as my Chinese is only as good as my awkward waving gestures and facial expressions…well, it didn't work. By this point in my time in Harbin I was pretty exhausted and so even remembering the word for yes or no (there is actually no single word for no) was beyond my capabilities. I just sat back, smiled at the giggling staring people (mostly women) around me and ate some dates from a ziplock baggy. It was pretty exciting till I realized I would eventually have to pee and the thought of climbing through everything, trying to ask where or how to use the toilet, going out in the very cold somewhere and probably squatting in the dark all the time sort of worried that they would leave without me (I'm over paranoid at times)…was a bit too much to handle. I just kept falling asleep waking up to the nearly full moon staring at me and my face almost frozen due to the draft from the window by my head. The bus stopped about 3 times, for about 10 minutes each by the side of the road and I jealously watched the guy beside me jump out and return in a very short amount of time, probably feeling very comfortable and relieved.

I was told we were to arrive at about 4AM so at about 2:30 I had gathered up courage (or enough discomfort to be mistaken as courage) to prepare the big dive into the unknown world of "the rest stop," when all the lights came on and everyone else starting gathering their stuff and piling up blankets. So we had arrived! Unhappily for me the trip did not actually end until 2 hours later due to Timothy's car breaking down, but the managing woman took good care of me allowing me to stay in the bus after we spent a confusing amount of time communicating that (on my part) I didn't need a taxi because someone was coming and (on her part) that I should stay in the bus and sleep to keep warm. I was so excited and awake I opted to sit in the front of the bus till I begin to feel the chill creeping into my bones and the bus lady's urging for me to get into a bed under a pile of blankets became more than just a request but rather like an order. In the end Timothy asked me to take a taxi, gave him directions over my cell phone and I arrived. Cold, desperately excited to use the bathroom and not quite ready for the sun to come up but there she was; already peeping over the horizon.

Guess what. I caught a cold. Go figure.

The trip home was much nicer because by then I was rested (sick but brain rested) and more confident of asking questions. Also, the bus was only half full and I got a seat way up front with a thicker blanket. We even stopped for dinner this time where I ate very spicy soup and managed to find a bathroom (yes I was entertaining but that comes with the leaving of the comfort zone to travel; you end up either frustrating or amusing people so it is good to be on the happier side).

Coming back to Dorm A-13 and banging on the door to wake the night guard (my dorm has a midnight curfew) was actually a comfortable returning. I remembered how a few weeks ago I arrived in the middle of the night scared and homesick. This night I walked into the courtyard and looked up to see the moon and the bright stars of the constellation Orion and in one moment the city was not so bad and home was at the top of 16 floors with friends down the hall.

Going to the Farm – Mid Autumn Festival and the Golden Week

Mid Autumn Festival. Moon cakes: some only slightly better than Christmas fruitcake, some worse, some delightfully yummy. I personally prefer the sesame or red bean filled ones. They come in all sizes, but always round and always bearing the ingredient inside in Chinese character on the top (no help to the illiterate me). The Mid Autumn Festival celebrates the harvest moon and is a time for eating moon cakes with your family while looking up at the full moon is a park or backyard. My students brought me several bunches of these always surprises cakebits and, as a foreign teacher, the international affairs office of HIT always gifted us with a beautiful tin case filled with only the most expensive moon cakes in Harbin. Strangely enough the most expensive moon cake is a sort of sugary bean filling surround a whole hard-boiled egg yolk (I am assuming the yolk resembles the full moon?). I didn't mind the surrounding filling but the dry egg yolk was less than exciting. I enjoyed the less expensive varieties. I was told that some of them have meat but thankfully none have yielded such delicacies (to my relief).

Golden Week. National Holidays in China. Three times a year the whole country (almost) goes on vacation for a week (maybe longer over the Chinese New Year) and though government is working to change this, it is a time-honored tradition and was ever present during the most recent Golden Week. A country of 1 billion people all going on vacation, a country of exceedingly mobile people all traveling to somewhere, wreaks a bit of havoc on transportation systems (which consequentially do not get vacation at this time).

I too decided to seize my chance of a lifetime to see a little bit of China's countryside and also to visit a family and farm where my father has been working the past couple years. The "small" town of Hunchun (only the size of Winnipeg) is also called the Last Stop because it is literally in the corner of China between the ominous shoulder of Russia and cold front of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

I was visiting the Shell family of Timothy and Naomi and their 4 "eager beavers" of Mary Frances, Ruth Anna, Miriam and little Lyte. They live and manage a farm there consisting of all sorts of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, a few dogs, lots of cats and a beautiful bunch of hills covered in pine and aspen like trees. I am sure there are more things but I was a little confused about who managed what and where and, as I was sort of delighting in long walks in the clean air and a very exciting new family to hang out with, I chose to relax rather than be inquisitive. (I can always ask questions next visit). It was a wonderful visit! I spent lots of time baking with Naomi and reading books to the family (yes the whole family listened to me read Prince Caspian and the Magician's Nephew and yes I did get hoarse). We spent a day with a few other families out in the country near to another town called Yanji picking pingguoli (apple-pears) and looking for 'pretty' rocks. The girls are also avid collectors of all sorts of rocks that end up in piles and jars various places.

Yes, those are sparse details but really the most exciting part of my Golden Week experience was, as I was mentioning before, the travel there and back….

Thanksgiving in Canada

Today is (well was for me now) Thanksgiving day in Canada. The past three years I have spent this holiday in the glorious home of my friend Judi. Far and beautiful, tucked into north-western Ontario on a bit of an island called McKenzie. It is always a time full of deep talks, canoes across crinkled waters, numerous cups of strong black tea swallowed in evaporated milk and honey, dancing while cooking frenzies, and (my specialty) the gathering of leaves and harvest field beauties to adorn the Thanksgiving table.

Yes, I am sad to miss my very dear holiday with some very dear friends.

So to commemorate this Canadian Thanksgiving far from home but ever still thankful I have decided to devote a blog to all the amazing things in my life right now.

A hurrah for green things! My fingers and eyes seek out the clinging green on waving branches, drinking up that precious colour now more than ever for soon it will be only found on pictures and in my mind's reserves. The few spots of yellow and red or purple flowers also get special attention and yes, I stop often to be the odd curly haired crazy sniffing up great breaths of sweet marigold or fading rose. It is a trick Josh and I have been testing this past year; stopping to smell all the flowers to live longer or happier on a natural flowery sort of high (better on the lungs).

China! It still has yet to sink in. I cannot seem to grasp how I wanted to travel and then: zing! Bam! Here I am. Although, globalization seems to creep up on me and I often wonder if this is actually Winnipeg with a Chinese flavor or China with a Winnipegish sort of flavor? I feel concerned that all cities might feel a bit like that and I am confused as to whether to enjoy feeling at home or be annoyed that I can never really leave. (I need to think more on this one.)

Josh! Family! Friends! If home is where the heart is than my heart just keeps getting bigger. I could elaborate but then I would never stop. It is good simply to be in awe of the cup of friendship that continues to overflow.

Water in large bottles and kind, patient people that understand me when I fumble in Chinese and bring me a new bottle when I finish one. Vegetables and fruits from kind and patient vendors with wooden carts on the street side. Too many kinds of rice and things to add to rice for me to tell the difference and only one kind of flour. Hot baked yams right out of the steel drum on the corner. Tea of the green, black, whole flower varieties and then some. Yellow and green colored chalk that remains on fingers and migrates to everything else. Strong wind that stirs up dust and blood to cool whipped faces in the struggle to walk in the dazzling autumn sunshine of the sweet morning. Runners that cushion the happy simple plodding of early morn jogs. Recognizing a character on sign, understanding and being understood when speaking Chinese. Recognizing a student's face and almost remembering a name and sort of saying it right. Sitting for a moment of silence and suddenly forgetting to hear the construction banging outside. Skype connections clearer than telephone; communication that goes beyond words.

It is good to be thankful.

Teaching English – Master's Oral English

Ah yes. The thing I came to Harbin to do: teach English. I have now completed 3 weeks of classes and am officially a laoshi or teacher. Seven times a week I teach the same 2-hour class to about 25 to 30 students each time. In total I have almost 200 delightful students each with a beautiful Chinese name I am attempting (!*!) to memorize and learn to say in a way that is at least somewhat near to correct. It's a wonderful sort of disaster that only remains bearable with lots of laughs and forgiving patience!

The course I teach is designed to improve the listening and speaking skills for students learning English as most of them can read and write very well but when it comes to the more productive (listening and speaking) aspects of the language they are less confident and able. My job is to get them speaking. Easy right?

Well, in some ways. The greatest blessing so far in my arrival to Harbin is that this course is already planned out! Megan, an English teacher from Arkansas who has been here for a year already, is teaching the exact same course and she has all the lesson plans, worksheets and overheads for the whole semester. YES! They are done and all I have to do is look over them, figure out how to make sense of what I say and do and copy off the worksheets to hand out! The hard part comes only when I step into class each morning.

So there I am four mornings a week; walking over to the building, scurrying up the steps to gather the little plastic box with a key to open the computer and a remote to turn on the projector (the rooms are fully equipped), then stepping into the corner room full of large windows partially covered by dusty drapes and solid long wooden desks. Usually I arrive about five minutes before and the class is already there; studying, chatting softly, and (yep) basically just waiting for me. It is all rather awkward still and oddly frightening. It is considered quite a privilege to have a native English speaker as your teacher, which creates quite a celebratory sort of gap that I have yet to really break down. (Hopefully that will come with time.) Yet, I have definitely settled into a nice routine which is much more comfortable to me than that first week of teaching. It was crazy! Trying to get everyone's names, figure out who is supposed to be in the class, being too soft and allowing several auditing students (grrr), trying to explain all the policies and such in a simple slow sort of way and probably failing miserably, since I tend to talk fast when I get excited. Of course, things still don't quite gel all the time and I have many lessons to learn. Many.

My respect and awe of those in teaching positions grows by the minute…

Morning in Harbin

China lives all in one time zone: Beijing time. It is handy for traveling and calling long distance across China, to be sure, but it does have quite an effect on the rising and the setting of the sun on those living east and west of Beijing. In Harbin the sun peeps it head over the horizon around 5am or so. I do not actually know the exact time because I prefer to have my eyes and curtains shut at this time of the morning. The afternoon is when the difference is more noticeable as the setting sun begins to draw long shadows in the dust and concrete by 3:30pm or so and by 6pm it is pretty much dark with a few stars. This makes it entirely convenient, then, to do everything early. Indeed, we eat lunch at 11 or 11:30 with dinner beginning at 4 or so (because it can last a long time I am told). Yoko and I joke about eating lunch by mid morning or else we won't be ready in time to have dinner!

Ah, but the current joy of my morning is the jog I have been going on in the morning with the whole of Harbin. There is a football (soccer and such) stadium right next to the dormitory building, which opens for public use from 5:30am to 7:30am (Or as Guodong has said, half-ah-past-ah 5 to half-ah-past-ah 7). So I have been quite the early bird and will get myself out there to jog a few laps with a great number of everyone. Its great! Mostly men go to jog but there are some women, children and older folks mingled about, stretching, walking, jogging at a nice slow 'Mya' sort of pace.

So, yes I had been enjoying this very energizing routine of about 6 or 7 laps before rushing home to run up the stairs, shower and run out the door for class at 8. THEN one morning a student asked me if would want to try running around the nearby park/zoo. It was delicious! There are people everywhere at that time of the morning, aerobics classes on the lawn, women practicing fan and/or sword dancing, people doing some kind of martial arts, choirs practicing, bands trumpeting…etc! What a treat! It is like the day of a big happy marathon, but every day. I get excited just thinking about it….can't wait till tomorrow…