Update

Hello everyone! I am sorry about the long delay in a blog entry. It seems that Blogspot is being blocked in China. This entry has been posted thanks to my brother, Matt. Thanks Matt! I hope to keep my entries coming, but please be patient with me. If Blogspot continues to be blocked, then I will move this site to another space. But for now, we will just have to wait and see. I have added and will continue to add photos to my flicker account, so please keep checking that.

In other update news….Well, I am alive and kicking. I know my last blog entry was an intense one, but no back problems to report! It is still very straight and feeling OK! I have been putting most of my time into my work. Starting a new school is hard! So many papers to write, protocols to design, curriculum documents to plan! Added to this are new changes every day! Construction sounds permeate the Jin Shi Tan site and new things are delivered to the school and installed on a daily basis. It keeps us all jumping. It is exciting, fast paced, and exhausting. So, I have been lying low on my down time and resting and exploring the local area.

Last weekend, I went on a drive to the country to an area about one hour from Dalian. It was absolutely beautiful, with high rolling hills all around, bright orange fall colors and crisp clean landscape. Mrs. Jin is a woman who used to work as a cleaner at our school. She invited us to her mother’s house for a traditional Chinese meal. And what a meal it was! There were about 20 dishes, including beef, chicken (head and all), crab, clams, shrimp, lamb pancakes, cauliflower, snap beans, corn bread, a huge fish, and on and on and on…Traditionally, the host stays in the kitchen or another room. The many dishes are a very expected tradition as well, and we were give the highest ranked guest status. Mrs. Jin and her mother continued to say that we should eat slowly and pace ourselves because more dishes were coming. This happened even after we were bloated and stuffed an hour later and we were begging off, saying we couldn’t possibly eat more. The dishes kept coming. At the end of the meal, grandma came in and sat with us and chatted for a while. She told me I was just a baby and said I should call her grandma and think of this place as a home away from home. They begged us to come back and bring our friends and family there when we have visitors. Mrs. Jin and her mother continued to point to Jessie (Granddaughter: age 18) and I and speak in mandarin. I think they were implying a current/future connection between us. We are meant to practice our languages together.

Oh, and let me tell you about the house! It was incredible. The Jin family has been living there for 20 years. There is a clean and odor-free little cement outhouse that consists of a single slit in the floor. The front porch has the most beautiful little well dug into it. Water is brought up from a pail with a long rope attached, just like in children’s rhymes. The rooms are very small but cozy and quaint. There is a front room with a bed in it. It was explained that the kitchen fireplace feeds into the space below the bed so that the hot coals heat the bed in the winter. If you lay your bedroll out on it, I think you could be quite cozy in winter. In the front yard is a beautiful garden with every sort of vegetable growing, eggplants, peppers and tomatoes, squash, all kinds of fruit trees...tiny and pristine and beautiful. There were also many cabbages in a tiny field in the side yard that were pickled in big old clay jars on the front porch to last for the winter. It was such an amazingly beautiful place. The sad thing is that this land is going to be used for a company to build high rises, and the Jin family is being relocated in a month’s time to an apartment building a quarter mile away. The entire area will be developed.

After my meal at the Jin’s, Mrs. Jin’s brother took us for a drive in an area nearby that is closed to foreigners due to a military base in the area. We were allowed to drive through and look but not get out of the van. We were warned that we might get hassled in the van though if a guard happened to stop us. Thankfully, we were not bothered. The city just looked pretty much like any other though.

I have so much more to say and could write volumes about this last week. I have had so many thoughts about the culture and as I get to know more local people, I am learning about surprising similarities and gulfs of differences between us. It is fascinating. A real sociological adventure. So, cross your fingers that Blogspot opens up for me soon! In the meantime, I’ll do my best to keep the letters coming. But, please remember to write me too! I need to keep getting those encouraging e-mails!
Love, Becky