Christmas in Dalian

Christmas was certainly different this year. It's the first time I've never been with my family, and so in a lot of ways it was lonely. But, I was able to talk with a bunch of everyone on Skype, which was awesome, and got some really home-feeling packages in the mail :-) which helped a lot.

Christmas Eve was spent baking cookies during the day and going to a western buffet for dinner. Turkey and mashed potatoes, yumyumyum. pumpkin soup, and lots of other tasty foods.

Here's the sign outside of Eddie's. Eddie is a french/italian-trained chinese chef, so he makes lots of yummy food. we went back for dinner the other night and I had a Philly Sub!!


My friends who I ate with....




I didn't take a picture of my dinner, but here was my chocolate cake for dessert, yum! We also had eggnog with Kaluha. not my favorite, but I was happy to have eggnog.


On Christmas morning I woke up to snow!!! this is the view outside of my window!!!



After opening presents and spending a nice day to myself/baking cookies still, I went with my New Zealander friend David with some Irish and Chinese friends to a Hibachi dinner, then to the bars. All in all a well spent Christmas!!

Cookie Saga, the finale

Alright, so i wanted to write about each cookie as its own episode in the saga of my cookie making. but between being sick, busy, and working, and having to make cookies, there was no time. The cookie saga is over, well, almost, there's still a bit of a mess in my kitchen to clean up... maybe next year :P

I learned quite a bit about making cookies. First. It takes a hell of a long time when you can only bake 9 at a time. I didn't count the total number baked, but let's see, 5 kinds of cookies for 13 friends, ended up with 5ish of 4 kinds for each of them and like 8 sugar cookies for each... so like, 250-300? yeah, it was quite the three day long event. in fact it was so epic I watched all of the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings movies while I was baking. In general the flavors came out okay, I think the Johnny Walked I used instead of vanilla extract worked out fine. A friend of mine got his hands on both baking powder and baking soda for me, the angel. Here are some pictures of the event, in addition to last blog's peanut butter blossoms i made choc chiip, oatmeal raisin, sugar cookies, and thumbprints with blueberry jam.
(not pictured, oatmeal raisin, guess i forgot to snap a pic)

first, chocolate chip, next time, when made with proper chocolate, they will be much tastier...



My first few attempts at sugar cookies ended up in crumbs because they stuck to the pan. I was so frustrated that I thought cooking them on a rack would be a good idea. um, DUh!!!!!! melted cookies....



with the help of a little foil (never did find any parchment paper), they came out better....



thumbprints!! they came out really well, the jam i used was super tasty. not very pretty though...


And the final products, just before the final wrapping and ribbon....




So what will I bake next? If I can find kosher salt I am going to attempt pretzels, and maybe a cake if I can find some decent cocoa. Requests are appreciated. :-)

Cookie Saga part 1

Even harder than speaking chinese is attempting to bake Christmas cookies here in good old Dalian. I have all of these great new friends that I want to get Christmas presents before, but don't know them well enough to shop for, so i said, I'll make Christmas cookies! who doesn't love them!!
Well,
not as easy as it sounds. First. the lack of oven. I purchased a toaster oven, and the goal is to make 5 different types of cookies :choc chip, sugar, oatmeal raisin, thumbprints, and peanut blossoms. i know the first three aren't really christmas cookies, but for the challenge it's going to be to make them, if they come out well it will truely be a Christmas Miracle.
here is my toaster oven, with my first piece of toast and slices of cheese i've had so far, 2 months in. :-)


And after a Christmas secret amount of time and money spent to get the ingredients, here is my first batch of cookies. peanut blossoms. They came out okay, if a little dark. Some of my hershey's kisses melted a bit too much. ah well. tastes the same.
I did them first because they had the fewest ingredients I was worried about (aka they only have 3 ingredients). For example, I am a bit worried that chinese baking soda and powder are different than American. Also, I couldn't find vanilla extract, so I'm going to use whiskey (I read it works!!). I think I found brown sugar that is like American stuff (I'm pretty sure chinese brown sugar is made from dates or something). And I bought Imported Gold Medal Flour... everything else, eggs, sugar, salt, i'm okay with.

Future challenges include: christmas shaped sugar cookies sans cookie cutters, whiskey extract?!, no parchment paper, and a general lack of counter space.

until next time...

The truth??

One of my fellow ESL teacher-friends gave me some good advice a few weeks ago before I started teaching a new student. He said, paraphrasing, "Remember, it doesn't matter what they [your students] talk about, only that they talk. This is why it's good to assign them opinions and have debates. This way they focus on the words they're saying in English, and not their thoughts in Chinese. There is no need to tell them the truth, as long as they keep talking..."

At Outstanding School, I teach 5 classes on Sunday and 4 on Wednesday. I have no idea whose class I'm teaching in until I get to the school, and the Chinese teachers have no idea what I should teach, because they find out I'm in their class when I walk in. Productive eh?

So if neither of us can come up with anything on the fly, I have so far been letting them talk until a grammar point or chance to introduce new vocab comes up.

Did you know that I know Lebron James? and we went to the same high school?

Well, my students think I do. :P

One of them said "I like to watch basketball!" So I said "Do you know who Lebron James is?" 90% of the kids got really excited and nodded their heads. So I continued to tell them about how I was from the same city (more or less) as Lebron James, and that we went to high school together. (Used it as an opportunity to teach them about The Great Lakes). They were soooooo excited, and actually paid attention almost the entire class!!

Okay so I don't know Lebron James (I did drive by his high school in Akron one time though!), and I may have been lying, but what a great class it was! not the usual, painful, nothing to talk about for 50 minutes class. :-)

Go Cavs!!!!!

Chinglish Friday #3

K so it's Saturday, but still Friday in the states... The weather sucked and I was busy this week, so nothing realy fabulous...

"Mission Corea Hair Beauty Salan"

mission impossible...

Auspicious Pharmacy...


Feide sea slue proteol si capsule...

k so Feide is the pinyin of the first 2 characters, then seas slug, but proteol si? sounds like a bad scifi sequel


On my way to work. Ho! it's the seven dwarves over yonder!


Happy and the crowd were passing out advertisements for some restaurant.

Tall, Blonde, Bullseye.

Firstly, this is an unpleasant story, scared the shit out of me, but I'm okay because there are some really nice people in the world. Nothing bad happened, just was frightened. So please don't worry about me!

I woke up late this morning, so I did not get to drink coffee or review my homework before my Chinese lesson, which made for a really painful hour of speaking Chinese. Afterwards, I wandered around the square where my lessons are until I found a post office (had to mail a couple of things stateside!). An hour later after a lot more painful speaking of Chinese and a very helpful post office clerk I was done. I knew roughly where I was, and so started heading towards this really big shopping area that was maybe 5 10 minutes away to have lunch. I was thinking about which kind of yummy Japanese noodles I was going have when this guy started talking to me and held out a 1 yuan coin in his hand. At first I thought I had dropped it and he was returning it to me. As long as they seem friendly, i usually talk to random people like this, it really helps my Chinese. But I quickly learned that no, he wasn't giving me money I had dropped, he was showing me 1 yuan because he wanted me to give him 1 yuan.

Alright. 1 yuan is like 15 cents US, but as soon as he asked me for money I said no way, goodbye. At that moment there weren't too many other people on the road, and I didn't want to risk taking out my wallet and him running off with it. Mind you, this man did not look like a beggar, he was maybe a little underdressed for the weather, but had on clean clothes, was clean shaven, and seemed like most of the other people I talk to, loud and curious. But when I said no he turned from nice to persistent. As I walked away from him he initally didn't follow, but then caught up. So I turned down an alley filled with street fod vendors and lots of people. I was getting really close to this shopping area, and I figured he'd back off once I was around other people. But he starts yelling! when he grabbed my arm (not forcefully, but I don't want him touching me), I turned around and yelled "don't touch me!!!" in english and "I dont' want to give you money, go away, goodbye" in chinese, more or less. This is in the middle of the busy alley. I'm the only whitey around, and you'd think that SOMEONE would say something to this guy, he's obviously crazy or something and I obviously don't want him around. But everyone just stares. So, I book it. Not quite running but using my legs in their full stride, but he runs after me!!! I am sooooo close to the mall, I know he won't follow me inside, I just have to cross the street and go through the doors. He's getting really mad now, when all of a sudden I hear someone say 'what's going on are you okay?" I turn and this Taiwanese woman has grabbed my arm and come to my rescue. She says something to the guy like "what do you want?" he says something like "all I want is 1 yuan!!" And she actually gives it to him and grabs me quickly and we cross the street.
she's saying "let's go to starbucks and get away from him, he's crazy, we'll call the police." Now that I have this wonderful woman helping me I thought he'd be gone but he keeps following us saying something about the pretty foreigner and how scared I am.

Um, hell yes i was scared, I felt so helpless because I could not shake him!

Well, She says something to him about calling the police, and finally he stops following us as we enter the shopping area. She gets out her phone to call the police but I ask her not to, I'm just glad he's gone and I don't want to make things a big deal, he probably would have been gone by the time the cops got there anyway. But she calms me down, starts talking to me about herself (Canadian businesswoman born in Taiwan in immigration) and had me talk about why i'm here, to take my mind off of what happened. Whew. Gloria. Glorious Gloria. without here who knows, he might have followed me into the mall.

We exchanged numbers and I am going to see her again to thank her properly for helping me. She was on her way to a meeting and couldn't chat long, and I just wanted to go somewhere out of the way, so we parted ways.

I decided to continue to lunch as I had originally planned, that way I could sit in a restaurant I knew and didn't have to worry about anything. I'm glad I did that. It gave me time to think about what had happened and why it scared me so much.

As a foreigner in China you're bound to run into people who treat you like crap, becuase they're racist or they just don't like foreigners, or whatever. Examples of this would be being gawked at, being charged higher prices because you're a "dumb waiguoren," taxi drivers refusing to take you places, and being pickpocketed. All of these things suck, they're no fun, but they're all superficial and you can get around them or prevent them from happening by taking a couple of extra steps before you walk out the door. Or in the case of being gawked at, turn it into a conversation, which is what i usually try to do, and failed at miserably this time. I just felt so so so trapped, and alone, because there were like 200 people witnessing this and all of them, just watching.
This guy, who was probably out of his mind or on drugs or something, just made me feel totally helpless. Until today I had this false sense of "well, I'm bigger than most Chinese, so I can handle myself" and sure enough, I was a good foot taller than this guy. But his menace outdid my height by far, and I was shown that maybe I need to think twice about having a real confrontation. Because it's bound to happen again, it's a little hard for me to not stick out of the crowd as a target, I won't be able to wear a winter hat in the summer to cover my hair color, and I can't chop off my legs. ANd I don't want to! I want to be able to walk around and have the freedom to go from the post office to a restaurant without being assaulted. I think though, that I won't get that here, and instead I will prepare myself for the next time this happens. whatever that means, i'm still working on it.

And I won't be going near that street again.

More or Less

A quick story about a really fun class I had the other day. Often (aka every class) when i teach at Outstanding, I walk into the classroom and have no clue what I'm supposed to teach about. More often than not, when I walk in the teacher says, "Oh we have foreign class today? Hooray!" They excited to have a break, a surprise break, because they don't know anything about what I'm doing eaither, or that I'm coming at all.

So this particular class, Mabel, my third class of the day of 4. I've redone Christmas and Thanksgiving already, and it looks like another Thanksgiving class. The kids are pretty well behaved, before class I sit down next to one of them and we have a nice little chat in Chinese filled English. So the whole class is good, we talk about when and why Thanksgiving is celebrated, the parade, and now it's time for dinner.
I discovered while teaching this lesson in another class that the kids really got a kick out of the hand turkey. They'd never seen it before. So I started out by saying "On Thanksgiving we eat turkey! Watch as I draw one for you." And sure enough, the class erupts in laughter and awe when they see this little-kid hand drawing of a turkey that all American children learn before they can say gobble gobble. As this is an English class, I ask them "Does this look like a turkey?" in hopes to start a conversation. "chaaaaaaaaaaaabuduoooooooooooo" I get as a response from one of the kids, Steven. Oh! what a perfect time to teach them a new phrase. So I teach them that "chabuduo" means "more or less" in English. And so I ask again, "Does this look like a turkey?" And I get about 3 yes answers and 17 "More or less!" (my drawing skills are limited, so it really did look more or less like a turkey).
I am so happy because I have taught them something really useful that they can hopefully use again soon. However, Steven, every question I asked thereafter answered "more or less" because he thought it was soooo funny. I couldn't be mad though because 1, he remembered the phrase this way, and 2, wasn't being rowdy, just kid-like.
So thank you Steven, I think this teaching this will be alright. more or less.

Chinglish Friday #2

Before I share this week's photos, I would just like to say that yes I do in fact enjoy being in China. I often write about things that annoy me, or unfortunate events that take place here. And well, frankly they're more interesting than the good things that happen to me (i'm amused easily). but I will make an effort to write about happy things sometimes! Like when I was out shopping today, "Time to Say Goodbye" was being played on the loudspeakers in the main plaza. :)

Anyway, onto the Chinglish!!

First, a picture of some KFC coupons...


Now, a fast food shop that has nothing to do with KFC, any pictures look familiar?


You know that this place has good prices, because they tell you so!

The fairprice shoemarket

If only you could find the ideal beau in a store...

The beauideal shop

Finally, For your every imported-goods need...

(They really do have imports here too!)

Coffee Time

Recently I have been consuming a fair amount of coffee. Now, I have always been a coffee drinker, but for fear of becoming addicted/I don't usually need the caffeine anyway I maybe had an average of 3 or 4 cups a week. As I may have mentioned, Chinese cuisine does not really include the following things: cheese, chocolate, peanut butter, pretzels, bagels, and coffee... among other things. but these foods you might say are my favorites. Coffee (well, crysalized instant), is the only thing that I can find where the Chinese version is close to edible, and even exists (no bagels or pretzels at all!).

I brought some coffee with me, and I'm hoping Santa will bring me some as well (hint hintfolgershint), but until then I've been having quite a lot of this instant stuff. I finally found unsweetened instant, but for the most part it's like 1/4 cofee 3/4 sugar (I like my coffee black).

Alright I'm sure you don't care about my coffee drinking habits, but in the coffee aisle at the supermarket today I found the following:



I don't know about you but so many times at the store i say to myself "I can't believe they expect men and women to drink the same type of coffee!"
puh-lease.
Could you Imagine seeing Lady and Men Coffee in the states? right next to the Lady and Men Ketchup. This is one of the many times I'm like, really China? really?

I wanted to see what the difference was, so I purchased a box of each (for a total experiment cost of $5 USD). Before I share my results, let me translate the descriptions on the box, what the company says the difference is.
[note this was done with my electronic dictionary, but I it's pretty accurate if a little Chinglishy]

On the Coffee for Lady:
清香型(qingxiangxing). "Fragrant Flavor"

On the Coffee for Men:
碳烧型(tanshaoxing)."The carbon is burning Flavor," more or less "dark roast flavor"

Both coffees had an enormous amount of creamer and sugar added, but the Coffee for Men actually had a little bit of coffee flavoring. Not burnt, or even strong. The Coffee for Lady was essentially sweetended milk with an afterthought of coffee flavor. maybe if you took coffee ice cream, heated it, and added more milk and sugar.

I am going to politely keep my comments to myself on what I think about the implications are of bs things like this, though I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions.