Christmas

So Christmas came and went this year, probably just as fast as it would have back at home, but the culture of Christmas is not at all the same here. So far, the kindergarten where we work has done a decent job at remembering the important American holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving. When we got to the middle of December and there was no sign of Christmas yet, we were beginning to worry.

We didn't worry for too long though, because a week before Christmas day, the decorations finally came out. We were informed of 3 separate Christmas parties in the kindergarten, and 1 for the primary school, in which we performed musical numbers. They asked us to come to the practice a few days before the first party and we had a great time watching the kids perform their dances. But we were still yet to hear a song that had anything to do with Christmas (unless Gangnam Style has taken over Christmas). Alicia and I performed a duet with my ukulele singing "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer". It didn't really fit into the rest of the music styles, but we wanted to hold up our end of a western-culture Christmas.

Now before I launch into the details of the Christmas parties, I want to mention that my selfless wife Alicia wanted to make sure we had some good Christmas spirit this year so she carried out a well-planned "12 Days of Christmas" with a different gift for me every day leading up to Christmas. I loved every single gift. I don't know how she got all the gifts so sneakily because we are always together. Here they are in a carefully remembered list:

12 - A bag of twelve snickers candy bars (they are pretty expensive here, but a fabulous treat)
11 - Eleven sticky notes hidden around the apartment with love notes written on them
10 - One pedicure for ten toes
9 - Blogpost titled "9 Things I love about Tom"
8 - Eight Homemade chocolate turtles
7 - Seven days of not having to wash the dishes
6 - Six Love Poems
5 - A 5 meter measuring tape
4 - Four 10-Yuan bills for buying any treats I want at the store
3 - Three Love emails from Alicia's secret email address
2 - Two new knives, one for my keychain, and one for my utility drawer
1 - A bag of Alpenliebe candy, like cream savers

So many gifts. Thanks Alicia for bringing the Christmas spirit home. In addition to the giftage, we decided that since we couldn't find any cheap trees at the store, we would make a tree out of paper and tape it on the wall. We even found a short strand of lights to put on it. Here's a pic.

Now the kindergarten parties were a force of cuteness to be reckoned with. We've got way too many videos of cute children that don't belong to us and we can only post a fraction of what we have here, so I'll try to keep it brief. Keep in mind that we attended 3 of these parties and they were all basically the same, so it will be hard to differentiate all the different videos with "Gangnam Style" playing in the background.

This is a small clip of the Happy Babies doing a fashion show with homemade designer clothing.

This is one of Alicia's favorite Small Babies. He's got the perfect hair for rockin' out and this is a little sneak peak of what we get everytime we sing a fun song with him.

This is the Happy Babies doing Gangnam Style.

They have a guy who teaches the little babies Kung Fu. Our city (Cangzhou) is one of the original cities and founders of Kung Fu (supposedly).

This is the Smile Babies doing a cute little dance.

This is the Super Babies reciting a poem that was written by Mao Zedong about winter. I just think it's interesting that he is such an honored leader here.

This is Linda, one of my smartest Super Babies, putting decorations on the Christmas trees outside the school.

This is Xi Xi (English name: Ace) and his mom. They are having fun helping decorate the trees.

Okay this picture is important. This kid is named Erba, but who else can see the resemblance to Tim Madsen as a little kid? Please let me know what you think.

Alicia is helping Erba with the decorations.

This is a group picture of all the kindy teachers, students, parents, and more!

The primary school had over three hours of performances up their sleeve as well. We got front row seats in the lunchroom as honorary guests to watch performance after performance of non-Christmas themed dances and music. It was still very neat though. We got to sing TWO songs at this party, so we included "Santa Claus is Coming To Town". I'll try to keep it brief with the pictures and videos below.

This was a good little intro to show the one Christmas song they all knew how to sing.

This may be one of our favorite performances of the event. The sixth grade boys put on a great shuffle.

This is another dance by the 6th grade students. We mostly put this clip in to show the awesome special effects. Watch carefully.

This is the 1st grade putting on some sort of skit. Not sure what the story is about, but it was entertaining. The kid who runs in wearing black is named Spencer. He loves us, but the only English words he's ever spoken are "Hello Teacher", and "I like ALL THE COLORS!!". Whenever he sees us, he runs up, points to himself, and says "S-pentherrrrr" with a very strong lisp.

Here you get to see a special clip of our Christmas performance. Before watching this video, make sure the volume is up. The teacher we asked to take the video handed the camera off to another teacher, and they speak some sort of alien language (it's just Chinese) to each other. So crazy sounding.

After the performance, the lunch lady, who speaks no English, wanted to make us a special dinner of tomato and egg and some other dish. We gratefully accepted. As we were walking out of the lunchroom doors, Kyle called and said he would be there to pick us up in 20 minutes to take us to a Christmas party with some college students at his hospital. He made sure that we brought the ukulele to sing songs for everyone. I guess Christmas is all about performances here.

We walked into a classroom full of college age students studying at the hospital and to our surprise, we were instant celebrities. We were sat down on the front row with a pile of oddly-flavored sunflower seeds and peanuts heaped on the desks. We were given oranges and apples like crazy, and they were constantly asking us if we wanted to participate, although the entire program was being given in Chinese. Although the communication barrier was still there, we felt much more comfortable with a crowd of people that were close to our age.

We played a game where we had to draw a backpack with a blindfold on.

Then we had to guess which picture was our own. If you got it right, you got a new pen and some glowstick candy. Saweet.

The party was a lot of fun and they all loved our Christmas song performance. When we stood up to leave, Kyle took the microphone and explained in Chinese that we believe in God. Everyone made a oohhh sound and we went on our way. It was very interesting that out of anything, he chose to tell them that. As we were walking out of the classroom, a girl came running in excitement to tell us that she was from Tianjin, and that she also believed in God. We had a short bonding moment, and went our separate ways.

If this Christmas Eve doesn't sound long enough yet, then let's tack on another couple hours of hanging out with Kyle and Lily at KFC. To tell the truth, those couple hours were probably the most interesting we had out of the whole season. Apparently word got out that a couple of foreigners were eating dinner at KFC on Christmas Eve because all of the sudden, there were two photographers taking pictures of us. Keep in mind, I was wearing a yellow bow tie, a santa hat, and was carrying around a peculiar instrument called a ukulele, and eating ice cream. There was one photographer taking pictures from 30 feet away using a huge telescopic lens. In my usual practice, I awkwardly waved at her until she aknowledged me. She waved back, but didn't miss a beat and kept taking pictures. Soon, the guy on the very next table, about as close as he could possibly be to me, whipped out this huge camera and was taking pictures of me paleting my ice cream, bite by bite. In addition to the paparazzi, I was told by two different people at that KFC that I look like the President of Russia, and also a frenchmen. I blame it on the bowtie. But the most mindblowing thing that happened that evening at KFC was when Kyle leaned accross the table and asked us an alarming question: "So do you know the meaning of Christmas?" I guess it shouldn't suprise me coming from a man who lives in a country full of atheists, but we had to explain to him who Christ was and what the Bible was, and how Christmas is spelled with His name in it. Mind blowing. We kept it all very brief, of course, to avoid proselyting.

Before we knew it, it was 10:30 and we were ready to go home. Unfortunately, we still had to work on Christmas, and go to our last kindy Christmas party. On Christmas, we left straight from the party to go to dinner with Kyle and friends. They wanted to take us somewhere special for Christmas dinner so we went to this sichuan style food place. There was an above average amount of delicous Chinese food there, and we were very happy to have it. I included a bunch of the pictures from that dinner in our Kyle and friends post a few days ago, but there are a couple of dishes that should be noted. The spicy duck head was unbelievable spicy. You should avoid that at all costs. And the fish bathed in oil should also be mentioned. So delicious. And finally, there were ribs of some sort that had been cooked with apricots and brown sugar and they were soooo good. Before we left the restaurant, Kyle strongly encouraged us to sing a song on the stage at the restaurant. Luckily, we had a couple of recently practiced Christmas songs under our belt so we did it. I know that no one in the restuarant understood the words to Rudolph, so I pretended it was a love song and gave Alicia a kiss at the end. It was a Christmas to remember.

First foreigners in Cangzhou: A Namibian friend

Way back in November, we were parousing the shopping mall in downtown Cangzhou, when accross the discount sweater bin, I saw an unusually colored hand under the sign on the other side of the bin. Upon further inspection, I quickly whispered (said outloud because that's how we whisper here, not worried about somebody understanding) to Alicia, "Alicia. There is a black guy over there!" One second later, I realized that there is a pretty good chance that he also speaks English. I scooted out from behind the sign and slowly moved towards the two black guys, and one asian that were standing there together. I asked the standard question: "Do you speak English?"

They did, and long story short, The two black guys were from Namibia, and the other guy was from Myanmar. They barely spoke any Chinese, and have been living in Cangzhou for almost a year for a special military pilot training program. They said we were the first foreigners that they'd seen in the city. This confirmed our suspicion that we are definitely one of the few foreigners in Cangzhou City. (of about 7 million people) They were very friendly and we exchanged numbers to try and arrange dinner sometime.

A couple weeks later, we met up with one of the Namibians that was especially friendly. His name is Samora. We had a very good time eating lunch with him and talking about Namibia and other random things about cultural differences. It was fun to relate with someone from Namibia about the challenges that come with living in China. He told us all about his hometown, and how the dude from "The Gods Must Be Crazy" was from a village very close to his home.

After lunch, we took him with us to meet up with Susan, our former liaison at the People's Park so we could see the Cangzhou Zoo. While we were waiting, we bought some Tonghulu to show Samora. At this point, we were feeling pretty good about our Chinese skills, so we were trying to find ways to show them off. He didn't like sweet things very much, just like the Chinese, so I don't think he liked the Tonghulu. Anyways, Susan showed up and we headed to the zoo entrance for a multi-cultural zoo field trip. We ran into some hard core kite flyers at the park that wanted each of us to try flying the kites. Take a look.

Samora, the kite owner, and Susan (in the pink).

Alicia got a chance to try and I guess her kite-flying experience was more euphoric than most.

This picture is to show you how friendly Samora is. He approached this Chinese baby and made him cry.

This was a cool bridge in the park. That is Alicia and Susan.

The zoo in Cangzhou was definitely not as interesting as the one in Baoding that we saw the week earlier, but you still can't beat the entrance fee of a buck fifty. As we walked past many of the animal cages, including the lion, Samora was telling  us about how lions, elephants, zebras, and other exotic animals just roamed free in his home country. They are often a concern when it comes to animals crossing the road in Namibia. He told us that no one drives on the roads at night for fear of hitting an elephant. He also said that it's pretty rare for someone to survive hitting an elephant with their car. Kinda crazy stuff.

Anyway, here are a few highlights from the zoo.

Turns out, all the deer in China are friendly!

Caaaaaaaaaamelllllllll.

Petting zoo with rabbits! Probably my favorite part of the zoo.

They were not afraid to get right in your face. They were hungry for some snacks!

Samora climbed in there with me too.

You can see that both Susan and Samora were laughing at my child-like nature.

This is the funniest little ball-of-a-bird that I've ever seen. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't do it justice.

This bear looks like he's loving life right?

They chained this tiger down to the table and let people pay to take pictures with it.

The entrance to the zoo was a mini-great wall of China. Doesn't Alicia look good?

Here's our group picture. Samora and Susan on the left.

We took a stroll through the park afterwards, and we came across a very proud pet owner. We have a few of these type of pictures, but I think this one is my favorite. It's a great example of what some people put their dogs through here. Yes, that stroller is made for a dog, not a baby.

As usual, I had to jump in on some weekend hacky with the locals. They are seriously so good.

We said our goodbyes to Samora and Susan and headed home. We are proud to say that we have a fun friend from Namibia now. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hang out with him again before he left home to Namibia a couple weeks later. 

This is a random picture we took that same night of the canal that runs through the center of the city. This canal is over 1,000 years old. The lights make it look very beautiful.

Baoding Round 2 with Zoo

Okay, so we are slowly catching up. A couple weeks after our Beijing weekend, we went to Baoding for one last visit to the Clegg's before they left to Korea. Prepare yourself to read about many grateful compliments to the Cleggs. They were the perfect hosts AGAIN!

The first evening there, they picked us up from the bus station and when we arrived at their apartment, Kathleen had prepared the most delicious cheesy veggie soup. It was like half cheese and half potato and half broccoli, and half awesome. We hung out and enjoyed speaking English with them most of the night. After finishing a few exciting rounds of banangrams, we went to bed.

For breakfast, Kathleen had pre-made (bless her heart) a bunch of breakfast burritos with real cheese, sausage, and egg. I had mine with some ketchup and it was like eating a McDonald's breakfast burrito on steroids. Nick had to go to work for the morning so we went with Kathleen to bum around at the department store and grab some food at her import store. On the way home, we stopped to buy some baseball-sized cream puffs that were to die for. So delicious.

After meeing up with Nick again, we took a taxi over to the local zoo (and when I say local, I'm talking about a zoo in the middle of a city the size of Beijing). The Cleggs had lived in Baoding for sometime now and going to the zoo was on their bucket list before going away. We braced ourselves as we bought tickets and entered the zoo because the Cleggs had only heard negative things about the zoo and how the animals were poorly cared for and seemed so sad. I'm just going to say up front that the rumor was mostly true, but that doesn't mean we still didn't have a very interesting experience there. I will put a few pictures in here to show some of the things we saw, and how it was not your traditional zoo experience.

While walking around, a young Chinese couple wanted Nick to hold their baby so they could take a picture. I thought it was so funny how they just stared at each other.

We found Kevin from the movie UP!!

This is the Queen of all chicken fowl.

THIS... is the King of all chicken fowl.

These are the emperors of all Cuzcopian birds.

Staring contest... GO!

He just wanted someone to talk to.

This was a baby fawn that was born just before we arrived. We watched it take its first run. We also watched the other deer eat the placenta together.

Caaaaaaammellllllllllll.

If you know who Sam Oak is, you better watch this video.

This leopard mama was pregnant. We asked her is she would show us her belly and this is what she did.

The Siberian Tigers were very bored. Laying out in true cat style.

I think this one was hungry. Look at those eyes!

The lions were also very bored.

The tiger was chewing on a bottle that someone had thrown into its cage. How sad.

After a plastic bottle, anything looks tasty...

That's a big kitty.

The Boading Zoo also offered a small array of ferrell cats, complete with aggressive fighting over a ball of cat food.

We also had fun at the petting zoo. The goats were anxious to get some snackage.

Don't miss the video!

Looks like a happy rabbit doesn't it?

The small monkeys were kept in these really dirty cubicles, but they were so interested in us.

We heard some screaming near the monkey cages, and about 10 minutes later we walked over to find this. We were fairly miffed by how something like this happened. Our best guess is that the mama monkey was wounded while trying to protect her baby. Her tail was also severely damaged. You wouldn't see this in an American zoo.

Without any regard for the signs, the Chinese locals brought bags full of fruit and nuts for the animals to eat. These monkeys were catching food from inside their cages.

This one looks like he's trying to make a deal with the lady who has the fruit.

This bear was begging for food. There was trash all over in his concrete pit.

I can think of two captions for this picture. Either the bear is saying, "Lean over that rail just a little further." or someone is saying to the bear, "Spread' em!!"

This is called a Sun bear. They had very interesting faces and really short hair. They used these bears for circus performances at some point. Here is a video below of this bear. If you listen carefully, you can hear Kathleen trying to make the bear spin around. After trying without success, the Chinese lady next to her says, "He can't hear English". So then the Chinese lady gives the command in Chinese and the bear quickly does a 360 and recieves a peeled orange as a reward.

Isn't this guy cute. Makes me think of Little Bear.

The deer were very friendly! Not afraid at all!

I took this picture because I like his stance. Looks like a dance move from the 70's.

The elephants were doing this crazy trunk hug thing .

So here comes one of the coolest parts about our trip to the Baoding Zoo. As we approached the giraffe exhibit, a maintenance guy (who happened to be the only zookeeper that we saw that day) took us around the side of the building and unlocked a door for us to go inside the giraffe exhibit. We were feeling pretty special and then realized that he'd left us in there alone. I noticed that the door to go up the stairs to the feeding area was open. So I grabbed some dried leaves from the feed pile and creeped up the stairs. When I got to the top, the giraffe knew exactly what time it was... time to eat some leaves. So I whipped out the camera and started recording a very close encounter with this giraffe. The video is below. Please take time to notice Alicia's reaction after she tries feeding the giraffe.

This is the zookeeper that let us in. Nick wanted to personally thank him by taking his picture.

Three or four hours later, we were getting a little cold and decided to get some dinner. The Cleggs took us to Pizza Hut. We opted to go there because we had seen it in our city but been too afraid to go and be served something that wanted to be pizza but wasn't pizza. (That's happened before at another restaurant). Turns out, the Pizza Hut here is a lot the same as in America. You get gobs of cheese on every pizza... and stuffed crust. Wow. We were very happy about our experience there and made an immediate plan to go there for Thanksgiving the following week. After returning to the apartment, we hung out and spent some good time playing the Wii that the Cleggs had brought from America.

The next morning we had pancakes, bacon, and eggs for breakfast. MMMmmmm. The Cleggs know how to do it. Unfortunately, Alicia has been cursed ever since with a desire to get some bacon from our own supermarket here in Cangzhou, and every week she goes back to scan the deli section with no succes. I guess they just don't appreciate good bacon here in China. We had church in their livingroom like we did last time, and it is always better when we can share that time with other members.

Before we prepared to leave, we decided to bust out the Wii again. We found some games that the Cleggs had never even played before, which included a game where the two players face off in a series of mental challenges like puzzles, math, memory, patterns, etc. As you might have guessed, Alicia was so dang good at this game. Kathleen and Nick didn't even want to play after they saw how bad Alicia beat me. So the race was on. I had to challenge Alicia over and over as Nick sat on the couch and laughed every time she would blow me out of the water. My wife is brilliant.

So we put our stuff together, which included a whole two suitcases of hand-me-downs from the Cleggs, and walked towards the street to get a taxi. We couldn't thank the Cleggs enough for how much they had given us and how much fun we had with them. We look forward to seeing them sometime in the future (probably back in Idaho.)

At the bus station, we commenced our typical routine of playing dumb to one of the bus station attendants. In doing so, we were able to catch an earlier bus than what our tickets said (just like last time). When we got to our city, we found a tiny motorized rickshaw to take us back to our school just like last time. We will always look back at our trips to Baoding as one of the many fun things we did in China.