Another Birthday Week

Monday, September 10

On top of being Mama Nelson's birthday, Monday was also "Teacher Day." Tom dressed up real nice for the occassion. After our regular teach/lunch/nap/teach schedule, we decided to go back to that place that had cheap delicious dumplings for dinner. We got a couple baskets of dumplings (of course) and some fried rice. Yum. A nearby high school must have just let out, because the streets and restaurants were packed with kids wearing matching jackets and such. After a lot of staring, giggling, and whispering, a few of the students worked up the courage to try out their English skills on us. They asked us the usual questions: "Where are you from? What's your name? Do you like China?" and told Tom the usual, "Your nose is big," and "Your girlfriend is very beautiful." Aw, gee, thanks guys. It's always fun to talk to the teenagers because they know more than most people's "hello" and "America!"

Then we headed over to Tong Tian to buy some groceries. We were thrilled when we found some peanut butter and jam next to the bread section. The peanut butter is pretty expensive here, and the biggest container we could find was tiny. But we were thrilled nonetheless. When we got home we got to have a nice little chat with the birthday girl before going to sleep early in preparation for our early start the next day.

Tuesday, September 11

Has it been 11 years since the 9/11 attacks? Wow, that seems crazy. I was in fifth grade when that happened. God bless America!

Anyway, we woke up early and hopped on a bus headed to Shijianzhuang, the capitol of Hebei province. We got there three hours later and headed straight to the medical travel clinic place to get our physical examinations done - this was just to verify that we are indeed healthy enough to work in China and we aren't going to spread any freaky diseases here. Whew, I tell you what, what an experience. First of all, we couldn't eat breakfast that morning (for the blood tests), so we were already a little on edge. The first thing they did was handed us our own empty blood-sample tubes and open-top cup (looks like the scoop you'd pull out a drink-mix container) for a pee sample. After promptly taking our blood samples, they sent us down a hallway full of side (torture experiment) rooms for the rest of the examination. Keep in mind, nobody caused us any pain, but when they shoved us into separate rooms and gave us ultrasounds as the first test, we were pretty confused. The awkwardness was only accentuated by the language barrier. Then they did a few normal tests: weight, height, vision, electro-shock therapy.. you know, the normal things. For the electro-shock therapy, they used a little jelly, some suction cups all over our chests, and strong metal clamps on our wrists and ankles to check for some kind of health problem; it was never explained to us. After a slightly strange x-ray experience, we finally filled up the tiny cups we'd been carrying around, and we were finished. Through all of this, we managed to see the first Americans we've seen since we left Beijing. There were three of them going through the same medical examination that we were doing there, and it was refreshing to easily make small talk with a few people again.

After finishing the medical exam, we had to wait for about 4 hours to get our results back, so we had some time to kill. We ate lunch at a place called "Kung Fu Rice" or something, and they used Bruce Lee as the mascot on their label. It was delicious, even though the soup looked like a very small E.T. had been boiled up inside of it. Then we walked around at the local clothing stores in search of a jacket for me (Alicia), but had no luck. So we spent like two hours talking to Susan about American holidays while sitting in the upper floor of a KFC. Then we went back to the travel clinic to get our results, and headed over to the Foreign Expert Bureau to get our Foreign Expert Certificates. When we got there, it looked like they were packing everything up to move or something and some kind of commotion happened between Susan and the people packing up. We're still not really sure what the situation was, but we turned around and headed back home. On the bus ride home, Tom enjoyed watching a movie about a crime scene investigation, even though it was in Chinese, because he used his vast knowledge of action movie plots to understand what was going on. As soon as we got off the bus back in Cangzhou, we were attacked by an onslaught of taxi drivers who wanted our business. We didn't realize until 30 seconds into it that they were taxi drivers, so the first few approaches were fairly scary. Luckily, Susan took care of us (as she always does), and we got home safe and sound.

Wednesday, September 12



Wednesdays are nice because we are done with classes by 11:15. So we each did a reading class this morning, and then taught our kindy kids before having dumplings for lunch at the school cafeteria. That's the other reason we like Wednesdays: dumplings for lunch. 

 

They love Tom & Jerry here.


After our long nap, we scooted over to a park a few blocks away from our apartment. The park was really pretty and peaceful. We heard some interesting music coming from one corner of the park so we headed in that direction and found the musicians. These instruments were pretty nifty. One of them was like a bagpipe meets organ instrument. They tried to chat with us, and we used what little Chinese we know to work with 'em, but eventually they just played us a song instead. It was great. Some people even stopped on the side of the street and watched.  

Tom is an iron lion, too.

The park continued across the street, where "The Iron Lion" is located. This "Iron Lion" is a replica of an iron cast statue that was made in 953 AD. The original one is in a different part of Cangzhou, and is one of the things that the city is famous for. It's had structural problems for the past several years though, so they made this replica and put it in a park that is closer to the downtown area in 2008.



At the park, there were these neat little dove hotels.

 


There were tons of these two-tone flowers; they came in all sorts of color combinations.



Not only were the flowers gorgeous, but they
also smelled like root beer. Literally. It was amazing.

On the way back from the park, we stopped at a couple of street vendors for dinner. The first guy gave us a kabob thing of barbecued tofu-wrapped veggies for free. It was delicious.



This is a really common way that street vendors cook.
We ate some of those tofu-wrapped things on the right.

 Then we got this Chinese burrito type thing for only 5 yuan. It was neat - we just chose our fillings and she cooked them right in front of us. The jalapeno pepper I put in there was pretty big, so I thought it wouldn't be very spicy (that's how it works, right?), but it wasn't seeded at all, so it ended up being quite spicy. It was still so yummy though. After drinking a milk packet I was fine. We'll definitely be eating this again.