Giving Thanks

Since we came to China, we've had many many opportunities to realize various things that we're grateful for. On this lovely day of Thanksgiving, we'd like to express gratitude for just a few of these things.

- The scriptures. We've been reading the Book of Mormon everyday for the past few months and we've loved it. We've learned a lot and have felt the Spirit in our lives so much more.

- Central heating. Things were getting pretty darn cold around here a few weeks ago. We figured we'd have to get used to it and just stay in our room where our little heater is. Then something magical happened: November 15th came and the government-mandated central heating turned on! It turns out that we have heating in our floors - very sneaky. Now we can walk around barefoot and our apartment is actually a little hot. Though the heated floors did melt my stash of chocolate chips that we brought back from Beijing, it's a good enough trade-off.

- Cheap food. We eat so much good food here. We've eaten some funky things (we don't suggest you try the "donkey bowel soup" or the things that look like white puffy cheetos), but generally we've enjoyed lots of great food for dirt cheap. We eat out for dinner at least 3-4 times a week and each meal usually costs between $1.50 and $5 USD. You simply can't enjoy that luxury in America.

- Cheese, and other dairy products.  I've always loved cheese. This is one of those "you don't know what you've got until it's gone" situations. We've made some delicious home-cooked meals here, but they're just not quite the same without a smathering of cheese on top of everything. Cheese is available in China, but not easy to find in Cangzhou, so we get pretty darn excited when we come upon some. That's partially why we enjoyed a cheesy pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut for our Thanksgiving feast tonight, along with some cheesy mashed potatoes and chocolate mousse cake. We even got some free shrimp things because one of our students was at the restaurant and his parents saw us and gave us a coupon for them. All of it was super delicious.

This is a deceptively shallow plate of mashed potatoes. That's okay. Most of it was cheese.

Here is a Chinese Pizza Hut version of a pepperoni pizza. Not the same as in America, but still very tasty. Can you see the small pots of mozzarella cheese in the crust... mmmmm.

In Alicia's mind, she's thinking.... Happy Thanksgiving, I love cheese!

Just a little morsel of dessert. It wasn't razzleberry pie, but it was still awesome. Nice presentation too huh? Way to go Pizza Hut.

- Freedom of religion. Like cheese, this is a "...until it's gone" situation. We are so grateful that we get to have church every week, read our scriptures, and worship the way that we do here in China. But we certainly miss the opportunities to share the gospel and have open conversation with curious people.

- Servicemen and women and their spouses. We are so grateful for those who protect our land and rights. We're also grateful for the sacrifice that their families give to send them off to duty. Since we've been in a foreign land together, we can't help but think about those who would have to do this without their spouse, or send their spouse off to a scary place and worry about them. We're grateful that we get to be together, and we feel for those who don't.

- Extremely cute kindergarten kids. Honestly, these kids are ridiculously cute. We could go on and on about each one of our students and tell you why we love them each so much. Instead, we'll just show you a few.

This is Fei Er (fay are). She's always happy and always cute.

This is what happens when I leave the "Small Baby" classroom.

This is a clip from the Kindergarten Olympics. They are good little dancers!

- Skype. Without skype we would be much too disconnected from our family back home. We chat with our parents once a week and get updated on everything. It's so nice to see their familiar faces. Mostly we just blab to them for 59 minutes about whatever exciting things have happened to us that week and then listen to their weekly stories for 1 minutes. It's really quite selfish of us and quite kind of them. We even get to see our siblings when we're lucky. In fact, we talk to Nate and Laura (Tom's brother and his wife) more now than we did before we came to China, thanks to Skype.

- Family. Like I said, we get to see our family once a week on skype. We look forward to it all week long. We love our family so much. We talk about and pray for them every day. Without them, life would be bleh. We're especially grateful for our siblings now that we live in a society where people don't generally have siblings.

- Western toilets. Enough said.

- Chinese hospitality.  The people here are so so friendly and kind to us. We've had countless encounters where people have helped us through awkward and confusing situations. People always use what little English and impressive hand gestures to help us find what we need. People have gone out of their way to get us on to the next available bus, eat strange food the correct way, and generally have an easier time getting around. We've made friends with people who have taken great care of us. They've invited us over for dinner in their homes and told us that when we miss our family, we can depend on them. Our coworkers are always doing little things to make us feel at home. For example, they knew that Thanksgiving was a big holiday and so they put together a gift for us - a "happy tree." It was so cute of them. Each teacher wrote (in English - most of them don't speak English) their "wishes" for us. Adorable.

- Forks.  I (Alicia) distinctly remember writing a gratitude list for Thanksgiving one year when I was about ten years old. On that list I remember putting spoons and forks. But I never truly knew how grateful I was for forks until we moved here. Chopsticks are great and all, and I can use them just fine, but I'll be honest, my hand cramps up after a long meal of fighting with slippery noodles!

- Potable tap water. Another one of those "...until it's gone" situations. Getting good water isn't too hard here - we just carry jugs of it back from the kindergarten. But brushing our teeth with water from a cup instead of from the faucet has taken some serious getting used to. It's not a huge deal, simply a reminder that we're grateful that back in America we have clean water available so easily.

Halloween

I know this post is coming a little late, but we've been so distracted with fun things lately that it's taken a while to get it uploaded.

So about a week before Halloween day, we had a meeting with the kindy teachers about how they would celebrate Halloween. After a long while of interesting discussion, half of which was in Chinese, we cleared up a few important misconceptions and the Halloween train started rolling. Every teacher in the whole kindergarten spent every spare minute of that next week cutting out pumkins, witches, ghosts, cats, bats, and more pumpkins. They actually did a great job of decorating. The only thing they asked us to help with was carving a couple of pumpkins. Unfortunately, they do not grow giant pumpkins in China and the largest pumpkin they could find was still pretty small. Here are some pictures of our masterpieces.

As the only true westerners within the city boundaries, we were asked to be the party hosts. It was a blast. We started with a few fun video clips about Halloween, split up into 2 groups and went trick-or-treating to all the classrooms where teachers and parents were waiting to hand out the candy. It was so satisfying to see the joy on the childrens' faces when they had the chance to experience trick-or-treating for the first time. Although their bags were small, they were still very proud of their loot and were not against sharing, so that was good.



This is April gettin' some candy, with Hank in the bottom left trying to control his excitement. Notice the pizza hut bag in the bottom right.

This is Mike. He was filling his character very well. He's one of my smartest super babies.

This is Highland. Although she looks dumbfounded, she is also one of my smartest students.

This is Michael. He is so little and cute. Just thought I'd throw in a picture.

This is Jack. The "Lumber Jack". He was twirling around with his cape to show me his super hero powers.

These are a few of the "Small Babies". They are all cats. Gene, in the orange, is practically a genius.

This is Re Re. He is like the Jugernaut. He just runs in every direction and you can't stop him.

After the trick-or-treating, we helped to host a dance party and games for the children and parents. At the end of the party, we helped pass out "pumpkin pie", which was actually a steamed bun that was slightly pumkin flavored. Good enough. We also took a group picture with us in the middle of all the action. Check it out.

Kyle and Friends

So the other day we were sitting in the bus station lobby waiting for our bus to leave to Baoding, and the Chinese man sitting next us started a conversion with us... in English! He asked us a few questions about where we were from and what we were doing in China. We found out that he is a gynecologist at the local hospital in Cangzhou and has been studying English for the last 4 months. He was very friendly and polite and wanted to take us to dinner sometime so we exchanged information.

Within a week's time, we had arranged to meet him and go out to eat. Based on our previous experience in being invited to dinner with a random Chinese family, we knew that we should be ready for anything. We walked with him to the restaurant, and he explained that this restaurant was new in Cangzhou and was really special because it was all about representing Chinese history. The restaurant was very beautiful and each table was in a private dining room. Pretty fancy. They sat us at the head of the table, and as per usual, we had to explain that we didn't drink tea or alcohol. We found out that they don't drink alcohol or smoke either, and that is very unusual for a Chinese man. After everyone else arrived, we had a total of 8 people around a large circular table that included his wife and son, his "brother", his brother's wife, and his niece. It turns out they are not actually brothers but they have been friends for 20 years and are very close.

Everyone at the table was so excited to be eating a meal with 2 foreigners. They were very polite and very interested in us. The food was extravagant, unlike any we've seen in China yet, and I'm sure it was not cheap. Almost everyone at the table spoke a little English, which made our experience a lot more relaxing and comfortable. His niece, Joy, is about 11 years old, and was almost the most fluent English speaker at the table. She goes to a private school and is studying to be a translator. She's so so smart. We almost couldn't believe it. Our new friends have a great sense of humor too. We would politely correct thier pronunciation and they were always grateful to take it and often made something funny out of it.

His brother was very interested in American films, and we spent a good amount of time talking about American actors, as well as politics, and even touched on religion for a moment. More than once, the freedoms of America were referenced and praised. It was so interesting to meet an above average group of intellectual people in China that seemed to be so envious of our freedoms.

Since that night, we've been to dinner again at an equally fancy restaurant. This restaurant specialized in hot pot, except this time, everyone has thier own heater and pot right next to your spot on the table. You put in whatever ingredients you want, and when they are done cooking, you dip them in some sauce and eat it up. The main attractions were mutton, mushrooms, and some green leaf vegatables. We also tried some chocolate noodles, fish, oyster, some other seafood, and squid. The squid shrunk after being cooked to about a tenth of the size.

We really like Kyle and his friends, and they have been incredibly generous to us. Unfortunately, it's hard to accept all that they are giving us because we don't have anything to give in return. It makes for a somewhat awkward situation, especially when we know that they are trying to win our friendship so we will teach them English once a week... or more. So we have to be careful about what we accept from them and other Chinese friends because then we feel very obligated to spend time with them and help them learn English. Overall, we're really happy that we have them as friends, because it's basically like having a free personal tour guide for our city, and because they are good company.

It's funny because I think they know more about American politics than we do. The 11 year old girl asked us if we'd watched Obama's victory speech, which we hadn't, and she had. We spent a good 20 minutes talking about democracy with her and Kyle at a KFC yesterday. So interesting. I think that the main reason they like to spend time with us is to help them practice English, but secretly, they want to know all about how much we love America and how we are allowed to believe in God outside of government control. They have mentioned God a number of times, and by total coincidence found out that we were mormon, asking if we were the same religion as Obama's opponent, Romney. We wish so bad that we could talk to them about the restored gospel, but we are under a very strict agreement to not proselyte at all, actively OR passively. They are such interesting people. I think they plan on being our best friends for the next 8 months, so I'm sure there will be more details to come about Kyle and friends.

Fancy hot pot restaurant... you can see the head chair where I was sitting.

From right to left: Kyle, Kyle's religious friend, Kyle's son Ron, Kyle's brother's wife, Kyle's brother (Steven), Kyle's wife (Lily), Alicia, Me, and Joy (Kyle's niece)

Speech on Science of Invention

So this one evening, I happened to pass by our school principal, Mr. Zhang. He mentioned that he just got off the phone with a principal from another school in Cangzhou and would like me to go to that school the next day and give a speech about the science of invention. With little chance to answer any more questions, he was off to other business. The next day, I was patiently waiting to hear more about when the speech would be, how I would get there, and what the speech should actually be about. I bomboarded our liaison with questions about what, when, and where, and wrote a few paragraphs on what I would say, and sent it in an email to the school so their interpreter would be ready to translate when the time came.

I (Tom) was allowed to skip a couple of my classes in the afternoon and was taken in a car with Rex, and the other school's representative, who ended up being my translator.

I was bummed that Alicia wasn't allowed to come with me, because it was very interesting to see a public school with 3,000 students instead of our school which is private with only a few hundred students. The building where they had school was really really old and the paint was chipping off the walls. The concrete floors were marbled with the passing of students' feet over so much time. I was whisked away to the second floor into a conference room with a large table. I was offered cigarettes and tea, of course, and a few plates of fruits. I accepted a banana and some hot water.

After a while of waiting, a bunch of official looking men came into the conference room and sat at the table to wait for the event to start. No one tried speaking to me, which I was grateful for because my Chinese is extremely basic. Even though there were empty seats on both sides of me, Rex, and the translator would not sit down. They loomed over me, acting as my assistants the whole time. I felt like an honored guest, but it also made me feel uneasy. I think status and appearance and very important in China.

When the time came, all of the people in the conference room shuffled out in single file to the assembly area and the important people were seated at a long table with a purple velvet tablecloth and personalized name blocks. It was funny because all of the names on the table were in Chinese characters all the way down the table until it came to mine and it said, "TOM". There were elementary school kids lined up all the way along the corridor, carefully watching to see the foriegner. Remember, Alicia and I are still the only white people we've seen in our city of 1 million people.

When it was my turn to give a speech, they called me by my official name, "Tom Teacher" (in Chinese), and I took the microphone. Up to this point, I still didn't know exactly what the topic or theme of this whole event was, so I gave my speech hoping that I was somewhat on topic. I spoke about creativity and thinking "out of the box"\(which I thought was a funny concept in a communist country), and used George Washington Carver's example of finding 300 ways to use a peanut. I didn't get much of a reaction out of anyone, and found out later that my translator didn't know how to translate some of my speech. All well, it was an interesting experience.

Kindergarten Olympics

A couple of weeks ago, we were asked to work on Saturday. We don't usually work on Saturday, but when we heard about what it was going to be, we happily accepted. Pioneer School had invited children from many other preschools throughout Cangzhou City to come and participate in a Kindergarten Olympics event. It was very fun to see all the people there. There was around 300 families that attended the event. The fun part was that when we arrived, about 8 minutes before the event was supposed to start, we were asked by the school principal's wife (Mrs. Sue) what we would say to the people in our speech. Taken by surprise, I (Tom) quickly thought of a few sentences and Mrs. Sue made a mental note of what I said so she could translate for me when the time came. After two months in China, I'm beginning to realize that impromptu speeches are just something you have to get used to.

As part of the opening ceremonies, some of the older students marched around the playground with the kindergarten flag with their parents by their sides.

You might not be able to tell, but this kid has full-on bangs down to his eyebrows - and nothing else. This is just a small sample of the many unique haircuts that Chinese people give their children.

The kids are ready for the wheelbarrow race. April is on the left.

The girl with the red ball between her knees is Mary. She is very smart but sometimes kind of naughty. The girl in the white shirt is Highland. She is slower at learning English but she has an infectious little giggle.

This is a student from a different school, but he showed up in true competitive style.

This is April and Highland; a couple of my Super Babies. They are like 2 peas in a pod.

This is Jack. He is not bashful. Also twice as big as some of his classmates in the Happy Babies. We call him the "Lumber Jack". He is giving Alicia a face hug in this picture.

This is someone's child that we don't know, but I thought I would include it to show how even the little kids here know how to use electronics.

Having fun with the wheelbarrow race. The boy with the orange wheelbarrow is the principal's son.

The Apartment

Well we've been putting this post off for a while because we had to wait until we could do a deep clean and also wait for an afternoon without any construction sounds. The video pretty much speaks for itself so just enjoy!

This is a picture of our entire apartment building. It's like three tall sections of apartments all hooked together. There is another building just like it right behind this one that is still under construction.

Baoding

Through the virtual branch that we attend for church every week, we met a couple named Kathleen and Nick Clegg. When we realized that we were the only members in our province and that we lived only a few hours away from each other, they so kindly invited us to come spend a weekend at their home in Baoding. So off we went!

The bus ride there lasted about two hours, and we sat next to this super cute kid who kept making faces at us. Oh and at the bus station we met a man named Liu Shi Kai. We'll tell you more about him in a later post.

So once we got there, Kathleen met us at the bus station with her driver. It wasn't hard to find her - she's got long blond hair. So we went back to their apartment where Kathleen had set up the spare room to be like a little hotel with American treats and everything. She's so cute. When Nick got home from work we had super duper delicious homemade tacos. On real tortillas. With homemade salsa. And avocado. And pork. And Mexican rice. We were in heaven.

As if that wasn't enough, we had "eggs al golden rod" for breakfast on Saturday. If you don't know what that is, I suggest you find out. And eat it. Lots of it. It was so dang tasty. So then they took us out to Nick's job site. He works for Dome Technologies, and they make... you guessed it: domes. It was actually super interesting to see the process of making these huge domes that are made to hold coal. As much as I enjoyed it (I even got to wear a big yellow hard hat), I think Tom loved it. Tom's such a boy.

So after some McDonald's and shopping (they have a store there that sells English DVDs - so exciting!), the Cleggs took us to dinner at Sandy's - a real Italian/Western restaurant. I got spaghetti and marinara sauce and Tom got some kind of bacon pasta. Freakin' awesome. Let me tell you about Baoding a bit - it's so so much bigger than Cangzhou. The population of the city center is 11 million (compared to about 1 million in Cangzhou). And there are other foreigners there! Thus they have cool things like English movies and western food. And also people didn't stop us and ask us for our pictures or anything like they do in Cangzhou.

Anyway, we went back to their aparment and chatted for a while. It was so nice to be able to easily talk with other native English speakers and just have normal conversations. And it was a lot of fun to spend some time with members; I didn't realize how much I'd missed that.

On Sunday morning we were once again spoiled with an awesome breakfast: pancakes, eggs, and bacon. Enough said. Then we went to church... in their living room. It was cool to experience the virtual branch with somebody else. I loved the spirit I felt.

After some Wii games and a bite of lunch, Tom and I headed back home. As if they hadn't spoiled us enough while we were there, they sent us home with a plate of cookies, and muffins, and other tasty treats. We were so proud of ourselves when we bought our bus tickets all by ourselves, but then we realized that we didn't know what time the bus left. So we asked a customer service lady and she had us wait in this VIP waiting room and ushered us on to the next available bus. That was pretty awesome (except I think we might have taken somebody else's seats. Whoops. Not our fault.). When we got back to Cangzhou, we took a rickshaw home from the bus station. It was our first rickshaw ride and it was pretty exciting.

Overall it was such a fun weekend. I kind of felt like a little kid that went to visit her grandma (except the Cleggs aren't old). We showed up with nothing to give and were treated to homemade goods and fun activities all weekend, and then sent home with treats and told to come back soon. It was so lovely.