SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

Welcome Class of 2009!!! (They count the year in college by the year you start, not the year you graduate). Traffic around our front gate was extremely bad last week with all the freshmen arriving on campus. Some were driven by their parent's in nice black Audi's or other imported cars and were carrying their cell phones, cameras, MP3s, and computers in tow. Others came carrying their belongings in small rucksacks full of clothes and books, sweaty and tired after a long, lonely, and crowded train ride. The found their major's department, met their 7 other roommates, and got their military fatigues which they'll be wearing for the next 15 days as they complete their mandatory military training. (You can guess what next week's snapshot will most likely be!)

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

Here's the team on the Saturday after our first week of teaching. Mr. Wang, our landlord, took us on a trip to Harbin's tiger park (search for it on youtube and you'll get a better idea of what it's like). You're probably wondering, where's the new guy? No, we did not feed him to the tigers. No, his first week of teaching was not that bad, nor was he scared away by the fact that he was on a team with only girls. Actually, he had to leave our team before he started teaching on account of a personal emergency. It was quite a shock to us and to our school. This is the 25th year that my organization has worked with this school. I don't think this unexpected loss has irretrievably damaged the relationship between the English teacher's organization and the school, but it hasn't been the easiest thing for us to negotiate.

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

The team of foreign English teachers at my university and I went on an outing to get to know one another better and to help the two new teachers get better acquainted with the city. Here we are posing in front of St. Sophia Orthodox Cathedral, one of Harbin's famous sights. On the left, M. (new to Harbin, second year in China), B. (third year in Harbin), J. (new to Harbin, new to China), and me (second year in Harbin).

HELLO HARBIN!

I'm back in Harbin for my second year of teaching!!!

I arrived around noon today on a beautiful summer day in the North
East of China. Last year, I didn't arrive until the very end of
September, so I didn't know how beautiful the campus would look at
this time of year! The trees are green, lots of flowers are blooming,
and the landscaping and road repairing that was going on when I left
has finished. Back in the residents area of campus, where I live,
many of the retired teachers were out playing card games, mahjong, or
just simply sitting and enjoying the summer breezes. As I walked
around campus this afternoon, running some errands, I kept my eyes
pealed for any student's I knew, but I sadly, I didn't see any. There
aren't many students around yet, but I expect they'll be arriving by
the end of the week.

I'm still trying to overcome the jet-lag, but on the bright side,
I'll be used to waking up early when classes start next week.

GOODBYE BLUEBERRYLAND

Blueberry cobbler is a summer staple in my family. Growing up, we had six blueberry bushes in our yard. In late July and August my sister and I would often pick a few cups right before dinner for our mom to bake into a cobbler.

Now, there’s current debate between some unnamed members of the family whether this blueberry cobbler was ever really a cobbler. It seems one side says it’s actually a crisp. I subscribed to the belief that it is indeed a cobbler since the recipe from which it came was entitled “Easy Blueberry Cobbler” and not “Easy Blueberry Crisp.” The recipe can still be found in the 1983 Southern Living Annual Recipes cookbook that sits on the cookbook shelf in the pantry.

My mom, and later, my sister and I, would make this cobbler weekly, even bi-weekly. Between the birds and us, we’d eat every last blueberry on those bushes. After they were gone, it would be another summer until we had cobbler, since you just can’t make blueberry cobbler with cryogenically frozen berries shipped from Jupiter.

For a girl who’s grown up on blueberry cobbler, you’d think it strange for her to go to a blueberryless land called China. Well, okay, I have seen blueberry-flavored things in China. There are those blueberry potato chips for one, and blueberry English toffees, oh, and some expensive blueberry health drink made from berries from a famous mountain. I’ve tried the two former ones and they’re quite disappointing. The point is, I’ve yet to see a real blueberry or even a frozen one for that matter. China is, as far as I can tell, blueberryless.

And so, after indulging on this dessert and breakfast as often as possible this summer, I think I’ve found the answer to the frequently asked question “What food do you miss the most while in China?” Blueberry cobbler! This is the taste of home that I’ll miss. Not turkey, not pumpkin pie, apple pie, or even Christmas cookies. All those I’ve been able to reproduce in China. But blueberries are as American as apple pie, or I guess I should say blueberries are as American as blueberry cobbler.

Blueberry season has just about finished, and I’m returning for another year of teaching in China. I’m sad to see this season of vacationing and visiting friends and family come to an end, but at the same time I’m also excited to see another fruit season begin over in China. And I’ll be home in time for the next blueberry season.

SUMMERTIME SNAPSHOTS

I stayed a weekend in Boston and visited some friends and family there.

It was my first real taste of Boston. Sure I'd toured colleges there when I was in high school and I went to see fireworks along the Charles one Fourth of July, but those just don't count when you compare it to an entire Saturday spent walking the Freedom Trail all through Boston followed by a free Beach Boy's concert.

My Boston visit in short: lots of walking, lots of sights, lots of people, and lots of fun :)

SUMMERTIME SNAPSHOTS

Here are some from my trip to Vermont and New Hampshire (and New York where my sister and I went cherry picking). I took the train there and back. It's such a nice way to travel, and I get enough hours in the air going to China, anyways. Also, it gives you a great view of New York City.

I just realized that I somehow managed to forget to take any pictures of my Alma Mater ... though I guess it'll still be there when I visit next time! (Or, if anyone has some pictures from my visit, please e-mail them to me).

SUMMERTIME SNAPSHOTS

Here's a few snapshots from the family reunion and my first week back in Maryland:

BACK IN THE USA

Well, I've been in the USA for the past 9 days. I think I'm finally over the jet-lag, but a cold is still keeping me a bit under the weather.

It's been relaxing to stay at my parent's house in Maryland, to see lots of relatives on both sides of the family, and have a "stay-cation" with my parents and sister. "Stay-cations" are all the rage, this year, I hear. Actually, it was quite a "go-cation" since we drove all over Maryland to look at historic sights and went to a baseball game.

Tomorrow I'll be heading up to Vermont with my sister and I'll be there until around the 23rd of July. So, if you're in the area, let me know, or expect a call from me!

From the end of July until August 20th, I plan to be around Maryland, and hope to see those of you in that area, too!

5.12

All around campus are signs commemorating the Sichuan earthquake.

It's a far away place from here (about as far as Maine is from Texas), but the effects of it are still felt. I got to talk to some my students about it when they came into the office today. They told me about how they were in school at the time, studying for the college entrance exam, and didn't know it had happened or how serious it was until they got home that evening. When they did finally see the TV reports they said they couldn't stop crying.

A few weeks ago someone forwarded me this slideshow:
NPR Coverage of the Sichuan Earthquake
I'd encourage you to watch it, but you may need some tissues. The poem "Elegy" by He Xiaozhu at the end of it made me cry.

NPR has also done a series about one year after the quake. And so has China Daily. If you have time, they're both worth perusing.

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

Recently, Erika, Lindsay, Becky and I realized that we've been living
in the new apartments for more than 2 months now, but we haven't had
much of a chance to get to know our neighbors. We decided it'd be a
good idea to try to have a pot-luck picnic with our neighbors now
that the weather is warm. We put together little invitations and
tried to personally invite all the foreign students and their
families who live in our building. There's about 15 apartments total.
We had to explain what a pot-luck was, but I think they got the idea.

So, for dinner this evening we had a few meat, rice, and vegetable
dishes cooked Sudan-style (they said it wasn't exactly Sudanese food
since they couldn't get all the same vegetables here in China),
Sudanese bread, authentic Vietnamese fried spring rolls (they called
them something else, but that's the best way to describe them),
Vietnamese candy, American potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salad,
cookies, and Italian herb bread. We all introduced ourselves in
Chinese and English or in which ever language we could speak, and
then introduced our dishes.
I'm probably spelling these names wrong, but I'll give it a try.
From the left: Afra and her baby, Hannai, M..(something), Mohammed and his
son (all from Sudan), Huang and I forgot his name (from Vietnam), me
(from USA), Tong Yiyuan (from Japan), forgot his name too (from
Veitnam), Moatsim (from Sudan), Deng (from Vietnam who lives across
the hall from me. His wife and child were here earlier this year but
went back home for a visit), and Erika (from USA). Most of the men
are engineering Ph.D. or Masters students. The women from Sudan are
here with their husbands. We also have Korean neighbors, but none of
them came.

We ate and we talked (in Chinese, English, Arabic, and Vietnamese)
for a good two hours, until it got dark. All and all, a lot of fun!
Now I know my neighbors a lot better and you do too! I look forward
to learning their names better (its hard for me to remember names I've never heard before) and of course, getting to know them
better.

Also, Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers!

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

You know it's spring when you see ...

Can you tell that I'm really excited that it's finally spring?

INCONVENIENCE & ADVENTURE - photo

Here we are waiting in the train station. Most of us still look happy.

小朋友！Little friends!

INCONVENIENCE & ADVENTURE - part III

The next hour it's more of the same. I get to talk to the girl in the pink hat a bit more. She also gets questions from those around her. "Are you their guide?" "Are you their translator?" "No, I'm just on the same train." "What do American babies eat?" "I don't know." "Why don't you ask them?" She's very patient, but I can also tell she feels tired. I'm tired, too.

The crowd does become more educated about how Americans care for their children: they get to see some diapers changed! Most Chinese babies don't wear diapers. Instead, their pants have a hole in the back, leaving their tush out in the open. I'm not sure how the parents manage it, but one things for sure, the Chinese aren't filling their landfills with diapers!

When I get back from the run to KFC, I get a text message from my teammates. They're on their way to the train station for their 7 PM train and they want to know if they should bring us some dinner. So much for me trying to take the earlier train! We don't need dinner, but one of them comes to find us and offers encouragement.

It gets to be 6:15 and the hour of our boarding is fast approaching. We gather our things together, but since we're near the gate, we don't bother to stand up. We figure the crowd will tell us when to move. Another announcement over the loud speaker is made (they've been making them the whole time, but because of the din, they're utterly undecipherable) and the girl (I wish I'd asked her name!) tells us it's another 10 minutes later now.

Our two friends on the 5:20 train call and tell us that their train is boarding soon, but that our train number is being displayed with theirs over their platform on the other side of the station. Our train has joined theirs. Are we in the wrong place again? We look at our platforms sign and see that our is still displayed, but so is theirs. Strange! But at least we're in the right place.

The crowd in the aisle still has not moved an inch yet and it's 6:50. The girl has realized this too, and tells us we need to be in one more aisle over. I ask a random person standing in front of my seat what train they're on. A woman shows me her ticket ... it's a different train!! We are in the wrong place! I grab my backpack, purse, one of the mother's suitcases and follow this girl with the pink hat. Weaving in and out and over, balancing and bumping, squeezing and pushing, and finally we're there. Me, the girl in the pink hat, and one mother and one baby. But where are the other three? We can't even see the crowd swaying as they make it through. It's another minute or so until they make it out, but we can't wait, this is only a quick stop for the train.

The ticket check lets me and the girl and the mother through the gate, we stand there on the other side and make sure the others are going to make it through. As soon as we see them through, we, the girl and I turn and hurry to get to the platform. She grabs one of the handles on the suitcase and helps me carry it down a long flight of stairs. At the bottom, there's a number of people waiting for the train. How did they all make it here so fast! I look back up the stairs, and the figures of the 5 others are small.

This platform has two sides, there's a train boarding on the left side, it's not ours though, it's the 5:20 train. There isn't a train to the right yet. By the time the others make it to the bottom of the stairs I've seen which way we need to walk to reach our car. A sign above points right to car 1 and left to car 18. Our car is number 3. I say goodbye to the pink hat girl and offer profuse thanks. Her car is number 6.

The train starts to pull in and we start booking it. I try to watch the numbers on the cars as the wizz by from behind us. Number 13 passes us. I realize we're practically at the other end of the train. Usually you can only board at your car - will we have time enough to get to number 3? I try to say back to the other women that I'm going to go ahead and so I can explain to the conductors to wait for the women with babies. Who knows how long they'll stop. They're already 4 hours behind!

As I speed away, I hear a thud and some gasps. I turn and see that the older woman has tripped and is lying forward on the platform. She quickly picks herself up and continues. At this point we're at number 7 car. I turn and ask the young woman conductor(in some sort of Chinese), "Can we get on here, because we have babies?" Without a second thought, she lets us on. So instead of rushing our way down the platform, we squeeze are way through the narrow aisles of 4 hard-sleeper cars. The aisle is about 3 feet wide when no one is sitting in the fold out chairs, and 1.5 feet wide, when someone is. Sorry to all those people we bumped.

Finally, we make it to our seats, which are actually the bottom bunks of a hard-sleeper that have already been slept in. We each have one, but we crowd into two so we can sit together. The train still hasn't started yet, so I guess we didn't have to jump on so early or rush so fast ... but better safe than sorry. 2 minutes later it starts up and we were finally on our way back to Ha'erbin.




"Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a place of poetical pleasures." (G. K. Chesterton)

I don't think that G.K.C. ever experienced the Changchun train station. I wonder what he'd say about it if he had. If he'd have been there yesterday, maybe he'd have seen the wonders of the cavern that were the foreign babies and the poetical pleasures that were distinctly Chinese. Good thing I enjoy Chinese poetry.

INCONVENIENCE & ADVENTURE - part II

The littlest baby stays hidden in her mother's arms for two hours. The other baby is like the main act in the three-ringed circus. Across from us, behind us, down the aisle, we (or should I say, the baby) draw attention from everywhere. The migrant workers laden with their belongings packed in rice bags as big as them simply stare. The young couples and recent graduates who have a bit of money take out their phones and take some pictures (usually they ask first). The older couples with their one child bring their children over to make friends. Another train boards through our aisle, meaning that practically everyone on that train gets a ticket to the circus.

Many ask questions and make comments, here's a rough translation of some that we hear: "Are they twins?" "How old are they?" "They're wearing so little, they must be cold." "They're used to the cold." "Russians." "Are you Italian?" "You look young." "American babies are so skinny. Our Chinese babies are fat (which is a good thing in this culture)."

We answer some, we ignore some, we talk with some, and we talk amongst ourselves. Two hours go by surprisingly fast, and once again, the aisle fills up. It's 5:15, there are still 30 more minutes until the train, so why is everyone so eager to line up? The young girl that our friend sent has stayed close by us. She tells us that the train will come soon and we should get ready. I look again at the display-board. Now the sign reads: 晚点：3小时30分钟. The girl hasn't seen it, and so I point it out to her. "Oh!" she says with a sigh. She's traveling to Ha'erbin to visit her grandmother, hopefully her grandmother has heard about the delay, too. And the line down the aisle, that's for another train.

We also hear from two other women from Har'erbin who had a 5:20 train leaving from another waiting hall, there's has been delayed about 2 hours also. At least we're not the only one's waiting.

At this point the babies have been fed and nursed (very discretely) but we're starting to get hungry. Since we still have another hour and a half to go, I volunteer to run out to the KFC that's right next to the train station. Leaving everything except for my purse and my ticket, I hop over the back of the chairs and escape from the circus. My steps are quick. It's 5:25, and what if the train time changes back to 2 hours and 30 minutes? I think I can make it. I hope it doesn't change. I make sure that my phone is handy, so I'll be able to hear it if they call to tell me to run back and catch the train.

The KFC next door to the train station is busier than the train station. 10 lines. Pick a line, hopefully you get the fast one. I do get the fast one, where the fries girl is fast talking, and her job seems more stressful than a stockbroker's. Before it's my turn, I do a bit of language decoding so I won't slow down her pace.

Suddenly, it's my turn. I spit out my order and it must be comprehensible, because 1 minute later I have 3 spicy chicken sandwiches and some chicken wings. Time to make my way back through the funnel! It's so crowded that I can skip the X-ray machine (don't want to loose the dinner, anyways), and take some quick steps back to the waiting hall. It's 5:45, and of course, they're all still there, waiting. I forgot to order the fries though!

INCONVENIENCE & ADVENTURE - part I

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." (G. K. Chesterton)

I was in Changchun (a city a few hours south) over the weekend, and let's just say that my return this Sunday was one of these adventures.


I originally planned to go back on a 7 PM train, but when a ticket for a 3:15 PM train came available, I decided to return early since I teach at 8 AM on Mondays. There were 5 other women I knew taking this train - one woman who's old enough to be my mom, one woman the age of my sister (late twenties), one woman a bit older than my sister (mid-thirties), one ten-month-old, and one four-month-old.

The 6 of us arrived at the train station at 2:50. We were cutting it close. We paid a porter 5 kuai to cart some baggage from the cab to the train station entrance, grabbed our bags, squeezed in through the funnel-like door way, and put our bags on the only running X-ray scanner. The crowd pushed us to the other side of the scanner where we grabbed our bags and hurried our way to the escalator. Once at the top, we checked the train schedule to find where to go, then wove our way through main hall to the number 4 waiting hall.

This hall actually is both numbers 3 and 4. There's probably 8 aisles with a row of 100 chairs on each side. Each aisle is about 10 feet across, it can fit 8 people standing or 6 people sitting on their luggage, side by side. It's crowded, but that's just how a train station is supposed to be.

We see a sign for our train over one of the aisles; it's 3:00 right now, and there's a thick line clogging the entire aisle. They'll probably let us through to the platform soon, we think. We wait... it's 3:10 ... how come the line's not moving yet? During this whole time there's been lots of eyes on us, particularly on the two babies. We watch these people out of the corners of our eyes ... and then we see that some of them are moving to a different aisle. Are we in the wrong line??? I don't remember how it happened, but somehow we realized we should follow them.

One aisle over, there's no line at all. We rush up to the ticket taker at the gate and show her our ticket. She glances at it and says to me, "晚点儿" (wan dianr). "什么?" I ask. She replies again, "晚点儿" . My Chinese skills still leave much to be desired, and this situation shows why - I immediately thought it meant that we were late! Couldn't they help us out? There were two little babies and we look as foreign as foreign can be! How were we suppose to know that the line changed!

In my disbelief, I asked some of those that we had followed. Maybe they were on the same train. I was so confused that I'm not sure what language I was speaking. The first man I talked to had an accent to thick for me to understand.

Our friend always looks after us, and he was looking after us then. I turn and see a girl wearing a pink baseball cap. She's a junior management major at Jilin University, who also was going to Harbin on the same train. She steps up and says to us "It's late." We go back and forth in Chinese and English a bit until I finally comprehend the situation. Chinese is a contextual language. Finally I understood that the context was the train, not us. "晚点儿” means "(The train) is late."

It's going to be late 2 hours and 3 minutes. So we sit down in that emptier aisle ... luckily there were 4 chairs open right next to each other. We sit and we wait and we wait and we wait...

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

This is near where I sometimes catch the bus on Sundays.

You know spring is near when the streets become full of street vendors. The tough ones stayed out through the winter, but there's many more now that the weather has warmed.
There's still a bit of snow left to melt, and I'm just hoping that we won't get any more.

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

10 things that students in China and students in the States have in common:
1. Most students have a profile on "xiaonei" (campus-network) which is the Chinese equivalent of facebook. It even looks like facebook, check it out! www.xiaonei.com
2. It's hard to find a seat in the library, especially when finals roll around.
3. Many are on a budget since college is expensive for their families.
4. They don't like the cafeteria food.
5. Many girls deal with image issues and it's not uncommon for girls to skip meals to loose weight.
6. Boys love playing basketball ... maybe even more than boys in the States ... but maybe it's just the sheer number of them that makes it seem that way.
7. They fall asleep in class. (Yes, sadly, some have fallen asleep in mine.)
8. Humanities subjects are dominated by women while science and engineering dominated by men.
9. They aren't so optimistic about the current job market, yet they are still optimistic about their future and hope to make lots of money when they graduate.
10. They are searching for meaning and trying define themselves during this time of their life.

I'm sure there's a ton more things in common ... but that's all I have time for now.

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

10 things about you if you were a student at this university:
1. You may have traveled more than 24 hours standing on a train to get here.
2. You'd live in a dorm room that housed 8 people.
3. Your only personal space would be your bunk, maybe a closet, and part of a table.
4. Most of your classes would be with the same group of people, and most of your roommates would be included in this group.
5. You'd have to get your hot water for drinking and washing from another building and carry it back to your room in a thermos.
6. You'd have to go across the street or off-campus to take a shower at the bath house (hopefully at least once a week!!!).
7. Your lunch and dinner hours would be extremely crowded since there's only one cafeteria building for all the thousands of students.
8. You'd have learned how to ice skate in PE class your freshman year.
9. The electricity in your dorm room would turn off at 10:30 PM each night and if you tried to enter your dorm after 10:30 PM, you wouldn't be able to get in.
10. The first non-Chinese person you ever met or spoke to was your foreign English teacher.

Quite the contrast to American university lifestyle, eh? Even with the differences, it's still university life. Maybe next time, I'll write about the similarities.

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

Here's a tour of my new apartment. There are 12-photos, so you may need to wait for them to load. I actually took these pictures back in January when I moved in. It doesn't look much different now, except for a few more dishes (okay, a LOT of dishes) in my sink and lots of lesson planning papers spread out on my office floor.

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT

Yes, I know it's Monday. But it's just such a good alliteration, especially when you add my name to it that I just can't drop it. Plus, you can't complain, because a good headline gives me more motivation to write a post, especially when I know it's just a short snapshot.

So... this week I want to give you a snapshot of my new place. As you know, I had to move at the end of the semester, right before I left for Thailand. And though moving was a bit of work, I feel like it was a major improvement. I wasn't too settled in or attached to my old, drafty place. The other American teachers also had to move, however, were a lot more settled, and their new apartments have some 'spots' on the walls...but we're all adjusting well.

Here's a snapshot of the new apartment from the north-west side. Lot of teachers live in this neighboorhood, as I saw during this morning's commute (10 minute walk). You don't see many other people outside during other hours, except for elderly people getting their exercise or walking their dogs. My balcony window is the one on the top leftmost corner.

In my stairwell there's about 18 apartments. Besides my 3 teammates, there's also a family from Vietnam, some Korean students, an elderly Chinese couple, a family from Sudan and another man from Sudan. I haven't met everyone yet, and those I met I have a hard time with their names. (They have a hard time with mine, too, though). Oh and I almost forgot Mr. Wang, who's in charge of housing foreigners, and the two guards who take turns sitting in the apartment on the first floor.

Here's a photo I took today from the little park area to the west of the apartment building.


The park is nice. Sometimes couples go here to sit, as you can see ...

TRAVEL SNAPSHOTS: HA LONG BAY, VIETNAM

TRAVEL SNAPSHOTS: HANOI, VIETNAM

TRAVEL SNAPSHOTS: CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

TRAVEL SNAPSHOTS: BEIJING

THAILAND so far ...

I've been in Thailand for a week now, here's what I've done:

Got my hair cut
Got my teeth cleaned
Took a cooking class
Bought 3 used books
Read 1 of them, started another
Eaten lots of good food (except for the worm I almost ate with my fruit yesterday at breakfast)
Caught up on sleep

The highlight so far was definitely the cooking class. It was the best food that I've had so far ... and haha! I cooked it.

Our teacher's name was Suriyan, but he said "if you can't remember my name, just call me international name: Obama." He was a funny guy.

First we took a trip through the market and "Obama" explained a lot of the main ingredients of Thai cooking, curry pastes, a ginger-like root, lots of kinds of noodles, ... I can't remember it all now, good thing he gave us a cook book with all the info. We then rode out to his cooking studio, outside the city.

Our class was a group of 11 people, but he had it down to a science! Each person had their own cook area with a gas burner and cutting block. Most things were prepped for us ahead of time, but we had to do the chopping and cooking. As far as I know, there were no accidents.

Our first dish was a hot and sour prawn soup. Then we made Paneang curry with chicken. Then, using the wok, we made a phad Thai (stir-friend noodles) and then a cashew chicken. "Obama" also showed us how to make a sticky rice, but we didn't make one, we just ate the one he made.

I was amazed at how fast everything was cooked. Thai food (or at least the dishes we cooked) seems to bee a fast cooking sort of food.

Here's the entire meal that we sat down to. Yum!!!



Oh and I also went to Chiang Mai's China Town to celebrate new years! It was so crowded. But I got a good view of the festivities. There were a few fireworks and lots of dancers ... but it probably can't compare to the celebrations in China right now.

I was looking forward to eating some Chinese food (I miss it) ... but it was mostly Thai food.

I still have about a week more here in Thailand, but most of it. starting today, will be taken up with my teaching conference. With all the relaxing I've been doing in the past week, I'm looking forward to having some scheduled time.

A TURKEY TALE

(the rest of the story...)

A bright and sunny and warm day back in October, we (the other foreign teachers and I) were walking along near our favorite Korean restaurant when we saw this:

"Huh?!? Are those really turkeys in China?? in Harbin??" On closer inspection, we decided they most certainly were! The only other place I'd heard of turkey being spotted in Harbin (I haven't seen it myself) was in the frozen food aisle at Metro ... and people say it's been there for a long long time.

The low October sun cast cast dark shadows, shadows that you might say, foreshadowed this turkey's fate. Lindsay and I went inside the storefront to inquire about the turkeys. It was worth a shot! Having lived in China for 5 years, she did most of the talking, but together, we came to understand that the shopkeeper would sell it to us for some 300 kuai (a pricey deal, but well-worth it, we thought, as our mouths watered) He would butcher it, clean it etc. etc. He also told us that they were his pets; he liked to see them strut around with their feathers furled. He'd never eaten turkey before, but he didn't seem reluctant to sell it to us to eat. He was quiet the entrepreneur!

Over the course of the next couple of weeks we hemmed and hawed over whether or not to buy the turkey. We all agreed that it would be a grand adventure AND a grand feast if we did, but was it worth the 麻烦 (ma fan - "trouble")? The week before our Thanksgiving dinner ... we decided to go for it!

Sadly (Thankfully) I did not get to witness the next part of the story. My weekly teaching schedule didn't allow for many long blocks of time off of campus. (photos credit of Erika)

The day was gray and cold. A light dusting of snow covered the ground as Erika and one of her students returned to purchase the turkey. But the change in weather had meant a change in storefronts. Things looked different this time, and there were no turkeys in sight!


But they didn't give up. Into each store they went, inquiring: "Do you have turkey?" "Yesssss, of course!" was often the reply they got,but then the shopkeeper would point to the cigarette lighters. "No, not 火机 (huo ji - "lighter"), 火鸡 flap flap（huo ji - "fire bird")... do you have any?" "No." Store after store, there were plenty of lighters for sale, but no turkeys. Finally, one storekeeper told them that it was the one next door!
Little turkey prints dotted the snow outside ... they'd found the turkeys!


After Erika picked a turkey, agreed on a price per jin(unit of weight), the lady shopkeeper simply picked up the turkey (or 宝贝儿 bao ber "baby" as she called it) and put it in a bag to hand to Erika and her student. What happened to the butchering? Erika later related to us that at that point, she was beginning to wonder if there was a return policy. But after a bit more hard bargaining, the shopkeepers agreed to take it to be butchered the next morning for 10 kuai.

The next morning a larger contingent of students and teachers went to witness the deed (still no me ... I was teaching class!).
As soon as they arrived, the storekeeper grabbed his bike and and the turkey in a sack and was off with a quick "Follow me!"


They stopped walking when they arrived at this hair dressers, and it was here that our 宝贝儿 turkey breathed it's last!

There was an older couple that lived behind this hair dressers that expertly did the deed. It was over before he knew it!But he still had all his feathers on... those there started to worry again because of our general lack of experience when it comes to cleaning and gutting turkeys.


Thankfully, one feather was plucked by a little child who witnessed the scene ... and then the old couple de-feathered and cleaned the bird.


After less than thirty minutes, our bird was ready to come home to be cooked!


Well, not exactly ready to be cooked.
He didn't fit into our tiny ovens, so first he had to be hacked up into more manageable pieces. We soaked him in a brine over night and then divvied him up to be baked the next day. I took care of the legs.

We then reassembled him for a picture before we disassembled him onto our plates and into our stomachs at a gathering we had with some 40 friends and acquaintances.

A mighty-fine looking turkey, don't you think? He was quite tasty too! Not just the best turkey that I've ever had in China ... but one of the bests I've ever eaten. There wasn't much of anything but bones left by the time the 40 of us got done with him. So, in the end, you could definitely say he was worth the 麻烦!