Back in Beijing! just returned from....

MONGOLIA!! We had an absolutely amazing time in Mongolia. What a gorgeous country with such friendly people. It was so nice to get out of Beijing for a week and into Mongolia's beautiful countryside with lush green rolling hills, blue skies and the sun shining down on us!

We had a nice and short 2 hour flight from Beijing into Mongolia. When we arrived it was drizzling, but from the plane windows you could see the gorgeous rolling hills with nothing but space... so we were excited. A friend had told me that in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, almost every car works as a taxi... so I knew to expect that. Once at the airport we found one of these unofficial taxis and off we went to our hotel.

As we set off from the airport, my husband was in the front seat and our friend Kimberly and I sat in the back. Between the three of us, we knew absolutely ZERO words in Mongolian, so we were truly without a way to communicate with the driver. As we were riding along, we noticed the roads were crazy bumpy, oh, and that our driver was driving like a bat out of hell. Flying over bumps, getting into the lane of oncoming traffic, playing a game of chicken while I grasp the "oh shit" handles and fumble around for my non-existant seatbelt... Catholic school came rushing back to me as I crossed myself in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit! Please God let us survive this car ride!

Little did we know, we'd soon come to almost a complete stop - of course, that is until our BSC driver took things into her own hands and began some more opposite-lane-driving. Our hotel should have been a 15-20 minute drive away, as it is only 10 miles from the airport. Unfortunately, some traffic lights apparently weren't working which created utter chaos. I kid you not, it took us TWO HOURS to arrive at our hotel. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen, EVER!! I have never seen anything like this in Beijing. I wish we had an aerial shot - picture one intersection, 50 cars, each car clustered in the middle facing different directions - and 100s of cars lined up.


Its all part of the adventure, baby!

We spent the first day exploring the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. UB is a pretty undeveloped city, infrastructure is not so great, especially when considering its the capital of an entire country. One thing I noticed was that despite the fact that UB gets significantly less foreign visitors than a city like Beijing, they don't stare at me! In Beijing I get stared down almost daily, like they've never seen a foreigner (despite a large expat population). I would have thought staring would be even worse in UB - but I didn't notice any at all.

That's Ghengis Khaan sitting there in the middle (Chinggis Khaan)


The square in front of the government building


Not historically significant obviously, but one of the few modern buildings in UB, and very distinctive part of their "skyline."


Statue of Lenin in front of the UB Hotel (yes THAT Lenin!)


Our favorite day while in Mongolia was the day we took a tour into Terlj National Park. It was just my husband, me, and our friend, plus a guide and a driver. We controlled what we wanted to see. The natural scenery was so pretty, the sky was blue and the air was fresh and the sun was out!

This is getting pretty picture and text heavy, so I am going to stop here and make a new post for the rest of my Mongolian adventures! Stay tuned!

The best is definitely yet to come!

Steph

Teaching kids & meeting new friends

After Xi'an we took a long slow train across the countryside of Shaanxi and Shanxi and slowly made our way towards the small ancient city of Pingyao. We spent hours talking with our Chinese bunkmates in the sleeper cabin. We had interesting conversation although they asked us why we were going to Pingyao, despite the fact that the entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We took everything they said with a grain of salt considering they also told us there is nothing to see in Tibet, Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, and pretty much the entire North East of the country.

We arrived in Pingyao in the dark. We were the only ones to get off the train at this small train station, the only ones walking through the station. It was slightly eerie considering my time in China has shown the train stations to be the busiest places, filled with the most people, and with a population of 1.3 billion, I am talking a lot of people!

This should be interesting, we thought. But, it was great, the hotel sent a car to pick us up and the transition from the train station to the hotel was flawless. The best way to describe our ride to the hotel is "dark." There are barely any street lights in Pingyao and it is crazy dark! But people were still out, riding their bikes in the dark, selling fruit, playing games of cards on the side of the road.

Our hotel was in a traditional courtyard house.


View from the top looking down into the courtyard


The room had a traditional kang bed - it was huge, could easily sleep a family of 4! but it was hard, as expected, though not uncomfortable.


The bathroom was interesting because there is no separate shower... the room is very subtly tilted and the water drains even better than in a shower.


The next morning, we went with some local teachers to an English school to teach English to local elementary school children.

This says "English is the bridge to walk towards the world."


Us with the students, who were really amazing and brought smiles to our faces!




The gorgeous jewelry box our hosts gave us, as a thanks to us for helping them teach the kids English.



Afterwards, they took us to their local middle/high school and introduced us to the principal. They are very proud of their school, with good reason! The school is huge, has amazing facilities and is basically the equivalent to the campus of a community college in the U.S. Not only that, but the government doesn't fund the school -the money to build the school was obtained by loans, also, the school opened a local factory and proceeds from the factory benefit the school.


After this, our amazing hosts really took us under their wing. They told us their car is like our car, wherever we want to go, they will take us, they will show us Pingyao's famous sites and be our personal tour guides. These were the friendliest, warmest, most hospitable people I have ever met. I doubt you'd ever hear of this sort of thing happening to a foreigner visiting the U.S.!

They took also took us out to dinner twice, took us to a folk show and then to an amazing lunch where we were the guests of honor... after showing us Pingyao's most famous sites.

Beijing.is.sweltering.

Thank you all for the super kind comments in my post from yesterday.

I was all set today to go out there with a positive attitude and explore Beijing, but it is so incredibly hot... I couldn't do it. When you step foot outside you can literally feel your skin burning! Its like an oven. I haven't left my house all day and it pains me, because today the sky is blue blue blue, and there is not a cloud (err, a pollution cloud?) in the sky. I'm sad such a beautiful smog-free day had to be so hot.

What information did weather.com have for me? Just how how IS it in Beijing today....


Definitely not my imagination. It is too hot for anything other than sitting in my house watching episode after episode of United States of Tara, obsessively checking Sephora's website to see if a new palette I want is in stock yet, and talking myself out of going to the gym yet again. Oh, and looking at these super cute pictures from an article in today's paper about the insanely high temperatures all across China lately!


A Panda in Wuhan desperately trying to stay cool by laying on a huge block of ice. Poor guy!


so yes. Its hot. very hot. And the final two episodes are calling me...

Steph

Everything has a difficult beginning

Photo taken at the Confucius Temple, Pingyao, Shanxi Province, China

I mentioned earlier that we had the opportunity to teach elementary school kids english. We had a wonderful time, the kids made us smile, and we made some new friends in the process.

One day, one of the middle school teachers was talking about the importance of the kids learning proper English pronunciation early, because bad habits are hard to break and they wanted to make sure the kids had the best beginning they possibly could. He told me in Chinese, there is a saying "万事开头难". In English "Everything has a difficult beginning."

This saying really hit home for me. I adore traveling. I always have. I have an insane case of wanderlust and dreaming of all the places I will see is one of my favorite things to do. I also have been studying Chinese for the past 2 years or so and I love the language. Thats why the difficulty of adjusting to life in China came as a total surprise to me. I've been homesick. I've experienced a bit of culture shock. And I truly didn't even consider that this would happen.

Prior to moving to China, I've lived clear across the country, on complete opposite coasts from my family - about as far apart as you can get without leaving the country. I never felt homesick. I didn't think living in China would be any different considering I'd already been living so far away from family. But a month or so after arriving, sometimes I've felt like I can literally feel the distance between here and "home".

I knew the food would be an adjustment for me, but other than that, I really didn't believe I would have trouble adjusting to my new life in China. I've also never dealt with culture shock before. I've been to many countries but the thing with traveling is, most people never stay in a new country long enough to experience culture shock. It is usually preceded by a honeymoon period in which everything different about the country is looked upon in a romantic light... but the honeymoon phase ends and pretty soon the things that were so unique or amazing are just sometimes obnoxious and annoying....

"oh my gosh that car was really going to hit us! they weren't going to even STOP!"

"this taxi driver literally refused to take us! he shooed us out of his cab!"

"O.M.G. it is 100 degrees outside and they have raw meat just SITTING OUT THERE?"

"...if I hear ONE MORE PERSON HAWK A LOOGIE!!!"

"Chinese food... AGAIN!!?!!"

YOU GET MY POINT!

Its a challenge. About 75% of the time I KNOW how lucky I am! I try to take EVERYTHING in. As I was walking down a hutong (alley) the other day, I literally stopped walking, looked around one minute, shut my eyes the next, and just took it all in. I felt the sunshine on my skin... heard the bikes whizzing past, the man whistling a traditional Chinese song as he walked by me, smelled the delicious scent of Chinese food in the air... there was no where I would have rather been. I LOVED CHINA.

But, the other 25% of the time, its hard, and I miss home and I would do almost anything to eat some tasty American food, and I miss my dog, and just getting in my car and driving where ever I want, and not having to worry about being scammed or having the price hiked up just because I am a foreigner... and just the ease of speaking my native language. (I feel like I am learning ALL DAY and it is exhausting sometimes.) (And my husband has our alarm clock set to the Chinese talk radio station and we really need to change that... when Chinese is literally the first thing I hear when I wake up it PISSES me off. LOL).

A friend I came across wrote in an email "China is hard" ...and I know what they mean. Sometimes, China IS just that - hard. Its no longer the Western world and sometimes those differences are very noticeable.

When this middle school teacher told me that Chinese phrase that means "Everything has a difficult beginning" it really made me feel better because it gave me hope. That particular morning I was feeling a little sad and its just the sort of comforting words I needed to hear. Prior to that, I was feeling a little crappy like I really sucked at this living abroad thing... everyone else seems so well-adjusted! Why am I having this adjustment issue?

So yes, he unknowingly told me exactly what I needed to hear.

Everything has a difficult BEGINNING but over time things get easier.

I'm hoping within a few months time I will be completely adjusted to my China life! I DO love the traveling around, and I think that helps.

Thanks for reading.

Post on Pingyao to come.

Steph

Our awesome journey to Xi'an ... (and Pingyao)

A couple days ago we returned from our trip to Xi'an and Pingyao. We had a really amazing trip and met some really awesome people. We took the overnight train in a soft sleeper from Beijing to Xi'an and it was surprisingly comfortable! We were in a soft sleeper room with 2 bunks - my husband and I on one side, and two strangers on the other. We ended up befriending one of the guys (Chinese) sharing the room with us... upon arrival to Xi'an, he took us out to breakfast to enjoy Xi'an's famous dish, yangrou paomo (and paid for it), made sure we were able to get a cab and then made sure the cab driver knew where we were going. Later that night, he and 3 of his friends picked us up for dinner, where he again paid for our meal, and we enjoyed about 3 hours of Chinese listening and speaking practice, including topics such as politics and the economy and China's fast development. Definitely got some great Chinese practice in!

We took a walk on Xi'an's city wall... Xi'an used to be the capital of China when the city was known as Chang'an. I love this picture because you can see the old and the new right there against each other.

Right from the wall, you are able to catch glimpses into the lives of normal people. People were actually living in these "storage unit" looking "houses." There is still a lot of poverty in China, and you can definitely see it sometimes, especially when taking trains through the countryside.

You can see in this person's house they have their bowls, rice cookers, a tub to wash their feet in.

Here you can see her bed.

This is the view from the Wild Goose Pagoda. The pollution is everywhere. We call it "The Great Smog of China." I really think its such a shame. China is truly a beautiful country and the smog takes away so much from it. But, right now China is all about developing, and the rest will have to wait.

I love this shot!

We also took a trip to the Terracotta Warriors, which is about a 45 minute car ride from the center of the city. We made a deal with a taxi driver to drive us out there for the day for a set amount of money... which was fine, until 20 minutes into the ride he stopped at a jewelry store selling jade "just to look and see if we wanted anything." My husband and I gave each other knowing looks at this point, thinking here we go. Luckily, we were firm with him and told him we do not want to be taken anywhere except where we tell him to go. He was a little cranky, but he listened. Even though we speak Chinese, taking taxis is always somewhat of a gamble in cities other than Beijing - we don't know where we are going, and we just have to put our trust in them that the worst thing they will do is try to scam us, but we don't have to worry about being kidnapped or enslaved or ending up in a ditch somewhere... too much t.v., so sue me..

The Terracotta Warriors were built to guard the tomb of Emperor Qin, the first emperor of China. It really is amazing to see the sheer amount of warriors that are there, and to think that they were all handmade, with such amazing detail - all their faces are unique - it really was amazing and gave me goosebumps. Not to mention these were made starting around 210 B.C.

We took a stroll through Xi'an's Muslim district. It is definitely worth walking through, there is still a Muslim Temple there. Its good to go on Friday afternoons, which is the day of prayer. My husband sat down with the son of the former Imam of the temple to find out what their views of America are and talk about China's development and place in the world. Interesting to see the Arabic in China.

This says Xi'an City Islamic Association (something to that effect... its always hard to translate proper nouns perfectly).

The hubby ate some of these quail eggs... I passed. I love this shot because you can see her wearing the Muslim-style dress.

Xi'an Recommendations

Accommodations: Citadine's Xi'an Center Hotel

We paid about $84 USD for a 1 bedroom apartment style room, including a full kitchen and separate living room. This is certainly not luxurious but definitely worth the price. It was very comfortable and the location was prime - 5 minute walk from the Muslim district and across the street from the Drum Tower. Although its close to everything, its on a quiet street. A great grocery store (I'll call it Western-style, but with all Chinese brands) is a 5 min walk away, called Vanguards. We would stay here again and recommend it to friends.

Restaurants: Wuyi Restaurant

This is located in the same general area of the hotel. It is written about in the guidebooks and for good reason. It was packed with locals and has great baozi, jiaozi, and other Northern Chinese style food. Cost: $. Very cheap.

Larry's Singapore Kitchen

Located next door to the hotel - we enjoyed this restaurant, the menu has a great selection and the food was tasty. More expensive than the average Chinese restaurant in Xi'an but still extremely affordable. Has noodle dishes, fried rice, and other basic dishes - I feel like this place will please a large variety of tastes.

Laosun Jia

Well known for Xi'an's famous dish, yangrou paomo. A favorite of foreigners and locals alike.

Things to do:

- stroll around the Muslim quarter. The temple is worth going to, especially on a Friday afternoon during the day of prayer.

- visit the drum tower, especially at night when everything is lit up.

- dayanta, or wild goose pagoda. This is especially fun to go to around dusk - there is a huge section of fountains that people like to watch for the fountain show. Many people walk out into the middle of the fountain (on ledges) on a hot day.

- take a walk on the city wall, or rent a bike... if visiting in summer, its best to do this in the morning when the temperatures are not yet scorching.

- Shaanxi History Museum, a very nicely done museum all about Shaanxi throughout time and different dynasties.

- the Terracotta Warriors, and if you have time, Huaqing Hot Springs are in the same direction ... used to be a favorite of the Imperial family.

- one of the favorite things we found was a market we stumbled across... was on a very interesting street, quiet, less foreigners... just a 5 minute walk from the hotel, near the grocery store.

My next post on Pingyao will follow separately!

Steph