I am sitting at a computer with a broken screen, exhausted from trying to wind my way through red-tape, in sultry Kashgar, at the far end of Northwest China. Having officially closed my Peace Corps service last Friday at midnight, I want to wrap this blog up properly before more time passes by.

My final months in Lanzhou flew by. My students did really well on their final exams, making me one very happy laoshi. Once we entered the exam period, leaving my aparmtent each day became emotionally exhausting, saying goodbyes each time I passed a student. It was incredibly rewarding too, though -- each day my time was equally balanced between the paperwork and packing that I needed to do, and the time spent with students and friends and co-workers who I care so much for. And their affection in turn became a real affirmation of what I've accomplished in the last two years. There were moments that I really regretted not putting some of my big plans into action, but in the end, I made a lot of friends, I worked hard and learned how to teach, and I know that my impact on my department and students has been real. Some photos from my last month at site can be found here.

Last week I spent 5 days in Chengdu "mentoring" the new group of trainees, the China 14s, as they had their first stab at teaching in China with their training Model School. It was fun to meet the newbies, but even more so to see how far my group, the China 12s, have come. In the last days of the week, nine more China 12s trickled in to complete their medical and administrative check-out process. Most of the other PCVs had already wrapped up their service several weeks earlier. There were some long sweaty days as we bustled around the city taking care of business, but on Friday night we all gathered, tired, to ring in the rest of our lives. We joked, and remembered, and at midnight stood silent. "Two years in China and none of us can manage a toast?" In the end it was simply "to Peace Corps China" -- and then, fittingly, the power went out.

If you want to follow along with Ben and my journey home, here's the link: http://chinatohome.blogspot.com

Here in Lanzhou we felt the earthquake yesterday afternoon, as well as several aftershocks later in the evening. Where I live, towards the north of China, the quake was fairly small and resulted in nothing more than scared folks and a few broken cups. We do have many Peace Corps volunteers in Sichuan and Chongqing, though, living in areas much closer to the epicenter. Luckily, as of 2am last night they have all been accounted for and are safe. Many of the students at my school did not sleep last night because they were afraid of the aftershocks (I found this out in my 8am literature class this morning when I was confronted with 35 drooping heads). In more southern areas of my province, as well as in Sichuan province, many students and townsfolk camped out all night, frightened or not allowed to go back into their dormitories or homes.

As is being reported, the death toll in western Sichuan has continued to rise (almost 10,000 already) and I believe it will continue to do so for a while yet... most of the deaths came from collapsed buildings, many of which are still being excavated. The most mind-numbing tragedy of the moment is that at least 1 large school collapsed completely and they don't think any more students can possibly be alive inside. Some of our students and friends have have had trouble getting in touch with friends and family. So far as I can tell the government has acted quickly and with some transparency in getting rescue and aid teams to the worst-hit areas, but with 80% of buildings collapsed in some towns near the epicenter, and thousands of people still buried alive, it's an enormous task.

The above is only one of the gazillion startling slogans which appear on our students' apparel from time to time. A few other choice ones reference a "chunkily penis," the wearer's status as a virgin (or not), the "MOB (it ain't nothing to fuck with)", and so many others that make you stop and stare. I call them startling most especially because the clothing is invariably worn by our sweetest and most shy students. Keeps class fun. The English department gave me a tracksuit with rhinestones on it so that I could match the rest of the department on Sports Day. It doesn't have anything inappropriate written on it, but it is bedazzled. That's fun too :)

Last weekend the China 12s all went down to Chengdu for our COS conference (COS = close of service). We received lots of good info about paperwork, final obligations, $, saying our goodbyes, etc., and ate ridiculous amounts of great western food. It was a really low-key weekend, and fun, though bitter-sweet with many goodbyes at the end. Sweating through a long train-ride home was made much easier by a big hunk of lusciously rich chocolate birthday cake -- thanks, Ben!

My sister finishes her first year of college on Tuesday and has not only excelled but generally kicked butt all around. So proud of you, kiddo.

A few holiday days of laying low in Lanzhou have been lovely, but it's time for grading and I have to get to work. Miss you guys at home. Still savoring the little things at home here in China too.

There is an old man who has 4 teeth to his smile and is 82 years old and never remembers that we've met, but speaks beautiful English. He began to learn English in 1940, and he visited the US in 1997. He was a mechanics professor at my university, and though he retired 21 years ago, he still loves to talk about machine oscillations. I can't imagine all the things he's witnessed.

There is a lady who runs a snack shop in the market across from my neighborhood. You can point to whichever skewered veggies or meats you want, and she deep fries them right up for you. Her seasoned chicken skewers are my most favorite snack, and I pick a few up several times a week. I can always count on her to tell me whether I'm looking great or tired out that day, and she usually sneaks me some of her home-made spicy potato chips for free. When I told her that I'd be leaving this summer, and how much I'd miss her chicken sticks, she immediately told me she'd wrap some up for me for the trip.

Down the street is a man and his wife and little girl who run a small store that sells a bit of everything you might need. They work incredibly hard -- open something like 7am to 11pm most days -- and I have seen their shop expand and improve every few months. They deserve their success. The man delivers tanks of water on his bike all day long, carrying the 5 gallon jugs up to each apartment, but never fails, when I say hello, to have on his face the sweetest smile I've ever seen. Running into him riding around campus or my neighborhood was one of the first things that made me feel at home here.

There is a man who lives in my building who waits or runs to catch me if he is heading to work and I am heading to class at the same time. He wants to practice his English with an intensity that I've rarely run into. He works in one of the labs where the engineering students go to do their experiments. He is in his late 30s I think, married with a little girl, has a decent job and an apartment and everything seems okay but inside he is profoundly dissatisfied -- in his eloquent gestures: stuck. The other day he told me he doesn't visit his parents much anymore because they don't understand him. They will never understand, he says, that he must study English, must study new machine designs, must do everything he can to be prepared to take a RISK. I think he must have looked up the word 'risk' in a dictionary, because he stuck to that word with an unnerving passion and diction, spitting out the 'k' with great determination no matter how many other words I offered in interpretation. Quite a brave word that he seized upon; I get the impression that to feel the way he does is indeed of certain risk. Because should an opportunity for something more ever come, he is determined to be ready to throw himself at it with everything he has. He is enormously frustrated with the standstill of moderate achievement, and the utter lack of dynamic opportunities now that he has been slotted into a job. He tells me weekly that he thinks China is just a cheap place to be trained and turn out products and copies of things thought up elsewhere. That what the country needs is for people to come up with their own new ideas. His speeches to me are stilted for lack of vocabulary, but oddly expressive as he still manages to ram his thoughts out through the not-so-wide opening he has in English. I find myself in the strange position of defending China to him, more often than not, and our conversations always leave me sad.

Well, here I am again, woefully behind in reporting on my life and times in China. A full update on what I've been up to since December is just too daunting, so all I can offer is this wee recap...

** Roughest winter in 50 years in China -- caught bits of it in Lanzhou and then in Chengdu for our in-service training (very good times with very wonderful people), but escaped the worst of it in beautiful Thailand. Met Ben's folks, whose generosity and company made Thailand a blast. We snorkeled a lot, and did other beach-y things. Some photos can be found here. When we got back from Thailand we met up with Henry, Ben's good friend from A-town, USA, and went to Yunnan where we met lots of cool people from around the world and did some sweet hiking. A few photos here. Got back to Lanzhou just in time to sort things out for the semester and bundle Henry off to T!b*t just in time for the protests (whoops). Overall an amazing holiday shared with amazing people. **

The semester is flying by. Next week I give mid-terms, which is 100% nuts because that means that I have just 8 more weeks of teaching here in China. I teach British Literature to the juniors and I have to say that these students are so wonderful -- I teared up on the first day of class just telling them this would be my last semester here. I am so sorry that I won't be here to see them graduate. The class has been a pure pleasure to teach. Last year I busted my ass to get on top of all the literature, create lesson plans and materials and lectures... this semester it's all ready to go, and the students, for the most part, really seem to be digging it all much more than last year's classes did. I also teach a huge survey course of the UK and the US to the sophomores. Those kids are pretty fun too, though trying to keep 86 of them interested for 3 hours is exhausting. Still, it's really been coming together lately, and after the exam we'll move to the US, on which I'm a bit more of an authority, relatively speaking.

This semester I have been especially pleased with the feeling in my classrooms. I have been consciously stricter in some ways, but more careful than ever before to make the purpose clear in everything that we do. (Most days) I love the tone and mood that we've managed to capture.: comfortable, but very respectful, and always -- always -- lots of laughter. I know this is as much a testament to my students this year as to what I've learned over the last two years. I feel like they really trust me to get us all where we need to go, and are more willing to do what I ask of them than classes I've sometimes had in the past.

Worth mentioning from the last two months is:

-- a fabulous hike (and lovely weekend!) that Ben and I and Niffy did with the Rosses in southern Gansu a few weeks ago. Photos here.

-- the tortuous process of registering for the GREs in China: writing portion done, back to Xi'an in June for the math/verbal sections.

-- the weekly gorging of myself on hotpot; oh the food I'll miss when I leave!

-- getting to know the freshman who I'll never get to teach but who include some of the liveliest, most fun students I've met yet!

-- thesis advising; it is what it is

-- savoring weekends of doing and eating my favorite things, trying to store up the long lazy days for when I don't have as much time to just be

In two weeks all of the China 12s will be gathering in Chengdu -- all together for the last time -- for a conference to prepare for leaving Peace Corps. Most of the volunteers will be leaving on July 11th, but I won't be finishing service until July 25th. Except for those that live near me, I won't be seeing some of these people again, a sad thought for me because let me tell you that the China 12s are an amazing group of people. I've applied to help with the training for the China 14s, and really hope to be spending a week in July getting to know them and helping them prepare for Chinese classrooms and Chinese life.

I'd like to say a brief word about the globally escalating protests towards China. I can't speak to whether they are right or wrong; that's personal to those choosing to protest. But I CAN say that after living here for this while, I can all too easily put myself into the shoes of the Chinese, almost as easily as into those of protesters. China does not work like the United States; most Chinese would not want it too. A more collective culture remains here, despite the rapid growth and globalization that has been taking place, and the vast majority of Chinese have poured their hearts and efforts into the Olympics. It is seen as their true global debut, their shining moment of pride and accomplishment. The vast majority of Chinese that I've met are nationalistic beyond anything I've seen before, and most support their government. Lacking the protest culture of the West, for those Chinese that are aware of the international protests against China's human rights record, dealings with T!b*t, etc., these protests are seen as a direct attack on China and the Chinese people. An attack being pushed forward by the very western nations who, just 100 years ago, essentially shat upon China, committing outrageous acts of imperial aggression which are still a point of extreme shame to most Chinese. This does not mean that China deserves a pass by any means, but I do want to say that while I have grave doubts over the ability of the protesters to succeed in changing Chinese policies, I have few doubts that escalation of these protests, particularly at the Olympics themselves, will damage the relationships between China and other leading nations -- relationships that need to be strong as we face possible global financial crises and food shortages. To be honest, my brain flip flops on these issues constantly, but this is one side of the issue that I felt I needed to speak up about. For an interesting explanation of how things stand among (ethnically) Chinese youth: check this out.

The holidays began properly for me this year on the winter solstice, a day when, my students tell me, you must eat dumplings or YOUR EARS WILL OFF. Needless to say I went with the dumplings, and several students took over my kitchen for the morning to turn out a jiaozi feast. In the pictures students are stuffing the dumplings, and I enjoy them with my site-mate and a few of the cooks! As soon as the feast was over, though, we had to hurry them out and start preparing for our second feast of the day: a Mexican Christmas with some other Gansu volunteers. Ben and I brought salsa and chips and beans, but there was also a full range of burrito fixings, and even homemade tamales (note: if you want to make masa from scratch, you will have to render down a really big hunk of fat). It was fabulous. The next night the festivities continued with my English Department’s very own Christmas “Party”. Now, I know I’ve explained these parties before, but if you missed that, think of it more as a slightly bizarre revue with a whole line-up of student performances. I do love watching my students perform, and the skinny Santa who came out throwing candy, narrowly missing the English teachers’ heads I should add, and was subsequently MOBBED by the Chinese kiddies, was a highlight. His maneuvers, as he raced into the crowd, ducking and spinning away from the grasping little hands, were brilliant. The stage had fun decorations, the performers looked great, the microphones worked from time to time, and the 1800 or so students in the audience happily waved their glow-sticks the whole time. A total success! The picture is with some of the night’s performers. The guy in the corner who looks like the REAL Santa is Randy, another teacher here at the school. The NEXT night was Christmas Eve and it was my turn to throw a party! After about 24 hours of baking and cleaning, my place was sparkling, the tree glowing, and the table set with a pumpkin pie, gingerbread cookies, apple turnovers, peanut butter-honey cookies, and pumpkin-oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies. As people began to trickle in, the other foreign teachers at my school contributed some delicious breads and cookies, and the Chinese teachers brought bags and bags of fruit, chips, and drinks. We were soon overflowing with about 30 people – my coworkers, their children, and a few of the English Association kids and graduate students that are my friends. ::whew:: It was a packed house, but the Christmas tree was the focal point (Chinese folks love a good photo op and it fit the bill as a back-drop), the kids were loud and messy and having a great time, people were mingling, and it was just plain wonderful. On Christmas morning we tore open the packages I’d placed strictly under the tree (no peeking!), and had a lovely Christmas breakfast of noodles. That night a few of us took advantage of a free banquet dinner. A local airline was hosting a fabulous buffet (with turkey! And lamb! And sushi!), and offered free tickets to bring our foreign faces to the affair. Well the food was delicious, the company good, the ambiance very Christmas-y with candles and music…. when all of a sudden the lights went down, red lights and a bubble machine came on in the middle of the room, and out strutted four Kazakh exotic dancers. Wearing teeny bikini tops. Because, you know, Christmas is a foreign holiday, so naturally foreign performers will make it a perfect Christmas celebration. We stayed until the girls came out again in little shepherdess outfits that ended at the crotch, and 2.5 foot tall Marie-Antoinette wigs… on our way out we were told that a local night-club manager had been put in charge of the (3 hour-long!!) entertainment. That actually didn’t come as much of a surprise.I gave my literature exam two days after Christmas, and caught a few cheaters which put a really lovely cap on a difficult semester with the seniors. I am so looking forward to going back to British Literature this upcoming semester with juniors. The students are just so completely checked out of their academics in their senior year, and not just garden-variety senioritis, but literally absent all the time, plagiarizing, cheating… ah well. It’s over. They only have their theses to write next semester and they’ll be out of here. I’ll be advising 4 of them on their final papers this year.For New Year’s several of us went out for a big dinner in honor of our friend Lu Wei’s 30th birthday, and then met up with most of the other Lanzhou volunteers at a laid-back club to ring in the New Year with some dancing. It was a great night, one of my favorite New Year’s Eves ever. New Year’s is always a funny moment among volunteers because for half of us it signals a year where we most likely will not be in the States at all, and for the other half of us, it marks the year in which we’ll return home. Exciting stuff in both cases I think. Since the New Year I’ve been on a fairly steady diet of grading, finally wrapping everything up last weekend by turning in mounds of paperwork. To celebrate finishing our semesters, Ben and I and Simon (another volunteer in LZ) went… skiing! Now, those of you who know me might say, “But Kristen! You don’t ski! And also you are a big klutz! And… there’s skiing in China?” Never fear, I didn’t venture more than half way up the slope. In my jumpsuit (see photo, and please know that it doesn’t belong to me). We all had a great time though, and the boys owned the top of the slope, wowing everyone with some spectacular tumbles (mostly courtesy of the impetuous Simon) and smooth moves. All of the above brings me to this week, in which I prepare to go traveling. Everyone around me is also preparing – for Chun Jie (Spring Festival), the Chinese New Year. It much resembles the lead up to Christmas, but actually holds meaning for the Chinese population unlike the December proliferation of Santa Clauses and arches made out of things like red cardboard beer advertisements and Winnie-the-pooh teddy bears. Everyone is buying beautiful red knots and strips of paper with blessings on them, and the whole city is filling up with gorgeous red lanterns, hung from trees, lamp-posts, bridges, and even in small strings lining the windows of buses. This is my favorite look for the city: still with all the winter time smells and sounds of the hot nut and corn and potato vendors, but with the fruit sticks dipped in glaze which signal the closer-to-springtime part of the winter, all lorded over by the brilliantly red lanterns. The holiday itself is on Feb 7, but the entire month surrounding that date involves mass-migration as nearly everyone in the country goes back to their hometowns to celebrate with their family. I love this time of year here but for one thing – the firecrackers. I have always loved fireworks, and can’t wait for the fabulous displays that will happen all over the country on the night of Feb 6, but for weeks now the booms of firecrackers have been echoing through my neighborhood, steadily increasing in frequency, and making me jump out of my skin every 4th or 5th unexpected boom. I blame the grandfathers – they are as gleeful setting them off as the kids that they hand them to. Heading out of town tomorrow for the next 5 weeks or so… stay tuned.

The biggest thing that happened at the beginning of the semester was the arrival of the Gansu 13s at site! We got a really great group. Down to earth, committed, and fun – I think Gansu will finally be in good hands after the upheavals and sudden departures of the last year. Together the 12s and 13s up here make a really mixed group, personality and background-wise, but despite that (or because of it!) I think we’re solid through and through. My site-mate’s name is Brendon. He just graduated from Georgetown (another history major), and is from New Mexico. We have fairly similar temperaments, so we get along well, though his self-discipline when it comes to studying Chinese and keeping the dust out far outweighs mine! Luckily, I’ve got experience on my side! I was so used to being the only volunteer at my school (with Ben pitching in when I needed help), that it’s nice to have such a self-sufficient site-mate. I’ve been pretty boring this semester, though never bored. School started September 1, and I spent the first month working to get my classes into a good groove for the semester. For the first time I was able to really plan out 2 of my 3 courses in advance, with a really complete set of syllabi and planned assessments – it felt good, and definitely paid off over the semester. My American Literature class I couldn’t plan in it’s entirely; never having taught the class and not having much to work off of, I wasn’t sure how fast we’d be able to move, and how much material we’d be able to cover. I didn’t travel during the October Holiday, taking the time to clean and finish settling myself into the semester. My Poetry course has been the academic highlight of the semester for me. There was no textbook, and the elective course-taught once every two years-has never really been taught successfully before as far as I can tell. So I was given a completely free hand in designing the class. Even with a class twice as big as I’d been told to expect (65 students altogether), I think we managed to pull it off, if with less discussion than I’d hoped for. We moved through basic tools for reading poetry, some of the most important poetic forms, and into reading and analysis by topic: poetry of identity, of childhood, of love, of gender, of loss… and finally poetry as performance. There was no final exam – I have 65 portfolios sitting in my living room, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that when I start grading them, my feelings about the class are upheld by the students’ work and their reflections. A ragged second to the Poetry class is American Literature – not because I didn’t love teaching the subject (I did), but because this course is for seniors, and passing it is a requirement for them to be able to graduate. This in a semester when seniors are gone for weeks at a time looking for jobs, and when teachers are asked to essentially forgive failure when it comes to their academic work. I’m working my ass off to get these kids to pass, because I refuse to change their grades. You might be saying: duh, of course you wouldn’t change grades, this is the real world. But the students had every expectation that they could not fail this class – they told me so point blank. I had to burst that bubble, because while my department would certainly ask me to consider being lenient after grades are totaled, they will (they say) back me up if I a student well and truly fails. Of course, getting in the way of a student graduating is the last thing I’m here to do, hence the stress. Hand in hand with the difficulties of keeping everyone in the game when seniors are absent every time a company that is hiring comes to town, is the cheating. Well, cheating by my standards. Students are literally told by some of their teachers just not to make copying and pasting from the internet obvious… they take bits and pieces from 8 websites, slap them together, and hand it in. Even those that have put together their own argument (ish. The idea of a thesis is somehow still elusive to many) have huge sections of their papers lifted directly from their textbook or the web. What I discovered, belatedly, was that my senior English majors have never learned how to use citations properly. In their first drafts, 1 out of the 60 odd papers had 1 citation. Weeks, several mini-lessons, and a lot of editing later, it’s still a problem. I’ve written about this before, but there is a widely-held belief among the students (those whom I’ve encountered at least), that what is printed in books or on the internet is more correct than anything they could come up with (in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and ideas), and therefore not to use those materials simply makes no sense to many. Even gentle suggestions of cheating or plagiarism sometimes cause tears; students are horrified that we would think of him/her as a cheater (despite the fact that they tell me all the time about how other classmates cheated more…). ::sigh:: Truly, despite my attempts at commitment to academic integrity, and the innumerable talks I’ve had with students about this, in the end it seems to me that it is simply their bad luck that they have a teacher from 'outside the system' for a class they need to pass in order to graduate. Anyway, I’ve said far more than enough on this topic, it’s just something that I’ve really wrestled with this semester. Advanced Practical Skills Oral English has been generally fun, and ridiculously laid-back, since that was a class of only 17 seniors, met in the evenings, and was usually decimated by the job hunt for most of the semester. I have been especially proud, though, of the improvement in two of the men in this class. Other than classes, let’s see. Ben’s heat/water/sewage has been broken for months so he’s been spending lots of weekends at my place. I can’t complain :) It’s just been fixed, though, thus ending a prolonged period of few showers and shitting in plastic bags. I’ve been working on a few secondary projects in the last few months, culminating in a BUSY weekend towards the end of the semester. For World AIDS Day on December 1, I went on a student’s radio show to do a talk with her on HIV/AIDS, and gave a big presentation on the West Campus at Friday Night English Corner that week. The presentation was a total teaching high for me – 80-100 kids from the lowest to highest levels of English, and I think they were all really engaged. Brendon and I had both been talking to our classes all weeks about HIV/AIDS awareness, and on December 1, about 90 students came out to show their understanding and stand together in saying that AIDS must be stopped. They formed a human-AIDS ribbon on the steps of our main teaching building. Several other universities did the same thing, at the same time, on the same day. I think the moment of it made a real impact on the students. That same weekend my department held an experimental teaching workshop for a self-selected group of the seniors. I worked with my dean, Daisy, to create a 2-day format and select session topics that we believed would be most useful. Then we held a meeting of the foreign and Chinese English teachers in our department and had one foreign and one Chinese teacher sign up for each topic (something I thought crucial after our experiences at summer project). Unfortunately, the weekend of the workshop a big job fair opened in town, and only about half the students who’d signed up to come actually showed up for the training. Still, those 13 included a few who want to be teachers, and the rest were good students who knew this was a great professional training opportunity. They presented lessons and received feedback the second day, and most did a really great job. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to expand this in the Spring semester for the juniors, changing the format slightly to allow more time for workshop sessions and for more students to be able to participate. A good start, for sure, and a great peer-development exercise among department teachers. Peace Corps has been really supportive of this, and is currently stamping certificates for the students who took part in the workshop. Thanksgiving was delicious and well-attended, with 30 people of 4 nationalities present. And Christmas is (truly) around the corner. My tree is up, my living room is red-and-green ribbon-lined, and I’ve been experimenting with cookie recipes in preparation for next week. On the 22nd, I have students coming over to make dumplings (apparently on the winter solstice, as at all other dates of import it seems, it’s traditional to eat dumplings), and that night Lanzhou PCVs will gather for a Mexican potluck Christmas. The next night the Foreign Languages Dept. at my school will be throwing the big Christmas shindig, and on Christmas Eve I have invited all the teachers in my department and their families to come by my place for cookies and music and Christmas cheer (wine). The province is holding a big dinner for all Gansu foreigners on the 28th, so we’ll be able to look forward to the further-flung of the Gansu PCVs as well. Tomorrow I will hold a big review session for literature, and that is officially my last class of the semester. I have huge stacks of essays and portfolios to keep me busy until the lit kids take their exam a few days after Christmas – but I should be free and clear by the second week of January. And after that? Islands in Thailand, and hiking in Yunnan province. Oh, and my last semester as a Peace Corps China volunteer, and teacher at Gong Da. Crazy.

My new goal is not to have to apologize at the beginning of each post. These last 6 months have been a completely egregious gap in the blog, and, as always, I’ll try to do better. I left off at the end of the spring semester last year, in mid-July, so I’ll pick back up there, with Summer Project.

Summer Project

On July 20, all the Gansu PCVs headed North and West to Jiuquan (means, literally, wine springs), a medium-sized town near the desert, and just 20 minutes from the very end of the Great Wall. There we spent two weeks running a teacher training program for about 200 teachers from the general area. We worked with a VSO volunteer from the UK – her job for the last year and a half had been attempting teacher training and while she’d experienced plenty of frustrations (as well as high points!) that mirrored our own over the course of the two weeks, her familiarity with the teachers, the job demands, and the Chinese education bosses was invaluable. Every morning, in pairs, we rotated to a new class of teachers. The first week, all of our lessons focused on specific English teaching methods, such as using story-telling and poetry in a lesson, using activities in a lesson, etc. The second week, all of our lessons focused on using social issues/topics to enliven their classes -- for example, using the Generation Gap, minorities/migration, the environment, etc. to engage students’ interest and make them more active in class. Each afternoon, a different volunteer gave a presentation and ran breakout activities/discussions on a variety of topics from multiple intelligences to HIV/AIDS and safe sex – things we thought the teachers would be interested in and might prove useful to them. As I look back now, finally, it is the high points that stick out for me. A particularly successful lesson with a very difficult, lower-level group. A discussion with some of the advanced female teachers on their roles in society and in the family. Seeing other volunteers in teaching-mode. Dinners out with some of the trainees. Crazy evenings with the other volunteers, preparing, stressing out, telling stories from the day, and unwinding. During summer project though, we ran into enormous frustrations. Logistically, though Michelle, Kari, and I had been planning for months, the small things were never quite right (they were largely out of our hands). We all had to be very quick on our feet throughout, living and breathing Peace Corps’ “Be Flexible” mantra as we constantly revised plans in the face of locked doors, lack of facilities, trainees’ job schedules, etc. We had to deal with the reality that after running a really successful lesson, the average trainee would still not be convinced to take all or parts of it back to their own classrooms, and their own students. Middle and high school teaching jobs here are so exam-based (with monetary penalties, in Jiuquan at least, for teachers if students don’t pass), so text-based, that while most of them have heard of general western-methodologies, it just doesn’t seem, to them, to be something they can reasonably start innovating with. And having foreign teachers running around the front of the classroom telling them they CAN engage their students, do interesting things in class, and still have students pass the exams? Well, they enjoyed the lessons, but it was clearly not convincing for a majority of the teacher trainees. If China is serious about changing teaching (especially language teaching) in this country, I think they need to have teams of really excellent Chinese teachers whose students HAVE scored highly on exams running these trainings all over the country in order to convince the average teacher Chinese teacher to try new things in their class. Many that we met have never made a lesson plan before, and their idea of a warm-up is to read the title of the lesson after the students have opened their books. As everywhere in the world these days, there is clearly room for improvement. A final mess when it came to getting certificates stamped by the Education Bureau (crucial for the teachers to get credit for spending their entire summer holiday in our training, often involuntarily), left many of us with a sour taste in our mouths as we had to say goodbye and move on with our summers. Family Visit

As we were making our way through the twists and turns of summer project, I had another big thing on my mind: my family was in China! Arriving less than a week after we began our teacher training, my parents and sister arrived in Shanghai, and, via Beijing and Xi’an, began to head Northwest. One more week later, and I was picking them up at the airport in Jiayuguan, and taking them back to Summer Project to meet Ben, the other volunteers, and some of the trainees. It had been just over a year since I’d said goodbye to them, and it was more than a little surreal to have them here in China with me! We made a whirlwind of the next 10 days. After spending the last two days with the other PCVs at summer project, I brought them home to Lanzhou. From Lanzhou, we took a weekend trip down to beautiful Xiahe, at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and spent an incredibly special afternoon in the grasslands. The next morning, we walked the kora together, circumambulating Labrang monastery. From Lanzhou, we said goodbye to Ben and flew to Chongqing where we boarded the Dragon Boat for a 2 and a half day cruise down the Yangtze River to the Three Gorges Dam. This catch-up blog is going to be long enough at is, so I’ll let it suffice to say that from start to finish, the cruise was fabulous. First of all, I felt so fancy in the cabin I shared with my sister! We had a little teeny deck off the back of it. Each day there were day trips, one to a series of cool Taoist temples (for the King of the Dead!), and another up a very small tributary to the traditional area of the Tujia minority. We went through the Dam at night, and it was completely dramatic -- the sheer magnitude of the construction feat was pretty breath-taking. Throughout the trip we could see clearly where towns had been relocated upwards, and where the water line would eventually be. The morning after the Dam, we disembarked at Yichang, and hopped on a train for Hangzhou. After a great 20 hour train ride which involved a lot of map-studying on the part of Dad, and a lot of catchphrase on all of our parts, we arrived in Hangzhou. West Lake was mesmerizing as promised. After getting stranded by our boat on a far island the first evening, Dad and Adrienne and I walked back along the bridges spanning the lake. They spoiled me with Pizza Hut that night. The next day we went to the Lingyin Temple area… skipping the pricey temple itself, we took a cable car up to the peak behind it for panoramic views of Hanzhou, and then spend a few hours scrambling through ancient Buddhist grottoes and paths all over the hill below. Had a great dinner that night, after a little trial and error at a restaurant downtown. As it came time for my family to go home, we made the quick hop back into Shanghai. That night we met up with my Chinese friend Wondering for dinner, and then had a last stroll along the Bund, all lit up and gorgeous as always. The next day we spent a very full afternoon shopping for all the friends and family at home, and as we came back to the hotel, my sister told me it had been perfect – there wasn’t anything she’d dreamed of doing that she hadn’t gotten to do, nothing she’d really fallen in love with that she hadn’t been able to buy cheaply. I think that after a 20 day trip in China, they were sated. The next day, I took them to the airport, waited with them through the long check-in lines, said goodbye, and headed back into the city. Post-Fam Summer Travel

That night, I started my train marathon. Took the first one overnight from Shanghai to Beijing, where I met up for the afternoon and evening with my friend Lee, a fellow veteran of many China history, culture, and language classes at UVA. That night, another overnight train from Beijing to Datong, where a student of mine lives. She and her dad met me at the station, and we spent the day first at the stunning Yungang Caves, and afterwards, wandering around town. The Yungang caves were cut back into the cliff wall just outside Datong, and are filled with beautiful paintings and imposing (enormous!) Buddhas. My student remembers that when she was young, she could climb right up into the laps of some of the towering statues. After being walked onto the platform and waved into the distance by my student and her dad, I was off again for my third overnight train, bringing me home again to Lanzhou. I think I had about a day and a half for laundry before hopping on another overnighter, this time with Ben, to Chengdu. It was unbelievably hot on the train, and we sweat buckets all the way there. Once there, though, we met up with Pierce, my old sitemate, who was now sporting a really scraggly-looking beard, and had just returned from visiting his lady in Kyrgyzstan (she’s Peace Corps too). With Pierce, we headed, by overnight train again, to Tongren, Pierce’s new site down in Guizhou province. From Tongren, we went to Kaili where we visited with a few other volunteers, including on of the China 10s who had done some of our training when we first arrived and was back at his old site, visiting old friends. From Kaili we left – in the pouring rain – for an all-day bus trip(s) up and around and over and through the (very) mountainous terrain. We finally found ourselves that night in a small Dong minority village. The country down there is all mountains and hills cloaked in mist at the top, just dripping with brilliant green, and valleys in between filled with rice paddies. The houses way down in the Southeast are made all of wood, most without any nails. They have lots of decks and open air drying platforms and rooms, and most of them are set up on stilts on the sides of the mountains. It rained a lot when we were there, but when it wasn’t raining, we walked around the town, hung out on the bridges with all the old guys, and did some fantastic hiking up among the rice paddies which cling all the way up the sides of the mountains. We also sweat a lot. Guizhou is gorgeous, but seems to sit at maximum possible humidity from what we experienced. On our way home, we stopped by Xijiang, thought to be the largest of the Miao minority villages (the Miao people are ethnically Hmong), where we spent the night in a pristine little hostel. The next morning, we walked all over this village set entirely upon a hill which in turn sits in the middle of a natural basin surrounded by rice-paddied hills. It was beautiful and incredibly peaceful. We had to head back to Tongren at this point, and spent a day taking a boat down the river with Pierce and his friend from college, Mahfuz. After a few hours of boat, we were dropped off at the foot of a mountain with a famous cave up at the top. We walked around the base of the mountain for a while, eventually coming to a teeny waterfall and swimming hole where we relaxed until a storm chased us back to the river to find a bus to take us home. That night we train-ed back to Chengdu, where Ben and I had our yearly physicals with the med staff and got to go to the dentist(!) and eat lots of Pete’s Tex-Mex. We also had the chance to spend a little time with the new China 13 volunteers who were going to be coming up to Gansu, and I got to chat with my old language tutor. Finally, it was time to admit that the summer had come to an end, and we hopped on the train one last time to take us home to begin our 3rd semester.

We, the China 12s, have now lived in China for one year + 16 days.

We've said goodbye to most of our China 11s, and welcomed the China 13s.

We've learned how to give speeches with one minute's warning, how to speak openly and without shame about the state of our poo, how to introduce ourselves and buy train tickets and cuss in Chinese, how to teach inside of another culture and system, how to enjoy our students despite constant requests for the secret trick to improving one's oral English. We've taught 100s of students, eaten 100s of bowls of noodles, drunk a LOT of bad beer, played a lot of cards, gotten to know our neighborhoods and our colleagues and our country kids and our city kids, spent weeks of time on trains, and generally had a great time.

Thanks for the emails, the calls, the visit (eva!!), the planned visits over the next year (mom! dad! adrienne! betsy! linds! lucy? nathan?) , the packages, the cards...

it's been a good year.

They say that year #2 goes even faster. I can hardly believe it.

Grades are in and I've been putzing around for the last few days cleaning and working on my classes for next semester -- I'll be teaching American Literature, Adv. Practical Skills Oral English, and a poetry appreciation course that I'm developing.

On Friday we head up to the desert town of Jiuquan to conduct our two week teacher training project with rural middle school teachers. My family will be arriving in China in just 10 days, and traveling around for about a week; I'll be picking them up at the far western edge of the Great Wall just before the end of summer project. Straight from there we'll head back to Lanzhou, spending a few days in Gansu before flying to Chongqing and taking a dragon boat cruise down the Yangtze River. From their, train to Hangshou/Suzhou, and finish up with a day or two in Shanghai before they fly home just in time for Adrienne to start college! From Shanghai I'll go to Beijing for a day and then out to visit a student's hometown. From there, I'll race back to Lanzhou, do laundry, hopefully meet my new sitemate, and hop on another train with Ben to head South... we're going down to Guizhou to visit my old sitemate, Pierce, and to explore the beautiful landscape and many minority villages down there. A quick stop in Chengdu for medical check-ups, and back to site by September 1st, just in time to start classes.

I'll be on the road for the rest of July and all of August, but please keep in touch! In China, an internet cafe is never far away.

+ On the brit. lit. midterm, several students mistakenly analyzed the character of Santa in Milton's epic Paradise Lost. As in: "One of the main themes in Paradise Lost is disobedience, like when Santa rebels against God very much."

That wicked fat old man!

+ The following lines came from the first draft of one of my thesis students who was writing about Gothic culture and literature as an important trend throughout history and still today. In the latter part of her paper she began to connect elements of the Gothic to the modern Goth sub-culture with the following results:

"Gothic people, at the modern time, never mean the people come from ancient Goth tribes anymore. Goth means someone (especially youth) who crazy about Gothic fashion. There are three main branches about Goths.

1) Perky Goths: There are all kinds of Goths from all walks of life. A well known phrase it the perky Goths, the insanely happy and bouny fans who revels in every aspect of life no matter if it's bad or good. They love nothing less than experience of anything, the more the better.

Perky Goths are to be found clubbing, having picnics, avoiding relationships with mopey Goths, being sociable amongs others, whilst the mopey Goths sit on IRC being mopey, or sit in bars being mopey and most the Goths known as Perky Goths.

2) Cyber Goths: A mixture of black, bright colors and glowing alien designs to make a cyber Goth! A breed of perky Goth, Cyber Goths can be found clubbing. Listen to trance, hard techno, industrial, etc. Glos in the dark Goths. Dance, dance and dance, bounce, bounce and bounce!

3) Trad Goths: Traditional Goths who listen to punk and guitar based Gothic music, 80's music. Frilly clothes, big, big hair. Frequently these ones complain about all the bleep and bloop that the cyber Goths listen to! They are crazy about medieval re-enactment and educated in the classics (Latin, history, art). Trad Goths are diminishing in numbers.

Don't ask me where she got her sources on that one... strangely enough, that particular section didn't make it into the final paper.

From the same paper we get this tidbit:

"Goth fashions have a range. People can wear black, or they can wear black. All Goths love black -- it goes with the territory."

Sure it might be a little (plagiarized?) sarcasm, but I prefer to take it as is.

+ late April: hiking in the hills across from Ben's place in Dingxi, taking advantage of the first really warm weather and the sunny skies! We walked through fields and then up a hill whose sheer loess soil face had bones from old burials sticking out.

+ My british literature midterm grades ranged from a low of 18 to a high of 96 and everything in between. I don't even know how to interpret a range like that! I mean, with such a low grade in the mix I feel like I fucked up somehow, but clearly SOME students were fully capable of doing well on this exam. I see this course that I'm teaching as an AP English class, and I'm doing my best not to dumb down the material or my expecatation just because English is not their first language. Still, I want them to have every chance to succeed... mulling over this a lot right now as I start work on making their final exam.

+ Massages. We've discovered a foot massage place where, for 25yuan (less than $3), we receive a foot soak and 90 minutes of hand, back, foot, and leg massage. They're open 24-7 (no need to inquire about what goes on in the back). Needless to say, they now know most of us by name and have become a favorite meeting spot among the volunteers when we need a break.

+ I have a new cell phone. The reason I have a new cellphone is because I lost my old cellphone down a squattie potty. I don't see any reason to elaborate on this one... just another Kristen moment. I'm really hoping this is one of those things you only have to do once in your life.

+ Summer project planning is coming right along! Michelle and Kari and I spent a whole day and half the night planning logistics and curriculum for our 2+ weeks of teacher training work this summer, but we're really excited about what we've worked out. Keeping in mind that every single detail could be changed on us at the last moment... we'll be in a city about 10 hours north of Lanzhou working with 180 teachers. We're planning on having an overarching series of workshops on individual and peer development, having all the teachers work on individual plans for dealing with specific problem areas in their classrooms. Each morning is devoted to actual english lessons, with all topics in the first week dealing with innovative ways to teach English and approach it with different techniques, and all topics in the second week dealing with major social issues and their relevance to students and teachers here and how to bring discussion of those into the classroom as well. Each PCV is also responsible for directing one afternoon session with presentation and activities, dealing with relevant topics ranging from education topics like Multiple Intelligences to cultural topics like world religions, influence of the media, etc. Anyway, I won't go on... obviously I'm psyched about the program. In two weekends the three of us will be going up to Jiuquan to visit the site and see what facilities will be available.

+ Prom -- yes, you read that right. In the town of Tianshui, about 4 hours southeast of here, there is a not *too* expensive hotel that sits over some natural springs, meaning that there is both a pool AND hot tubes (luke warm, but who's measuring). This was the second annual prom that one of the PCVs living there has organized and held at that spot. The theme was Enchanted Forest, and we had unicorns, forest elves, tree people... good times all around.

+ We celebrated Ben's 24th last weekend with korean bbq, beer on a barge in the Yellow River, late night massages, strawberry shortcake and good friends.

+ Marilyn, a spunky China 12 who arrived with us last summer and was in her 70s, passed away two weeks ago after collapsing in her classroom. She was beloved by her students who called her Grandmother and by all of us who had the chance to get to know her. I admired her energy and her straightforward idea that "as long as [I] have my health and half a brain, [I] might as well be off doing something to help." She'd always wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer, and with her children grown and her husband having passed away, she figured there was no time like the present.

+ Lately the weather has gotten hot during the days, and often sunny, but most late afternoons still end with dust storms or thunderstorms! Once the wind passes though, it leaves the air cool and fresh at night. I LOVE spring and early summer in Lanzhou.

+ T-6 weeks til my family arrives in China!!!

In China there are two main national holidays outside of Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) – the first week of October celebrates the founding of the PRC (National Day), and the first week of May celebrates International Labor Day. Every May holiday the provincial leaders organize a trip available to the Gansu “foreign experts” (yeah, that’s me) to see parts of the province generally missed by the guide books. This year they took us on a 5 day excursion to Longnan, the Southeast region of Gansu, a far greener place than I am used to. The first day was a bus marathon through some stunningly wild canyons somehow lined with the age-old terracing to be found in nearly all agricultural regions of China. We stayed at Wudou that night, and spent the next day at Tianchi Lake, a smooth and clear gem set into the mountain top high above a steep and verdant valley. The next day we went to Wan Xiang Dong, a cavern complex cleverly enhanced with garish colored lights to help us enjoy the natural beauty. Still, it was fun – anyone willing to clamber through a pretty small rock tunnel into the back section of the caverns could see some very old inscriptions, and scramble around some areas that I imagine might have been off limits in any American caverns this developed. I predictably managed to crack my head on some rocks on the way out, but nothing that some aspirin and a few days of ouches couldn't fix.

We continued on through a long series of valleys that afternoon to a small town even closer to the Gansu/Sichuan border. After dinner, the Townsends and Kari surprised me with a birthday cake! There is really only one chain bakery in these parts, called Aili Cake. We're pretty sure that the 3 to 1 icing to cake ratio proves that birthday cakes in China are really only for having food fights with (this also seems to be what the average Chinese family thinks judging by viewing birthday dinners out on the town). More relevant to this story, the cakes come with a Burger King style crown which I wore out to pick up beer and snacks after dinner. Pretty much every person that we passed in this tiny town gave me a Happy Birthday greeting… it’s probably one of only a few phrases in English a lot of them knew. As my students would say “it gave me a good feeling.” The next day we spent all day hiking through a valley in a national park called Guan e' Gou. The ravine passed waterfalls and beautiful trees and eventually climbed up to the snowline of a big mountain. Some people climbed up into the snow, but we stopped at a shelter just below if for some cards and some serious basking in the sun. That night we had some fairly unpalatable roasted sheep for dinner (I think I'm one of the only people that enjoyed that particular meal. What can I say, I love mutton, even over-roasted!), but were treated to a bonfire and traditional dancing afterwards.

The last day was another marathon bus trip all the way back up to Lanzhou. We were actually making fairly good time and were reallllly starting to look forward to dinner when we ran into a traffic jam. In the middle of the countryside. Seems that one side of the road ahead was being repaired and a cement truck got a little too close to the shoulder of the other side and it caved in, leaving that truck tilted and firmly stuck. Unwilling to wait for a resolution to the problem, a truck full of boulders decided to have a try with the side of the road under construction. As soon as it got completely into the repair zone, it promptly sank through the loose soil and was also firmly stuck. Neither of the trucks, quite possibly the two heaviest around, looked to be going anywhere soon, but they had effectively blocked the whole road – something which certainly didn't deter all the other drivers on either side of them from jockeying for position, filling the roads both in front and behind of the dueling trucks. Various official vehicles drove up but had nothing to offer and left. We were convinced that we were going to be there all night, and the provincial leaders didn't seem prepared to entertain the thought of back-tracking. Finally, after surprisingly few hours, a digger and a chain and some sort of steam roller were cleverly rigged up to pull them free, and off we went.

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The next night, Ben and I and John and Erin Townsend took the overnight train up to Jiayuguan, site of the most westerly fort of the Great Wall. It guarded what has traditionally been considered the 'mouth' of China, and is smack dab where the Silk Road moved into China from Xinjiang (to the west) and Persia (even farther west). We saw some fairly uninteresting tombs from the Wei and Jin dynasties, walked along a reconstructed section of the Great Wall, and finally checked out the fort which was really very impressive. Jiayuguan is located in a small oasis, with gravelly desert all around and the beautiful snowy peaks of the Qilian Mountains in the distance. There are also some lovely smokestacks billowing smog out the back of the town these days.

We found a great driver who was headed to the oasis town Dunhuang that afternoon to pick up a 9-day contract job that he had from a travel agency, so he took the four of us along with him for just over his gas costs. It was a great deal for a 5 hour drive through the desert, and he was a great guy. He was incredibly patient with us, willing to explain himself over and over again in different ways in order to point out things like the nuclear power (?) plant we saw in the distance. We chatted quite a bit and by the time we got to Dunhuang, he announced that he wanted to be a volunteer too, and offered to take us out to one of the main tourist sites for no extra fee. Sweet as his offer was, we were pooped for the day, and wanted to find a place to stay and some cold drinks. Before he drove off though, he reminded us again that he too was a volunteer!

Our hostel had a pretty fancy lobby, and although our dorm room was in a much shabbier wing of the place, the beds felt comfortable and the shower had both hot water AND pressure. At the end of the hallway past our room was what looked like a lounge:

Kristen: “Hey John, is that a rec room at the end of the hall? Do you there there is any pool?”

John: “Not sure – maybe some snooker…”

::cut to Chinese girls in an array of baby doll nighties and heels flouncing past us down the hall::

Staying in a whore house really isn't so bad, though there was a pretty noisy exodus around 5am.

The next day we had a lazy day in Dunhuang which is a pretty laid back little town, and then headed out to Ming Sha Shan once it started getting a little cooler. Ming Sha Shan is the biggest of a series of picture perfect sand dunes that roll away from the outskirts of the oasis. John and Erin headed inside of the park, and Ben and I headed around the sides to find a guide and some camels to take us out into the desert for the night. Buttercup was my camel and I have to say she was a little skittish, but she didn't spit on me, so I think we got along okay. Ben was riding sweet sure-footed Charlie. We made our way out into the dunes and caught the sunset just as a great wind started to pick up. It was... perfect. Coolest place I've ever camped, though the wind made getting the tent up pretty difficult! The next morning, we woke up to an eerie sunrise and hungry camels.

After meeting back up with the Townsends, we headed out to the Mogao Caves for the afternoon, a really ancient site considered to be the greatest depository of Buddhist art and scripture. We were able to go into about 10-15 of the hundreds of caves dug into the cliffs. One held an enormous seated Buddha, several stories tall. Standing at his feet and staring up at him literally struck us dumb. It was absolutely awe-inspiring. We also saw the famous reclining Buddha whose delicacy and lines reminded me of the some ancient Greek marble work, though more simple. I think it's the loveliest statue I've seen yet in China. We also saw the library cave, which once contained thousands upon thousands of the manuscripts accumulated from passing caravans and wanderers passing through this cross-roads on the Silk Road and had been secretly sealed up for centuries. Unfortunately, nearly all the manuscripts were taken out by one European group after another in the early 1900s.

That night we took the train home – I think all four of us were ready for another week of vacation just to recover from all the traveling! It was a great week though – we traveled from the very bottom of Gansu where it was brilliantly green and terraced, to the deserts above Lanzhou, far to the north. It was a special look at the province we live in, and definitely gave me a better perspective on the myriad environments and challenges that face the very poor areas of Western China.

--> Check out pictures in the Gansu collection at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/china-travels/collections/

Well, the last of my graduating seniors just turned in his final thesis draft and materials to me, and shutting the door behind him was actually pretty bitter sweet. The last few weeks have been really intense, with all the editing of their papers (and making many lectures on plagiarism) on top of my regular classes, but after seeing one or more of them almost daily for the last two weeks, and this after months of intermittent meetings, I can't believe they're finally finished and about to graduate. All they have left is to survive their oral thesis defense next week and they will be home free to graduate.

I'm pretty close to home free on this semester too – June 22nd is my last day of classes, this Friday is the last English Corner of the semester. Of course, finishing up this first year is also pretty bitter sweet (though admittedly more sweet than bitter). While I'm looking forward to summer holiday, summer project, my family coming to visit, and meeting my new site mate next September, we're all bracing ourselves to say goodbye to the 11s who will be leaving in waves throughout July. Seeing them preparing to leave and go back to their lives from the “before” time is really making me think. Sure it was hard to say goodbye to friends and family for over two years when I left last June, and my life here has large holes in it without those people present and without pizza and cheeseburgers and deli sandwiches; BUT, my life here is, in all other ways, very complete. I am living alone for the first time, and painted the walls by myself and own a fern and an ornery washing machine. I have neighbors and a milk lady and a water man and colleagues and a class of 6 year olds and lots of students with whom I spend a great deal of time, and a very satisfying job and love and a family of other volunteers here. Also a bowling alley and as many incredible travel destinations as I can squeeze out of my holidays. For all that, when I leave here in July 2008, it is easily possible that I will never come back to Lanzhou, never see most of my students or colleagues again. That kind of abrupt cutting off is going to be very hard I think. Luckily I have another year of life to enjoy in Lanzhou before it's time to say goodbye – and then 5 months of travel to dull the edge of leaving before I make my way home.

I know I am a solid two months behind on the blog (haha thanks for all the reminders, mom), so the next entry will be dedicated to the travel we did during the first month of May over the Labor Holiday, and the one after that will be highlights and happenings of the last two months, and then a final few tid-bits from the accidentally hilarious writings of my students. I'm apologizing in advance for the novel-length of these entries... take your time! Love and miss you all.

I've just started week 5 of my second semester and after a lot of scrambling in the first few weeks, I think life is starting to steady.

::warning, teaching report follows, quite possibly boring::

In British Literature, I think the students have reached a trust phase where they're not afraid that suddenly I will turn out to be a monster and stuff scary indecipherable english literature down their throats. Actually, despite frequent mini-migraines on my part whenever I compare their textbook to what I'd like them to understand, things are coming together and I think the class is going really well. Week 1 was the Anglo-Saxons, Old English sounds and riddles, and Beowulf. Stop groaning... unlike lots of you, they actually liked Beowulf. Maybe it was my oscar-worthy reenactment of Beowulf's battle with Grendel. Week 2 we moved right along into the Middle Ages, Middle English, and Chaucer. Canterbury Tales was tough. Satire, much less satire originally written in middle english, proved a little tricky to catch. Week 3 we moved into the Renaissance: prose, poetry, and drama (The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus... yes, students, I know tragical is no longer considered a word). Week 4 we took a break with Romeo and Juliet, a movie, and the start of Hamlet.

They just wrote sonnets (so far, only one has tried to slip another of Shakespeare's sonnets in instead of her own), and will be acting out scenes from Hamlet at the end of the week. I'm very careful to always explain the value of the assignments to them. This stuff is really difficult, even if English is your first language, and I'm trying to help them really internalize some of the material as well as break it down with different ways of examining and learning literature.

My sophomores are preparing for the BAND 4 test at the end of April which represents a significant and quite difficult certification for them to achieve. As English majors, if they don't pass their major certifications, their degree will have very little value, making it even more difficult to find a position in a job market glutted with degree holders. Listening is just one portion of the test, but they think it's a very difficult section, so we're focusing on the listening as much as possible until the end of April (other teachers are helping them prepare for other sections like writing and grammar).

They have to complete their workbook, but I'm trying to use it as only a rough guide for in-class work. Sometimes we use their listening tapes, but if we're using them in-class, it'll be with different tasks or uses for the material. Every week we listen to an American song both as a cloze activity (fill in the blank), for introducing new vocabulary/expressions, and to have a small cultural discussion. Last week we did some Ani Difranco whose lyrics they really responded to. Watching the tops of 35 students' heads, headphones on, chins bobbing to keep time, mouthing the words, is a total pleasure. In those last hours of class each week, I can count on somebody breaking out into a silent drum solo above their desk, or maybe half the class will break into song when the chorus comes along, led by August, who is usually moved to start singing along barely half-way into the first listen. Each of them does it totally un-selfconciously.

My seniors are supposed to be finishing up their research in these next two weeks and starting to move into the writing phase of their graduation theses. For the most part my job is just guidance and feedback, though in the last few weeks of june it'll be more intense as final deadlines approach and they prepare to present.

::end teaching summary::

Outside of classes, life is pretty good, and filling up quite nicely. I go to two English Corners each week. The first, mandatory for me and not tremendously well organized, run by English majors, generally attended by enthusiastic freshman and postgrads. The second, also not tremendously well organized, but run by non-majors and attended by dedicated students who have a real passion for English and a real desire to practice their English. These students are my favorite, and among them are a few who I consider real friends here. In the first semester tons of freshman show up (over 150 students altogether), but by now, there is a core group of about 30 who come nearly every week. This group has very few resources, and no other native English speakers, and I'm trying to come up with ways to help them develop a more sustainable program through their English Association. I'm thinking some officer training, and maybe compiling a database of activities, information, topics, basic resources in order to make the weekly two hours most useful and fun for everyone.

I'm also doing very preliminary work to plan a weekend of lesson-planning and communicative method workshops for my junior english majors. Most of them will become teachers, though it's not necessarily their top choice of job. Their teachers do assign them to present mini-lessons to their classes sometimes, but as far as I can tell they aren't given the tools to know how to prepare or present these lessons. Several have come to me with material to teach (7 Steps to a Great Life is a popular topic... exciting stuff I tell ya), but no idea how to teach it. One other teacher offers this type of workshop I think, but the students have to pay. I'm hoping to do the planning work for some weekend in late May, but then recruit some of the other teachers, foreign AND Chinese, to help with the actual teaching, so we can share methodologies and be doing peer observation among our colleagues as well as serve as examples for the students.

The weather is warming up and I have been trying to eat healthier and exercise more... it's been going okay so far, and combined with the feeling that I am doing real and effective teaching this semester, things are good.

Interesting tid-bit from some freshman students: they told me last week that they actually were bored and rather depressed their first semester in college because of the lack of rigorous and full schedules, all the free time. This from students who take between 30 and 40 class hours a week! Imagine what their lives were like in middle and high school.

When I get home from class, the email is waiting. I am not anxious because I know what it will tell me, but read it slowly, savoring the beautiful words my father has written.

A few tears slip down my cheeks, but I had been sobbed out days before. Then, I had felt peace. Now I am numb. My hand is shaking but I think it is from exhaustion – today, all day, I taught Shakespeare. And now sixty students are waiting to practice their English with me tonight. I have no time. I carefully step out of my teaching sweater and slacks, replacing them with one layer, and another and another against the temperamental March chill. Slip a photo into my purse. Check for my keys.

Walking down the street, tears silently inching down my face, I am immune to the normal stares. There are no double and triple takes today; one glance today is more than enough to tell anyone that my mind is as far away as the foreign places they see when they look at my face. The date is pounding in my head in time to my steps and all I can think is that it is exactly one month before Shakespeare's birth and deathday.

The bus creeps; time for my mind to smooth, my pulse to pick up its normal pace, cheeks to unsplotch themselves. My student friends greet me and I am desperately happy to see them, to talk about classes and weather over dinner.

After, I walk into a classroom, smaller than I am used to, crowded with students. Sixty heads swivel, one hundred and twenty hands clap, arms reaching to pull me towards them. “Hello” I say. “For those of you who don't know me yet, my name is Kristen, and I am a teacher here.”

Wild applause.

(They're an undemanding crowd)

"Before we begin today" I say quietly, leaning towards them, “I need to tell you about someone very special.”

I carefully take the photo out of my purse and hold it up.

“My grandfather was almost 90 years old.”

I pause for those cries of astonishment that I am becoming so good at predicting.

“He was married to my grandmother for more than 60 years.”

They gasp.

“He had four children and six grandchildren and friends all over the world. He made textbooks, and he traveled to so many places, and he played tennis until he was very very old. He loved to tell jokes, and he knew more about history than anyone I have ever met. His legacy… do you guys know the word legacy?” I pause to write the word in large letters on the board. “His legacy is one of intelligence and humor and a true zest for life. Zest. Z-E-S-T, a great excitement and love for.

I want you all to know this because my grandfather died today, and I miss him very much.”

Tonight we talk for two hours about travel. I think of the hundreds of students I spend time with each semester, and the entire student body of this country with the greatest population on earth, wanting more than ever to see the world, and unable to. We talk about all the places they dream of going to study or to work or most of all just to visit. We talk about the tiny handful of options some of them might someday have for doing those things. A few are filled with determination. All are here, on a Friday night, after a week of maybe forty class hours, practicing English so that, someday, they may have more opportunities.

I think: Here I am, on the other side of the world, living and teaching in the fastest developing nation on earth. I miss my family and I wish so much that I could have been home these last days, but...

And I respond to my sympathetic students as we leave the classroom “No no, it's alright. I'm very happy, and I think lucky, to be here. This is where my home and job are for right now, and you know, he was very proud of me.”

The morning that Pierce and Mattias flew back to Chengdu, Ben and I went to the Potala palace. It was a strange experience, but I'm glad we did it. The Potala Palace was the winter home of the DL and was symbolic of Tibetan leadership. No longer I think -- unlike the other places we visited, the Potala feels to be nothing more than a museum now.... given, a pretty magnificent one. Slipping in just before the doors closed at noon, we followed the pilgrims up the outside of the building in order to wind our way down, clockwise, through the palace. Near the top we peeked into what had been the personal quarters of various of the DLs themselves. Often a set of the guys' robes would be carefully arranged on a seat, as if they'd just slipped out of them. There were many many altars (look at the size of that building!), but some of the most stunning and interesting of the things we saw were the enormous gold and jewel-encrusted stupa tombs of the DLs, sometimes stored in crypts that might span floors 5-8 within the building. All cool stuff. The less-appealing factor came in the form of the rigid line of people that we had to be a part of, shuffling along the pilgrim path accompanied by the shouts and stern attention of guards who certainly took their duties seriously. I'm glad we decided to see it for ourselves and draw our own conclusions, but overall we both thought that, compared to the vibrancy of many other [functioning] sites, the Potala was not worth the steep entrance fee.

The next day, we shook off Lhasa itself for the day and headed out to Ganden monastery. Ganden is about an hour and a half outside of Lhasa and is on top of a mountain with beautiful views of the valley below. Getting there and back was a bus adventure that deserves mention -- the new road which scales the mountain, allowing us to catch the daily bus straight to the monastery, feels like a huge and very dangerous Lombard street as the bus barrels up the steep face around hair-pin turns that seem as though they'd be physically impossible for anything bigger than a roadster. Ben closed his eyes. Once at Ganden however, the drama and beauty of the place overwhelmed any other thoughts. Curved into a protective impression just below the peak of the mountain, the monastery shines brilliant white and gold. Reconstruction and a rebuilding of the monk population is ongoing, because it was badly damaged during the Cultural Revolution (it had been shelled). Surrounding the monastery and completely circling the peak of the mountain, was an incredible kora. The narrow and rocky path gave great views of the valley, and we passed a sky burial site, many burnt juniper and stone offerings, a multitude of prayer flags, hermitages, rock paintings, and a yak as we climbed. After making our way through much of the monastery, seeing both the old, the refurbished, and the new, we sat down on a stoop to chat with a monk. Score one for our communications was the monk's verdict that ben's hairy legs were like a yak. Then he upped the ante, drawing maps with his hands, rolling a few key words like "Bush" and "Islam" back and forth, and finally hammering down and crushing the fingers of his right hand with his left. Foreign policy discussions on the top of a mountain in Tibet.

The next day we again caught a pre-dawn bus, this time heading out of town for two days, to Samye. Built in the late 8th century by Trisong Detsen, the first Tibetan king to embrace Buddhism, this was the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet, and was where the first seven monks lived. Later, it was also the site of a great debate on which strands of Buddhist thought Tibet would ultimately follow.

A few bus-hours outside of Lhasa, we crossed the jewel-like Yarlung Tsangpo river and emerged into what looked like desert. The scenery would swing from sand dunes to mountains besides us, with views of mountains and red-leaved orchards across the blueblue river from us. At this point the bus started bouncing wildly along the rocky road, and didn't stop for another hour and a half, long after we were sore and beat up. Our fellow passengers were all Tibetan and they all had different reactions to the rattling we were getting. One family spent the time chasing after their large bucket of milk which was being churned as it slid around the aisle. Others lit cigarettes and smoked with skill. And in a brief pause for mechanical problems, others pulled out a small plastic gas container and began to distribute cups of home-brewed chang. It was a fun ride! This is the nice old man who sat behind us, chanting mantras under his breath most of the way.

Once in Samye, we found a place to stay in the village by the monastary, and spent the afternoon hanging out with some old tibetan ladies and some local kids. After a long lunch with the old ladies, drinking tea and shooting the shit using mostly hand gestures, we shot pool and ben kicked around a soccer ball with the kids until it got dark. The next day we woke up to very different weather. It was colder, with heavy clouds on all horizons and wind whipping by us. So we pulled our hats down a little lower and took off for a large hill just East of the monastery, where supposedly Guru Rinpoche had once stood and vanquished all the pre-buddhist demons in the valley below. We were buffeted by wind at the top, but caught views of the monastery's unique design. Samye is a 3-dimensional manifestation of a mandala, the buddhist representation of the world. The drama of the day was all around us with prayer flags flapping in the wind around our heads, dark clouds, and the perfect mandala spread out below us. First surreal moment of the day.

As we headed down to the monastery itself, it started to snow. Entering the main building, we found the power out, and in the dark there was only flickering candlelight to expose the chanting monks whom otherwise we could only hear, accompanied by huge drums and deep horns several meters long. Surrounding that main hall was a pitch-black stone corrider that we felt our way through. Samye is famous for it's epic murals, but also for the architecture of this main hall. The bottom floor is Tibetan, the next is Chinese, and the top is Indian. We wound our way up, emerging on the top floor walled only in latticework and filled with the blowing snow fluries. I don't entirely know how to describe it except that it was beautiful and thrilling.

The storm clouds chased us back to Lhasa that afternoon, but didn't drop more than flurries onto the dry plateau.

On our last day, we walked one last time for views of the Potala, but stayed mostly in the Barkhor, doing a little shopping and just generally drinking in the experience of the bustling Tibetan quarter.

On Tuesday we walked up the bottom of a mountain just outside of town, to Chubsang ani gompa -- Chubsang nunnery. Chubsang is like a medieval village clustered on a mountainside. There are wandering cows and small chapels scattered through the compound, and the nuns and their abbot are incredibly friendly. As soon as we made our way up through the maze of little alleys, we were welcomed and ushered inside the abbot's rooms, where a traditional New Year's spread was all laid out, and urged upon us. There were tons of little flaky pastries, sweets, fruit, drinks, and most of all, the ubiquitous yak butter tea, bane of most foreigners travling in tibet. It's a soupy, yellow-ish tea that smells and tastes really strongly of... well, yak. Weaker versions of the tea have actually started to grow on me, though the 6 cups I had to down at the nunnery may have had to do with that. After a friendly half-hour of snacking, nuns came in with freshly-made yak momos, tibetan dumplings. Totally stuffed, we finally exited, after being given katas (traditional white scarf) by the abbot and the nuns. Instead of heading back down to the road, we bushwacked our way around the corner of the mountain, and down through dusty fields to Sera monastary, at the base.

At Sera, we began to walk the kora. Just a little way around though, we started climbing up a steep crack in the rocks to reach an outcropping where we wanted to hang some prayer flags. A good-sized climb later (bless pierce and ben for not letting me slip down backwards), we reached the top and added a long strand of prayer flags to the cluster already strung there. We had incredible views on a perfect blue-skied day. I'll load pictures when I can.

One precarious descent later, we continued the kora, edging past a holy spring as well as pilgrims slowing making their way by prostrations around the big monastay.

Yesterday, we woke up late to an invitation by the workers in our hostel to a party at noon. That sounded like good food to us, so we showed up at noon ... only to find that we were the only foreigners there, and our hosts were speaking almost solely tibetan while watching pretty terrible chinese comedy shows on the tv. After much gnoshing on more New Year's snacks (laid out in every home and gathering place these days), and toasting with chang, the local home brew, a fermented barley drink, we tried an exit strategy. It sort of worked. They asked us to come back at 2. With some misgivings we did, but we were treated to a great meal of boiled meat (yak? cow? sheep? goat?) and potatos. Our hostel may be freezing cold, have interesting plumbing and the occasional sound of scurrying feet, but it's owners and workers are totally welcoming, sharing the holiday with us from New Year's morning when they woke us up with traditional foods and drink to ring in the new year, to their own celebration yesterday.

Today, Ben and I spent the afternoon at Drepung Monastary, just outside of Lhasa. Once the largest Tibetan monastary, it is also a maze of compounds and chapels built up a mountainside. A long pilgrim path was laid out throughout the complex with arrows which often pointed in patently opposite directions, but always led us, eventually, through beautiful old courtyards, and buildings filled with chapels and relics. These old monastaries were set up by a system of colleges, each with their own leaders, living quarters, meeting halls, and chapels, and the remnants of this system were evident to us, even with far far fewer monks in residence today. Afterwards, we walked down the mountain to Nechung Monastary, which had been the home of the Nechung oracle, without whom the Dalai Lama rarely acted. The last Oracle left Tibet with the Dalai Lama in 1959. We weren't able to get inside because of the long line of pilgrims, but we were able to see enough to appreciate the pre-buddhist influences of this particular site, including themes of possession and exorcism.

Tomorrow Pierce and his friend Mattias leave (they've been here two weeks already), but Ben and I have a little more than one week left. We've been getting lots of sun, a good bit of exercize, even though it's hard to catch one's breath this high, and a lot of relaxation in addition to being treated to stunning views, friendly monks, and the sheer magnitude of being "on top of the world". The one big frustration so far has been in trying to get a trip together to travel south along the Friendship Highway, down to Everest Base Camp. It's the New Year though, and it's been hard finding anyone to help put together a trip, much less an actual driver/guide. We have some time left, so we haven't given up, but it's starting to look doubtful. Still, there are a few day/2-day trips out of town that I'm really excited about, so we'll be able to push out of Lhasa a bit, no matter what.

Lhasa is the holiest, friendliest place I have ever been. Today, the first day of the Year of the Pig, pilgrims, children, shopkeepers greeted me with Hello! Tashi Delek! (tashee delay) -- best wishes, good luck.

Yesterday, our first full day in Lhasa, we walked the Barkhor: the teeming, brightly colored, noisy kora (holy circumambulation) surrounding the Jokhang, the holiest site in Tibet. Crowds eddied through the cicuit, buying and selling, stopping to eat, but always flowing clockwise among the pilgrims doing their prostrations along the route. The Barkhor is the heart of the Tibetan district of Lhasa. Afterwards we followed the Lingkhor, a road which outlines the original periphery of Tibetan Lhasa. We walked in a crowd of pilgrims, all spinning their prayer wheels as they walked, and all greeting us. We walked to a hill clothed in prayer flags and decorated with holy paintings. Along the stone path people had left a myriad of junk... broken pieces of mirrors, plastic cups, small figurines and talismen, many coated with grime. And all of this stuff, under a canopy of colored flags and a haze of incense and brushed by old and bent pilgrims, was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

As we emerged on the other side, we faced a huge rock wall with an enormous blue buddha and attendants painted high up. The rock below was worn smooth by pilgrims' prostrations, and just below the cliff face was a small temple. As we were about to leave the area, a big ram wandered through at a fast clip... taking a quick look both ways and seeing no one in his way, the goat darted right into the temple! A monk, seeing him come in, ran up and smacked him right on top of the head. The ram was taking none of this, even from a monk, and tried to headbutt him! The monk eventually wrestled him out, and sent the goat, chagrined, on his way. Funniest thing I've seen in a long time!

That night, we wandered the Tibetan quarter, dodging intermittant fireworks (most set off by small children, all of whom own their own lighters) and watching as pilgrims lined up around the Jokhang. As it got close to midnight, we returned to our hostel on the outer edge of the Tibetan area, and happily found ourselves caught in the midst of the best firework show I've ever seen. Fireworks were being set off left and right -- full sized shows were going off at either end of our street, and in between, every other restaurant and shop was setting off its own chains of firecrackers, punctuated by bands of kids shooting bottle rockets across the street at eachother. It sounded like we were in the midle of a war-zone, and as any of you who know how much I love fireworks might guess, I loved every minute of it. The bedlam went on for a solid 20 minutes, and all night long we'd be woken up by a big boom from someone's belated celebration. Firecrackers have gone off now and then all day, and there are still random fireworks going off tonight. The night before we arrived, the streets were apparently filled with bonfires as people burned old things, preparing for a clean start in the new year.

Speaking of a clean start in the new year, today everyone was out and about sporting brand new clothes. It looked like the number of Tibetans had tripled because so many more people were dressed in beautiful tradition clothing. The kids, wrapped up in tiny gold and fur coats, and sometimes wearing fur hats half again their own size, were adorable. Many also had new hairstyles. Today we parked ourselves in a small grassy spot by the Jokhang and spent the afternoon warm in the sun, making friends with a few families,some young tibetans, and several monks who were fascinated by our cameras. Best people-watching ever. We have some incredible photos to show for the afternoon, and I'll add some of those to this post in a few weeks when I get back home.

Oh! I should probably mention the train ride to Lhasa! We had been worried about getting tickets, but my dean helped us out and we ended up being in a farily empty train, a big change from normal travel in China! It took about 30hours, and we spent the whole of a day glued to the windows as we passed snow, tundra, mountains, yaks, nomads, the highest freshwater lake in the world (frozen over),antelope, and did I mention yaks? The highest point that we passed by train to the top of the world was a pass 5000+ meters high. Be on the lookout for a few pictures from this part of the trip too.

One thing that's really stuck out for me here has been the begging for alms. Both people in need, as well as pilgrims, and many children, ask for money at almost every turn within the tibetan quarter. It's traditional to just give 1mao (10mao to the yuan, 8yuan to the dollar). Most people also leave mao at each altar in the temples. In fact, it's a common sight to see people making change for themselves at the alters, exchanging yuan notes for the piles of mao. I try to keep a pocketful with me all the time. There is no stigma in buddhist thought attached to begging. You face life with humility, live on what you are given, and offer people the chance to gain good karma by giving alms. It's really given me pause at times, but I'm starting to appreciate the general air of acceptance and care and above all, the incredible focus and balance of the pilgrims here.

After Chengdu, we took a 33hour train ride to Beijing where we met Eva, my roommate from college who'd taken a week off from both school and work to come visit!

We did, however, have a few obstacles to overcome. The first was that while in Chengdu, I'd had an MRI... the aide holding my things came into the room a few times and my ATM cards (both chinese and american) were demagnetized by the machine. So. No money was the first problem. After a stressful few days, Peace Corps came through with an advance on our post-peace corps settling in allowance. In my quest to access that money in my China account though, I ran right into the phenomenol beauracracy of Bank of China. The employees were kind and apologetic to a fault but as it turned out, only my personal Lanzhou Bank of China branch could help me to do anything relating to my account. Including take out money. Okayyy.

Obstacle 2 was lunar calendar related. February 18 is the Chinese New Year this year... called Chun Jie, or Spring Festival. At this time of year, all of China picks up and goes home to be with their families. Mostly by train. And in China, you can really only get train tickets in the city you are departing from, slightly problematic if you arrive in Beijing on Thursday, want to leave on Saturday night, and tickets have already been on sale for 10 days during the biggest travel rush of the year in a country of 1.3billion people. It was touch and go for a while as to whether we'd get stuck, both in Beijing and Xi'an, but miracles happen and we pretty much stayed on schedule for Eva's Week in China.

Our first day in Beijing, before Eva arrived, Ben and I went to the Summer Palace, which was an imperial retreat, now on the outskirts of the city. The enormous man-made lake which dominates the landscape was very low and a little icy, but an early morning ethereal mist burned off to a beautiful blue sky. We spent a couple hours strolling around a large hill dotted with temples and pavilions and rock gardens. The next day, Eva in tow, we headed out to Simatai, a more remote and less re-constructed section of the Great Wall, about two hours outside of Beijing. Perfect weather and a morning to ourselves on the wall made our 6am bus totally worth it. That night we went out for some delicious Beijing Duck before crashing early.

Next day, nursing extremely sore legs from the Simatai hike, we scored onward tickets to Xi'an, wrassled with the Bank of China (we lost), and wandered Tian'anmen and the Forbidden City. Sadly, several of the major temples in the Forbidden City were undergoing some reconstruction and were wrapped up in netting, but we were still able to see a lot, even finding some courtyards and buildings which I'd missed on my first visit a few years ago. There is still a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City.

Ben left us for a foot massage while Eva and I squeezed in a last minute shopping trip before catching our train. I almost lost Eva (literally!) to the crazy purse sales ladies who just about tugged her arm off, and we left after an hour, totally dazed from the guantlet of buyers and sellers. We dashed back to the hostel to grab our luggage, and then headed to the [massive] Beijing train station. The only tickets we'd been able to get our hands on were softsleepers (rather than the cheaper hardsleeper we usually travel), and we took off for Xi'an in luxury.

In Xi'an we visited the terra cotta soldiers (now being hemmed in by a large "international plaza" for business and commercial use), walked through the temple complex at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, hung out in the town square, and spent the early evening in the busy streets of the Muslim district.

We caught a train home to Lanzhou, and found that spring is peeking around the corner -- the sky is clear and blue (maybe the biggest miracle of all), and there is a warmth in the air. We also found the city dressed for the New Year, with red and gold lanterns hanging everywhere, and every bus and neighborhood decked out with flowers, lanterns, and pigs (2007 is the year of the pig). It was so nice to get home.

This morning Eva left to go back to the States, and this afternoon Ben and I are leaving for Tibet.

Go here (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2081308&id=1511004) for a few photos.

IST = in-service training.

For 5 days at the beginning of February, Peace Corps brought all of the China 12s (with a one day overlap with China 11s) in to Chengdu for some rejuventation. There were some language lessons, and a lot of open sessions led by our peers about all aspects of our lives here, from travel to making good assessments of our students, to chinese philosophy and history. It was something I had not been looking forward to, but after an initial day of shock from so many people speaking such loud english, I came out of the week feeling really inspired and ready for semester 2. In our medical session I learned about more worms and parisites we might be exposed to (with some pretty gnarly accompanying slides), in language sessions I really felt inspired to study much harder in the upcoming semester, and in all the time spent with other volunteers sharing stories and ideas and expertise, I felt really proud to be a part of this group and to be doing the work we're doing. We played poker and ate cheeseburgers and shared allll the failures and triumphs of our first 7 months here. On the first night, we had an open mic night that blew all of us away I think, in the face of so much talent. One site-mate pair altered some lyrics and performed an acoustic song just for us, the China PCV's, that had half the audience in tears, me included:

This is our life

Chorus:

Well, it's cold outside and the sky is gray

Pressin' down on me with its dismal face

With my feet in the air and my head on the ground

Where is my mind, Where is my mind

Verse 1:

Well, it's cold outside and the sky is gray

Pressin' down on me with its dismal face

I'm in no mood to talk so I walk quickly

Head down hood on and hope that people miss me

(Please miss me, Please miss me, I'm beggin' you, please today just today miss me)

Today, no fake smiles, No superficial speaking

No learning about another last minute meeting

I know it sounds bad but it's the way I feel and it's real for me so please just let me deal

(Let me deal, just let me deal, Today please no pep talks, just let me deal)

Let me miss my mom

Let me miss my Dad

Let me miss my job

Let me miss the man I had

Today, just let me hurt today

Chorus:

Well, it's cold outside and the sky is gray

Pressin' down on me with its dismal face

With my feet in the air and my head on the ground

Where is my mind, Where is my mind

Verse 2:

Well, it's cold outside but it's a beautiful day

I woke up, ate and showered, now I'm on my way

There's some slide in my glide and some pep in my step

As I speak to strangers on my right and my left

I'm in the mood to talk so I walk slowly

Head up hood down as I speak to those who know me

(those who know me, speak to those who know me, today it's so good to see all of those who know me)

Today, I'm full of smiles

Today, I can't stop speaking

I'm up for banquets and for last minute meetings

To me, it seems a dream this life that I've been given

Me in Peace Corps China, You got to be kiddin'

I love my students

I love my waiban

I love my site mate Matt

I love my life man

Today, I feel so good today

Chorus 2:

Well, it's cold outside but it's a beautiful day

I woke up, ate and showered, now I'm on my way

With my feet planted firm and my head held high

This is my life, This is my life

And this is my life, this is my life

And this is your life,

And this is my life

And this is our life

And this is my life,

And this is your life

And this is our life

This is our life

Internet was largely down for a few weeks after Christmas and I wasn't able to post... I did send a long email out to those who I knew read my blog. I'm reposting most of it here for the sake of continuity:

Just before Christmas, the English department put on a large "Christmas party" for the school. Several hundred students probably attended. They use the word 'party' with abandon around here, but I use it rather more cautiously because their 'parties' are usually a long performance, complete with 4-6 girl and boy hosts who all have microphones and wield them fiercely, often in ear-splitting unison. Glow sticks and swords were handed out as well as the clapping-hand noisemakers. People talk the whole time. The theme for this particular party was "Fly your dreams." Students performed everything from raps, both traditional and hip-hop dance, pop songs, traditional musical instruments, and even a comedy skit that retold Romeo and Juliet in mostly-Chinese and kept interrupting itself with product placement spots. I sang Silent Night as an offering from the small foreigner contingent at the event. Not sure if my description has made it sound fun, but I had a GREAT time. My seniors had been the main organizers for the party, dashing around all evening with super worried looks on their faces. And my sophomores were largely the stars of the night! They made up at least 75% of the performers, and did an amazing job! I was positively puffed up with pride in them. This night was an amazing culmination of the semester for me, even though only parts of it were in English. Sitting down in the audience (front and center of course -- let's not forget that I AM the honored foreigner), it really hit home that a teacher feels some ownership of every one of their students. Not like a parent does, but really sort of a slightly smaller feeling very close to that, and for so many students. I left that evening blind from about 100 camera flashes of students wanting a Christmas photo taken with the foreign teacher, and on a total teacher's high from pride at my talented kids. I finished up the 1st semester's classes that week. With classes done, life has been rather different since Christmas. Many of the volunteers and several of our Chinese friends got together for a Christmas eve chili cook-off party. It was a really nice night, low-key and delicious. Opened gifts and packages the next day with Ben and a few of our Chinese friends. On New Year's Eve day my department held a big bash to celebrate the end of the year, renting out the 5th floor of a hotel for the afternoon and opening it to the English teachers and their families. I was rather confused about this, til I arrived with Ben and a Chinese colleague, David, to find a mini-bowling alley, karaoke, ping-pong, and pool tables. We spent a great afternoon bowling and chatting with my colleagues before heading upstairs to the ubiquitous Chinese banquet. A number of school officials began making speeches up at the front, with no one apparently paying any attention except for clapping every few sentences. We were starving and already surreptitiously digging in to the first round of cold dishes when I heard my name. I look up and sort of do a general nod to the room, hoping that will do, but my dean rushes over, grabs my arm, and drags me up front to make a speech. I stammer through a passable thank you for the welcome/ I'm excited to be working with you all/ Xinnian Kauile! (happy new year) speech. After returning to my seat, the teachers at my table inform me that that was the first time a foreigner has been asked to speak at this event in at least the last 6 years. And to think, with just a few minutes of warning I could have done something great! To be fair, one of the best skills that China has been developing in me is public speaking. At any event I attend, there is a likely chance that I will be asked to stand up and give some sort of talk, or even sing something. Keeps me on my toes at least. The following week I finished giving oral exams and started the avoidance stage of the semester. Two reasons. The first is that at the beginning of the semester I was told that my classes were exam-based (the final exam making up the bulk of the final grade), when in fact, come to find out at the end of the semester that they are actually comprehensive. Too bad I have almost no grades from the kids with which to compile a comprehensive grade. I feel a bit of a fraud going back and filling in that sort of thing from the notes I took on each student over the semester, but I suppose it's all I can do to salvage things this time around. The other reason is that I have a whole stack of paperwork as well as some online spreadsheets -- all in Chinese -- to complete with grades and analysis. The department helpfully printed out lots of screenshots and instructions (also all in Chinese) to make the whole process a little more transparent for me. Ah well, I'll get that all sorted out and turned in over the next few days. Yesterday I met with the 6 seniors that I'm thesis advising next semester. They have to write 25-35 page papers in English to graduate as English majors, and mine are writing on topics ranging from Milton and Hardy to Gothic British literature to whether China's young people need a new symbol such as the Long March, to the varying global symbolisms of the Dragon and whether China should keep it as part of the national identity. I know I'm a nerd but I'm sooooo excited to see what they do with these topics. On the literature side of the advising, it's a good thing I'm teaching British Literature next semester in addition to listening and speaking, so I'll have to be brushing up on the subject anyway!Last week we found ourselves with some free days, so Ben and I took off for Xiahe, a small town 5-6 hours southwest of Lanzhou by bus. Xiahe is an incredibly special place, located right on the edge of the grasslands, and home to Labrang monastary, the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastary outside of Tibet itself. The population is part Tibetan, part Hui people (Muslim minority), and part Han. Usually an important tourist destination, we found the town deserted of foreigners. Fair enough, it was freezing afterall, especially in our room where the heat didn't quite make it on. But it was also one of most unique places I have ever been in my life. Tibetan and nomadic pilgrims pour into the town from the grasslands at various times of the year, and trickle in at all times to stock up on things or to visit the monastary. Over 1200 monks of all ages, dressed in a range of deep fuscia-colored robes wander the town and monastary. Labrang itself is a maze of housing and meeting rooms for the monks, as well as maintaining many many temples and altars. It is also home to 5 "institutes" of learning and debate. Ringing the monastary is a 3km pilgrim path lined with prayer wheels. I was going to just walk along it, without spinning the wheels. Afterall, I'm not Buddhist and was walking in the midst of real pilgrims. But as you start walking, it's impossible not to reach out and at least brush each of the beautifully painted wheels. In some long stretches of the path it became hypnotic and extremely peaceful even while the right arm aches from spinning the heavier wheels.

The view that will stick with me forever is a large courtyard in the center of the monastary with close to 200 monks scattered in debate. On a raised platform at the front, a man who I think is one of the reincarnated lamas rocked and spoke quietly. Below him, slightly older monks sat listening to groups of young monks debate. Each man or boy slapped his hands together, shooting the right one forward, everytime he made a point. There was tons of laughter and pushing and shoving. And watching it, you know that this exact scene has gone on forever in Tibetan monastaries where debate is considered a critical part of education and development and understanding. On a hillside above sat over a hundred more monks, all older and in darker robes, filling up a depression in the side of the mountain. We wanted a picture desperately, but held back because most monks don't want their picture taken. While on the path surrounding the monastary, we approached a view overlooking the courtyard and both had our cameras at the ready, but when we actually came to the gap in the wall, neither of us could bring ourselves to take a picture. So I don't have a picture of this for you. Maybe I'll try again in Tibet.

Last Saturday night, I invited all of my students over for a pre-Christmas celebration. Several of the other foreign teachers here, all of whom are very religious, hold Christmas dinners and discussions in their homes, but I really wanted to give my students a taste of the magic which builds up throughout December. They kept telling me that they wanted to experience a "real" Christmas, and for me, half the magic is in the preparations and the build-up, so here are a few photos from my attempt to give my students a cultural peek at Christmas-time: http://uva.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069312&l=f42da&id=1511004

Several of my senior boys were determined to dig up a tree for me, saying that a fake tree meant a fake christmas, and that they wanted me to have a real one. Normally I sort of agree with them, but I really love the fake tree that I found at a small store across town, and I think it turned out beautifully. I am a little worried that I'll wake up on Christmas morning and find a tree leaning against my front door... We decorated, made and frosted cookies, listened to christmas music (thanks Mom and Adrienne for the great Christmas mixes!!) and generally had a smashing good time. The students had fun, but it really meant the world to me because it finally felt like christmas in my home away from home.

All over the city, stores and restuarants and hotels are dressing up for Christmas and it is a bizarre feeling to be a Westerner wandering around the city right now. Many of the laoban (store owners) don't even know the word Christmas if I ask them about it, though it festoons their shop windows. When I went shopping for some decorations, I was barely noticed among the hordes of people pushing into the few stalls which had holiday decorations. A welcome, if surprising, experience.

On Thursday night the English department will be hosting an enormous Christmas 'party' for the University -- from what I can gather, party, in this situation, means a large and probably lengthy performance. I'm supposed to be singing Silent Night, but I have no idea what other representations of Christmas there will be. Maybe I should give a mini-lecture on Chanukkah, though I think it would burst their bubble a bit. Sunday night I'll be gathering with the other volunteers in Lanzhou for a salsa-licious Christmas eve, then spending the morning of with Ben and three of our closest Chinese friends. Yes of course there will be stockings. Pancakes too.

With all this, what about school you might ask? Well, I'm working on putting together exams, which I'll be giving during Christmas week. This week we're wrapping up course material and reviewing. I can't believe the semester is practically over! I've learned so much, and hopefully I'll be going into the next semester prepared to offer the students more predictable schedules and rubrics, but overall, I think I've hit on some routines that really work well, and I believe that gotten at least something from my lessons and the mad-cap role-plays we often get caught up in. Next semester I know I'll be teaching British literature to the junior english majors, and I'll be thesis advising 5 or 6 of the seniors which is supposed to be quite time consuming. I'll continue teaching listening and speaking, though I don't know yet if it will be with my sophomores or if I'll get a crack at the freshmen. It will be a much more demanding semester all together, but now that I've had my first few months of trial-by-fire, I'll be ready for it (I hope).

This weekend I went down to a small town between Lanzhou and Tian Shui, called Luomen. Wandering down from the traintracks early on the morning of market Sunday was a total assault on the senses: music blaring, people yelling greetings, fruit and tea everywhere. Loved it! I was there in search of the Water Curtain Caves. The area is about 17 wild kimometers from the town, passing through a steep and twisty streambed before widening into a wider canyon of huge sandstone domes with temples and ancient cave paintings and carvings embedded in the cliffs. The main cliff work features a 31-m high Buddha surrounded by paintings and carvings finished in the Northern Wei dynasty (AD 386-534). Side note: our awesome taxi driver who got us out there in one piece also served as guide for us and while I certainly couldn't catch everything, I understood some of what he was saying about the history of the place! Here are a few of the pictures I took in this incredible place.

It snowed yesterday and after we, the residents of Lanzhou, had collectively ground it into a gray mush, it froze into a solid sheet of ice covering most streets and sidewalks around the city. Walking to class this morning through the single-digit cold was dangerous as I had to avoid the many chinese ladies, apparently unwilling to give up their heels, who went flying; shoes, vegetables, and papers every which way.

Last week I spent two afternoons judging an English competition. The ages of the students ranged from around 6 to 12 year olds. The first day, with the young ones, was pretty priceless. Tucked in, two to a seat, they filled the auditorium. They each recited a little story, sang a little song, and answered two of the pre-provided questions that I asked them. They were adorable, but it really provided a lot of insight into the background of my students. Something which, when we have the energy, we all fight, is the habit of our students to say Nice to meet you every time we see them. Nice to see you again seems a lost cause. Even my senior english majors will slip up in this little way if I catch them by surprise on the street. Doesn't seem like a big thing, I know, but when everyone you see always says nice to meet you, even those you see daily, it can suddenly seem like a looming grammatical point. ANYWAY, a provided "question" for me to ask these litt'luns was Nice to meet you. The answer we were looking for I presume being Thank you. Nice to meet you too. Other 'questions' in the same vein were Happy Teachers' Day. Real questions were more like holding up a few fingers and asking how many? Not how many fingers mind you. I got yelled out for that. They haven't learned the word fingers yet. And if it's not on their vocabulary lists, there's obviously no way the kids could understand, even with me wiggling my fingers and pointing at them. Well, talking about contextual learning had no place in the middle of the competition I guess.

With the older kids, the next day, I asked each of them 2-3 questions that I took from the story they recited. They probably hate me. There were few that they considered appropriately easy -- one student even said "that question is too difficult, please give me another." Someone coached her I suppose. But the thing was, they weren't hard at all... they just addressed the content of the stories, something only a few of the students were familiar with. It was frustrating for me because I think a ten year old telling a 1-2 minute story should also be required to know what they are talking about! It's a very different system over here. And yet I can't totally dismiss it because my students have enormous vocabularies and grammatical backgrounds in English, allowing me to have fun with the real communicative aspects of the language in my classes. And there is a significant difference in ability from year to year, so something is working.

Another thing which I found interesting is the degree of tracking -- each grade had around 7 classes, and the brightest/best students are in class 1, the next best in class 2, and so on. This is something that continues straight through to University. And the difference between classes is clear even among the 6 year olds, only increasing in effect among the older children. Really drove home the arguments for inclusion in classes. Students pegged to a lower numbered class in early childhood are likely to stay there right through to the level that I teach at, affecting their goals and achievements at every turn.

From a western point of view, this educational system seems stifling and almost backward at moments, apparently valuing the perkiness of an english "performance" over content, originality and communication. But it's really not that simple at all. Chinese students outperform American students in most (all?) academic areas, and by not-slim margins. They have a discipline, dedication, and respect for academics which is lacking in the states. Here it is inculcated at a very young age through constant competition, ranking, formalized testing. Three of the least inspiring methods of evaluation, and yet, successfull in many respects. Some sort of compromise between Eastern and Western education seems like an important concept, particularly as we at home seek pretty desperately to rehabilitate the American school system. And in that context, I think the wave of new charter schools in the states seems on the right track. They, like the chinese, have many extra hours built into the school day, teach discipline and scholastic 'attitude' as they teach regular subjects. But they also keep more western standards of fostering intellectual curiosity and multi-cultural conciousness, things I find lacking in many of my Chinese students, though only because they haven't been a part of their education.

Anyway, just a few thoughts as I keep puzzling things out over here.

So Thanksgiving was delicious and plentiful and comradely and everything Thanksgiving away from family and the States could possibly be. Ben and I were up half the night before cooking, and I know lots of others were too. It was completely worth it -- that's just about half of the spread we had that you can see there at the bottom. In this picture we've got 15 PCV's, 4 Chinese friends, and another PCV plus some other UK friends out of the frame. From the evening we were missing just 7 of the Gansu PCVs.

Winter is here at last, and with a vengeance. After an abnormally long, wonderful, fall, it has gotten cold, and will get much colder. I've heard varying reports between -10 and -15 degrees celsius for the coldest days of January and February. I'm choosing not to convert that to farenheit, it sounds bitter enough as is. Today it was in the mid-30s and felt almost balmy. I got overheated playing pingpong outside with a student this afternoon! The entire province has been winterizing. Outdoor restaurant stands are featuring shaguo (an earthernware pot stuffed with meat and veggies that they pour water into and cook over a high flame), hot potato stands and tanghulu (candied fruits on a stick) abound, and foods considered innard-warming, like yams, are readily available in the markets. An occasional jingle-bells cell phone ring on a crowded bus makes for a good pick-me-up. While I have seen houses in the countryside decked out in drying corn and peppers, I have only just started noticing that many apartments in the city have also looped drying red peppers up in their sun porches. It's festive looking, but also a really tangible reminder of the season. I love catching a glimse of the bright, spicy, strands when I bus through some of the more run down neighborhoods in town.

Two weeks ago it started snow flurrying, and in English Corner, Einstein, one of my favorite freshman, jumped up to excitedly tell us all that he had seen his very first snow that morning. It snowed more that night and I got an ecstatic text message from him the next day that read "Snowing ! ! ! ! ! !". It was beautiful though, I wish it had accumulated a bit. A few hours out of town it did stick a bit, dusting the terraced hills and looking gorgeous. Both the English Corners that week had been about Love for some reason, and between kids taking notes on pick-up lines and uttering words of wisdom like Puff's "Love is not so much a feeling to be felt as an ation to be learned", it made for pretty interesting, if sometimes repetitive conversations.

This last Friday, Dec. 1st was World AIDS day and I conducted small lectures in English Corner and in several of my classes -- the only safe sex/HIV "education" my students have had has been from TV. With my sophomores, on the day of, we played an HIV transmission game (yeah, I feel as weird typing that as you do reading it) in order to drive home how quickly HIV and other STDs can be spread and the importance of education and praciticing safe sex, whether that means abstinence or correct condom use. They thought they'd just been having fun running around the room playing a crazy conversation game, and the looks on their faces when I told them they'd actually all been running around the classroom 'having sex with eachother' was priceless. That class was particularly receptive to the information I had for them.

Next week is the last week of classes for most of my students' courses. My classes technically have 3 more weeks each, though, since I started 2 weeks into the semester. I feel bad since most of my kids are preparing for finals in all their other classes, so I'm going to try to swing it so we review next week, they take their exams for me in class, and then we have a (English only) party for the last class. But we'll see.

In apartment news, (1)I have a mouse (mice?). I am rather impressed with it's ingenuity, in fact, since there are no apparent holes in my walls, there are screens over those of my windows that don't close flush, and my place is in the middle of a brick and concrete apartment block. (2)Next week I'm hoping to either buy a fake christmas tree downtown somewhere, or somehow borrow one from the university's grounds. The next week I'll invite all my students over to decorate it and my apt., and make christmas cookies and listen to christmas music. I'm excited!

---> Speaking of the christmas spirit, if any of you were thinking of sending packages this way, there are quite large envelopes at the post office which mail as Global Priority Mail for about $11 and get here in 7-10 days. I would be thrilled to get some of those packets of dry mix for sauces/seasonings/muffins/ranch dressing that you can pick up at the grocery store. Those, mix CD's, magazines, reese's pieces, peanut butter cups, junior mints, and any other cheap and easy way that you might want to express your love would make my christmastime that much more special.

Kristen Rush

International Office

Lanzhou University of Technology

Langongping 287

Lanzhou, Gansu, 730050

China