We FAIL at this whole keeping up with our blog thing!

Hi again guys!

I'm sure some of you were beginning to wonder what happened to us, sorry about that. I'd also like to say a big thanks to my darling older sister for nagging us to get back at it! So here we are with a brief update of the past several months.

Christine came to visit us for Chinese New Year. It was a really awesome trip & she really seemed to enjoy Shantou. Especially, big surprise, KTV. We took her around & showed her some of the local parks & sights & just generally took things pretty easy. Especially since Alex & I were so exhausted from working so long with no break.

Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival) remains my favorite time of year here in China. The decorations are fantastic, the people seem happier & there tends to be less trash everywhere. Though I suspect the latter has more to do with hiring more people to sweep the streets than anything to do with the holiday.

Christine also helped us play with my fancy new camera tripod! We may have had a little too much fun with it!

Everyone who walked past us while we were taking these light painting photos had the same extremely perplexed look on their faces, that was pretty great. Of course, the didn't ever bother not walking through my frame, so I've got a couple with ghost people in the edges. It only added to the fun though!

After Christine left, Alex and I went to a Super Bowl party. Yup, you read that right. Super Bowl party in Shantou, China. The owners of the restaurant, Il Santo, where said party was are Austrian. Really good guys. Both are good friends with Jimmy, who just happens to be from Eden, NC. I find this particularly funny because when we first met Jimmy he insisted we wouldn't know where he was from & left it at a very general "I'm from North Carolina". For any of you who don't know, Eden is maybe 20 miles from my parents house, so Jimmy was pretty amused to discover we did know where he was from.

Jimmy is apparently a huge football fan & he somehow managed to talk two guys who know nothing about American football into buying a "black market" tv box to get live tv from other countries & hosting a big breakfast bash in honor of the Super Bowl, which started at about 7:30 in the morning our time. It was great. Of course the poor tv box kept cutting out & Jimmy kept screaming at the wall where the game was being projected, but the breakfast was worth it! We met some other foreigners & our friend Brandice picked up a stalker. Basically just another day, especially for her.

Since then, we've been working, lots. But our contracts, and time here in China, are soon going to be drawing to a close! We have less than 3 months left! In our last 3 months, we plan to travel to both Shanghai (for 4 days) and Beijing (for about a week), which is really exciting for us since we haven't been able to travel as much as we had hoped to. I'm also working on finishing up a handmade quilt that I started on last year and Alex is hoping to get in time to make one last batch of beer.

We hope we'll see you all stateside real soon!

Cheers,

Elise

 

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Mid-Autumn Day and Typhoon Usagi!!!

Sorry guys for the several week hiatus... Lots of stuff's been happening, both here & at home, and we got a bit sidetracked, but we're back now!

Shantou's local mooncakes.

Mid-Autumn Festival was the first interesting thing that happened. That was on September 19th, which we had off from work. The locals celebrate by visiting their friends and family and making gifts of mooncakes, which are a traditional food. They also place food and two red candles on their balconies and pray to the full moon for luck and good health.

The local mooncakes in Shantou have a flaky crust, kind of like an apple turnover, and are filled with sweetened red or green bean paste. I know that sounds a bit strange, but we really enjoy them. The Guangdong style ones, however, have a bit thicker crust and have a salty egg yolk in the middle of the bean paste. Of those, we're not such fans, but they're still edible as long as you take care and miss the yolk.

We celebrated by going to KTV with some of our friends and just kicking back a bit. We did catch sight of the full moon on our walk home, and it certainly was beautiful peeking out from behind the various skyscrapers which dominate the Shantou skyline. Some of our co-workers brought us mooncakes on Friday too, which we were pretty excited about!

While at work Friday, I was checking out the American news on my phone and I saw a headline that said something like: "Super-typhoon has Hong Kong in sights". I thought to myself "Oh my, they must be mistaken because no one here has said anything about it". The day went on and it slipped my mind.

Saturday was our normal day off. Georgous weather, and by that I mean blue skies and almost cool enough to step outside without sweating through our shirts (a common problem here). Beginning at about 3pm though, we started getting texts from various people warning us of Typhoon Usagi, which, sure enough, was heading straight for Hong Kong. Shantou is only a bit to the north and east of Hong Kong so we were sure to get hit.

This isn't our first typhoon here, though NONE of the others have been much of anything, just a bit of rain. To be completely honest we usually find out that the "shower" was actually a passing typhoon when one of our co-workers mentions it in the office the next day. We weren't worried, to say the least. But then at about 8:30 Saturday night, they canceled school for Sunday. That had never happened before & was rather worrisome. We decided to be sure to stock up on canned foods and water, just in case. So we made a late night run to trusty Wally World, which is about a block from our apartment.

Sunday dawned cloudy and breezy, but it wasn't really very threatening. The wind did end up kicking up a good bit, quite a few trees fell. My main entertainment for the day was when a tree on the street below us fell and the response crew went to work on it with hand saws. Yup, you read that right. A tree down over a pretty major road & the road crew was only equipped with hand saws. They managed to hack off some of the furthest reaching limbs, which entertained me for a few hours, and then they gave up and just left the rest of the trunk lying in the street blocking a lane and a half of traffic. Not surprisingly, this minor obstacle didn't even phase the flow of traffic, most drivers just whipped into the oncoming lane and the blare of horns kept me up all night. A few however chose to fly up onto the sidewalk instead. It was great.

Not the best picture, I know, but this is the tree that entertained me for so long.

It didn't even rain enough to flood the street. That was rather surprising since the street usually floods if we get more than 10 minutes of constant rain. Our power never even went off. There were enough trees down for classes to be canceled Monday morning too though, which was very welcome after Sunday night when I couldn't sleep thanks to the traffic.

The most exciting thing that happened as a consequence of the Typhoon was that the hippopotamus somehow managed to escape from the ZhongShan Park Zoo. He found his way down to the river (more of a moat, really) that runs along the side of the park and made himself right at home there, bellowing at anyone that dared to come near him. He made the news, had the time of his life, and was re-captured and returned to the zoo on Monday. Poor hippo.

The trees weren't really cleaned up with any haste. It was Tuesday or Wednesday before the major roads were completely cleared and there's still branches hanging around on our alley.

The rest of the week was business as usual though, downed trees or no downed trees.

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What is this "KTV" you speak of???

Essential KTV Equipment

Karaoke television (or more commonly just KTV) is a favorite Chinese pastime. Many of our students and co-workers indulge once or twice a month and we go occasionally when we're invited. Though you all are familiar with karaoke from bars across America, KTV definitely has its very own Chinese spin.

Rather than getting up in front of a bunch of strangers and singing in a bar, you rent a room for a set amount of time. The room is private for you or your party, and it comes equipped with two or more tv screens, several microphones, booth seating, a disco ball, and a computer loaded with China's favorite hits (aka Michael Jackson and Avril Lavigne.)

Brandice, Me & Dani (Spring 2013)

You can order food and drinks to your room, including tea, beer, whiskey, popcorn, fruit, and chicken feet! Needless to say, our group orders drinks more often than food. You can ask for sets of dice to be brought to the room, which make for one of China's favorite drinking games.

Don't want to sing? There's always dice to be played or beer to be drunk.

Once you select a song to sing, it queues up on the computer, like a normal karaoke machine. There's actually a fair selection of English songs, but it's always a coin-toss whether they'll have the particular song you're looking for. When your song plays, the rest is fairly similar to regular karaoke, except for a couple extra perks. There's no need to leave your seat to sing. The microphones are wireless, so if you want to perform from the comfort of your booth, you can! Also, with no DJ, you have a little more freedom concerning how you sing. You can pause or skip songs, you can choose whether or not to play the voice track of the song's artist, and for the brave-of-heart, you can choose to remove the lyrics from the tv screen.

Alex showing up the students.

All in all, we enjoy KTV a bit more than your run-of-the-mill karaoke night in an American bar, because it's basically our own private party. It's pretty affordable, especially if you share the cost with some friends, and it can be a lot of fun. Everyone has a better time when they aren't singing in front of a bar full of strangers.

This doesn't happen often...

Since Shantou is a city with few entertainment attractions, you can probably imagine that KTV is pretty popular. It isn't our favorite activity here, but our students love it. Typically, when we go, it's because we've been invited by students, friends, or fellow teachers. Most recently, the school had a KTV shindig to give the students a relaxing atmosphere to get to know the staff a little better. But now that the summer rush is over and students are leaving, we are getting new invitations from students who want to see us a last time. That's actually what we're planning on doing tomorrow night.

Take care for now & we'll post again next week!

Elise & Alex

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So... This Finally Happened!!!

Hello Hello & Welcome to our first blog post!

In case you haven't noticed, we've been  pretty terrible at actually keeping in touch lately. Summer is our school's busy season so we've been pretty swamped with students since we've been back from the wedding but things are finally settling down some & we finally have time to concentrate on other things that we've been meaning to do... like this blog. Yay!

Lots of fun stuff has been happening in the past few weeks. Two weekends ago our boss decided to host a student/ teacher get together at KTV (karaoke television) on Friday afternoon. So he informed us we had to show up & schmooze with the students. All the teachers were a little unsure of how that would go because some of the students this summer are pretty immature and not very respectful to begin with, & that's before you add in beer and bad Chinese love ballads, but hey, it sure beats classes, right?

Alex sang a few songs & the students seemed pretty amused with his singing and song choice (since his songs weren't super sad/ depressing love ballads). I hid behind my camera most of the time but I did play a few rounds of Uno with some of the students.

This is nearly all the students at the school! Again, I'm hiding. Johny, our boss (front & slightly to the right, in the white shirt) did take pics later, but he couldn't figure out how to use my camera properly because you actually have to look into the viewfinder to use it, so those photos are a bit wonky

The students were all surprisingly good the next week, maybe we should do more morale building events. I mean, who doesn't like seeing smashed 16 year olds...

Last weekend we went to Xiamen, FJ, China to celebrate my birthday. It was an awesome trip, even though the weather was ridiculously hot. We spent Saturday at GulangYu, an island where a lot of Western embassies used to be located, so its architecture is very unlike the rest of China. There's also a whole lot of pianos on the island (thanks to the foreign influences) and we ended up seeing a piano museum and an organ museum, which were thrilling, I promise. In their defense, however, they were air conditioned. In addition to those we got to see a calligraphy museum, a seaside park and Sunlight Rock, which is the crescendo of the island (only a little pun intended). It was a really good day!

Our friend Maggie (from New York & also an English teacher in Shantou) came up and spent Saturday with us too. She showed us the Taiwan style snack street, that we didn't know existed despite visiting Xiamen last year. It has a full block or two of street food vendors packed into a narrow alley, which is crammed with people. Some parts smell great, others, not so much... That's what we spent our Sunday doing. We tried half a lobster smothered in garlic, a squid, an omelette (complete with mayonnaise & sprinkles on top) and for desert ice cream wrapped in mochi (Japanese rice dough) with cilantro & peanuts. Street food here is shockingly good, and unlike restaurant food, has never given us food poisoning.

This is the Xiamen skyline as seen from GulangYu.

Traditional fishing boats, I loved their eyes & all the colors!

Alex, Me & Maggie

Tiawan style "snack" street! Tons & tons of really tasty street food! :) Yum!

I reckon that's all for tonight, but we're going to try real hard to post once a week, feel free to e-mail either of us if we forget!

Cheers,
Elise & Alex