Greatest Love Of All

Have been watching Whitney Houston videos since her passing. It's amazing how these songs bring so many feelings to the surface, feelings from junior high and high school. Here is one of her more inspirational songs...



I believe the children are our are future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be
Everybody searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me

[Chorus]
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be

[Chorus]
And if by chance, that special place
That you've been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love

Kwest for Kwik Kaffeine!

I have been on a quest for good instant coffee since arriving in China last weekend. I became somewhat addicted to Nescafe during my 6-week stay in Kathmandu, Nepal, which lasted from just after Christmas to the first week of February. Up until about a few months before leaving the states, I would have never even considered drinking instant coffee. But at some point I tried the Starbucks "Via" instant coffee and thought it was good enough in a pinch, which meant I started drinking it every morning when I got to work. But at home, I always bought and brewed fancy froo froo coffee beans, whatever that means.

So in Nepal, when you ask for a pot of coffee, they bring you Nescafe. Hey, whatever, it was good. Then it was great. Then I was addicted. Add to that a healthy dose of Nepali sugar and Nepali milk, and wham, no turning back.

I was sure to buy some Nepali sugar and powdered milk (and Tokla brand tea and masala spices for making Nepali masala tea) before I left for China. I arrived in China and went to find some Nescafe at the market. I found Nescafe, but all words on the box other than "Nescafe" were in Chinese. And on the front of the box there was a big "1:2" ... wha? So I bought a box of Nescafe and came back to my apartment to make some. I opened one of the lil pouches in the box and it looked awfully funny. It looked like a bunch of powdered milk or creamer with tiny brown flecks mixed into it. Were those flecks the actual coffee?! Oh no no no, I don't think so Nescafe! I boiled some water so I could taste test it, seeing how I had already opened it and there was no returning it to the store.

Sure enough, it tasted like...actually I don't know what it tasted like. It's not unpleasant, but it certainly isn't coffee. And it most certainly doesn't provide a sufficient caffeine buzz. Big fail.

So I went to another market to search for real instant coffee. None of this powdered-whatever business. I bought a tin of instant coffee, but again, most of the words were in Chinese, so it was another gamble. The only words in English were "Instant Coffee" and this time there was no "1:2" which I was now convinced was the source of the problem. Was that supposed to mean 1 part coffee, 2 parts mystery powder? Seemed like the case.

I came home and opened the tin, and once again I was severely disappointed. This time there seemed to be even fewer brown specks. And once again I boiled some water to do a taste test. Yep, same results. No real coffee taste, no real caffeine buzz. So sad.

I have gone to the market a couple of more times in hopes of finding real instant coffee, with no additives. Here's what I have so far...



Today I bought a tin that was all Chinese except for a "3:1" on the front. I sure hope this means 3 parts coffee, 1 part mystery powder! But I got it home and this tin doesn't have a simple peel back cover. I need a can opener and my apartment didn't come with one. Dangit! Back to the market.

I even resorted to buying the canned and bottled Nescafe to see if it packs a punch. So far, a big thumbs up to the canned stuff. Finally, I felt a teensie weensie caffeine buzz. Ahhhhhhh...

Adventures in dining

Earlier this week I went to the coffee shop next door and tried to order lunch. I was unable to read the menu, but luckily there were photos of some of the dishes. I pointed to a plate of steamed vegetables and tried to make it clear to the waitress that this is what I wanted. She didn't understand, so I somehow miraculously conveyed to her that I would like her to simply pick something and bring it, anything. By this time I just wanted food, any food, and would have been happy with anything. I'm still not sure how I was able to communicate that, while completely unable to point to a picture to say that is what I wanted. I'm getting pretty good at miming, or so I thought. I point to picture of vegetables, then to me, then to vegetables, then to my stomach, then to vegetables, then to my mouth and make chewing motions and go mmm mmm mmm and rub my belly. Still, no luck.

Anyway, she understood that I just wanted her to pick something. So she pointed to some Chinese characters on the menu and looked at me as if to say, "Is this ok?" and I nodded and smiled and off she went. I was excited to see what she would bring.

And to my extreme delight, she brought this...



I love eggplant! How did she know?! I was ecstatic! I had set my expectations really, really low, just in case she brought something with chicken feet sticking out of it. I was thrilled that she brought one of my all-time favorites!

So later when she came back to refill my water, I mime-asked her if she could please write down the name of the eggplant dish in Chinese so I could use it later when trying to order. Somehow she understood my mime question, and she gave me this (I wrote the English of course)...



So today I went to the coffee shop just to get out of the apartment, get some sunlight and do some reading. And when I got there I started craving the eggplant dish. Luckily I had the above note with me, and I showed it to the waitress. She looked a little confused, but then went "ohhh, ah ha!" and I nodded and smiled (something I'm getting really good at doing) and off she went. She brought me the same eggplant dish, so I was very happy. But this time there was no rice with it. When she came back, I tried to ask her for a small bowl of rice. First, she just brought an empty bowl. Oops, my bad. I tried again, and this time I really thought I did it right. But this is what came...



Wha? Huh? Oops. These eggs were really good, btw.

Then finally I remembered that I had my iPad on me and that I had downloaded a mandarin ebook of flashcards. I quickly pulled up the flashcard for cooked rice and showed the waitress...



Success!!

Here are the receipts for my eggplant and coffee, so now this is what I'll bring with me in the future. I'm sure at some point I'll want something other than eggplant...



Baby steps.

Squats

After about five or so days of being here in China, I noticed that my quads were really sore. Like, abnormally sore. I thought really long and hard about what could be causing this soreness. I certainly have walked a lot since arriving, but I walked a lot more in Nepal and never did my quads hurt like this.

Then the lightbulb came on. It could be one of two things...

1. I am now a kindergarten teacher and my students are teenie tiny, so I am constantly squatting down to meet them on their level.

Or...

2. Chinese public toilets. The squat toilet (I took this photo from a Google images search, and it accurately represents all of the public toilets I've seen so far, although this one may be a tad bit cleaner)...

But I'm gonna go more with #1 than #2 since I haven't used the public toilets THAT much yet.

Sounds of Haikou

I guess any time you find yourself in a new setting, your senses are sort of overloaded. New sights, new smells, new tastes, new sounds. So I thought I'd dedicate a post to the sounds of my new home. I live in a city called Haikou, which is pronounced HIGH-ko, and is the largest city in the Hainan Province, which is the little island off the southern coast of mainland China. I live on the third floor of a big apartment building, and because I am in a busy area of the city, there is constant noise around the clock.

Lots of horn honking. And it's not so much that the horns are honked out of frustration, anger or road-rage. It's more of a "hey I'm coming, please don't hit me, because I know you're not looking when you zoom across 4 lanes of traffic."

There's also this really weird car alarm, or some sort of alarm, that goes off at least a few times an hour. It might be the most annoying sound in the world, so I'm training myself to tune it out.

I can also hear my closest neighbors, the ones just next door. They are pretty quiet for the most part, but once in awhile they start speaking very loudly at each other. I think a large family lives there...mom, dad, son, grandma, grandpa, maybe even aunts and uncles. So sometimes it sounds like things get a little heated. A funny side note, our front doors are directly adjacent to each other, and they open outward. So if we both try to exit our apartments at the same time, our doors smash into each other and we're trapped inside. And it's already happened. We got stuck for a couple of minutes because they didn't understand me saying, "Ok, you go first" and I'm sure they were saying "Ok, you go first" in chinese but I didn't understand. So finally I went.

I noticed a funny sound the first time I did laundry in my cute little Chinese washing machine. When you start the washer it plays Beethoven's "Fur Elise" and I love it! That was the first song (besides Mary Had a Little Lamb) that my grandma taught me on piano.

At the coffee shop next door, which is quickly becoming my home away from home, they play some sort of CD on repeat. Instrumental versions of the following three songs are played constantly, and I love it…
1. Can You Feel the Love Tonight (from The Lion King, yes!)
2. My Heart Must Go On (from Titanic, yes!)
3. Ave Maria (which reminds me of the Chris Botti version, yes!)

Another sound I've noticed makes me very curious. I hear some sort of trumpet song at 6:45am every morning from somewhere far off in the city. It makes me think of someone playing the trumpet in the military to tell everyone to get up and eat breakfast, it's very strange.

And last but not least, one of the sounds I hear nearly everywhere, is that of a huge loogie being gathered in someone's throat. On my first visit to the coffee shop next door, I noticed a man constantly making the loogie noise, and as I peeked over at him, I saw him spit the loogie into the corner of the coffee shop! I was like oh no no no surely I am seeing things. But he kept doing it! So then I tried to see if there was a potted plant or some sort of loogie receptacle in the corner, but nope, none. He was spitting onto the floor. And then at a different cafe yesterday, I noticed another man do the same thing…just spit a big 'ol loogie right there onto the floor beside his table. I guess it's totally acceptable here. And now I know never to set my bag down on the floor in any public areas. Lesson learned.

Reading extravaganza

I'm so happy to have time to be reading again. Three books in two weeks, so happy! What's weird is that all three books I chose were written in the 1970's, just a funny coincidence I guess...

1. The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird
2. The Body Electric, by Thelma Moss, Ph.D.
3. The Facts of Life, by R. D. Laing

I picked out a few quotes from the third book that I really like...

"Are we all essentially, equally ignorant?
but some are more ignorant than others, ignorant
of their ignorance, hence thinking they know?"


"Am I unaffected by anything?

One cannot pluck a flower
without disturbing a star,
it has been said

And if the stars are disturbed?"


"Let your heart be like the sun
Shine alike on everyone."

Lucid dreaming?

I had a strange experience last night that I chatted with my friend Jen about this morning. Instead of rewriting it, here's the chat...

“well i just got into bed last night and was lying there really still, sort of like meditating, deep breathing stuff and trying to make my body feel really light, and then i noticed the sounds outside my apartment were just sort of floating far away below me....like they were going under water...

and the vibration sounds in my ears (hard to explain) were becoming a bit louder, like when you can hear power lines or something...

and then i felt the vibrations start going through my body, a little at first, and then stronger and stronger

and then in my mind i lifted my hand, even tho i knew that my real hand wasn't lifting, but in my mind i was telling my left hand to lift, and then i felt it 'come out of my body'...again hard to explain, so i kept going with that feeling, with the rest of the areas of my body.....

until it felt like my whole body had separated

and then i floated up to my ceiling, and in my head i said turn over

and i did

and i saw myself in my bed sleeping

and i was floating so i said to myself, i want to fly, and then all of a sudden i was in a very different place, very vibrant colors everywhere, and the grass and trees were very green

and i was flying slowly over all of this green grass, lots of rolling hills

so then in my head i was trying to control my flying and i came closer to the grass to fly low, and all of these tiny lightning bugs appeared and i flew through them as they were lighting up all around me

and the rest of the dream i was flying around exploring, and i saw lots of strange birds that i'm not even sure exist

and then i flew near a clothes line near a house or something and i picked up this big colorful sheet, and i was holding it above my head as i was flying

and then at some point i saw a couple of little kids and i flew near them, and they tried to take the sheet or something, and they weren't that mean or anything but they really wanted the sheet so i gave it to them and then i was back in my bed, awake

the end”

Made it to China

There's so much to write about in just the few days I've been in China, that I don't even know where to begin. I also feel like I haven't even fully absorbed and reflected on all of the things I experienced in Nepal. I'm sure the coming blog posts will be full of scatter-brained-ness and a mishmash of all kinds of nonsense. In the meantime while I try to compose some complete thoughts and sentences, I'll just paste something I wrote in an email to my mom about a couple of experiences in the last couple of days here in China. I really do love people so much...

"People here are so funny, I love it. I was leaving my apartment and this woman approached me all smiling and speaking chinese very quickly and excitedly, and making hand motions at me and then toward my apartment and then to herself and toward her apartment, and I figured out that she was telling me that we are neighbors. So then she hooked her arm through my arm like we were best friends, and we rode the elevator down together (I'm on the 3rd floor of my building) and she kept walking with me like that, arm in arm, just smiling and smiling until we had to part ways hehe. So cute.

Then last night I was leaving this little market by my place after picking up some air fresheners (cuz everything is so musty smelling in my place because it's so wet and moldy all of the time) and as I was walking out of the market, this older man was walking in, and as soon as we made eye contact he smiled super big and his eyes got all big and he yelled right in my face "HELLO!" and gave me a big thumbs up. It was hilarious! He must have been so excited to practice his only English word. That's exactly how I feel when I get to practice my chinese on people. I must look just like him...all crazed and maniacal, yelling broken mandarin at innocent people."

I am plant food

I am reading a fascinating book called "The Secret Life of Plants" and this passage really gives a different and interesting perspective of man's purpose in this world...

"Was it not one of the ultimate purposes of the human bodies to serve vegetal life, surrounding it by emitting carbon dioxide for the plants to breathe, and manuring them with human bodies after death? Did not flowers and trees finally consume man and, by combining his remains together with raw earth, water, air, and sunlight, transform and transmute human bodies into the most glorious forms and colors?" - Gustav Theodor Fechner (1839)

I really love how this makes me feel completely tiny in this world, yet full of purpose in this life.

Thank you, toilet.

After being in Nepal for nearly 4 weeks, I have become very thankful for the seemingly simplest of things...

Like a flushing toilet. I had problems with the toilet in my room for the past few days. First it was flooding all over the bathroom floor, and then it stopped working completely. Today it flushes and I thanked the toilet gods. I squealed and did a happy dance and said, "Thank you, toilet!"

And today as I turned on the shower and waited, the water finally became luke warm and I squealed and did a happy dance and said, "Thank you, shower!" Every morning it's a gamble on whether I will get hot water, room temperature water, or freezing water.

And later as I was out and about with classmates trying to catch a taxi to the school where we were to teach, and we had to get out and walk due to the bad traffic, I did a happy dance that it wasn't as dusty as previous days, and it was a little easier to breathe as we walked on the dirt roads to the school. And thankful for being able to take taxis in the first place, as that is certainly a luxury here, with how expensive they are and the severe fuel shortages.

And I'm thankful for toilet paper, and even having a shower in the first place, and having extra blankets on my bed, and having 4 walls to my room, and having the luxury of having toast and coffee for breakfast, and having coffee and some Toblerone as a snack this evening, and being able to sit next to a space heater in the hotel lobby while I do lesson planning for classes, and having wifi Internet, and having generator power even during some of the 14+ hours of daily power outages.

Life is good.