Exploring Haikou

I have been making an effort to get out and explore the city a bit more lately. And since the only camera I have is my iPhone, and I can never seem to capture very good cityscapes, here are a few nice ones I stole borrowed from Haikou's Wikipedia page...






Today I decided to check out another of Haikou's big public parks. I have visited Evergreen Park several times, which is a very beautiful and spacious park right on the ocean. It has a lot of open grassy areas and lots of pathways for walking or riding bikes. It also has an amusement park and some outdoor exercise equipment. But today I wanted to check out a new park, so I searched around online and found a list of Haikou's major parks.

I chose Golden Bull Mountain Ridge Park (金牛岭公园: Jīnniú lǐng gōngyuán) because it is fairly large with lots of tree coverage, a cemetery, a zoo and other interesting things to see. I didn't end up going to the zoo, but I did manage to walk a couple of hours along all of the beautiful paths through the trees. I figured the park would be much busier with it being a Sunday and all, but it was so peaceful, and the day couldn't have been more beautiful. I expected the usual afternoon rains to come rolling through in the middle of the visit, but I lucked out and the skies were bright blue with little poofy clouds rippling across the sky. Here are a couple of pics from my visit...




The rest of the pics are up on Flickr here.

i lost my run . com

I mapped a 10 mile run using mapmyrun.com, was pretty confident I could stick to the route, but managed to get lost about half way through it.


Help. I think I'm lost. And this is not a flattering angle.
I'm not sure where I ended up but thank goodness I brought enough cash along for a cab ride home. I magically hailed a cab that had the AC on full blast, and the cabbie was super friendly and chatty (most of them have seemed hesitant to try talking with a foreigner even when I've initiated conversation), and I got home just before the afternoon rains hit. Even though I lost my run, it turned out not so bad...even got to see new parts of the city.


This is right about where I realized I was lost.

5 Little Monkeys

I know I'm pretty new to this whole teaching thing, but as of today I may be the worst teacher in the world.

I was teaching my youngest classes (the 3yr-olds) the 5 Little Monkeys song, and I selected 5 little munchkins to come to the front of the class so we could act it out since they are such little hams already. And I taught them that when we sing "1 fell off and bumped his head" they are supposed to squat down and yell "OUCH!" but they took it a step further.....they thought it was funny to fall to the ground very dramatically and actually bang their heads on the tile floor! And then yell OUCH HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Omg I about died, both of laughter and fear...so I quickly asked the Chinese teacher to explain to them not to actually hit their heads. I can just picture them going home and saying "mommy, look what my English teacher taught me today" ::smashing head motions:: Yikes.

Popup Chinese

This is my new favorite site for learning Chinese...



http://www.popupchinese.com

Well, it's new to me anyway...the site itself has been around for years and they have a ton of content. I love that all of their podcasts are free to listen to, and if you pay for the annual membership, you get all of the transcripts and can download the podcasts. So far I have been listening to the "Absolute Beginner" podcasts online for free and will likely purchase a membership once I progress to the more challenging levels.

The hosts of the podcasts provide real-life scenarios and conversations, and then break them down line by line. Not only am I learning a lot of practical Chinese very quickly, I'm learning a lot more about the culture and how people really speak.

KTV on a school night

One of my coworkers invited me out to karaoke with her friends last night, and it was 8pm and I was already contemplating konking out for the night. At first I thought, ooh hmm errr on a school night? ::pause:: YES PLEASE! (I think as I inch closer to 35 I'm rebelling more and more against logic).



I sang worse than usual, but I did get to try out my very first Chinese song! Success! And then I introduced China to a little Shania Twain ("Any Man of Mine") and Kanye West/Estelle ("American Boy") to show them some country twang and raps, you know, show them how diverse we are. After countless Chinese love ballads, it was much needed, no matter how terrible it sounded.



And here are a couple of videos of my coworker and her friends singing...

Afternoon time with my C.A.G. (Chinese Adopted Grandma)

Just returned from a mid-day run (not the smartest time to be outside here) and stopped at the hole-in-the-wall place that serves yummy iced tea drinks, and then plopped down on a rock outside my building to cool off a bit. The old lady neighbor who fed me mangoes the other night sat and chatted with me awhile and then invited me into the security booth to sit under the fan because she said I was "too red", hehe so sweet!



Then she read me some newspaper articles, not that I could understand much of it. And she took time to teach me several of the Chinese characters. Then she lectured me on being outside in the sun when I should be napping. Then she noticed my iced tea drink was empty, just a cup of ice at that point, and she grabbed it out of my hands and chucked it out of the booth onto the sidewalk. Guess that's what we do with trash here.



You know how we say "thank you" for everything?...and everyone here tells me "stop saying thank you!"...well I have the same problem about litter, I just can't do it. So, trying not to insult her kind gesture (of trying to get rid of my trash for me) I went and picked up the cup and then put it on my forehead and joked with her that I need the ice so that I can stop being so red. I'm glad she laughed and didn't get offended.

Then she shooed me away to go take a nap.

Nearly everyone you run into here will ask you "have you eaten?" and "have you napped?" and if you answer "no" or "not yet" you are punished with stern "tsk tsk tsk" noises and concerned looks. It's kinda hard not to fall in love with a place that punishes NOT eating and napping all the time.

Diggin' to China

I posted this to Facebook last week...

I had a very doofus-y moment this morning. I walked over to some kids during recess where they were digging a very deep hole in the sandbox area, and the words were alllllllmost out of my mouth before I stopped myself... "If you keep digging, you'll reach China!" Doh! I can be such a moron. And now I wonder, do people in China say, "If you keep digging, you'll reach America!" ??? I'll ask around.

So today I finally remembered to get to the bottom of this…(get it?)...

So I asked my Chinese coworker teachers today if they say anything when the kids are digging really deep holes, and told them in America we say "If you keep digging, you'll dig all the way to China!"... They just looked at me funny, so I asked them a couple of different ways and they said, "Yes, I understand what you mean" and I was like and? well?... Turns out they don't say such silly things. If I had to guess, maybe they are more practical and simply say, "If you keep digging, you'll dig all the way to the bottom of the sandbox." Oh well.

Not a very exciting conclusion to this mystery, sorry folks.

Marathon #5, here we come (I hope!)

Well, they say if you come up with a goal you want to achieve, make it public and you're more likely to stick to it. We'll see! My foot finally seems healed and feeling good (after partially tearing a ligament or something in there about 6 weeks ago), so today I started a marathon training program with the goal being the 2012 Hainan DanZhou (pronounced like "Don Joe") International Marathon. Probably not the smartest thing to do after hurting your foot, but hey, you only live once :)

This will be my 5th and (possibly) final marathon, making it a nice round number. The last one I ran was in 2008 in Scotland, so I have some serious training to do to get back into running shape. I have exactly 6 months to train, and I mapped out my training runs between now and then, and it works out better than expected. It's more aggressive than the schedule we had with the LA Leggers (a marathon training organization based in Los Angeles) because I'm starting 6 months ahead instead of 8-ish months ahead, so I hope I can hack it. Dealing with this heat and humidity will probably be the biggest challenge.

I have no idea what finish time to aim for this time around since I'm running in completely different weather, and starting out in worse shape than before, so maybe after several weeks of training I'll try to come up with a time goal. My goal right now is to finish the race...alive, and hopefully cry-laughing like those previous races.

Don't stand on ceremony

I never realized how difficult it can be to explain English idioms until lately. Now that I'm practicing Chinese with people and helping them learn English as well, a few common sayings have rolled off the tongue, and it's funny to think that I've never had to explain them until now.

Today it was "You only live once!"

I didn't sleep much last night, woke up too early, and it's been a long, rainy, nappy kind of Saturday (ahhh heaven). So I decided to study some Chinese, and figured hey, I know what this calls for… Coffee! (any excuse, really).

So I am drinking coffee at 4:30pm and chatting with a new friend on QQ (China's most popular instant messaging service). He asked what I'm up to and I said drinking coffee and studying Chinese, and he replied, "You shouldn't drink coffee so late."

It's very common for people here to tell each other what they should and should not be doing. It's usually a pretty friendly gesture, and not a bossy/jerk-y thing. I've mostly gotten used to this, but being kind of a stubbornly independent person, it still feels a little strange at times.

So I tried to explain that since I have to go to bed early most nights due to needing 100% of my energy for wrangling adorably wild little munchkin monsters all morning, I like taking at least one weekend day/night and screwing it up completely. And then I said, "You only live once!"

He then asked me what it means. And I tried to explain it in simple English, well, at least what it means to me anyway...

It means, life is a gift and we only get one chance to live it, so don't waste time worrying about what everyone thinks you SHOULD be doing… do what makes you happy.

So whenever you are doing something that makes you happy, but maybe other people don't think it's very smart or wise, you say "You only live once!"

Even after I explained it, I get the sense that it doesn't quite fit well here. I've made several acquaintances who are younger than I am, and we talk about our cultures, customs, etc. And most of them tell me how they don't like the social and family pressures. For example, to be extremely thin and to find a husband well before you reach 30. Some of my Chinese teacher coworkers are nearing 30, and they seem to really enjoy being single, having a job and being independent, but then they talk about needing to find a husband soon. And when they speak about it, none of them have seemed very excited, and a couple have even seemed worried or anxious. The vibe is usually one of 'well, I don't necessarily like it, but that's what I have to do.' I nearly have to bite my tongue because I recognize that our cultures are wildly different, and it's not my place to interject my own thoughts/values into such a personal feeling. I would never give outright advice on such a thing, I'm just not an advice-giver, but I have to fight the urge to even explain how I feel about it for my own self in the context of just having a friendly conversation on the matter. When really I want to grab them, give them a huge bear hug and then shake them by the shoulders and say "You can do whatever you want with your life, it's yours! Run, be free!" hehe

But I'm 34, divorced, no kids, and I love Oreo cookies. I'm no poster child for the Chinese dream, or the American dream for that matter. So I keep quiet, and take it all in. :)

So anyway, it's a lot of fun trying to explain English idioms, because it makes me stop and really give thought to what they mean, since they have so easily rolled off the tongue my entire life, without any thought at all. And I'm learning some Chinese idioms as well, and they are as foreign to me as the English ones probably are to them.

This week on my audio lessons I listen to, I learned bié kèqì (别客气) which sounds like "bee-yeh kuh chee" which in Chinese means "Don't stand on ceremony." It is sometimes a response when someone says "thank you" so I think it's similar to our response of "you're welcome."

But I guess it means a little more, like "We are all friends, so please don't mention it." And yesterday at our school lunch, which was a slightly more formal or organized event and a treat to us teachers from the school, someone stood for a toast and said "bié kèqì" and everyone cheersed (is that how you spell cheersed?). I remembered hearing the phrase in my Chinese audio lesson, so I took the opportunity to ask my Chinese coworker who speaks really good English to explain what it means in more depth. And she said it can also mean "make yourself at home, we are all good friends."

My Chinese tutor also taught me some curse words and phrases, but I'll spare you. I'm trying to forget them so I don't accidentally use them since I'm still in the phase where I mix up all the vocabulary I have floating around in a jumbled blob in my brain.

I feel like I've advanced in my Chinese speaking from the "baby stage" to the "caveman stage"… I doubt these are real, documented stages in language learning, but it's the best way I've found to describe how I sound when speaking Chinese. I used to sound like a baby, just making a bunch of sounds that don't really make sense at all, all of the words mixed up in the wrong order, wrong words, no context, no sense. Kind of like when I try to tell someone "Nice to see you" and I accidentally say "I want to see good." Now I feel like I've advanced to the stage where I have more context and the words are mostly in the right order, but I still sound like "Me like coffee. You would like with me go drink?"

Me like learn Chinese. ::grunt::

I think I have a new Chinese niece as of today

Today was awesome and weird and more awesome. The awesome: Sickeningly sweet and cute Children's Day performances by the munchkins. Being treated to lunch by the school, where I got to sit with my coworkers and actually take part in the gossip and jokes, even when everyone is speaking 100 miles per hour. All this studying is paying off!

Then I was treated to dinner by a new friend I made last week at the fruit vendor as we were each buying bananas. It's funny, no one lets me pay for anything, maybe because I'm a guest in their country? I always try, but they never let me, and no one lets me say "Thank You"...it almost seems like I'm kind of insulting them by saying "thank you" so often. But it's so ingrained in us Americans that I don't think I'll ever be able to break the habit. I've already told a couple of people "I don't think I can stop saying it...can you try to program yourself to not hear it?"

The weird: Aside from the unbreakable "thank you" habit, I think I'm doing pretty well with going-with-the-flow here and maintaining an open mind and positive/optimistic outlook about absorbing the culture. It's an amazing place and so completely different than I ever imagined or expected, but here are a few things that keep making me do a double-take, like "what the?!"...

When I meet someone new (anyone and everyone), the first questions they ask me within mere minutes of saying 'hello' are, "Are you married?" "Why not?" "Don't you want kids?" "Do you want to stay in Hainan a long time?" "You want us to find you a Chinese husband?" and "What's your salary?" And if we chat or hang out for awhile, they immediately ask if they can see my apartment. This one is so bizarre, but people tell me that's just how it is here.

Tonight after dinner I stood chatting with some of my neighbors. One is an older woman who I see and chat with everyday, and she introduced me to her daughter and granddaughter. After chatting awhile, they invited themselves to my apartment, so I said sure, and took them to see my place. This is the 3rd time I've let new acquaintances into my apartment after they've invited themselves over, and the first thing they've all done is walk right in and give themselves a tour of the entire place, bathroom, bedroom, the whole shebang. I guess that's the culture, but it still throws me for a loop. A couple people have told me there's no word in the Chinese language for "privacy" and now it's starting to make sense. They've all invited me to their places too, but I don't think I'll ever be able to give myself the free tour.

Then they invited me to their apartment which is a few floors up from mine, and off we went. They sat me down, peeled me a mango, handed it to me and all 3 of them stared at me while I ate it. Their faces were about a foot away from my face almost the entire time I ate the super messy, juicy mango. No, not awkward at all. Uhh.

The more awesome: Then they showed me a stack of the granddaughter's color drawings, which were actually pretty damn amazing for a 7-yr-old. I wish I could frame them and hang them in my place. Then grandma loaded up a bag of all kinds of goodies for me, like lots of mangoes, lychees, homemade breakfast buns, and homemade treats of some sort that smell really good. We chatted for awhile and I excused myself so the granddaughter could go to bed. They all saw me to the door and grandma told me that I'm the granddaughter's "auntie" now. Looks like my family just grew a bit larger. Except I'm learning that here when someone says "auntie" it means something like "that old unmarried woman with no kids" ... but at least it's not said in a derogatory tone. :)