Dali: Day 1

After English Corner Saved my life and I was finally able to get into my apartment. The next day we set off for Dali! Dali is a very famous city in the Yunnan Providence, about 300 years ago the Dali Kingdom covered the entire providence of Yunnan and even parts of Vietnam. Now whats left of it is a preserved historical city, with a lot to do and plenty of good sites. From where we are its about six hours by bus to Dali, so we took a one hour bus to Kunming and five hour bus ride from Kunming to Dali.


We Spent the first day venturing into the Ancient city of Dali, here on the left is the South gate.




I went he wo de hao zhong guo pengyou Leo and Felix. (With my good Chinese friends) Leo I had met at English corner on campus and Felix I met through Leo since he is Leo's roomate. It really was because of Felix that we went on this trip on the first place since he is a native from Dali. We owe a lot to Felix since he showed us around the city and also helped us save a lot of money. Not to mention the fact that his family bought us dinner twice and put us up in a Hotel room the last night.









On the left is Felix and on the right is Leo.









Here is another important Person I have named the boat lady. Every where we went this lady followed us through the entire Ancient city of Dali trying to sell us a boat trip to some Island somewhere.









After Leo stopped stealing hats from little boys we decided we needed to go get our own Chinese Cow Boy Hats!







Here is me standing in front of the entrance to foreigner street.




















The characters read yang ren jie or westerner/foreigner street.












Here is the view from the North gate over looking the temples and the mountains.
















What can I say! Just look at those cool guys!













Here is a view of Er Hei Lake also from the North Gate!










































































So that was Day 1 at Dali in a Nut Shell, Day 2 we went to the 3 pagodas and the temples that are in the picture above, but that will be another post!

The Day English Corner Saved My Life

I bet your wondering about how English Corner saved my life. Some maybe even wondering what English corner is. Well, there are two English corners that I go to normally one is on campus on Thursday nights from 6-8pm and there is another one off campus at an English Training Center on Saturdays from 8-10pm. At English corner as a foreign English speaker I go and others come to practice there conversational English.

Well it was Saturday, and I not only was planning to go to English corner, but was first going out to eat with a Chinese friend then to teach some little kids English at one English Training center then going to another English Training Center to do English corner. As I was stepping out the door to my apartment I went to check my pockets to make sure I had my keys and just as I realized that I didn't have them the door slammed behind me.

So locked out of my apartment I started to think about how I was going to get back in. Just about all my foreign friends had left town for the National Holiday so I couldn't call them. Then I tried calling the lady in charge at the foreign affairs office on campus, Kerry. When I called She said one sentence and we got disconnected and when I tried calling back I found out the phone was disconnected. So with no other options I went out to eat with my friend at the cafeteria on campus. He then told me of our plans to leave for Dali tomorrow mourning, so if I was going to have any clothes to bring with me on the trip I was going to have to get in my apartment some how.

Afterwards I went to teach the kids, which was a nightmare! Then I went to English corner. Everywhere I went I told everybody about the ordeal and just about everybody responded the same way laughing and then not helping me at all. Till Finally when I got to English corner, that night it turned out that all the students had classes (yes they had classes that they had to make up for the vacation before they could be off, at 8pm)! So after we talked for about an hour with just a local high school English teacher another foreigner there to help with English corner and the manager and a teacher there at the English training center I finally told them of my predicament. Immediately the other foreigner offer to let me stay at his place, then the High School English teacher offered to go find a locksmith for me. He came back in about 20 minutes and we all went back to my apartment to see the locksmith open the door to my apartment. The English teacher had translated a little for me from the locksmith and I found out that the Locksmith had already been here several times to this apartment building so I had a sense of I wasn't the only one. Anyways as you can see in the picture below the teacher held the light as the lock guy somehow opened my door! That was the day English Corner saved my life!

An Awesome Birthday

Wo de sheng ri!

On Wednesday September 26 my friends Flood, Mudslide and Tsunami threw me a great birthday party with all kinds of surprises. It was a good retreat from the chaos of the week before it, and great surprise. We started out by going out to dinner to the local Yi restaurant and then went to Flood's new apartment for the after party! A night full of food, fun and Karaoke!



After a few songs of Chinese karaoke, Mud Slide brought out my brownie cake hand made by Tsunami and with toothpicks in the shape of the number 20! Then later when I was about ready to go home thinking this was the best birthday party I ever had in China, then they brought out my birthday present that they all chipped in to buy!



They bought me a Chinese Johnny Cash impersonator! Ni Hao! Wo jiao Johnny Cash!

Just kidding, they got me a guitar! Plus a yue bing and Cheddar Sun Chips from the import store in Kunming!

All in all it was a great birthday party, one I had not expected coming here to Asia not knowing anyone and on the complete opposite side of the world from my family. However, I have found some great friends!

Classes begin

Classes began on September 10 here for all the foreigners who are studying Chinese. It has recently become a requirement that all beginning students must take at least 15 credit hours a semester so currently I am taking 15 credit hours of listening, Speaking, and Comprehensive with three different teachers which don't necessarily teach any of the above areas but they often switch. All of the teachers have been very helpful so far in the past 3 weeks of classes 2 of which are really nice and the third is a little bit more challenging... I will discuss the latter in more detail in the next post, when culture shock finally begins...

It is about a 20-30 minute walk to class which is probably pretty close to the same as last year at Liberty in comparison with the distance from East campus to Demoss.

However, it is a little bit different from walking on a bridge over a busy high way...

Half of the way is on the normal campus through the dorms and the cafeteria and the main class room buildings. Then the second half is on a dirt road through farm land. Once you get to the dirt road there is the sound of constant dynamite blasting as a bunch of construction is taking place at this end of the campus, which causes some humorous times in the middle of class...


At the end of the dirt road, as shown above, is the new foreigner branch of campus; which once was less than 2 minutes from most places on campus and now is a 20 minute walk separated from the rest of campus... This is also the area of my classroom as shown below.

In side on the left is my good friend from Thailand hes my only classmate who knows a little English. He is a medical doctor in his 40's who knows over seven languages and is studying the trade between different minorities in the area. Up front is one of five of my Korean classmates. The Korean students speak very little English so I have not gotten to know them well however, my Thai friend "Song ba" has been a great help to me.

Thank you, for your support I should have a lot more posts coming up soon to catch you up with the past few weeks of whats been going on here in Asia!

Chi le ma: This will make you want to move to China

Chi le ma?

This will make you want to move to China!

This has become one of my favorite places immediately outside the gate to the school. And to the right is my favorite dish Niou Rou Chou la mian. That is "Cow Meat (beef) fried pulled noodles," and above you can see the guy pulling the blur of noodles!

Then of course their is a hot pot restaurant down the street. Here you just pick what every dishes you want at the counter from potatoes and beef to fish heads, crickets, grasshoppers, and grub worms. Then they calculate your bill by your plates at the end.



Here is another restaurant which has also another one of my favorites Chou r si, or fried r si. R si is another type of noodles that comes in large squares.

Xau Kau

This was a new experience for me. Here they grill your choice of which ever meat on a stick you'd like. The choices ranged from regular beef to chicken feet, chicken heart, beef intestines, dog, chicken liver and several others. I got a couple of just about everything as you can see on the right they all pretty much look exactly the same anyways.

Zhong qiu jie

On Tuesday the 25th of September China will be in celebration of their Autumn Festival. A huge part of this celebration is the consumption of Yue bing or moon cakes. There are two main different compartments of Moon Cakes, those from the North and those from the South. The ones from the North are filled with fruit flavors and have a more decorative outside. Coming in flavors like apple, hawthorn, pinneable and just about every kind of fruit. The Southern style, as depicted to the right, is different however and contains meats rather than fruit. These contain salt cured ham, chicken, and bean. Personally I much rather prefer the southern style moon cakes since the Northern ones are way too sweet.


Cooking At Home...
If I come back to the US really skinny it will not be because of the food here, it will be because I cooked too many of my own meals... It can be very difficult for a waiguoren when even shopping at WALMART to get items for food. The only thing which I have actually made is Chou fan but I often buy some new mystery item to place inside.
Thus far I have done tomato, goat cheese, chinese sausage, eggs, and one time some sardines because I thought it was dried beef...
I should maybe just quit while I am ahead...

Bao zi Breakfast

It has become a ritual of mine to go right outside the gate every mourning to get freshly cooked Baozi. I always get xin rou (pork) but they have other kinds as well such as mushroom. You can get liang ge or 2 for 1.2 RBM so it beats the dollar menu for breakfast at 16 US cents for breakfast!


Well it may seems weird to start with dinner and end with breakfast, but when I am eating breakfast your eating dinner and when i am eating dinner your eating breakfast...

Man zou!