The Zoo (Foreign "Expert's" Housing)

the front of my spacious apartment, complete with front porch

The area between apartment buildings

Behind my apartment

The above pictures were taken recently inside the the apartment area of the foreign experts housing... We jokingly call this compound "The Zoo." As you can see in these pictures, we are completely fenced in! If you look closely at the first picture, you can see that these bars are even topped with spikes. This fence is complete with a heavy iron gate. As if the fence itself were not enough to give the feeling of "zooness," the creatures inside certainly complete the picture. I am referring of course to US-the foreign teachers... On  nearly a daily basis, while outside the apartment either eating breakfast or doing whatever, passersby will literally stop and stare into "the zoo." The funniest part is that many of these people make no attempt to hide the fact that they are staring at us- some laugh and point, others just look dumbfounded... Being stared at in China is definitely something that I will have to get used to... We teachers joke that we need to hang the following sign on the fence: “不要饲料的外国人” （do not feed the foreigners)

"Poopin' in the Street Dada dee da dee"

I have have been having trouble keeping up with my blog as the internet has been down the last couple of days. A lot of interesting things have happened in this time. I will break these occurrences up into separate blog-posts in order to keep my readers interested. I am sure that the title of this post has everyone intrigued, so I will waste no more time in getting to the point... Here's what happened:

Yesterday for lunch, a small group of foreign teachers (the Ben's and Malory and I) went to a small restaurant outside of the south gate. As the rain had subsided for a few minutes, we decided that it might be safe to sit at a table on the sidewalk... We had ordered our food and just before it arrived, a cute little Chinese girl (between 2 and 3 years old) walked out from a neighboring shop and started pacing around in the street near our table and holding her pants. We all knew it "she's going to poop." no sooner than we all agreed that this was going to happen, (but way before we were prepared to witness it) the child pulled down her pants and squatted down within ten feet of our table... She proceeded to squat for about five minutes as she pinched a couple of logs right there on the sidewalk, all the while looking at us foreigners as if we were the ones out of place... Midway through this five minute relief session, our food arrived. Somehow we were able to eat normally and nearly finish our meals. (Small Ben, however, seemed a little disturbed and I had to help him with a few bites) This experience has certainly brought new meaning to the term "dinner and a show."   

Mid Autumn Festival: Moon Cakes

an example of a fancy moon cake

This past Monday was a national holiday which meant NO class as China celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional Chinese festival best explained by the experts of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival

When I ask students or Chinese friends what they do on Mid-Autumn Festival they always same the same thing: "eat moon cakes 月饼." So in order to experience the holiday in a traditional manner, I emulated the locals and spent the weekend sampling moon cakes. Fortunately, I did not have to actually buy any cakes because I received several as a gift from the International Programs office and from other teachers and friends... This venture was semi-successful at best. The very first one I tried was pineapple flavored, which was delicious. The next few were not quite so good... The next one was what I call "ambiguous meat flavored"Yeah, I know, meat in a cake GROSS!!! and it is indeed as gross as the name implies... I made it one bite in before throwing the rest of it away... The third one was also a "dud" as I have been calling the bad ones. It started out good as it was sweet red bean filled. The sweetness ended abruptly when I bit into something hard, yellow and bitter. I thought Potato? Ben, who I think knew what was coming and decided not to tell me for his own enjoyment, quickly informed me that it was actually duck egg-yolk... From this point on, I made it a habit of either asking explicitly "what is in this?" or breaking the thing open to examine it before putting it in my mouth... This has generally been a pretty good practice as I have successfully avoided two more "ambiguous meat cakes" and managed to find another pineapple cake, a strawberry cake and a peanut cake!!!

The Cold, The Rain and the Foreigners

These last few days it has been pretty miserably weather wise. Actually, we have had pretty constant rain for the last week... The temperature has also fallen about 20 degrees since my arrival when it was in the mid to upper 90's. Now it is cool and comfortable in the low to mid 70's. However, the rain does make it feel a bit cooler. Being from the 'North Pole' of Ohio, I find this weather along with the cool mists to be quite comfortable and  therefore have not changed my wardrobe from the shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops that I have been wearing for the last week. On thee other hand, it appears that everyone else in the city of Kaifeng (including the other foreign teachers) has decided that it is now time to wear pants and fall jackets... What does this mean for me? I stand out even more!!! Now its not just "Oooo, look at that foreigner," its "Wow, look at that crazy foreigner who is not wearing any clothes!!" While walking downtown yesterday, I saw a moped crash into the back of a bus right beside me... I have a strange suspicion that it was because he was trying to steal a second glance at me and Ben and didn't see the bus stop in front of him!!!
My clothing choice also seems to be bewildering to my students and Chinese friends that have asked me on numerous occasions: "do you feel cold." I always answer "No," and try to explain that where I come from it starts snowing sometimes in November and that the snow comes up to our knees!!! I start wearing pants when the temperature goes below 55!!!

About where I am living

I could go on and on about the history of the province OR city where I will be staying for the next year.. Here's a couple of links to catch you up...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan_Province
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaifeng

trip to Zhengzhou

Today, I went with the Ben, Ben and Malory to Zhenzhou- The provincial capital and biggest city. The purpose of our venture was to find a foreign food import store and pick up a few comforts of home. We found three (3) such stores but didn't end up buying too much... We went to the city without a shopping list and we came back with only: Pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, BBQ sauce and lime juice... I had wanted to buy a big jar of peanut butter and the Ben and Mal wanted to buy some cereal... I was unable to find the peanut butter and the cereal was grossly overpriced at about 36 RMB (about 6 USD) (mind you we get a hot egg breakfast for 3 RMB) So they decided that they would just live without the cereal. As for me and the peanut butter, I think I can wait til Santa sends me a present this year (hint hint mother)!
Although the trip in itself was not incredibly successful and quite long (we left campus as 7:30 AM and didn't get back til about 6:30), I did manage to bring the iPod along and snap a few pictures for the enjoyment of my followers... Here they are:

A large banking building near the bus stop at arrival

One of countless apartment grids in the massive city.. Both Zhengzhou and Kaifeng are building rapidly as money starts to come into central provinces...

A nifty drum statue in a park near the bus station

River/ Canal running through the outskirts of the city

A closer view of the apartment grid: I counted 31 stories on the highest one

A park inside a Zhengzhou Campus

Spelled wrong: Olive tree RENTASRANT

and spelled wrong DIFFERENTLY!!: RESTAURAUT  

a SMALL bike and moped parking lot near the center of town

Inside the McDonald's in the center of town. (I tried a bacon chicken burger... Chicken good, Bacon bad)

freshly minted SEQUENTIAL bills!!! (given as change at Mc D's) ever seen this before?

square in front of Mc'D's

again

a large park near the city center

Chinese Beer （啤酒）

Today I want to talk a little bit about Chinese beer... I am sure this will only be the first time of many that I share about beer over the course of the next year. In the past two weeks I have had a chance to sample various brands of Chinese beer. I remember in one of my first blog entries I mentioned drinking a beer and claimed that it was cheap and "not so bad." Since then, I have had some beers, also cheap, that were "so bad;" I would like to point out that MOST Chinese beer has an alcohol concentration ranging from 2-3.5% ABV (In the states it starts at 4 and goes UP)
Yesterday, Tall Ben (another beer lover) and I decided that it was time that we find some good beer... We had heard rumors about a German beer store downtown and decided to check it out... Well, to make a long story short--- the store was a disappointment. There was a poor selection and everything was overpriced. The main product was mini-kegs costing about 300 RMB each. (Mind you, I have been eating ALL day for about 12 RMB) Since we went all the way down there, Ben and I decided that we should at least buy one (bottle) of beer apiece. I grabbed a pilsner (frankly it was the only one I knew anything about).
On the way back to campus we decided that we'd just buy a case of our favorite 'fall-back' Chinese beer "TsingTao" 青岛 (We have it in the states)... This beer was only 45 RMB (about 8 USD)  for a case of 12 600 ml bottles... This beer tastes pretty good and surpasses other local beers with an ABV of 4.7% (doesn't taste like water). I think I'll be sticking with this for the remainder of my time here...