Zai Jian Tongliao!! I will miss you!

A few days ago, I went for a run outside our campus during a drizzly and dreary morning. The wind has finally ceased and the dry, hot weather has arrived. But during my run, I passed a scene that I have grown accustomed to seeing. Down the straight, empty roads outside the city of Tongliao, I passed a pack of cows eating the almost non-existent grass in our desert-like surroundings. (Here’s a picture of another daily sight…donkeys!)




I received the puzzled “Who in the world are you and WHAT are you?” look from the cattle farmer but this has become a part of our lives. As I ran by them, I couldn’t help but laugh because every single cow was staring at me probably with the very same judgment. I laughed because my life will NEVER be like this again.




The past week has been a roller coaster of emotions. For one, I am so excited to move to Beijing and get settled for what will be a crazy six weeks! But on the other hand, I am sad to leave a city that has become my home for the past year. I never thought I would feel so attached to a life of cold showers, squatters, and nothing Western except for a KFC (which is still appalling to me). Shopping in the Chinese supermarket, ordering at a restaurant without a picture menu, and having a conversation with a pleasant taxi driver is no problem now!

The most difficult part of this week has been saying goodbye to my 800+ students. It was impossible for me to create close relationships with all of them but I was lucky enough to become close with some of them. I think my students are amazing. They have 11+ hour school days and immense pressure from every teacher. They are hardworking, driven and incredibly kind. I had the unique experience of seeing firsthand, their reactions to the Earthquake in Sichuan Province. Some of my classes gathered more then 1,000 RMB and you have to remember that many of these kids come from the poorest sections of Tongliao’s countryside. In my last week, I have received every type of gift you can think of! Everything from drawings and letters, to traditional Chinese dolls and stuffed animals.



(Can you find me in this picture???)




However, my favorite gift came from all of Class 1. They purchased a notebook and every single student wrote a note inside to me. Because I try to speak both Mandarin and English in their class (they are good teachers!), they wrote the notes in both languages for me. I received some very funny notes like “Sheila, I hope you have many children!” and “Women can hold up half the sky. I wish you to be a millionaire so I can call you Sheila Millionaire!” So many of the notes cracked me up but there was one in particular that was amazing.

“My dear teacher Sheila, Everyone has some dreams. One of my dreams is to travel all over the world like you. Through this year, I learn that everyone should smile to life. I learned this from you. Every time I meet you, you always smile. I think you are a lovely angel. Miss you forever.” --Monkey

When I left the school for the final time, I was not as sad as I thought I was going to be. Instead, I was incredibly happy because I feel like I have left my students with a positive opinion of foreigners (especially Americans). For most, I am the first foreigner they have ever met and since the beginning of school, many have voiced interesting opinions and thoughts on Westerners. So as I left, I felt so proud because I think all of the negative opinions they grew up listening to and seeing on television were thrown out the window. That might be one of the most important things that have happened this year.


(The guys came with me on Friday night for one final goodbye to my students! They were thrilled to finally see "the other foreign teachers").






In addition to hand washing my last load of laundry, taking my last cold shower, and trying to pack my last years worth of ‘stuff’ into two suitcases, I have taken full advantage of my meals. I now have tasted a wide variety of food from all over China and I may be biased, but there is nothing better than the food in the Northeast of China. I am really really really going to miss ‘real’ Chinese food!

Here is a photo of Julianne and me at our last dinner with our co-workers at the South Campus.





In China, tables are set up with a large glass lazy Susan in the middle of the table. Typically you order between seven and ten dishes ranging from anything (vegetables, meats, fish, and tofu). At the end of the meal, one will order “Main Food” which means any kind of carbs. This can be dumplings, baozi, noodles, rice, or pancakes. I’ve learned that the reason why this occurs at dinner is to soak up all the alcohol that was consumed during the dinner. The Chinese are hardcore drinkers!! (At every single meal.)

The most unique part of our experience has been being the only foreigners in the city. Tongliao is a city of four million people but everyone seems to know us. We stick out like sore thumbs and we are pretty popular residents of Tongliao. Many of the restaurants we frequent allow us to become friends with the owners and employees. For example, a small noodle hut on Tongliao’s “Snack Street” is a weekly stop for us and the couple that own it love us! Last week I went alone and I ended up staying for an hour chatting with the ladies who work there. I actually didn’t even eat noodles! They were on their lunch break and I ate a big bowl of dumplings with them! It’s the little things like that, that make this experience so special. (and it also does wonders for learning the language!)

(Here is Mike, Me, and Ian with the owner of the Muslim Restaurant)





Here is a picture of my favorite meal. This is from a Muslim Restaurant in Tongliao. The reason why it is Muslim is because a small population of Chinese are Muslim. The biggest difference between this restaurant and any other Chinese restaurant is that it does not serve pork. In the picture you will see the large lazy Susan in the middle of the table with raw meat and raw vegetables. In front of every person is a small pot which sits above a small flame. This is the HOT POT dinner. Each guest is allowed to choose the flavor of their pot (spice, tomato, curry, or plain). Once the water begins to boil, you can add any food to your pot and wait for it to cook. It is delicious!!!!




I am now just hours from leaving for the Tongliao Train Station. I will arrive in Beijing tomorrow morning and will be moving into my new home for the next two months! While I am so psyched for the next phase of this year in my life, I am a bit apprehensive. This has been the best year of my life. I feel like I have grown and learned so much and I feel like I have completely immersed myself into this culture. Things are a little more simple, a lot more last minute and believe it or not, the absence of a mobile phone in my pocket constantly was so refreshing!

(Me and my best friend Marsha)




The adventures of yours truly will continue! After moving into Beijing and figuring out my Visa situation (and a few cups of coffee), I will be traveling to Xi’an, China to see the very famous Terracotta Warriors. This will be a three day vacation, followed by a week in Beijing. We will see all the touristy sights that we missed this year (before the rest of the world comes to Beijing in just weeks!) Finally, we will travel down to Qingdao, China for a little seafood and ocean air before coming back to Beijing to begin our new jobs!

For all my wonderful readers, this is not the end! I will continue through my trip and the Olympics. My final entry will come at the end of August. So keep reading and if any of you want autographs, let me know! I will try my best!!! (Michael Phelps, here I come!)


Zai Jian Tongliao!!! (Goodbye Tongliao!)





The seven of us in our school's uniforms. The kids LOVED it.

I almost made it the entire year without taking THE PUBLIC SHOWER....

Hi All!!!!!!

Happy June and Happy Father's Day! I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the end of the school year (for all of you in school) and the arrival of summer!! I am in disbelief over how fast this past year has flown bye. It is definitely bittersweet! I have two weeks of work left and I'm starting to go through all of my stuff and am getting organized so I can start packing, WHAT! It's amazing.

I am going to try to write a few more entires before the end of the year because there is so much I still want to add to my blog before I leave. But for now, I have one of the most hilarious moments of China to share with you. It truly left me well....speechless and naked. hahaha

Please enjoy! I miss you all!

Lots of love,
Sheila.


I have seen really strange and bizarre things in China over the past nine months...but I can officially top them all with one unforgettable afternoon. A few weekends ago, I went away to Shenyang (a city four hours Southeast of Tongliao) with Ian, Mike and Anthony. We wanted a little Western loving, and when I say this, I mean the guys went to McDonalds and I enjoyed the quiet solitude of Starbucks!

After a four hour bus ride, an hour of watching the boys disgustingly wolf down McDonald's and a little hectic shopping in another overcrowded Chinese city, I decided it was time for a nice, long, HOT, shower in our hostel.

But to my great surprise, our hostel was an absolute mess. We shared a four person room with community bathrooms. As I approached the women's shower, a hostel employee informed me that the shower was broken and directed me down a back staircase to the back of the hostel. When I reached the bottom floor, I found a back entrance to a separate facility. At the sight of what lay before me, I burst into a fit of laughter. I had somehow avoided the "Public Bathhouse" over the past nine months, and with only three months to go, this experience wasn't going to escape me. So, I took a deep breath, smiled at the Bathhouse employees who were now laughing and pointing at me and I walked through the curtains.

I entered a small changing room where I was assigned a locker and a lock. No problem! "This isn't so bad!" I thought to myself. The one thing I have avoided like the plague allllll year, is not that big of a deal! I grabbed my stuff and looked around the room to see what the next step was! But then I noticed THE DOOR. As it opened, I had a quick glimpse of why I have avoided this situation. I walked through the door into the shower room. It was a huge room with shower heads on all four walls. I stepped through the doorway and frantically searched for a free shower head. After putting my things down, I then searched for the button to turn the water on without success. I had no idea what to do! At this point, I felt an audience forming, so I looked at the woman to my left, who smiled and pointed to the sensor on the wall. All I had to do was stand under the shower head and the water would begin. After figuring this minor detail out, I decided to look back at the woman and give her a thankful nod, but as I looked to her, her eyes were still on me, but not at my eyes.

After relaxing a bit, I took a quick glance at the room to really see if I was actually doing this. There must have been 40 women in the room and I would say about 3/4's of them were looking at....yours truly. I felt like the Declaration of Independence in Washington D.C. or Britney Spears in the middle of an airport. I was the most popular thing to look at, I was the show.

I began to notice that I was doing something wrong. Here I am, minding my own business, showering face to the wall. My fellow shower friends were all facing towards the center of the room. I decided, hey I'm being very Chinese today, let's continue. So I bit the bullet and turned to face the center of the room when I saw a sight that almost made me fall to the floor.(Thank God I didn't, that would be even more disgusting than my hostel). I actually think I stepped outside my sensor in shock without even knowing my water stopped. In front of me was THE MOST INTERESTING SIGHT I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY 23 YEARS OF LIFE. At the very center of the room, I found the real show.

In the middle of the room were two twin-sized beds (minus the sheets and pillows...it was more like a board). And on top of the beds were two naked, FAT, Chinese women. Now they weren't just lying there, but they were being washed. Yes, I said BEING WASHED. Beside the beds were two more naked women, washing the two women who were lying on the beds. And when I say washing, imagine going to your favorite car wash that never misses a spot. These women were cleaning every possible area you could think of (better yet, don't picture it). No wonder these women were so out of shape, this is the epitome of lazy...they can't even wash themselves!

Overall, I had a brilliantly hot shower. (I am definitely not going to miss my cold showers when I leave China). I know I just spent an entire blog on my shower, but this story is one I will never, ever forget, even though I wish I could!

The Inner Mongolia Marathon!!!!!

A few months ago, I wrote a blog about the gym I joined in the city. Julianne and I go every morning to take advantage of the solitude (it is like our own personal gym) and the HOT showers!!! Since we go every morning, we have become close with some of the trainers. It’s become our second home of sorts, we arrive, we run, we stretch, we shower in HOT water, we practice some Mandarin, and we go. This is a typical morning in the lives of Sheila and Julianne.





One morning, we were approached by one of our favorite trainers; Wanjian with an interesting question for us. He informed us that this year, the Inner Mongolia Marathon would be held in Tongliao and that the city was very excited to be hosting this annual event. We thought he was going to ask us to come and watch him run, but that was not the case. Instead, the gym wished to sponsor us and we would run as a team. So in other words, the gym wanted to show their Americans off at the marathon!
He added that since we were V.I.P. (we are??), we would get a t-shirt and hat for the race and we were allowed to ask the rest of the group, who are not members at the gym, if they wanted to join the race. We told him we’d think about it and discuss it with the others. Our first reaction was “absolutely not!” A) Yeah, we run everyday, but we haven’t been training for a marathon. And B) It is the middle of sandstorm season, so we’d probably have to wear masks while we ran…It is so unhealthy to breathe the air over here, especially for 26 miles.






When we got home we asked the rest of the group, and received two immediate “No’s” (Actually they were more like “HELL NO’S” After further discussion, the five of us agreed to run the half marathon. And why did we decide to do this? Because, why the hell not!! We’re in China!
As race day approached, one of our five dropped out because she had the flu, so we were down to four. Each morning at the gym, our trainers asked us if we were excited, but we just laughed and asked ourselves, “What are we doing?”






On race day, another one of us dropped out 20 minutes before we left our apartment, leaving me, Kim, and Julianne still laughing on our way to the city. When we got there, we realized that we were not the only VIP running for the gym. The gym also asked the Pakistani med students. (There are a group of Pakistani med-students at the University in Tongliao and we discovered these additional foreigners just months ago). It was a pretty fun situation; our team was multi-cultural! (The American girls, the Pakistani guys and the Chinese trainers).





So we were all dressed in our uniforms and the three of us looked ridiculous in our size XL shirts. It looked like we were running in dresses. We jogged to the sports square in the middle of the city for the start of the race. As the leaders of the city and the province gave their speeches, all of the newspaper and television cameras were on us!

As the race began, we had cars with the same cameras driving next to us the entire time! As I ran, I thought to myself, “You’ve taken fifty pictures of me so far, I’m only going to look worse the more I keep running!!” They followed our every step like we were in the lead, but no, it was just the American girls running in a marathon in the middle of INNER MONGOLIA! About five minutes into the race, two Pakistani’s in front of us stopped and said, “Okay guys, we’re going home. See you later!” It was the funniest thing, I think they just wanted to the oversized t-shirts.

These are the male marathon winners.



















(These are the female marathon winners. As they stood on the podium, they were so serious. No one smiled!)










Overall the race was really fun but the Mongolian wind was killer! Julianne actually placed third for the women and received a cup. This was the most low-key race I’ve ever seen. There were no clocks or timers, so no one knew their times and I think only 10 women finished the half marathon!!! As we left, we were all laughing and in disbelief. Another crazy thing to check off of our lists. Oh China!