The Chinesta
So maybe the name needs work but hey, China plus siesta=chinesta, right?  It makes sense to me.  Anyways, so now that my tenure at China is coming to a close I am noticing things that perhaps I had noticed but it hadn't penetrated.  one of these things is that the chinese have a love affiar with sleeping, but they do not do with what I would say is a normal sleep pattern.  First, many many shops trhat you pass you will see chinese sales people sitting at the front desk with their head on the table fast asleep.  I at first thought it could have been because there were so many workers at a particular store but this is true even in stores that may only have one or two people.  Then I thought perhaps it was the oppposite, as I mostly see it in non franchise stores, things that appear  more family owned.  I thought that maybe because they have only one or two people that work at the store so they work like a 15 hour week and so catch a nap whenever they can.
BUT...there is also a two hour lunch time that is fairly standard for all chinese businesses, and in all the teacher offices at my school they have fold up cots to sleep during the lunch period.  SO it is not limited to only sales people.  I have come to the conclusion that in China there is a completely different sleep schedule than in the US, partly because of the fact that as I've said earlier there is a big emphasis put on social activities.  I live outside of the gym and when I go to bed(usually at 11 or after) they are still playing badminton.  So since they are all up late it makes sense for them to have a nap time.  AND after thinking about, I like the nap time idea.  I mean why do only toddlers get the benefit of having a nap time, do we not all know people that maybe get a bit tetchy and could use a chance to relax and recharge?  When back in the states I will probably at least think very hard about starting a nap time movement to instate the Nap for all, apple juice will be optional, but I'm all for that as well...with animal crackers if you're good.

Well, I have never lived in Miami and don't really have a particular want to but those who know these things say that the weather in Miami is the same or similar as that in Shenzhen.  If that is true while i still don't want to live there I would love to visit because the weather here has ben beautiful recently, and I also hear good things about pork sandwiches in Miami as well.  Now I know that it will get hotter because I was here last year when it was hotter but just now it is pretty much perfect.  Even today, while it is raining I am loving it.  It is either overcast and rainy(awesome) or it is balmy and sunny(also awesome).  While there are not many actual "activities" to do outside as such just walking down the street can be nice, grab a pineapple on a stick along the way and listen to NPR or BBC podcasts along the way.  The only thing that mars this otherwise beautiful time is the fact that Indiana Jones s coming out and I'm not sure if it will be out ehre at the same time.  Iron Man came out over here a day early and I went and saw it in a real theatre and didn't buy the bootleg dvd which turned out to be a good thing since it was dubbed not subbed chinese.  Plus for movies like that part of the fun is seeing it on the big screen.

Well no matter the fact that I have been in China for almost a year I must still be doing something innately foreign because I still get pointed at at small children and called Wei gua ren(Foreigner).  Maybe it's my accent when I try to speak Chinese.  Hmm.  Well at any rate they are at least getting more polite when they say it.  It has gone from just stopping me in the street pointing at me and sayin it to now saying Wei Gua Ren Hao(lit:Foreigner good) which translates into Foreigner Hello.(hello-Ni Hao(Ni means you so literally "you good?") And as a foreigner and since i will be leaving I am making a list of the things I will miss in China:
1. Street Food - Always good, always open, whether it be BBQ or noodles or stir fry or chao mein or pineapple on a stick

2. Prices - Even with inflation everything is cheap. WHy can't I get dinner out for 2 or 3 dollars in the States(That isn't fast food)

3. Cheap Restaurants - Kinda goes along with 2 but all you can eat sushi for $9.00, all you can eat teppenyaki with kobe beef, shrimp, salmon and all you can drink sake

4. DVDS - Yes I know I know these are bad, they hurt the copyright holders etc but when you are homesick and want to see a movie that is in English it's nice to be able to get it for $1.50

5. Being Special - I am special in China, people look at me and its fun.  I was on the metro and a couple of girls came up and took some pictures with me last week, and its happened a few other times too plus its fun to be bad at chinese but still have people compliment you o it just because you are trying and say a few words

6.My Students - Not all of them, some of them i want to throw out of windows but the good ones and the girl that I tutor I will miss

So I saw the Olympic Torch relay and it was alot of fun.  Most of the schools had the day(Thurs) off and Id say everybody else had it of in the city too because the crowds were HUGE but this is China so who knows.  Anyway, I went with my other english teacher Dan and a few of our students at 7:30 because the Torch Relay started at 9 but when we get there people said that it had been moved back to 12.  I thought it was kind of funny that even when they reach China they are still worried about disruptions.  So we left and came back at around 12 and looked for a place to see the Torch.  The crowds were really really big so the closest we could get to was maybe 6 rows of pushing people from the route.  It was very hot, actually it was a beautiful ay but when you are standing shoulder to shoulder with millions of Chinese people the immediate temperature around you goes up. Back to the story so we are there and every time a truck or car that is part of the relay goes by everybody shouts Gong Gua Jia You and goes crazy and then after the truck there is nothing so everybody gets quiet again. Finally the torch comes and everybody goes crazy and I take pictures but luckily they came out because I couldnt see the guy that well through the crowd on the camera though I could with the naked eye so i just thrust the camera up and started snapping away.  Afterwards we all went to COCO park which is a mall near us and ate at the food court and saw alot of students all of whom always have the identical expression of surprise when they see me outside of school. Anyways it was a fun day even though we had to then work on Saturday to make up the day.

Well after God knows how many months I can now get back onto my blog.  THis miracle came along with the equally great miracle that wikipedia and youtube now work as well.  Though to be fair I don't really use youtube but still its nice to know that if I ever want to I can.  I use youku.com mostly or video.baidu.com because I don't like to watch web clips so much as tv shows and movies and youtube doesn't have those and the chinese sites do.  But the real happy part is that wiki now works because it is very frustrating when you have a random question you want answered and you cannot find the answer because wikipedia is offline.  ALSO, BBC is also now available though of not much use to me because I use itunes to get the podcasts from the BBC news and use yahoo for written news I think it is a good thing in general that more websites are now available.
Secondly and of more importance is the Chinese earthquake.  Many people have died and it is very interesting to see the reaction of the people here in Shenzhen.  I was in Hua Qian Bei looking at electronics and there were two separate booths set up by the government, one for donations of money and the other for blood donations.  BUT, while that would be a good response they also had groups of people with Chinese flags and wearing red shouting Gong Gua Jia You! and marching around.  Gong Gua Jia You means China add oil but add oil is an idiomatic expression for GO! So that felt a little odd, but given the governments quick response, especially when compared to Burma's situation I guess they can be given a little leeway for a small amount of nationalist indoctrination in this situation.

So China can be an odd place.  i went to hong Kong to the Thunderbird Super Tuesday Alumni thing and I'll admit being in hong Kong can be kin of heady and it made me want to maybe get a job in Hong Kong or somewhere else, it's sort of like when I would go into San Francisco when I was college and wanted to live there, the whole being in the bright city lights etc etc.  So of course that got me thinking about my future and that got me slightly down, not knowing what Im going to do, not being able to remain forever young...FOREVER YOUNG(to the tune of forever young) and listening to a poignant, sad, and ironic song and walking back to my apartment and then I saw a man and woman(I think a married couple) with a street rigged hibachi, the people that sell meat on a stick but on their tray of food to choose from I saw an eggplant, which I have been wanting to cook more of because they are everywhere here and they are just these beautiful shades of purple and so cheap. Anyways, so I chose that and they grilled it and then added chives, garlic, a little oil and some ground chili and then gave it to me in a horrible earth ruining styrofoam container to take home.  it was really really good.  So while I cannot replicate this particularfood because of my lack of bbq, and I don't think it would turn out quite as good on a hot plate as on a grill I thought I would share the food, though I'm sure people may have thought of this before it is still something you should try.  When the skin cracks then slice it almost in half so it is basically butteflying it and cut off the green stem then brush it with some chili and or chili oil, some garlic and green onions and ground chili and then leave it for another minute or so and voila.  Of course if it doesn't turn out well with the eggplant almost mushy on the inside  and gushy and delicious then it isn't my fault it's china!

Well, it happened last night, it was my next door teacher friends birthday and Satan used ice skates to get to work.  For dinner we went out to dinner at the all you can eat sushi restaurant.  The thing is I had gone to that place on Wednesday and then on Friday I went to an all you can eat tepenyaki place that also included sashimi.  That place was really really good, it included sake, asahi beer, lamb chops, salmon, and steak.  So after last night I am amazingly sushi-ed out for the moment.  I'm not sure how long that will be but for the moment I am sushi free.  
Secondly, I went to a new bar last night after dinner with him and some other friends.  The bar is called Galleon and it is located at the top of the Intercontinental Hotel at Overseas Chinese Town(which is the actual chinese name of the neighbourhood or OTC)  Anyways, the place is okay and it has a microbrewery with the name Blanca.  The hotel is spanish themed supposedly though I couldn't really see it, but the menu proudly proclaimed that the beer was named for a spanish word for blonde.  The palce was pretty nice, all the waiters and waitresses were in pirate attire.  Lots of restaurants that feature ethnic or foreign or themed foods have costumes which is kind of funny, especially taco bell grande where they all wear large concial sombreroes.  Anyways, it was the usual mix of Chinese couples, perhaps a bit more western men with younger chinese women, and a few foreign couples.  They also had a live samba band which was fun.  The beer on tap was pretty good, though we prdered two different types that they had and they only brought us one but it was nice.  Oh, almost forgot, the bar itself is an actual ship, or at least the outside of a wooden galleon on the roof of the building.  I'm not sure why they chose this but it was funny and fun and I'm not sure if you can get up to the deck of the ship as the hold, or where the hold would be is where the bar is, but I think they also serve food earlier in the night so maybe then you can eat up there.

Road Trip and Rollerblade Ninjas

So this is something I have seen a couple of times over the past couple of months, teenagers walking around twirling nunchucks, and then different sets of teenagers setting up small traffic cones and rollerblade around them at night.  but last week as I was on my way back from Latin, an all you can eat brazilian bbq place(it was good, and pretty cheap but not as cheap as the all you can eat sushi place I go to which is sushi, so no contest)  Anyways, so on the way home from Latin I was riding past one of the many billboards of Deng Xiaoping and in the little plaza around it I saw a group of these rollerblade kids skating around only this time they were all twirling nunchucks.  That's it, thats the story, no real moral or point just thought it was interesting.
Number two, roadtrip, the more Ive been thinking about coming back to the US, the more I am again coming to the conclusion I'm not sure what I am going to do when I get back.  Anyways, as the prospect of a job job is coming to look clearer I am thinking of all the things that I want to do that are difficult to do with a job job.  One of them is a road trip, not just a small one but a big one, specifically I have been thinking about Route 66.  Chicago to LA, so I've been looking into that some, and it seems doable but a knotty problem about the trip is how to get me and a car to one of the starting places, either way if I drive from Phoenix to LA or Chicago I would then have to backtrack most of the way, which I'm not sure would be bad or good.  So with that preamble, anyone that may read this is invited to PLEASE help me think of a solution!

Tomatoes Tomatoes Tomatoes
Here in China they do not have salad, I mean they have the necessary ingredients but unless you go out to a more expensive restaurant that actually has western food you have to make it yourself.  This was made easier by the discovery of salad dressing in certain supermarkets western sections, in particular a sesame dressing which is very good, not as good as the miso dressing at home but still good, especially considering the only other salad dressings they have are thousand island for the most part.
Anyways, I digress, back to tomatoes.  So cucumbers I can always get and it is actually fairly easy to find romaine hearts as well.  But tomatoes are easy to find, or at least chinese tomatoes.  Now I don't mean that these are a new variety of tomatoes from here in China or anything, in fact a fairly common dish is chopped tomateos and eggs which is pretty good.  But by Chinese tomatoes I mean that they aren't very good, no real flavor, all very faded red, not entirely ripe but what can you do right?
Wrong, you see there are also lots of fruit stands, or to be more precise fruit vans that set up everywhere and until then I hadn't really frequented them unless I was walking by the and was hugry at that moment.  BUT then I saw cherry tomatoes at the stand near one of my friends house.  So I bought a kilo of them and ate them in like two days, they were amazing, juicy flavorful and ripe, really red, all the more so because of the alternative.  So now I can finally have good tomatoes with my salads.  But I have to be honest, I have not actually had them on a salad yet, both times I bought them i finished them before I could have them on a salad.

So Thailand was nice enough I guess, I really didn't get a feel for the country as a whole just Thailand and a few days on an island but I have to say that Cambodia was alot alot alot of fun. That country was really nice! Especially after how crowded and busy Bangkok was it was nice to go to a country that was alot more laid back and not as crowded. I only went to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap but both were really nice. Phnom Penh, even though it is the capital isn't really that developed relative to Bangkok or Shenzhen. It has something of an expat district along part of the river but it is really small. It was also pretty hot, I cannot imagine what it must be like in this region come summer, at least Phoenix is a dry heat. Siem Reap was alot of fun even if it was really touristy, but it wasn't in an obnoxious way and the Cambodian people were all very friendly as well. We rented bicycles to explore Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom etc and that was alot of fun. The food was good, even though I don't normally eat bread every day and especially not in China I had forgotten how good french bread was until I hit Cambodia, where it was everywhere. They make this really good sandwhich with cucumber, green onion, cambodian fish sauce, and what I think was condensed milk which they use alot, along with some sort of meat but the meat didnt really add anything to the taste. I have taken an ungodly amount of pictures it will be at least 500 or so by the time this trip is done. Digital cameras and large memory cards have unleashed the inner artsy photog snob in all of us. I need to go to Laos at some point but not this trip, and have to go back to Thailand but after the end of this trip I think I can cross off Cambodia and Vietnam of places to be visited.

Maybe a correction

Okay so i am now not sure if the papaya salad was papaya or mango. it was a light green fruit about the size of an avacodo that was shredded and was a lighter green on the inside but it has been called into question as to what it actually was...if anyone knows and would like to enlighten us please feel free!

Thailand

So I have now officially added thailand to the places Ive been, but at most it is a hollow achievement. I am only here for 8 days and i will not get to see much of the country, which to me is the whole point of going to a country. Anyone can go see 12 countries in 12 days in Europe or jsut travel to the capital of a place but that doesn't seem any fun. So I have to come back and do Thailand properly, maybe take a few weeks or a month at some point though I have no idea when. It is also depressing because even though I am living in China and traveling through Southeast Asia for a month i am constantly meeting people who are traveling for a year. Now I am having a great time but still, it would be alot of fun to travel for a year. I met a girl who had come to thailand via China and the Trans-Siberian Railroad and another who had just arrived to start her travels and she had quit her job at an aquarium.
Anyways, on to the travel update. bangkok is alot of fun, very big and crowded but the Skytrain makes it relatively easy to get around. Everything is cheap but that just means that you spend alot of small amounts of money that add up to a large amount of money(relatively speaking). Also everyone thinks I am a pervert and ask if I want adult DVD because I am a foreigner. I did walk by several go go bars that lie along the night market, nothing really special that i saw, just a large amount of thai women in bikinis sort of half dancing on stage. Eh. Also did a cooking class that was alot of fun. It was 4 hours and only had me and one other woman from Canada and we made fresh curry paste, a very nice mint salad, pad thai, a really good soup and then a dessert called rubies in coconut milk. I have all the recipes so I can make them when I get back. I also went to the old Siam capital and that was cool, lots of ruins and what not, took alot of pictures. Anyways, then I went to ko Chang which is an island and that was really laid back and relaxing even though we were only there for two days but that beach was really nice, kinda made me wiosh I was traveling with a girl but c'est la vie.
Finally, the food is amazing! Street food is so good and they need to have it in the states, maybe thatll be the theme of the restaurant I open, all street food, which includes alot of different thigns, from pad thai to meeat on a stick to papaya salad(Which was incredibly good!!!!). Anyways, on to Phnom Penh and Cambodia so i will let you know what comes next!

So I leave for THailand in two days which is very exciting for me.  I ate the last of my perishable food today and so for dinner i went out to a noodle place, not one right next to me but one a 5 minute walk away.  To get there I have to go past I guess what would be the "town" or "village" square.  Id never been there at night before and just as in the park it was full of people.  Theere were kids watching what looked like a Barbie cgi movie and groups of people ballroom dancing and doing tai chi and practising some sort of dance involving cymbols, small drums, and red fans or scarves i wasn't sure which.  Anyways, the point of this is that I kind of like the Chinese community spirit thing they have going here.  I don't know if it stems from cultural differences or because of the whole socialist thing but at night in any neighborhood in the US you wouldnt have all these people out and about at night all just at one place doing things together.  The same thing, only on a slightly larger scale happens at the park only there it is mostly people ballroom dancing which is fun to watch.
Also people here have been asking me about the election happening back home so that has been interesting.  They don't really have a good idea of how things work as far as elections for president go, at least not that I could tell and Im not sure if that is because of a language barrier when we talk about it or because the government doesn't want them to know or it's just one of those things that they ahppen not to know about.  At some pont it would be ncie to find a person that speaks fluent fluent english and talk about it and see what they have to say.  i know that alot of people that I have talked to over the months do expres dislike for the party and all but I wonder how much they know abut alternative forms of government.  Anyways, good night and I am very excited for southeast asia.  Also, I was thinking, we call the general region of Iraq Saudi Arabia, UAE the middle east, but we dont call any region the East.  Why is that?  Also with words with the prefix of mis, they usually mean soemthing bad, what does mis mean?

Well it is beautiful today outside.  There has been a cold snap around here but it is slowly getting less cold, a few days ago it was freezing.  But today, while in the morning it was really cold it has warmed up to merely a bit chilly and with my new scarf and my jacket it is a very nice day, the sun is shining, which in itself is a good thing since every once in a while China's almost perfect enviromental record there can be a smidge of smog on the horizon but today and yesterday it was almost perfect.  Two nights ago I made chicken soup and then last night french onion soup.  Tonight I was going to make chili but i hink my tutoree's(is that right) mother is taking me out to dinner for spicy food because we both like it apparently.  
New Years was spent in hong kong and it was alot of fun, lots and lots of people everywhere.  We went to a few different bars, including one which is a brew pub or something that had a really good house beer that I am blanking on the name so i will have to go back at some point.  They also have escalators that take you up from the harbor into the Soho district which is where there are alot of foreign restaurants, bars, and people.  I found this out after already walking all the way up the streets which are fairly steep but now I know.  I hope everyone had a good new Years wherever they were!
I went walking in the park near me again and caught the tail enf of Aladdin, the disney version, in chinese.  After that they put on a shadow puppett show, not sure of what was going on but there were puppet dragons, small children, chickens, frogs and other things that I did not recognize.  I didn't understand the show but from the laughing I took it to be a very funny show.  
I am going to have to get my hostel in bangkok today or tomorrow and then we also need to book one for Cambodia where I am meeting up with some other friends.  I guess that is about it on this front so I hope you all had a Happy New Year!