I know that it has been a while. A looonnnnng while. But I’m back for a bit. Tomorrow I’m completing the trifecta of ring roads that you can bike around in Beijing. 🙂  With about 10 friends (American and Chinese), I will be enjoying a ‘family’ bikeride in our beautiful weather down in the historical part of the city. I’m excited! More to come later.

I just realized that my last post was just after Thanksgiving.  I am getting bad at this again…

Here are some highlights of my “Christmas Season” this year in Beijing:

1.  We had our yearly Christmas party with hundreds of Chinese friends.  It was enjoyable once again.

2.  The homeschool had it’s first ever Christmas party. 🙂  Each teacher was supposed to think of something to “perform” for our subject area.  As the math teacher at the homeschool my math class performed “The 12 days of Christmas” and had the audience count the total number of gifts received.  (First person to respond – in the form of a comment – with the correct answer will receive 10 points!)

3.  I spent a LOT of time working on my white elephant gift for our annual FOC gift exchange.  We do both a white elephant gift exchange and a secret santa gift exchange.  My white elephant gift was something that I had been planning since the summer time.  Last year’s white elephant was the FOC Beijing version of “Guess Who”.  This year I wanted to do better so I made the FOC Beijing version of Clue.  It was a hit with the group.  I’ll put photos at the bottom.

4.  I’ve spent much of my time teaching (both school and B studies)  I’m still enjoying my classes this year, especially our homeschool boys.  As crazy as they are, they grow on you…

5.  I bought a plane ticket to Thailand!  🙂

6.  I practiced a little bit more with photography.  I hope you enjoy the sample photos I’m including.

7.  Did I mention that I’m going to Thailand?

These are some of the miniatures I created for the Beijing version of Clue. The weapons were chopsticks, a wok, a cleaver, a bike chain, Micah's guitar string, and Teri's cat. I changed the room names too. 🙂 And the suspects 🙂

I also changed the photos of the characters on the front of the box. 🙂

This is what the whole front of the box looked like. 🙂 They didn't even know! hehehe...

Well, I’ll be back in a few weeks.  I’m flying into Bangkok tomorrow afternoon.  I’ll update when I come back. 🙂

Although the entire apple pie was eaten, the orange-pecan pie with chocolate drizzle received the most comments.  I’ll take that as a tie.  I did have an entire apple pie left.  I’ll be taking it to Chinese class on Tuesday. 🙂

It smells amazing in my apartment right now! Specifically the kitchen (which is also the dining room and entrance to the bathroom…)  As you all know, Thanksgiving was this past Thursday.  As teachers in a land that doesn’t really celebrate Thanksgiving, naturally we had to work.  However, since I teach at a homeschool, we did our own Thanksgiving celebration with our 8 boys.  (The girls were both gone for the week.)  I was on pie duty.

My favorite pie to make is apple pie.  It probably the easiest one to make and it goes over pretty well with the crowds.  A few weeks ago, I practiced by making a pie for my Chinese class.  This past week I made two pies for the homeschool celebration.  I’m on pie duty for our FOC celebration.  I just finished making two pies…one apple, one orange-pecan pie with a chocolate “drizzle”. 

I don’t know if you know how to make pie crust, but it is relatively easy.  My pie crust recipe goes like this:
          2 Cups Flour
          1 tsp. salt
          1 Cup butter (yes, that says 1 Cup–I didn’t say my recipe was healthy)
          1/2 Cup water

In my mind, the most important “ingredient” is the tool you use to “cut” the butter.  Known as a “pastry blender”, it is very useful for this task and makes pie-crust-making much easier.  I was cutting my butter into my flour when–SNAP!–the pastry blender broke.  The screw came off of one side of it and the whole thing snapped open.  Well, I was a little sad about that.  For one, I had to go back to using a fork. Two, I have to get a new pastry blender.  Making crust with shortening is a little easier but I think the butter recipe tastes better. 

The crust still turned out great (better actually) and the pie is just asking to be eaten!

I even criss-crossed the strips on top. 🙂 This was the first time I've done that!

The other pie was another “problem”…  The crust for the orange-pecan pie has grated orange peel in it.  (Oh, it smelled amazing!)  It is a bit difficult to grate an orange peel when you don’t have a grater.  I ended up using a knife and it worked okay…it just took a lot longer.  The other difficult thing about this pie is that it has pecans in it…I know…it’s in the name…I’m aware.  I didn’t realize just how difficult it would be to find pecans.  I found a 5.5 oz. can at a large grocery store (with a sizable import section) that cost 108元!  That’s about $17.  There was no way I was going to pay that much for such a small amount of nuts.  I kept looking.  I found a bag of pecans still in the shell for much cheaper.  The problem is that they were still in the shell.  Does anyone know how hard it is to get pecans out of their shell?!? It’s horrible.  It hurts to type right now because of it. 🙂 

Pecan pie is basically pecans (which are already sweet) and multiple types of sugar.  Add to that a chocolate drizzle and an orange sauce and you have a recipe for diabetes.  The pecan pie got a little bit well done but I think it will be okay.  The chocolate “drizzle” never did get drizzly on the stovetop so it’s more of a chocolate “frosting”…which is a little weird on pecan pie. We’ll see which pie gets eaten first. (My guess is apple.)  I’ll be making another apple pie when I return to my apartment tonight after a friend’s birthday party. 

A little side note about extra pie crust:  Sometimes there’s a little bit leftover when you roll it out, etc., etc…  I want to share with you my mini-muffin-sized-apple pies.  🙂  They were equally delicious.

They're just so cute!

I let you know which pie is the favorite!  Happy Thanksgiving!

There have been a few episodes in the last edition of “Amber’s Life in China”.  Allow me to give you the brief run-down.

Catch up with old friends and meet new ones:

You remember Tom and Amy, right?  It has only been about two and a half months since their baby was born.  I dropped by their apartment last week to pay them a visit. (When I say “dropped by” I really mean “planned it in advance”)  Lucia, their daughter (or in Chinese – 路加 pronounced “loo-jyah”) is growing quickly.  She has super chubby cheeks and sleeps well at night.  Both mom and dad are happy, content, and tired. 🙂  Lucia has some health issues.  If you’re looking for something to pray for–you got it!  While I was in Tom and Amy’s part of the city (about 1.5 hours from where I live) I wanted to visit the foreign import grocery store.  There are many things you can buy there which you can’t buy at other places.  (Unfortunately, still no peanut butter M&Ms)  I was going to there after visiting them but they wanted me to stay for dinner.  Tom insisted that I use his bike to go there and then just come back to their apartment for dinner before going home.  He led me out to the underground bike parking garage and got his bike.  Now, in Chinese to say “ride bicycle” you say “骑自行车”.  (chee-zuh-shing-chuh) approx…..  the verb is “chee”.  Tom used his very awesome Chinglish to make a joke using the verb “chee” that I thought was funny.  He told me that his tires were out of air (气 — also “chee”) because “Long Time No Chee”.  hehehehe…. We steal our phrase “Long time no see” directly from Chinese. 

Baby Lucia with me

I also met a new friend at B study this past week.  Her name is Amanda and she just came back to China from living in Canada for 9 years!  Her English is amazing.  She’s a graphic designer and knows photography.  She and I will get along very well! 🙂

The tale of the Zoomer

A couple weeks ago, a friend asked me to help him get his e-bike fixed.  He just needed help talking in Chinese. (I know…funny, right?–millions of English-speaking Chinese people and he asked me…)  I went with him to the bike place and got them to understand that he needed the breaks fixed, a new headlight and a new “stand” for the bike.  They fixed those problems but couldn’t fix the much-more-complicated chain problem.  A few days after that, this friend texted me and asked me to try to fix the chain at a different place. In exchange, he would let me ride the zoomer (we affectionately call it “zoom-zoom”) for a few days.  How could I not?

So, I picked up the bike from his house on a Saturday. (The bike still works…It’s just that if the battery would happen to die while driving it, I wouldn’t be able to pedal the bike and would have to push it.  Okay…no problem…I’ll just charge the battery each night and we’ll be good to go.  First of all, the battery is super heavy.  If you remember correctly, I live on the 5th floor.  I definitely got a workout on the days I was carrying that battery.  Of course, this makes up for all the exercise I wasn’t getting while scooting around on an electric bike.  I didn’t fix it on Sunday. (but rode it to church) 🙂  I didn’t fix it on Monday because I’m gone to a different part of the city on Mondays teaching.  Tuesday rolled around and I rode it to Chinese class and other places.  I took it to a different bike place to see if I could get my meaning across. They understood me just fine but said they didn’t have the part.  They said if I would come back next month, they could have the part.  Hmmm….well, okay.

Here’s how my days of riding the e-bike went.  Sunday – ride to Chinese church to meet a friend. Ride to our church along the path of the Beijing marathon.  (almost impossible to cross the road) Ride to school to pick up some things. Ride back to my home. (battery still working.)  Take battery upstairs to plug it in.  Monday – no riding.  Tuesday – ride to school, chinese class, to Hannah’s, to bike fixing place, to the boy’s apartment for B study.  Leave the bike there.  I had had enough.  Oh it was fun to drive. So fun I considered for about 10 minutes whether or not I should buy one.  But I decided it was not a fit for me.  First of all, I really do love riding my ‘manual’ bike.  Second of all, there is a little button (see below picture) that, when I push it, honks the little horn on the e-bike.  It’s the equivalent of the bell for the ‘manual’ bikes.  It says ‘excuse me, I’m coming up behind you and would like to go around you.’  Except–when Amber’s on the e-bike.  For some reason, when I’m on the e-bike, the little horn-honking-button becomes (only in my mind of course) sort of a force field.  I think that if I push it, cars will magically not hit me.  I definitely felt fearless while riding this bike.  This would not be good for me.  It goes much faster than I need to (although I really want to).  Long story short:  my days with the e-bike were short-lived, albeit exciting. 

Here is Zoom Zoom. Ted bought him last year but never really rode him. He sort of gets passed around among the men of the group but I was fortunate enough to try him out for a couple days. He's awesome!

See that little button on the bottom? That's the horn for the zoomer. It really is the control for this force field that I was talking about. It's very dangerous.

The time when Amber couldn’t get warm

It’s been getting quite a bit colder in the capital city.  It has dropped to a chilly 30-40 degrees at night and hovers right around 60 during the day.  Now, you’re probably thinking that it isn’t that cold.  But I disagree. When you spend the greater share of your day outside on a bike, 60 starts to feel cold.  The worst part about the cold is how it invades every corner of my apartment.  Now, being the good communist country that we are, the heat is regulated.  When I say regulated I mean that I don’t get to choose when to turn it on.  I probably would have turned it on last week.  It is frightfully chilly inside of my apartment, especially my bedroom.  (I’m sure the other rooms are equally chilly…I’m just in my bedroom the most because I’m NEVER home.)  I think the “heat-turn-on-day” is November 1.  Happy Birthday, Amber…have some heat!  I’ll let you know if that is in fact the day.  I really shouldn’t complain about not getting to control the heat.  Our southern counterparts don’t even get to have heat. Granted, they are technically in a warmer part of the country but I would rather have heat inside. 

While complaining about the cold with an American friend of mine I was reminiscing about my travels last year and how I experienced the “no heat inside” part of the country in January.  This journey back in time reminded me of how I stayed warm on that trip…every place I stayed at had an electric matress pad on each bed!  Last year for my birthday, my friend Junning gave me an electric matress pad.  I had forgotten I had said matress pad.  I have never used it because the heat came on before I had a chance.  (And then the heat didn’t go off until April.)  So, naturally, I went right home and put the matress pad under the sheet on my bed. 🙂  Warm Bliss!  So now I’m warm in my apartment. At least when I’m in/on my bed. 🙂

—————————————————————————-

Many other things have happened as well.  Just not as memorable to me.  I’ve been using my camera whenever I get the chance.  I’ll share a few of my better photos below.  Enjoy the weekend!

I was playing with my camera in my apartment. I had to lie on the floor for this one. Notice the clean floor. 🙂

This was a late night adventure on Peking University Campus. The red sky is due in part to the pollution.

My plan was to get a photo of messy traffic so that you could see what I was talking about in my previous post. I happened to be there on the day that the police were regulating the traffic. This is one of many shots that I got from inside the "subway". This line of the subway is mostly above ground.

Besides going rafting for the holiday, I also did some other stuff…

I visited some places I had seen before. (798 Art District, the city of Tianjin)  I saw a not-so-awesome Chinese fairy tale movie…in Chinese. I went to a micro-brewery in downtown Beijing to drink some not-so-awesome beer.  But in all of these ho-hum activities there were awesome people involved, which made the experiences wonderful.  Oh yeah….I also helped photograph another wedding.  See a few of my favorite photos below. 

The happy couple

They didn't have any attendents so I have a bunch of pictures of just the two of them.

🙂

What you don't see in this picture is across the lily pond the hoards of people photographing these two. It was quite entertaining.

There’s an upside and a downside to every outing…usually.

Once again, I find myself with an obscene amount of vacation time after only teaching for one month.  During this holiday, there happens to be a wedding right in the middle…so, I decided to hang out around Beijing and fly by the seat of my pants.  I was online exploring things to do in the Beijing area (to see if there were things I hadn’t done) and I found a white water rafting place. ‘Hmm…could be interesting,’ I thought to myself.  I sent an email out to the group to see if there was anyone interested in rafting.  After people decided what they were going to do, I headed to the train ticket office to see if we could get tickets for THE NEXT DAY…  If you have learned anything from me during my time here, you should know that this is nearly impossible.  But I went anyway.  I took my awesome friend Gretl with me because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to communicate my needs to the ticket seller.  We waited in line for what seemed like an hour (probably only about 30 min).  Got to the window and the woman said, “什么都没有” (shenme dou meiyou), which means “nothing!”  I was skeptical (even though I knew this was an impossible task) so we made sure that we heard her correctly and then went on our way.  A little sad about the lack of train tickets, I headed back to the school to brainstorm with Gretl how else we could get there. 

We checked buses, private driver, etc.  Everything was either unavailable or unaffordable.  I sent out a mass text message that said we couldn’t get train tickets and to see what the group wanted to do.  They wanted to keep trying.

The next morning my friend Ming (who was actually coming with us–poor Gretl was helping us organize and not even coming on the trip) went to the busiest train station in Beijing.  (She did this because sometimes if you go to the station instead of the ticket office you might be able to get tickets.)  She couldn’t even get INSIDE the train station.  When she finally did get inside she had to wait in line.  She finally heard from someone that there were no tickets to ANYWHERE for that day and the next day (Friday and Saturday).  Her long trip to the station was worth nothing.  We made an executive decision and informed the group that we would be heading north to a closer, less adventurous river to do some “drifting” down a river. 🙂  They were all still “in.”

That evening, after two friends finished teaching, we headed for one of the main bus stations.  Tickets to the nearby suburbs are fairly easy to get.  Actually, we were technically using a city bus that was faster than the other city buses.  Ming had arranged our “hostel” (actually a farmhouse–called 农家院 in Chinese) and a driver to get us to the “hostel” for when we got off the city bus.  Transportation to our destination cost approx. Y18. 🙂

We were pleasantly surprised to discover that our driver was taking us far away from the city and into the mountains via some beautiful scenery. 

We arrived at the 农家院 to find a wonderful supper waiting for us.  All of the food was farm fresh and delicious.  We got to try some new things too.   Our room was equally awesome!  Not “awesome” in the way you would think… Awesome because all 8 of us got to stay in the same room and it was fun to have great company.  (BTW–people who came on the trip included, Hannah, Hannah’s Brother, Chinese friend Ming, Joseph, Micah, Tim, Chinese friend Jacob, and yours truly…aren’t you glad you know now?)  We had tons of laughs and giggles about four of the guys sharing one enormous bed. (It was actually four twin-sized beds shoved together with a piece of what was basically plywood laying on top of them.) hehehe….

In the morning, the 老板 (boss) made us breakfast and drove us to the place where we would eventually hop in the rafts. 

Here is where the pictures come. Except…when you are surrounded by water with water splashing into your raft and onto you, you don’t really want your electronic devices along with you.  This was such a bittersweet day for me, lover of images, to not have my camera. (I even brought my point and shoot with me that day because I knew the DSLR would not have been a wise choice.)  The rafting people recommended not bringing anything electronic: phone, camera, mp3, etc.  I struggled and struggled with the decision but eventually decided to leave it.  The sky was a gorgeous deep blue, the water was lovely, the cliffs were precipitous, and it was an all around great day!  I wish I could share it with you in photos.  One of the highlights of the day was sharing a boat with Joseph who is a laugh a minute.  He also didn’t like the way I paddled so I got to enjoy most of the ride without the work. 🙂  We almost capsized at one set of rapids but managed to keep our boat right. 

After the river journey we were carted back to the place where we stored our backpacks and decided to grill some chuan’r 串 (with the sole purpose of having the sticks and grill to use for roasting marshmallows).  After relaxing with beer, chuan’r (and s’mores) our driver took us back to the bus station from the night before to catch the bus back to Beijing.  We arrived in the city in time for a Peking duck dinner and headed to our respective homes.  It was a really amazing day in God’s beautiful scenery enjoying time with a great group of people!

(It’s actually 996 words, but who’s counting?)

Transportation in China will always be my arch-nemesis.  Actually, I’m unsure if it is the transportation or the lack of common sense by the people operating the different forms of transportation. 

Whether I’m on my bike, on a bus, in a taxi, walking, or even on the subway, the lack of common sense is glaring.  For example:  if you have to make a left turn on a busy street (because there is a school there and many many bus routes) it is only natural to turn your car in front of the bus coming at you and wait there until you are able to get through, thus blocking the rest of the cars behind that bus and causing traffic to be backed up for kilometers.  And then, of course, if you are not in that car or on that bus but riding your bike, it is only natural to ride between all of the cars/buses/etc. to quickly get to your destination…this just makes sense people. 

This morning I rode my bike to Chinese class.  It takes me anywhere from 28-35 minutes depending on the flow of traffic near this aformentioned school.  This particular road was probably not the greatest idea that the city planner came up with unless his/her intention was to see what 3 kilometers of buses and cars packed bumper to bumper looked like.  I really need to photograph this for you.  It’s amazing what people will do to be first here.  When I got to the “neighborhood” where my Chinese class is held there was another massive traffic back up.  Apparently we haven’t figured out the green arrow in this country.  Naturally, if you are waiting for the light to turn green so you can make a left turn, your first reaction should always be to turn in front of the oncoming traffic, convincing the cars behind you to do the same and causing the non-turning cars to wait and back up.  It is diffucult to recover from this sort of “jam” because (believe it or not) the cars KEEP COMING…  Add this situation to a location where there is a railroad track going right through the neighborhood (with quite frequent trains) and it’s even more entertaining. 

It doesn’t just happen with left turns.  Question: when you make a right turn onto a road (busy or not) what is your first reaction?  I hope you answered, ‘check if traffic is coming from the left.’  If you live in China, however, there is no need to check this direction because the person turning onto the busy (or not) street (at a much slower speed, mind you) is clearly more important than the cars or buses speeding down the road.  No problem. Those cars will stop for you.  (It affects the bikers too…this is how I got hit by a car once)

One of my favorite situations while using the subway system is when people try to get on the subway before allowing anyone to get off. I think this might actually be a game for some people. Or elevators. The same.  The key is to stand right in the middle of the opening of the door so that the “exiters” are not able to exit before you get on. 

THE SOLUTION to these traffic problems is simple, however:  HONK YOUR HORN INCESSANTLY.  🙂

Okay…I’m done venting.  Have a great day!!

This morning when I went to park my bike near my Chinese school I noticed a line of 50+ bikes where we “aren’t supposed” to park our bikes…I was wondering how they would enforce this.  It’s exactly like any of the other “laws” this country has.  We drive on the right side of the street?  But what if I only need to go 100 meters on the wrong side of the street?  Is that okay?  I think the laws broken the most are traffic laws, and next to that it’s tax evasion.  But that’s another blog post.

The weekday homeschool kids are getting into a better routine and are therefore much better behaved.  The struggle with this group now is to get them to learn algebra in a language they don’t speak natively.  Hmm….this could be interesting.  (To clarify–I teach at two different “homeschools”–one is the FOC “homeschool” and the other one is a co-op of teenage girls. The aformentioned homeschoolers are the FOC students…7 boys and 1 girl)

Having never taught in a multi-grade classroom, I’m finding it difficult to overcome the language barriers while teaching three different levels of math.  Thankfully, the girl (Vivian) is really awesome at learning things on her own, and her English is better than her Chinese.  (I have Vivian on Mondays at the co-op homeschool also!)  She basically reads through the algebra book on her own and does the lessons.  She’s awesome.  Every Monday after our classes together, we share a taxi back to my part of the city because she stays with my friend Gretl so that she doesn’t have to get up so early to come to our school. (She lives over an hour away in the northern suburbs in a large house.)

As I’m writing this, I just got home from tutoring a 9th grade boy, Mark, in US History.  He’s going to the US for high school after this year and he desperately needs help with his English if he’s going to survive.  His mother cooks supper for me every time I go to their apartment.  They live about a 15 ish minute bike-ride away, and they don’t care where I park my bike… 🙂

Hopefully I’ll be more interesting after I’ve had some good sleep! That’s all for now…

I’ve heard many theories about forming new habits (or routines) and about how many days it takes to do so.  One said 60 days, one said 30 days, another said 21 days, and still another said anywhere from 21-250 days.  Is there really no research on this?  Honestly, I think it really depends on the habit/routine that you are trying to form.  I’m having a difficult time adjusting to my new routine/schedule and how best to use the time in the middle part of my day.  I can’t decide if I would do better with mornings free or afternoons free. 

For now, my very busy schedule is okay.  I’m enjoying teaching what I’m teaching but I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.  I’m wondering if this is a habit/routine that is just taking a little longer to form.  Every beginning to a school year takes a while to get used to.  Maybe I’m just being impatient…

In other news:  Chinese class is going pretty well.  I miss every Monday because I’m in a different part of the city teaching. When I’m there it’s pretty good.  I don’t spend as much time studying as I would like because I am spending most of my “free” time planning my other classes…  Today there were five students in the class (it changes every day).  Two 美国人(Americans), one 英国人(British), one 俄国人 (Russian), and one Algerian (don’t know that one in Chinese).  Class today was probably the most fun of all of them so far just because we spent a lot of time just talking/discussing different habits of people in our home countries.  I felt less afraid to speak…maybe it’s getting better.

When I arrived at class this morning, I parked in my usual place (along the sidewalk with a whole mess of other bikes) and got my iced coffee. (Pretty soon it will be hot coffee as the weather is rapidly getting chillier–46 degrees when I woke up this morning)  After class, I went to retrieve my bicycle from the line of bikes and it was gone! (Now, I know you know that I’ve had two bikes stolen so far…this was not like that.)  My bicycle was not the only one that was “stolen” from the place.  There were ZERO bikes along the sidewalk.  I was baffled as to where my bike could possibly be.  Another man was there and we looked at each other with a “what-in-the-world-just-happened” look on both of our faces.  I quickly scanned the area for any evidence of the recent events.  There were three men in orange jackets pushing one dolly (yes-three men for one dolly) on which was an electric bike/scooter thing.  Hmmm….I wonder if this is what happened to my bike…

I asked one of the men what happened to all the bikes. (in Chinese—because, for some reason, if I am forced to speak Chinese I have no problem)  He told me they were on the other side of the road.  I glanced over and there were no bikes directly there.  I crossed the street in search of the missing 车 and discovered a sort of parking garage for bikes buried behind the entrance to the subway.  It was at this point that I was very thankful that my bike is very recognizable.  It’s obnoxious in color and has a blue seat (most have black) so it was relatively easy to find among the probably 1000+ bikes in rows.  Attached to my bike was a little white piece of paper with a printed note on it.  Later (from a friend) I would find out that the note said that I cannot park my bike in that place anymore and if they find my bike there again they will take it! 🙂  Yikes!  If everything could be so efficient in this country…

So, I need to find a better place to park my bike.  I wonder how long it will take me to form that habit…? Hopefully not too long or I may be walking…

Until next time…