They sure do grow up fast

Do you remember those two little rascals, Wei-En and Wei Min, my nephews, in Bangkok? Well, they both have grown considerably, especially Wei-En. When I last saw him, he was cruising around in his stroller, chewing on his shoelace fascinated with empty plastic bottles. Now, he's walking around, chatting it up with everyone and has 2 nicknames for me, he has renamed Uncle Jimmy as: "Go Me" and "Jimmy-ah" (imitating my Aunt Nancy in a Chinese accent).

As with Wei Min, everyone talks to Wei En in a combination of Chinese, Thai and English. Wei En can correctly identify and say: Flamingo in English, Dog in Chinese, and Elephant in Thai. At first, I thought oh my gosh, that kid is going to be confused when he gets older, but the more I thought about it, the more it seems appropriate. It'll all get sorted out and then he'll be tri-lingual like Wei Min, which is fantastic!

Wei En, following in the footprints, or should I say hoof prints of his older brother , by riding a pony. Wei En is also very into applauding !Wei Min, Wei Min and Uncle Jimmy

Catching up

After 2 1/2 weeks of traveling in China, I have a much needed respite with my relatives in Bangkok. Dealing with all of the logistics of getting four people through China, while fun and exciting, can be a bit stressful. It feels like I've come full circle since leaving last year. I started my adventure in Bangkok and am now ending it here.

After we left Xi'an, we went to Chengdu (成都) in Sichuan (四川) Provence to see the Pandas! This is the same Provence where the tragic, devastating earthquake happened, but Chengdu was not effected. Pandas are cute, but they are pretty lazy. Most of their day is consumed with eating because their bodies can only absorb a fraction of the nutrients from bamboo, so they have to spend about 80% of their day eating. Its a hard knock life for them.

We also made a day trip out to Leshan (樂山), where the world's largest buddha is located. This place also happens to be the birthplace of my father, who I thought was born in Chongqing, but was recently informed otherwise. His Chinese name carries part of his birth place, Le (樂), which means "happy."

After a couple of days in Chengdu, we made it to the Yunnan (云南) Provence, which is an area that is worth exploring in China. The scenery is breathtaking and the old towns of Lijiang (丽江) and Dali (大理) are a refreshing change of pace from the generic Chinese cities, especially, since there's hardly any pollution. Also, we hike Tiger Leaping Gorge which was an amazing hike. My mom was a super trooper and hiked the incredible difficult trail without any assistance, namely from the 2 local with horses who were trailing us in hopes of one of us tiring and paying money to ride the horse to the top.

Anyhoo, that's brief recap of our travels, which concluded in Hong Kong with a four day extravaganza of eating, shopping and seeing relatives.

Zach, Jen and I at Tiger Leaping Gorge
The Fam:
Click here to see some cute panda cubs, the world's largest Buddha, and more!

Family Vacay

D'oh, its been almost a month since I've last posted. Things have been really hectic for me as the year is coming to an end. Over the past month, I went to my friend Letizia's wedding, which was a beautiful ceremony on the beach and have been trying to say my good-byes to my friends in Jilin. I've also been packing and cleaning; as Kevin points out, I'm a pack-rat, although I think that over the years, I've gotten better about throwing things away.

One of my last nights in Jilin was one of the funnest. Along the scenic, yet slightly polluted, Song Hua River, Snow Beer (Xue Hua 雪華) set up several beer tents with mini kegs and pitchers for sale, combined with kabobs and other small snacks, it was a fun evening. This type of thing is pretty atypical for Jilin as most things are closed early and most people head home around 9pm.
Song Hua River
Jenny's friends, Jenny, Jim and Kevin

Leaving Jilin was bittersweet; while it was sad leaving my friends and students, I was excited to travel in China with my mom, sister, Jennifer, and her husband Zach.

We started off in Beijing, doing all the major tourist sites and then headed on an overnight train to Xi'an (西安). It would have been easier to take a flight, but I wanted to give Jen and Zach a true China experience: the overnight train. They are actually not that bad and quite comfortable, but I think one event is seared into their brains. The morning before our arrival, the water, for some unknown reason stopped working in the bathrooms. This led to no flushing of the squatters (toilets that you have to squat to use, which are ubiquitous in China); consequently, giving my sister and Zach unfortunate views and odors.

Otherwise, its been great seeing a new place and I'm excited for the other places we're going to see.

I'm in the process of uploading pictures, but enjoy the one of Jen and me eating an overly sweet fruit kabob. I recommend getting this only with the pineapple, we had a few tomatoes in ours!

Ice Lake Ditch (冰湖沟)

This past Saturday, my Medical English Students took another teacher and myself on an outing to Ice Lake Ditch (冰湖沟). It's a beautiful place and its easy to forget that there is life outside "the city." Incredibly enough, there was still ice formations at this place, or rather maybe not so surprising since it has been cold up until now. Regardless, it was pretty cool to see ice blocks, on a sunny, warm day. My students are a fun bunch and it was great to hang out with them outside of the class setting, especially since my time here is coming to an end.

I honestly can't believe that my time here in Jilin is almost over. Before I came, I was looking for some kind of connection to China. I think that I can honestly say that I'm Chinese-American with more conviction.

Many students have asked me do you consider yourself Chinese or American? In the U.S., I've always given the standard response, "oh, I'm Chinese-American," but that was more based on appearance than anything. I mean I did know how to use chopsticks and I love to eat Chinese food, but other than some understanding of some customs, I never felt that I was truly Chinese. While living here for a year does not necessarily make me an expert, I have a better grasp of the ideas, customs, culture and more importantly, I can actually order the food now. My reply to the students have been, "I'm both! I'm Chinese-American!"

I'm in an ice pocket

Look at the last guy who littered.
He learned his lesson and now uses the trash receptacle.

Rest of the pictures from my outing.

加油! Jia You!

As I ran along the hilly countryside, along the Great Wall Marathon course, many little kids and adults were yelling, "Jia you! (加油!) Jia you!" This literally means "add oil," but translates to "go! go! go!" It was kind of humorous because I would usually hear the crowds yell out "hello" to foreigners passing by, but then when they saw me, they would say, look a Chinese runner, and say, "加油!"

This was a pretty intense course, much of it uphill and on top of that there's the wall. The first time around, it wasn't so bad, kind of nice and my body was still relatively fresh, as it was in the first 5 miles that we "ran" the wall. In reality, its nearly impossible to run along Great Wall, so most of us just walked along, hoping not to fall off or trip and break a bone.

However, by mile 22ish, I was pretty tired and my legs were screaming in pain. I was cursing every step and was wondering if I could stop right there. I kept chugging along until the end of the wall and it was all downhill from there, literally.

It was the greatest feeling to cross the finish line and I got a nifty medal. Overall, it was an amazing, grueling experience, one that I probably will not do again, but highly recommend it!

On the stage with my medal!













You can see the wall along the hills.













In other news, the earthquake in Sichuan province is devastating, as I'm sure you've heard. Thankfully, I am up in the northeast, which very far away from the western province. Today, and the next two days, there are moments of silence at 2:28PM for the victims of the Earthquake. Also, if you would like to donate some money, the following are some good websites to check out:
http://tsinghuafoundation.org/earthquake08/index.html
http://www.us.tzuchi.org/usa/home.nsf/photonews/k11802
http://www.mercycorps.org/chinaearthquake/

May 20th, 10:53PM Addendum
Here is my result from the Great Wall Marathon

May 23rd, 12:37AM Addendum
This website has photos of me along the wall and the course, just click on the Great Wall Marathon on the left side and put in my bib number in the search engine: 544

Harder than the Antarctica Marathon?

With about a week and a half left before the Great Wall Marathon, I though I'd peruse some of the articles on the marathon, just to mentally prepare myself. When I came across a comment left by a previous runner who wrote, "I thought Antarctica was tough until I ran the Great Wall Marathon"

I was in a state in of utter disbelief. I mean, come on, we're talking about freaking Antarctica here. Its covered in ICE and Wikipedia has this to add, "Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents." Oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into?

In other news, we were on holiday last week for May Day so a bunch of us went camping at 5 Tiger Island. This island is actually a theme park, so it looked a bit odd that we had all our camping gear, looking for a spot along the beach. One of the tourists yelled out, "do you plan on living there?" Regardless, we had a grand ol' time which was accentuated with 朋友 (peng you, "friend" in Chinese), Michelle's boxer, who was super hyper, but not very good at fetching. 5 Tiger Island photo album here

Peng you "helping" collect firewood:













Matt, Michelle, James, Kevin, Peng You, and Jenny

Childhood pastimes

Winter is becoming a distant memory as the days have become super nice and warm. More and more people are outside, recalibrating their eyes to the sun and, as my students would say, playing outside.

Recently, I've rediscovered 2 activities from my childhood in Century Square, a ginormous square, near the Song Hua River, that has a huge structure called "the boat", a small zoo, a large TV that plays Enya all day long, and throngs of people renting roller skates and flying kites, some are doing both at the same time.

Jenny and Kevin in front of the Boat in Century SquareI think I can count the number of times I've gone roller skating on one hand, but nevertheless it was tons of fun and I didn't fall once! The following day, I went kite-flying with my friend, Ethan, and his girlfriend Linda. I was skeptical of kite flying at first, but I ended up liking the challenge of getting the kite high in the air and maintaining it high above. Its harder than it looks!

Kevin and me keeping balanced

I told my friend Katrin about my recent adventures and she said, "that should be a requirement...to spend an hour a week doing something that you used to do only as a child! minimally"

Octopus kite...
So buck up campers and get on out there!
Look how much this little tyke is having!

Indoctrination

So recently you've probably noticed that all the press about Tibet, the Olympics and whatnot, and maybe you're wondering what the sentiment here is in China, especially among the students. I came across this op-ed piece (NY Time Article) which I think correctly assesses the opinions of most Chinese here.

Understandably, students are taught to love their country, nationalism is part of any country's curriculum. For example, the U.S. text books have glossed over our own malicious behavior towards American Indians and Japanese text books have underplayed their war atrocities in China and even have made some of the army leaders into war heroes. This is all done in order to paint a rosy picture of history and an attempt to avert any type of shame or disdain for one's country. Regardless, history is supposed to explain the truth and even knowing the truth, one can still love their country.

Thus, one can still love their country and at the same time be critical of their actions.