Last few weeks

Hello loves!

I haven't blogged for weeks due to tragedy at home; I've been grieving from afar and constantly thinking of a family that I love dearly and have always felt part of. My heart hasn't really felt 'here' since then. Then, last weekend, I traveled for the first time to do a presentation in a neighboring province.

Let me catch you up on some going ons' in my life in Wuhan. I'm not feeling my normal verbose self, so this is mostly photo-journal style.

A few weeks ago, we all had a week off for 'National Week.' It came at a good time, giving us all a collective sigh of relief and time to catch up. During that week, I promised myself that for every day I wasted away on lesson-planning, I'd make up with a day sight-seeing in Wuhan. During the week, I explored East Lake, the Botanical Gardens, and the old part of Wuhan, which is called Hankou. It seems like if I stayed in Wuhan every weekend/break, I'd still not run out of things to see and do.

A small part of East Lake that reminded me of Minnesota:

 East Lake:

 Walking on the Greenway that goes around the lake:

 On our walk to the gardens (it was national day, so many a flag!):

Lilly Pads at the Botanical Gardens: 

 Lotus-shaped pond at the botanical gardens:

Lovely pond

Going into Hankou (downtown) was definitely cool too, although the literal opposite of spending a day walking around tranquil ponds. This part of Wuhan is bustling and a little more touristy, although touristy for Chinese people, not really for foreigners. There's a lot of old bank buildings and museums and monuments to the revolution. Actually, the revolution technically started in Hankou, Wuhan (which used to be called "Wuchang"); in the early 20th century, revolutionary groups in Wuhan led an armed uprising against the imperial Qing dynasty, leading to the establishment of the Republic of China. Naturally, I had to commemorate this moment enthusiastically!

The rest are pictures from Hankou, in no particular order:

Cool art in Hankou: 

 The huge pedestrian street at night.

 Carving somethin'

 Hankou at night....all the buildings light up

 An outdoor market

 Just so you can see what it's like getting on and off the metro:

 Will we all fit?

 Modeling downtown

 Majestic lions

 Wedding pictures

 A great view of the city and the Yangtze

 Looking awkward in font of a big, old building

 Street sculpture

 We wandered into a free art gallery...

So many buildings like this.

 Although a major city, there's still more of a bustling, alley-way life preserved in some corners of the city where old folks play mahjong and time moves more slowly:

 Fish!

 Fish!

 Snakes and turtles

Sesame jelly candy we tried. 

 Beautiful sky

Later on that week, I went to have a delicious Chinese, vegan meal home-cooked in someone's apartment.

My friend Nadeesha and I:

All of us, including the amazing chef:

I've definitely been blessed with vegetarian food recently. A few days after this meal, Nadeesha invited me over for home-cooked Sri Lankan food, which I am now obsessed with.

Nadeesha was all like, "Oh, I'm sorry, I only cooked 5 DIFFERENT CURRIES" and I think the fact that this picture clearly shows that there's a hole in my sock really tells you a lot about how many curries I would casually prepare for someone.



Oh, and then here are some mysterious green noodles that I recently got from the cafeteria. They attracted A LOT of attention. everyone around me was staring and asking me questions, which was interesting since usually I feel invisible, but I guess no one can be invisible when they are nomming on green noodles. I have no idea why they were green but they were beautiful and I think vegetarian.

Other things: I'm mentoring four Mongolian English teachers as they go through an e-course about teacher training. This is technically a secondary project; I spend a few hours on this per week. Here they all are, standing around my picture like I'm some sort of spiritual guru. 

Besides the e-teacher mentoring, I also just did my first teacher training workshop! I traveled to Hefei last weekend to give a seminar at Dani's university (she is another fellow). We both gave seminars; mine was on critical reading and hers on using mobile apps for vocab learning. The audience members were Dani's colleagues, other English language teachers at her university. They were a great, active, and enthusiastic audience.

This is me, slightly tilting my head and looking apologetic (this is sort of my default look):

Some of the attendees hard at work:

 Group photo

The seminar went pretty well, I thought, and it was really nice to finally do one so that I could see that it doesn't have to be terrifying. I have several coming up before Christmas; I'll be traveling at least three more times over the next two months to do presentations. The challenge is getting used to the increased workload now that I not only have more classes but also have started doing these secondary projects.

After the seminars, Dani, her husband, and I went to the university's first English club of the year. An English club is basically an adorable way to torment foreign English teachers at universities. A group of students come up with adorable, interactive activities---conversation, games that involve yelling the names of different animals and types of fruit, etc, but then all of these things fall through majestically and when the foreign teachers show up to support the club, they basically have to run the whole thing so that it doesn't veer off a cliff and explode. It's fortunate that it's such an adorable gathering, because otherwise it's a complete nightmare where people are either staring or clapping at you at the wrong moments and not saying anything to help move things along. Don't believe me? See for yourself here: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/zS8CsO0lzgCz7PIb2a2qhQ. Can you see how freaking cute it is? Can you see how I'm about to murder everyone as I'm slowly realizing that I will have to, in fact, facilitate a large, sweaty group of excited 18 year olds for the next hour instead of simply participating?

Actually, the kids were great. We came, we talked, we sweat like buffalo, and we left. And, since I am so used to being an invisible, flapping stork at my university, it was kind of fun to be around students who wanted to talk to me. And, somewhere during that time, a few of the students got really stagy and I filmed them:

The next day, after sleeping off the English club, I met up with Dani and Tucker, and their friend Sally, and we spent the day wandering around Hefei. Hefei is about half the size of Wuhan. There's soooooo many less people. But. There's still a lot of people. Wuhan doesn't have many foreigners but I never saw another foreigner while in Hefei. It feels different there---people talk to you and smile. A grandmother literally put a toddler in my arms and took a picture of us. It was nice having a more small-town feel (haha, Hefei has 8 million people!). Wuhan can feel too big.

I also felt like my day in Hefei was such a good example of what China is like. In China, you never know know what's around the corner. You only have an inkling that it won't be something you expect. In Lao, I knew that around most corners I'd find a raucous group of friends toasting each other with Beer Lao by the Mekong. In China, this is not the case. In Hefei, we saw a little of everything and most of it was unexpected. I'll try to show you what I mean by that below as we go through a series of pictures taken in the same urban park.

So, this might look harmless, right? A group of middle-aged/older folks. This isn't harmless. This is in fact a marriage market, where parents of suspiciously old single children (my age or younger) gather to meet the parents of other suspiciously old single children and make matches. I'd like, more than anything, to listen in on the conversations.

 Here's the notice board at the marriage market. Here's where you can post the important stats about your single kid, like their height, income, and whether they have a house yet.

Sally, below, who is in the danger zone at 25 and single, had many words to say about this phenomenon.

 So, I was wrapping my head around the marriage market, and we rounded another corner, and I saw what looked to be people stabbing fish with medieval lances. Nope, actually people were feeding koi fish food from BABY BOTTLES. I would let that sink in, but I'm not sure if it ever will. You can actually hear the fish slurping/sucking on the bottles.

 
The signs in the park really illustrated the shock and awe factor. YOu might not be able to see but it lists "Storm experience" and "7D cinema" and "child photography" (which I unfortunately misread the first time) as things available in the park, when I was just expecting some wilted tulips.

 Another corner and there's a man creating next-level art out of sugar:

 Then, a ferris wheel!

 Then, small children running around in hamster balls on water! Twins! Dressed the same!

 Then, I had to use the toilet and this was how they were labelled. I guess it's pretty accurate.

 There was some normal stuff too, like this grandpa getting pushed around by a bunch of his grandkids.

 Kids being cute

 People wearing traditional Chinese clothes

 A lovely field filled with life

Outside of the park, we saw some other beautiful stuff:

I'm back in Wuhan now, lesson-planning myself into oblivion. Looking forward to doing stuff besides work this weekend like a few birthday parties and more delicious food. Just did something really weird---dropped a lot of money on winter clothing since it's getting cold here and I brought clothes suitable for Thailand. This morning I saw Chen for the first time in over a month even though we live 8 minutes away from each other. Chen is even busier than I am and sometimes doesn't eat lunch or dinner because she is working. I bought her a grilled cheese sandwich and we talked about relationships and being too busy. 

Speaking of relationships, I'm missing all of you quite a lot. I'm hoping to be able to reconnect with lots of you soon.

Love,
Ilse