sevenup christmas tree

“I love my parents they make my life very colorful” or “my campus life is very colorful”

“having Chinese new year is very convenient” or “ having a lovely brother is very convenient”

No one speaks like this but I don’t want to burst their bubbles. Also, even students that speak very good English have an AWFUL time with distinguishing the sexes he/she, him/her ect. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult but they always say things like my brother, she is very interesting.

students and I at dinner

I have had terrible speeches and ones that were very detailed here are a few of the surprises I encountered:

Some students were super personal when talked about their families and I was about to start crying during their presentation. One student talked about how her sister died a year ago and how her father was having a very hard time coping with the situation and it was driving her mother crazy and she was scared for her family’s mental health.
Another student told me that her father died early on in her childhood but her father’s parents, her grandparents, thought it was their fault so they shunned her and then her mom had a really hard time taking care of her. Then another student told me that her father and mother divorced and her father got custody but then a year later threw her out of the house and she had to hunt down where her mother was and ask to live with her. Her mother accepted but died soon thereafter, and then she had to live with her grandparents. Yet another student told me her mother had cancer.
Another student was telling me about she was forced to start school when she was only 3 and is now in college at the age of 16 and she has no friends b/c she is so young. Most of the students are about 19 as freshman. =( GOD BLESS! All I could do was nod and try to cry listening to all these terrible stories, especially because I expected the usual speeches on their favorite hobbies or what basketball players they liked.

On a more upbeat note… One student was like I like American movies. My favorite is Pretty Woman and I like the actress whose name was Vivian and I know she’s a hooker but I chose Vivian as my English name after her, haha.

me and my ghotst pal

students and I at traditional hot pot dinner

lily was growing at me for some reason

christmas tree made of seven-up bottles

Example 1 – Fillet we say it like the French people do as in , fillet mignon. Well, they say it the way it is written fil-let. Makes them sound ignorant haha

Example 2- Parmesan we say it like parmejawn because it is once again a foreign word. The English dum dums say parme-sand

Example 3- Oregano they say it like or-i-gone-o its bizarre

Example 4 – they say piano the same way but not pianist; the way they say it sounds like penis with a t on the end. Pean-ist

I’m sure there are many more but these are the ones that have come up and me and Alison who is also American get into fights with the British on how to pronounce them

I’ll leave this entry on that note. It’s too long as it is and I need your full attention.

Sayonara suckers and

at dinner

my main squeeze -- please notice the brittish flag made of tinsel in the back haha

I finished up the second week of exams OMG it was grueling. Hearing the same speech about hobbies over and over again and hearing about the same hometowns starting getting painful. I stopped listening and was literally thinking about hmm… I wonder if this girl knows she has a lot of upper lip hair and geez this guy has a really big head. Sounds terrible, but after 300 and something speeches, what do you expect? The good news is just one more week of exams. The bad news is THERES STILL one more week of exams ughhh!

my lover giving me a lap dance

me and the birthday girl!

our friend will. he loves bananas

leany x mas tree and drunk lilly

should be a christmas card

So it was Lilly’s birthday yesterday and we threw her a small birthday bash with a few Chinese friends and students. Mat got Lilly a very nice birthday cake ( the cakes in china are really pretty and elaborate) but they also look better than they taste. We went out for some karaoke and dancing at the bars.

present giving time

jolly good fun

Mat got cake all over his face and it just so happened that the chocolate is right in the middle of his lip and it made him look like he had a Hitler mustache. We had a good laugh.

hitler school boy

yayy

surprise! cake

I’ve also starting teaching one night class on Wednesday nights for some extra mula. It will come in handy during my two month travels. There are only 8 people in the class so its pretty easy -- just sit there for an hour and a half and chat about whatever topic I choose.

For Christmas this week we are doing secret Santa. We are teaching Monday through Thursday morning. Thursday day we are going into the city to eat cheeseburgers and salad haha and to see a movie. I haven’t been able to go to a movie since I’ve been here because there are no theatres.
I hope everyone has a wonderful and very merry Christmas!! I miss all of you and I miss America very much, especially this time of year when I usually am baking chocolate chip cookies and eating them with a nice glass of cold milk. ( I have neither of these)

written by  cz74699 on December 20, 2009 from Hechuan, China
from the travel blog: Chongqing, China
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

pretty! on the side of a random building

Now, let me just say that the beginning of 2010 has already been a hot mess for me. I hope the entire year doesn’t follow suit.

pirate ship we found haha it was near starbucks, which is all we really cared about

new years masquerade ball on campus

The issue is this entire week I wasn’t supposed to be teaching classes, I was supposed to be putting grades into the computer and getting ready to leave Thursday night for my trip. But… Mark, one of our many bosses has said that we must teach this week including Thursday and Friday. I was supposed to be drinking margaritas and delicious beer and making sand castles on Friday. Here was our mistake: Mark asked us Saturday night if we could all go Sunday to the crazy town where he took us at the beginning of the year (see blog entry called bad and good day) where they took us to a tiny town to be paraded around and signed 100’s of autographs for middle school kids. Which was all fun and games, but we never wanted to go there ever again. We were all exhausted from being out of town and from new years and just needed to stay at home Sunday to plan lessons. So because we said no he decided he would play the asshole card.

The VP and three of our other bosses said it was okay for us to miss Friday but Mark insists that we can’t and he isn’t the top dog but i guess we needed clearance from everyone. This is causing us to change our flights to Saturday (costing us $$$) and also costing us more $$$ because our hotel rooms were booked for Friday night, but we wont be there. Needless to say, im thoroughly annoyed and he can suck it.

He wont be able to use us again; he is always inviting us yo weird sketchy bars and parties to make himself look cool because he has foreign teachers at his school. For instance, just last Monday Mark called and said he wanted us to meet the CEO of some mining company, so he came and got us. After being in the car for 45 min we were taken to a hotel. Then there was a karaoke bar on the top floor of the hotel and we got introduced to a shitload of random people who looked like they were on drugs. We were all sober and it was bizarre. The men were grinding on what looked like their trophy wives with their shirts off and they kept just bringing boxes of beer to our table. I swear if we wouldn't have been there the Chinese people would have been having a giant orgy. It was amusing, but disgusting.

On a different note, new years in Chongqing was a great time. We all went to the city center and there were fireworks, and people everywhere celebrating even though it wasn’t Chinese new years. We all went outside and stood by this monument where there were lots of fireworks, and then we continued bar hopping. I of course broke my camera (for the millionth time) by spilling water into my purse. So the pictures kind of just stop and I wasn't able to capture all of the fun.

typical pose

attempted pic of the crowd and everyone had balloons they let go of at 12

ballooons before the big release at midnight

looks like theres a glow stick comin out of phill's nose

We came back Friday afternoon from the city only to discover that coincidentally Alison and I had both left our keys in the apartment. Normally, being locked out isn’t an issue because our boss lives in the same building and she has a spare, but she was out of town. Next best answer was to break in. Problem with that is all the windows have bars. Somehow some way, Tom, who is Mat and Peter’s friend that’s visiting from England was able to use a knife to derail the sliding doors on my balcony and break the lock. Thank god…I really wasn’t looking forward to being homeless the whole weekend.

kathryn and her zack morris cellphone

me and the brits

tom and i

haha morning after. kathryn stole this hat off some lady's head then bolted

Well friends, hopefully I’ll be shipping off this week…late, but better than never. So, new interesting photos hopefully coming this way soon.
Ive never been on vacation for nearly two months before!!

Peace and love you all,

CZ

written by  cz74699 on January 4, 2010 from Chongqing, China
from the travel blog: Chongqing, China
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

and its amazing how many people come try to be your friend when you have baskets and baskets of beer in front of you, ha!

written by  cz74699 on February 28, 2010 from Chongqing, China
from the travel blog: Chongqing, China
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Picture this: The poor girl looked limp and lifeless. The taxi driver gets out.The girl's boyfriend is like frantic on his cellphone and the girl continues to be unresponsive for about ten minutes. Meanwhile, there are tons of ppl crowding around and the road is completely blocked. Buses are honking with people hanging out the window, police men circling the area, motorcycles trying to squeeze through,ect. It took the ambulance a really long time to get through because no one was getting out of the way and vehicles just stayed on the road. What a mess. This certainly made me check twice, no X that, at least three or four times before crossing the road!

Dear lord, please never let me get hit by a car in China.
- yours truly, Carolina

ladiesss

Now on to prior business. We went to the center of the city a while back for Fiona to get a traditional Chinese hand chiseled tattoo. They apparently are supposed to hurt a lot more, but according to Fiona, who has many tats already, it did not hurt more. But it did take two and a half hours for just this small flower.

almost finished..ouch. it is a traditional Chinese flower

setting up the ink

We got so bored at the tattoo studio that we decided to get friendship piercings that we will probably take out in a few months (if we ever get real, big girl jobs haha)

it takes two ppl to chisle away at her skin

Fiona's Traditional hand-done chinese tat

Patricia and Alison got their noses done. I got my tragus done (the funny little part that's really thick in the middle of your ear)

friendship piercing haha

patricia gets nose pierced

Afterthought - I ended up going back to the same tattoo parlor and getting a tattoo of my own! (not my first so I wasn't too nervous) However, the traditional style would have taken about six hours, so I opted for just the regular type. Here is what I ended up with.

The back story isn't too exciting, but long story short was that I got my fortune told at this temple with tons of Buddhas and in the middle of the room there was like a queen bee, mother figure with tons of peacock feathers. And there my friends, the idea was born.

My tattoo

Finished!t

When my students have speak out in class to answer a question or such they will end it with "and that's all" so, in the name of my students:

That is all.

written by  cz74699 on April 6, 2010 from Chongqing, China
from the travel blog: Chongqing, China
tagged TraditionalChineseTattoos
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Due to the fact that I have been very busy and also frustrated with some things here, I have not really felt the need to write any more blogs. I lost the lovin feelin' as they say. However, I will give u this link to see the mini vacay I had this past weekend...

http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/6789176/1//chinarrr%20carolina?h=68be76

and I will also give u this passage which is from the city I was in.

An incredible love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch the world. It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peace for over half a century.

The 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has passed away in the cave which has been the couple’s home for the last 50 years.

Over 50 years ago, Liu Guojiang a 19 year-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu Chaoqin..

In a twist worthy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.

At that time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman.. To avoid the market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin County in Southern ChongQing Municipality.

In the beginning, life was harsh as they had nothing, no electricity or even food. They had to eat grass and roots they found in the mountain, and Liu made a kerosene lamp that they used to light up their lives.

Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him, ‘Are you regretful? Liu always replied, ‘As long as we are industrious, life will improve.’

In the second year of living in the mountain, Liu began and continued for over 50 years, to hand-carve the steps so that his wife could get down the mountain easily.

Half a century later in 2001, a group of adventurers were exploring the forest and were surprised to find the elderly couple and the over 6,000 hand-carved steps. Liu MingSheng, one of their seven children said, ‘My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for over 50 years and never been apart a single day. He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother’s convenience, although she doesn’t go down the mountain that much.’

The couple had lived in peace for over 50 years until last week. Liu, now 72 years, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed. Xu sat and prayed with her husband as he passed away in her arms. So in love with Xu, was Liu, that no one was able to release the grip he had on his wife’s hand even after he had passed away.

‘You promised me you’ll take care of me, you’ll always be with me until the day I died, now you left before me, how am I going to live without you?’

Xu spent days softly repeating this sentence and touching her husband’s black coffin with tears rolling down her cheeks.

In 2006, their story became one of the top 10 love stories from China , collected by the Chinese Women Weekly. The local government has decided to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived as a museum, so this love story can live forever.

So with that I bid u adieu and hope u are well friends!

written by  cz74699 on May 6, 2010 from Zhongshan, China
from the travel blog: Chongqing, China
tagged LoveStory
Send a Compliment

---

2 comments...