Trip to Volcan Irazu

During our training, which ended just last week, we were only allowed two nights spent out of our site (besides visiting a current Volunteer and visiting our sites and future host families). The limit of two nights was put into place so that we would spend more time integrating with our training families and the community, which we were supposed to do in order to be better prepared to repeat the process in our actual sites. So, a day trip was planned. I can’t emphasize enough how awesome it is to get trips planned by someone else. Although I do love the adventure of traveling in a foreign country, trying to get on the right bus, find the entrance to the museum, not offend the locals with my apparel, and all that jazz. Yet, I can’t deny how great it is to just be told to bring a lunch, show up at eight, and if I show up at eight, the worrying is over.

Kyle K. from Melbourne, FL is a really energetic, humorous, self-deprecating fellow Volunteer. His training host family was awesome (unless he told all lies) and his host dad was quite charismatic and gregarious (my judgments). Even better was that he had a somewhat Asian-esque mustache and always rocked a hip Quicksilver hat. Well, Arturo is his name, and Arturo planned a trip to Volcan Irazu for all of us trainees that wanted to attend. We (about 25 trainees and the families of maybe 10 of those) took a private bus to the volcano, one of the four active in Costa Rica, and the tallest of all Costa Rican volcanoes. Undoubtedly, the best thing about the day was the view from the top of the volcano. I walked up to the top with Barton R., a fellow Volunteer from Ventura, CA. Barton is among a good share of Volunteers who have Peace Corps in their blood. His parents met in Fiji, where his mother was a Volunteer and his father was keeping the Peace Corps dream alive, serving a second term after completing one in Thailand. On this topic, Kelsey I., another girl from my training community, is the daughter of a couple that met when they were both serving as Peace Corps Volunteers in…yes, believe it, Costa Rica.

Back to the sulfur and craters, Barton and I walked up to the highest point on the volcano, a ridge above the main craters, and took in a gorgeous view of layers of clouds above rich, green hills, meeting in the distance with the Pacific Ocean. Barton, being from California, might not have been impressed, but for me it was one of the more wondrous landscapes I’ve seen. On the other side of the proverbial coin were the clouds on the Atlantic side that blocked full views of the crater and the Atlantic Ocean. Volcan Irazu is among a few peaks in Costa Rica, which possess this quite unique quality: on a clear day you can see the world’s two largest oceans from them. Unfortunately as well, the main crater, with odorous sulfur coming off it, can not be fully appreciated from the views on the main plateau that sits atop the mountain-it declines too steeply to allow one to see much of it. After the Volcano, we also enjoyed a nice walk among the countryside on the road down the mountain-as I passed on paying to enter a “haunted” former sanitarium. I was actually criticized for my defiant refusal of any belief in ghosts. I guess I was wrong in thinking that belief in ghosts and the like went out of style a few centuries ago.

Without an entry fee, and much more entertaining than anything in the “haunted” sanitarium could’ve been were our frequent stops on the way home. Queso fresco (queso blanco) is superlatively popular here, and used in empanadas and cheese tortillas-two of the most popular Costa Rican breakfast and snack foods. Apparently, the highlands leading up to Volcan Irazu make great queso fresco, as we stopped four or five times to check the quality and prices of cheese vendors. I’d say roadside vendors, as two or three of them were, but not all. That’s because, I have noticed, that with some agricultural products, especially queso fresco, farmers will just paint “vende queso” (‘cheese sold here’) on a piece of plywood and lay it at their gate. So, our bus would stop, one of the training family parents would get out, walk up to the house, inquire about the cheese, walk back to the bus accompanied by a man with plastic bags full of blocks of cheese, and then some bidding and shouting would go on through the bus windows, cheese would or would not be sold, and we’d be on our merry little way. I think some of the other trainees might have been annoyed; I was nothing but amazed and entertained.

A Toda Maquina

So, Julia L. from Greensboro, NC, (another trainee in my training community), and her host sister, Elena, came over to my host family’s house one night in the second week of our service. I was eating dinner and only paid mild attention to the conversation, but it sounded like they (Elena much more than Julia) wanted me and my host mom (Xinia) to accompany them to a TV show. Elena claimed to have some extra tickets her friend had given her; so I didn’t see why she wanted my host mom and me to go. Well, as it turns out, I’m fairly sure that the “extra tickets” were just a front, and she really needed my host mom to get us into the show. It turns out that one of my host mom’s sons, Cristopher, has a marinovia (translate for meaning: live in girlfriend/life partner) whose daughter is the hostess of said show. I’d say host brother, but he doesn’t live at the house, so he’s really more like the host mom’s son. Yes, if you’re doing the math right, his live in girlfriend is maybe 25 years older than him, so that her daughter is his age…but let’s just say that my host family isn’t quite ‘typical.’ This TV show is A Toda Maquina, which can really just be translated as Super Variety Show. And oh what a show it was.

So, well, I said yes, the tickets were arranged and we headed out on the bus early on a Sunday morning, switched to another bus in San Jose, and then walked right past the brand new National Stadium, built by the Chinese (I haven’t quite figured out if the Costa Ricans think this is a good thing, but they always say it when mentioning the stadium). I generally think that if the Costa Ricans want anything done in any sort of timely manner, they’d probably better call the Chinese. Oh, I got yelled at by my host mom and Elena for commenting that the stadium was neither very big nor impressive. Apparently I’m supposed to lie about something that wasn’t a whole lot bigger, and less impressive architecturally than my high school’s stadium. Also, the aforementioned ‘we’ also included Julia’s neighbor, Yansi and Yansi’s daughter Fraychel. Who said you had to choose between Francine and Rachel when naming your daughter? We get to the building and get in line. As I later found out, if you dress up to dance and arrive early to line up, you can compete in one of the many couples dancing competitions during the show. There were also some people with dogs in line-doing the same thing for the stupid pet tricks portion. And, let’s just say that I’ve seen friend’s hunting dogs do significantly more and better tricks than the dog that won. Many people in line had brought snacks, and if not, there were some vendors mingling about the line offering up chips and fried plantains. Thankfully, I brought my Kindle (shameless plug) as we were in line for over an hour.

Apparently you don’t really need tickets, as my host mom just said something to the lady with the list of names, and we went in. Once we got inside, I realized I almost preferred the line. I’ll be sensitive and say that one must not be too burdened with intelligence to follow the humor and quiz games that transpire on A Toda Maquina. Without doing any thinking or processing one could be entertained by dancing by girls not dressed for winter, dancing competitions between older couples with various levels of skill, spelling contest, guess the liar contest, stupid pet tricks, break dancing, reading of posts on the A Toda Maquina Facebook page, dancing by women not dressed for winter and men dressed as if Prince was still a pop icon, a life size spider web climbing race (Yansi competed!), and a bunch of stuff I have forgotten because it was forgettable. For me, besides the brunette prize presentation girl (cash prizes are handed out during the show to activity winners), the most interesting thing was watching the cameramen move around to get the best shots. Was watching the cameramen a sign that the show wasn’t for me?

If it doesn’t seem like being immersed in A Toda Maquina for all of its three hours was peaches and cream for me, there is a reason besides the show’s content (although I’m not absolving the show). Pressed right next to me were a woman and her two kids. With whistles. I knew I didn’t like her from the beginning, for one prejudicial reason and one more legitimate one. The former, she, like many of her fellow female citizens, has apparently not been made aware that wearing tight fitting clothing that shows a little skin becomes less and less attractive as a woman’s BMI trends upwards from 26. The second reason I didn’t like her was because her kids were quite impolite. They were old enough to know how and when to say excuse me, sorry, etc. but not old enough for it not still be mainly her fault. And they had gosh darn whistles. Gosh. Darn. Whistles. For three gosh darn hours. At first it was kind of funny, how excited they got over what seemed to me a mindless assortment of lights, sounds, and uninspired dancing. After thirty minutes I wanted to pull the godforsaken whistles out of their mouths and throw them onstage. After an hour more I was clenching my fists, staring at the ground and breathing deeply. With an hour left I started looking at my watch every other minute counting the minutes left until this hell in Costa Rica was over. I also began mean mugging the heck out of them every time they blew their whistle at football match volumes. With twenty minutes left, it again became funny and I kept glancing at Julia whenever I surmised a whistle was coming up. Many of the people nearby looked incredibly annoyed, and I can only imagine I did too (hiding my emotions is not a strong trait) as I was the person whose ears were closest to the abomination. Although, sitting next to them did afford me a few chances to get in the audience shots-when was the last time you were nationally televised in a foreign country? Snap!

For both my host mom and Elena, this was not their first time watching A Toda Maquina live in the studio. The ability to view a live taping of this show is a cultural difference I cannot understand, nor plan on adapting.

My new home

I’ll be honest, for someone with a Spanish degree; I knew shamefully little about Costa Rica, Central America, or Latin America before I boarded my final flight in Miami Airport. Studying in Spain, and then taking most of my classes from a professor who studied Spanish literature did not provide for much knowledge about the Western Hemisphere that isn’t America or America Lite (Canada). I’ve obviously learned a couple of things in the more than two months I have been here (if not the training staff certainly has some questions to answer). Yet, I would say that because so much of my time has been interacting with other Americans and learning about Peace Corps policies and project goals, I have not learned as much during my first two months here compared with my first two months in Spain or China. But, I’m going to share a little smattering of what I’ve learned during my training and from reading the Costa Rica Wikipedia article a few times.

The land. Costa Rica covers a bit more than 50,000 km^2, and contains roughly 4.3 million people. For comparison, Iowa covers 145,000 km^2 and has almost exactly 3 million corn eating inhabitants. My last place of residence, Changzhou, covered 4,000 km^2 and had 4.4 million people. So, Changzhou packed more people into less than one tenth the area of Costa Rica, and Iowa is three times the size of Costa Rica yet has a million less people. Considering that I grew up in Des Moines, which has 400,000 people in maybe 2,000 km^2, Costa Rica seems very rural for me. And, these two months have been the first time I have ever lived anywhere that is at all rural. Also, it is my first time living somewhere at all hilly. Des Moines, Tulsa, Salamanca, and Changzhou are all reasonably flat cities. It is gorgeous here, but I have had trouble getting a sense of where towns are related to others, because I go up, down, around, and up again before getting to the next town. Also, Costa Rica’s less than desirable infrastructure (I’ll probably write more about this) combined with all these hills means that in a country a third the size of Iowa it can take ten or eleven hours to travel between places. For example, the bus from my training community, El Rosario, to San Jose, covers the 16 miles (25 km) in an hour and fifteen minutes.

More on the land. Costa Rica is roughly a rectangle 250 miles long (400 km) and 100 miles wide (160 km), bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the east by the Caribbean Sea, the north by Nicaragua and by Panama in the south. You can see both the Pacific and Caribbean from some of the highest mountains and volcanoes. There are three main mountain ranges that run through the center of the country, with the biggest population center being in the Central Valley, which is between two of these ranges. San Jose, the capital, as well as Cartago, Heredia, and Alajuela, all major cities, are in this region. On each side of the central ranges are hilly zones that contain many of the rainforests and flatten out to the more cultivated plains, which lead right to the beaches. Bananas, pineapple, sugar cane, and rice are among the major crops cultivated in the flatter zones near both coasts, while coffee is grown in the hilly zones and the mountain ranges (which are not incredibly high ranges). Even with a fairly robust agricultural sector, one fourth of the land in Costa Rica is devoted to national parks or protected zones (what a nicely vague label). Many of these still have huge economic importance, as they are visited by tourists, one of the nation’s most important industries.

The people. 94% of Ticos are either white or mestizo, I guess they kind of consider it one race. I’d make a critical comment about this, but the US Census hasn’t really figured out how to deal with the Hispanic/Latino race thing, so I’ll bite my tongue for now. Blacks make up 3%, Asians 1%, Amerindian 1%, and the one out of every hundred Costa Ricans is ‘other.’ As for religion, the Internet tells me that 76% are Roman Catholic, which is convenient, because that’s the official religion, 14% are Evangelical Christians, there is a sampling of Jehovah’s Witnesses, other Protestant sects, other religions, and 3% are not religious. They love football, but aren’t all that great at it as a national team. They love rice and beans, or if they don’t love it, then I don’t know why they eat so much of it. They also seem to love playing the lottery.

The work. Until very recently, agriculture made up most of the economy, with coffee, bananas, pineapples, and sugar cane being important products. But, now, most people work more industrialized sectors especially in pharmaceutical, technology, and medical products manufacturing as well as offshored customer service and clerical work. Tourism is a huge industry here, now larger than agriculture, as over a million tourists visit annually. Related to this is the unpleasant fact that more US passports are stolen in Costa Rica than any other country. What’s more, no crime records are opened for theft under $500 because pickpockets and the like are so common. As for the energy for these industries, Costa Rica has harnessed its numerous rivers, and gets over 80% of its electricity from hydropower. Among its biggest imports is gasoline, but the Costa Rican government made the ambitious goal of being carbon neutral by 2021. A much less admirable fact is that this year the US government added Costa Rica to its list of major countries for organized crime. This is due to the transport of cocaine from Colombia to the place where people love cocaine: the USA. This was done to help the US work with the Costa Rican government against drug rings. Because, of course, we only should fight the supply side of the drug problem, and there’s no need at all to look at the demand side of the equation.

The cheddar. Costa Rica’s GDP per capita in nominal terms is $6,345 per year. When purchasing power parity is taken into account, it rises to $10,579 per Costa Rican annually. This places Costa Rica 86th among 181 countries in the world (according to the IMF). To me, what is very impressive and something worth remembering is how high of life expectancy (78.9 years) and a human development index Costa Rica has achieved with a lot less money than comparable countries. There are all sorts of things that contribute to these statistics, but I would suggest that not spending money on a military and also having had no civil strife for 60 years has really helped keep those numbers up. I’m not advocating abolishing every army, it’s just very interesting to see how much Costa Rica can spend on other things because they aren’t buying planes and tanks. Well, hopefully this has given you a better idea about how the Costa Rican people work on their land to make some cheddar.

My new gig, in detail

Well, it’s time to turn over a new leaf in this blog. But, before I get into telling my tales from Pura Vida land (as I like to call Costa Rica) I thought that I would expound a bit about my new employer (which is ultimately you, the US taxpayer) and my new country of residence. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the delightful buzz of the first snow, Salvation Army bellringers, the Amy Grant Christmas CD, eggnog for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and everything else that goes with Christmas. I’ll be honest, the Christmas trees and lights next to tropical plants and palm trees is just not yet acceptable to me, but so is the burden of growing up in a state where a white Christmases were all but guaranteed.

I think the most natural question that many thought (or asked) when I said I was going to work for the Peace Corps in Costa Rica, was “Costa Rica, really?” And, well, yeah, it does seem a bit odd to snag a Peace Corps post in one of the hottest tourist destinations on the globe. Additionally, Costa Rica is actually doing pretty well at fulfilling its “need for trained men and women,” (one third of the Peace Corps mission). Its Human Development Index (HDI) is highest of all the Peace Corps countries in Central and South America. With a life expectancy of 77 for me and 81 for women, it’s doing almost as well as the rich countries in that category. Its GDP per person is , but bumps up to if you take cost of living into account. So, your question unanswered, you may even more strongly ask: why the heck is the Peace Corps (aka my tax dollars) in Costa Rica.

Well, unfortunately, part of the answer is that it’s been here a long time. And well, people have a tendency to resist change and leave things as they are. Peace Corps Costa Rica started in 1963, when Costa Rica could still be called a third world country. (Side note: I loathe the statement that Costa Rica is a third world country, it’s not, it’s developing, or second world if you will). It started as an English teaching program, and with the virgin Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) program I am a part of, has kind of come back to its roots. In its 47 years, more than 3,000 Americans have worked as Peace Corps Volunteers here. In 1999-2000 there was serious talk of closing the program, as Costa Rica had developed considerably and Peace Corps thought its services could be used better in poorer, undeveloped countries. But, (and here’s

your answer) it was decided that Costa Rica was so important to US political interests (both as an ally and as a regional leader/example) that it would be beneficial for Peace Corps to remain here. So, in as many words: soft power. In my opinion the Peace Corps, with its missions of helping other countries understand America and helping Americans understand other countries (the other two thirds of the Peace Corps mission), is a form of very, very soft power. Some may balk at this idea, but that is a conversation for a discussion of the existence of altruism.

So, as it’s here, what’s it doing? My last blog talked about some of the cool peeps in my training group, but there’s also a heartier group of volunteers currently in country. There are ~105 volunteers currently serving here. They work in the areas of Rural Community Development; Community, Youth, and Families; and Community Economic Development. They are spread out throughout the country, with the largest group serving in southern Puntarenas and Limon. I’ll soon be working in the newest program, TEFL. TEFL was started because of an aggressive presidential mandate made in 2003 by former President Arias to have the country bilingual by 2017. Yes, the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) officials we talked to admitted that the goal is preposterously optimistic, but sometimes it takes giant goals to get people to make even small achievements. The TEFL program was constructed with the consultation and help of MEP representatives, but still is a Peace Corps program, with its own goals. This is kind of how the Peace Corps generally works: a country solicits the volunteers, explains how it would like them used, and then the Peace Corps tweaks with the demands to make them applicable to its volunteers’ abilities and institutional goals. The three goals of TEFL are to help teachers improve English skills and teaching methods, directly help students improve their English, and to promote and establish English learning activities or institutions in communities. So, that’s my job for the next two years.

Some people in our group will be teaching their own classes at rural elementary schools that lack their own teacher, and many, including me, will be more like an adviser/resource/support staff to the elementary or high school English teachers. Some will do a mix of the two things. The concept of teaching the teachers is to make the project more sustainable. Yours truly is working with a high school and a night school, and at both trying to be some sort of resource cum adviser to the English teachers there. I think there are two huge challenges to our job. First, trying to be an adviser/resource to teachers who very well have more experience than we do. Second, to find our place in each particular school-treated by the students as a teacher, while not actually doing much teaching, and helping the teachers out in a non-authoritarian manner while still hoping they will take our advice.

This job will be very different from my last job in a number of ways. First and foremost, Costa Ricans aren’t Chinese. Additionally, I will not have a simple schedule of classes to teach and then be free. At JSTU I was somewhat of a cultural ambassador, and helped out when I could with all sorts of activities. But, here, that cultural ambassador role is stepped up, as my job description includes representing America. What’s more, I’ll be the one expected to organize the activities, not just show up and smile-which I’ll also do, of course. The responsibility of representing my nation 24/7 is one that I take very seriously, and can at times be difficult when a Costa Rican asks a question that starts with “Americans like to…” or “In America, do people…” Luckily, I have two years of practice with these questions, as they were the same ones that almost every student in Changzhou would ask daily.

My new gig

Well, in just a few days I will (barring any major problem) be swearing in as a Peace Corps Volunteer for the TEFL program in Peace Corps Costa Rica. I’ve already expressed my disagreement with the term Volunteer, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere, so I’ll just have to bite my tongue lots these next two years. Like everything in life, you all (the readers collectively) have varied knowledge about this separate national program (it’s not part of the Department of State). So, in order to strive for some intellectual parity, I’m going to write a bitsy bit about the program. It was started in 1961 by then President Kennedy. There are a few (probably apocryphal) stories about what gave him the motivation to start the program, but according to the official documents:

“The mission of the Peace Corps is to promote world peace and friendship by:

-Helping people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and

women

-Helping promote better understanding of Americans on the part of peoples served

-Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans”

Whether you choose to understand “world peace and friendship” as exporting American liberal democratic principals to counteract Soviet communism is to be done under your own volition. Nonetheless, here it is on the eve of its 50^th anniversary doing, in my opinion, pretty much exactly what its goals say. Essentially, Peace Corps, instead of looking to provide bags of wheat to hungry villages, tries to send a skilled American to that village to teach them how to grow wheat. It takes the ancient Chinese proverb about fishing to heart. I’m very happy with the sustainable development aid model that the Peace Corps follows, because sending bags of wheat ad infinitum to poor countries is good for the Kansas wheat farmer, but pretty inefficient for everyone else.

It is my understanding that any country can solicit volunteers, and although I’d imagine that Peace Corps would cordially rebuff a request from Luxembourg or Singapore. But it is the host countries that really decide if they’ll have volunteers, and have some impact over the number and type of volunteers they’ll receive. Likewise, they have input on what the volunteers will do. Peace Corps of course analyzes the safety of the country, and this also limits the countries in which it serves. There are currently over 8,500 volunteers serving in 77 countries across the world. Even with this input from the host country, Peace Corps ultimately decides how volunteers act, where they’ll live, and what they’ll do. In fact, “because that’s what Washington says” is often a response given by my bosses or trainers to certain pointed questions. In order to avoid seeming sketchy in the future, I will proffer a few rules from the Peace Corps Handbook. First, if I seem a bit less frank than usual Ken it is because “Volunteers should remain culturally sensitive with respect to the material they post to any Web site” and “Volunteer-posted material on the Web should not embarrass or reflect poorly on the Peace Corps or the countries where Volunteers serve.” In the same vein, “[a]s a safety precaution, Volunteers must not include on their Web sites information about their precise living location or those of other Volunteers.” Sorry if it means my blog will be G-rated, but I’m not looking to get fired.

Now, with the economy and government spending being a central topic in our nation’s most recent elections, and sovereign debt fury spreading across the globe (well Europe really), I thought I would offer some food for thought as I am now a recipient of your tax dollars. The Peace Corps, except for its small management staff in DC, is pretty much spending all its money overseas. To many people this may be very unpopular and even treasonous, because, ‘American dollars should stay in America’. Without delving into the subject of how effective soft power versus hard power dollars are, the returns which development aid may or not pay, the cost of soft power versus hard power (regardless of efficacy), and other issues which I am happy to discuss with anyone and also am trying to learn about, I’d like to offer some more basic thoughts.

I wholeheartedly agree that managing the national debt is very important, as being burdened by debt both hinders our ability to act as a nation and our ability to manage our finances. The debt spiral might not be impossible to get out of, but when countries default, it’s not much fun for anyone. Let’s also not forget that other than the American people, America’s next largest creditor also possesses the world’s second largest army. In other words, I don’t really want to be Greek or Irish right now. So, let’s quit frivolously throwing money at these foreigners is what most Americans say. Here’s the problem: cutting all foreign aid saves America less than a penny for every dollar spent. The tax receipt (link) and a poll by the Economist display both of these facts. People want to cut spending (62%) and not raise taxes (5%), so, unless someone is proposing less bombs, planes, and soldiers or checks to old people, then he is not actually suggesting a viable solution to the national debt problem. So, from the bottom of my heart, let’s focus on the real costs and leave foreign aid alone, because I’m really enjoying my job so far.



As an addendum to this post I will include some information about the cheddar that Peace Corps spends from your hard earned tax dollars. Overall, in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget, the Peace Corps' total cost is $373 million. This amounts to about $43,000 per volunteer in the field. Of course, we're not getting paid anywhere near that, as their is both the (probably highly bureaucratic) staff at headquarters in DC, and support staff in every country. Costa Rica's 2010 budget was $1.737 million for the ~150 volunteers here. In specifics, that money can be broken down into $700,000 for operations, $425,000 for the volunteer food, rent, and living stipends, and $200,000 for medical (includes the costs and the medical staff salaries. There are more items, but those are the big ones. For a more accurate perspective, the $425,000 divided by the roughly 150 volunteers amounts to our living costs being about $2,800 a year. So, I may be in Costa Rica, but paying $75 to rent kayaks or go rafting for a day is a cost that I can barely shoulder once a year.

Getting oriented

My journey to Costa Rica was missing one key thing: sleep. After coming back from a trip to Tulsa and St. Louis to visit family and friends from school, I had one last delicious dinner with the family (sans Petey), stayed up late finishing packing and Pops took me delightfully small DSM at five in the morning. I arrived in DC, took a taxi to the hotel, and registration was closing and our “Staging” meetings started immediately. That night, after getting to bed around ten or eleven, I was up at 01:30 to meet in the lobby for our trip to the airport, where we waited for a few hours and then flew to Miami and the San Jose. We then took a bus ride across San Jose (all of us flew from DC to Miami to San Jose together) to Tres Rios, which is a community in the hills east of San Jose.

(my host family's house-second story)

Tico 21 (that’s my training group-Costa Ricans call themselves ticos instead of costarricenses) spent its first week at the San Juan XXIII retreat center in Tres Rios. It was a beautiful retreat center, with amazing views of the city, and basketball courts and soccer pitches for fun. We spent the week going over nuts and bolts information, meeting the Peace Corps Costa Rica staff, learning a little bit about the country, and learning a fair amount about our projects. Evenings were spent playing basketball, soccer, getting to know other trainees, or getting those last emails sent using the center’s wi-fi.

My favorite part of orientation (aside from the awesome food (I have a weird penchant for cafeterias)) was the “diversity training” that Delia, our fiery, intelligent, and sarcastic ‘Training Specialist’ facilitated. What the diversity training consisted of was each trainee making a poster representing the challenges and successes of different phases of our lives. Some people don’t like get-to-know-you activities, but I love them. Because the better we know someone, the more willing we are to share with them, and well, that’s how friendships are developed. It was wonderful to hear about everyone else’s experiences, values, and to see their pictures. It’s well established that my ego could use a couple knockdowns, and the presentations did just that. I was amazed and humbled by the other trainees. So many had so many rich experiences. One was born in Kenya. One met her husband while they were teaching English in Korea. One is the daughter of a Paraguayan man who one day took up a friend’s offer to use an extra plane ticket to visit America, and then established a life there. One guy covered the Iditarod as a journalist in Alaska. One woman, who is a septuagenarian, was married to a Nigerian and a Mexican in her life (at different times). There are two people from Idaho (I know). One girl knows the Cutler boys from my high school. One spent part of her childhood with her grandparents in Mexico. One taught English in Hungary. Needless to say I was humbled by and excited to get to know Tico 21.

Some quick facts about the group I have spent the last two months with and will be with for a few more weeks. Our group consists of 46 people from 26 different states, from Florida to Alaska, Inglewood to Queens, and Washington State to New Hampshire. And Beth Dove is from Janesville, IA-near Cedar Falls, so we have an overabundant Iowa representation. We are split into two groups, the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) group I am a part of and Community Economic Development (CED). The average age is 26, with all but two people falling in the 22-32 age group. Our two outliers are both fantastic people. Patty M. is ~70, and has lead an incredibly interesting and atypical (if there really is such a thing) life. Brad M., who is in the CED group, is 51 and retired from working in sales and management with Cisco Systems. The TEFL group doesn’t have too many Y-chromosomes running around, with twenty women and only six dudes. The CED group is tilted the other way, with 18 men and 12 women, making the group totals 32 women and 24 men. Sarah B. is part of the TEFL group and is continuing with a third year of service after two in Tonga. Marie B., part of the CED group, is also adding a third year to her service, and was Sarah’s South Pacific neighbor in Vanuatu.

Closing the China chapter

The end is here. This will be my last blog about China. Phew. It was a great two years, full of challenges and fun. I am incredibly glad that I decided to go, and even happier that I stuck around for year two. Many people have stumbled on this blog because they have in interest in going over to the Middle Kingdom to live, teach, or maybe just travel. So, below is a Dave Lettermanesque list of reason to and not to head east. Now I just have to catch up on sharing about life in the tropics. Thanks again to all who read my blabber.

Top ten reasons to leave the States and teach English in China
1. Haircuts and shoe shines are so cheap you can always look dapper (if that’s your thing)
2. You’re such an outlier and it’s assumed you have money so you can wear pajama pants and an old t-shirt to fancy clubs (if that’s your thing)
3. Wonton soup delivery in January
4. The fact that even if you’re 22 it’s still totally cool to challenge the Communist Party Dean of your department to a baijiu shot contest
5. A twenty ounce bottle of Snow Beer only costs 1.9 yuan ($0.28)
6. A bachelor’s degree from any old American college or university catapults you to an upper middle class college professor
7. The opportunity to learn what one in every five humans thinks and does
8. The completely challenging and awesome experience of dealing with a writing system totally different from ours
9. Hard sleepers
10. Street vendor fried dumplings

And ten reasons you might want to pass on that ticket to Shanghai
1. Your clothes will get dirty almost anywhere you choose to sit down or rest your arm on, dust seems to cover everything, so you’ll just be dustily dapper
2. You’re such an outlier you will invariably get bugged to buy things, give money, and will hear incessant “Hellos” from everyone. Everyone.
3. No heat in most buildings in January. Or November, December, or February for that matter
4. Baijiu will give you a hangover like one you’ve never experienced before
5. Snow Beer tastes about as good as it costs. Getting good quality beer requires living in a big city and lots of cash money
6. Even though you’re upper middle class, you still have to breath the same dirty air, deal with the same horrendous traffic, smell the same dirty bathrooms (they’re almost all dirty), and deal with the same crowds
7. One out of every five people is Chinese. That means there are a whole hell of a lot of Chinese people. It can get overwhelming.
8. The completely befuddling Chinese writing system
9. Anytime hard and soft sleepers are sold out. Happens a lot. Can’t buy tickets more than 10 days in advance, can’t buy tickets directly on the Internet, can’t always get tickets unless you’re in the city of departure, etc.
10. At some point, you’ll trade 1,000 bowls of rice for just one loaf of wheat bread

Warning, it's a long post

I know that everyone is probably pretty tired of reading about China on my blog, and wishes I was writing about my experience thus far in Costa Rica. But, to explain, I keep this blog not only to keep everyone back home informed about what’s going in my life, but also a journal for myself. It’s a great way for me to record stories with the pictures I’ve taken, the trinkets I’ve acquired, and the friends I’ve made. I hope that my loyal readers will put up with this for a post or two more. Everything is going well here, no big problems, I’ve been learning lots and have taken many notes and will post them when I have the time to get them organized and Internet access to get them posted. The five of us in my training community had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with one young woman’s host family. We had a splendid time cooking together and were able to pretty well replicate a Thanksgiving at home. I took care of the garlic mashed potatoes and helped out with the stuffing. I have less than a month left of training and will then head to my permanent site. With that, I’ll delve into a fairly serious and involved blog post that I have pondered about for a long time, discussed with many friends, read about all over the news and political magazines, and will opine about now. (Because, with the Internet, anyone can comment about anything.)

China is a rising economic and political power. China will continue to rise in the near future. The rate and number of speed bumps are debatable. The previous two statements are not. How this will affect the world as well as the Chinese citizen and the American citizen is something I thought about a whole lot during the past two years. It is also something I have discussed a lot, with great minds like my great friend Dave Wacker, my newly acquired friend Danthemanstan, Sean and Sarah, Chinese people like Steve Wu, Chen Gang, Qin Chen, Xing Xing, the lovely Zhen Zhen, and recently, with a fellow Peace Corps trainee named Barton Rode. Sometime during my senior year in high school I started getting interested in politics. Sometime in college I got really interested in finance and economics. After going to Spain, I gained an interest in world politics. My knowledge in this arena is about as great as the chance of Blockbuster building a new branch in your neighborhood, but with that and two years meandering around Changzhou (normal city China) I’ll take a stab at analyzing the significance and impact of China’s inevitable rise as an economic and political power.

One prevalent question about China is whether or not democracy is inevitable. It’s almost impressive how well the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has kept a hold on power even as China opened up, millions of Chinese have gone abroad (and some returned), Internet, TV, and phones have opened up the minds of the average Chinese citizen. The oldest generation in China still holds a lot of reverence for the CCP. For Mao Zedong for pulling the country together, and to Deng Xiaoping for bringing the country out of famine and despair and into the world economy. Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, is loved and adored by the elder and middle generation alike. Middle aged Chinese people still respect the CCP and see it as the agent that has given them so much wealth (comparatively). The difference is in the youngest generation, the kids I taught, the single children who have known nothing but expanding wealth their entire lives, who were raised by doting grandparents, and who see the world through the Internet they access from their smart phones. It is this generation that the CCP has its biggest problem with. The Hu administration has brought back Confucian thought in an effort to foster strident nationalism, and in China, the CCP is the nation. But, this generation sees access to global products, global media as one of its main goals, and if the CCP gets in its way, I think a grand sociopolitical fracture may happen.

My two years in China really opened my eyes to one main concept, which is related to whether this fracture occurs. Before I went to China, from what I read, I saw China as a totalitarian, human rights abusing, dictatorship. Well, I wasn’t really all that wrong. What I saw, though, was that this totalitarian regime has put incredible effort into the three things that are most necessary for economic and human development, in my order: infrastructure, education, and security. Limiting families to one child is a great breach of personal freedom. Forced sterilizations are both deplorable and barbaric. Ignoring property rights to build a road is not just. Imprisoning political dissidents without recourse is wrong. I am not supporting an end justifies the mean argument, because that argument is fraught. What I am saying is that living in China made me realize that the efforts of Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, Hu Yangbao, and many of China’s leaders today were and are done with the goal of raising China’s standard of living. The Mao government was wrong and self serving, but in the past thirty years, since Deng Xiaoping wrangled control of the government, China has made great leaps because the totalitarian government made them happen. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman isn’t on opium, there are many things about the Chinese government and society that America should be jealous of. Women in China still deal with a very patriarchal society, but they have so many more opportunities than women in any other developing country. China’s authoritarian government has given access to education with quickness and breadth that is the envy of countries worldwide. I was truly blown away at the level of education in a country with 1/8th as much money per person as the United States. China has come a long way, and this required lots of stability. I would be more than willing to argue that China’s government involvement and authoritarian rule was very justified, and in others was totally problematic.

China has come a long way, but the youngest generation wasn’t there to see the country ruined by maniacal rule and indiscriminate political killings. The youngest generation sees their freedom limited. They know the Internet is censored, and are annoyed they have to download software and deal with a slow connection to access the “real” Internet. They are annoyed that certain American movies don’t show in the theater. They are sent polemic books by their friends studying in Hong Kong. They are forced to meet in secret homes to have church services. Ian Johnson, in his book Wild Grass (p. 251), perfectly summarized the sentiment that Chinese people have lived with for their entire lives: "The comments reminded me of the remarks that family members might make about a troublesome relative: Don't speak about that because it'll only set him off. It was the way a lot of citizens around the world are forced to deal with their governments--as an unpredictable force that is better left alone." As China becomes more and more capitalist and more involved in the global economy, this generation will question this situation. They may question the economic controls exerted by the CCP and its state controlled enterprises. What they certainly will question is whether the controls on free speech, free press, free religion, free assembly, and political and labor group formation are worth the advancing standard of living.To me, and from all the Chinese people I have talked to, this is the question that must be answered. It is only now forming. Until recently, the increased standard of living was well worth the limited personal freedoms. Some think that the housing market may crash in China and this will be the great event, some think it may be an internal battle for control in the CCP between conservatives and reformers, and some think the issue over Taiwan could escalate. Perhaps a great fracture will not occur, but I think, if anything it will be how the CCP handles the evolving freedom for development bargain they have made with their citizens.

Now, for those of us that bleed red, white, and blue. The last issue was an internal one, but China is no longer an autarky. Check where your sunglasses or iPod were made if you have any doubts. So, a grand question in international relations (and maybe the grand question) is how do America and the EU deal with China’s rise, and America more than the EU as America is truly, the world’s security guarantor. Infrastructure and education are mainly internal challenges, security is not. From those who I’ve talked to and what I saw across the country, I don’t think that China is trying to take over the world. Do they want to have a bigger say in global order: of course. Do they want to be treated like the world’s second largest economy: duh. Do they sometimes want things to be counted per person, so they can get off easy (e.g. carbon emissions negotiations): yes. Is this kind of petty: yes, but also kind of just. China’s in a unique position, of the world’s ten largest economies, it and Brazil are the only developing countries, and it has a whole lot more poor people than Brazil. It has the world’s second largest military, yet almost all its soldiers and tanks are within its borders. I’m certain to some I appear to be a Chinese apologist. Granted, I grew some great affinities in the past two years for the country, but also much disgust. What I would most like to say, what I most learned in the last two years, is that China is indeed a very unique country, much like the U.S.A., and it’s a country that will rise, and in my opinion, fighting this rise or treating China as anything but a partner and potential friend is not a safe, prudent, or responsible option.

If you can imagine it, it's on the Internet (or even if you can't)

It is with this sentiment that I share a story of my exit from China. During my two years there, I had various tutors who helped me (slowly) learn Chinese. I won’t lie and act like I was a good student. Without tests, homework, or the threat of failing to pass to the next grade, my motivation for learning Chinese was low. Of course, I was motivated to learn the basics, but after that, my motivation was really just being able to carry one more intelligent conversations with people I met on the train, because all of my Chinese friends in Changzhou had a great command of English (kind of the reason I was friends with them). But, I would occasionally meet with my tutors to at least humor them with an attempt at learning their language. Most of my tutors were students from the English department (pretty necessary at the beginning levels). But, one day I met a girl trying to get me to sign a banner for a patriotic holiday. As I didn’t understand the holiday in Chinese, she switched to English and we chatted a bit. She asked to meet me again, and due to her diligence and risk at losing face (speaking improper English with a foreigner is a big no-no in China) I assented.
She was a freshmen math student, and we didn’t really share many interests, and her English prevented us addressing too many interesting issues, so I figured our relationship would be best suited as tutor-learner. So, she was my tutor during both my first and second years in Changzhou. At some point, over QQ, she professed her strong romantic attraction to me. I told her that I wasn’t interested in a relationship (which was generally true), and even more truthfully that I didn’t think she was old or mature enough to date me. We continued the weekly tutoring sessions, when I didn’t sleep in and cancel via text two minutes before the session (see, I really began to integrate into Chinese culture). I was aware that she continued to feel strongly for me, and often was overly dramatic when I would be gone or we would have vacation for long periods of time. I just tried really damn hard to always keep the conversation stuck on vocabulary, stroke order, and syntax. So, after I had had my last tutoring session with her and said goodbye, but before I left, I was hanging out on my computer while Zhen Zhen was messing around on hers, as we were wont to do when she dramatically called my attention. She had discovered the following post by the aforementioned tutor. She had posted this on her QQ Zone, much like a Facebook or MySpace page, and like those, with limited access to only her contacts, so I can’t provide the direct link, but have copied the content below. Zhen Zhen translated what I couldn’t read (most of it) for me that day, but you’ll have to settle with Google Translate’s version if you can’t read simplified Chinese. Sorry. The original text is below the translation for any of my Chinese readers.

--Goodbye, I love you! Few days before, I'll be hesitant to do this seven p.m. I go to find what kind of excuse for it, I do not want to see the parting scene, tell yourself over and over again not to go out, so good, up as nothing, but still Afterward, I always thought one of the few opportunities we met, but did not think that this is the last time I saw him five days later, the people will disappear from my life, two parallel lines intersect after a brief encounter, separated forever! Remember a year ago of their own, or in such a summer night, imagine yourself a year later how to accept this reality, I can accept it? ! Think it will cry in the night time, just thought of that day to come so fast that today! All came too suddenly, five days after he left did not expect, did not think this is the last time. When I sent out text messages not to go that day, I regret it, but fortunately, he was invited again, when I was in the past, he left his position beside me, he's doing his right-hand side girlfriend, I know this scene is very awkward, the other is International Studies University, they have a lot in common, to me is not their colleges, but sitting next to him and he can say a few words I have been very satisfied it! When they are gone, I'm not coming back to multi-conscious glance, farewell!
Goodbye, I love you! Now take the corner of the campus, can think of our previous memories left behind in this, all this is still very familiar feel, or something yesterday, but everything is coming to an end. Today you have sent to me looked over each SMS, or do not possess the courage to keep it deleted, looked at your gift, and have taught you to write the card, and your point of written bit drops, to throw away, but he could not bear, this is once the baby. Why should I be so hard!
Goodbye, I love you! Dear friends, I know you are very concerned about me, I know you a long time ago advised me to give up, but I'm too stubborn, I told him I thought well what the results, but my choice is to accept, do not blame me I know that I hit by far more than he brought me happiness, but happiness to that point by so much against my wish, I do not regret, because I really like him, his every movecan affect my mood, because his word, a text message, I can happily long, long time. Everyone said that I simply do not know better, or silly is good, in fact, Ye Hao simple, stupid or my people is such, I was thinking that the simple, to how to do it, I know that listen to my heart. Now he is leaving, I know, I return to my own life, please do not worry me, I'll be back. I am a man can bear, hit're used to, do not care which one!
Goodbye, I love you! Although I have the courage to say, though still good friends before you pretend to, though often thought of, but in the face of reality, we have chosen to surrender, in fact, quite good, so be it! The two end of the world, one day, one night, once said that good food to eat together, even for those traveling with it! Is this the end now!
Goodbye, I love you. Remember our previous joke that you'll forget me, how did you reply to me? ! ? Well, you may have forgotten, but what I do not luxury, just hope you remember me, do not forget to have a silly girl who helped you, give you the joy! When you bring your experiences in China when the thought of me. I remember a girl in China, there to support you, no matter who you're with, no matter where you are, I will silently bless you, hope you are happy, though you hurt me deeply, but I do not hate you. We are still friends, good friends!
Goodbye, I love you. I think I'll be fine, and friends, and family. Because through this whole thing, I know they love me. Although I love you, but if I were them and you choose, I would not hesitate to choose them! Because you do not deserve so much I paid, but they are worth it. Although I was reluctant to give up, could not bear to finish the work, been reluctant to let go of my own life, when I want you, let the memories with me, remember that you left me the best gift. I think my life will no longer face to people like you, to you it makes me sad person! In fact, did have seen much of you, but I think I know you will never, never, and you have the intersection, I did not realize, fate. Also a pity that fate.
Goodbye, I love you. Good-bye, never disappear. So many memories, so enough, enough for my taste alone every day! Finally, you figure disappeared into the sea, only to find the most pain crying laughing!
Good-bye, never gone, I have liked you, Ken

再见，我爱你！前几天开始，我就在犹豫，今天晚上七点我要不要去呢，要找什么样的借口呢，不愿看到离别场面的我，一遍一遍的告诉自己别去了，这样挺好，就当作什么都没有，可是还是心有不甘，我一直以为我们见面的机会屈指可数，可是没想到，这是我最后一次见他，五天后，这个人就会从我生命里消失，两条相交的平行线在短暂的遇见后，永远的分离了！还记得一年前的自己，还是在这样的夏天的夜晚，想象着一年后的自己怎么接受这样的现实，我能接受的了吗？！那时想想就会在夜里哭，只是没想到那一天这么快就到来，就是今天！一切来的太突然，没想到他五天后就走，没想到这是最后一面。当我把那天不去的短信发出去的时候，我就后悔了，还好，他又来邀请，当我过去的时候，他把他旁边的位置留给了我，他的右手边做着他的女朋友，我就知道这种场面很尴尬，其他的都是外国语学院，她们有很多共同语言，就我一个不是她们学院，但是坐在他旁边还能和他说两句话我已经很满足了！当她们都走后，我不自觉的又回头的多看了一眼，永别了！
再见，我爱你！现在走在校园里的角落，都能想到我们以前在这留下的美好回忆，这一切都还很熟悉，都感觉还是昨天的事，可是一切都到头了。今天把你发给我的每条短信都看了遍，还是没有那勇气把它删了，又看了看你送的礼物，还有曾经教你写字的卡片，还有你写下的点点滴滴，想扔掉，可是还是舍不得，这都是曾经的宝贝。为什么要让我这么痛苦！
再见，我爱你！亲爱的朋友们，我知道你们都很关心我，我知道你们在很久前就劝我放弃，但是我太固执，我心里清楚我跟他的结果是什么，但是我的选择是接受，你们不要怪我，我知道，其实我受到的打击远远超过了他给我带来的快乐，但是为了那点快乐，受那么多打击我愿意，我不后悔，因为我是真的喜欢他，他的一举一动都能牵动我的心情，因为他的一句话，一条短信，我可以开心很久很久。大家都说不知道说我单纯好，还是傻好，其实单纯也好，傻也罢，我就是这样的人，我就是那个简单的思维，能怎么办呢，我知道听从我的心。现在他要走了，我知道了，我要回到属于我自己的生活，大家不用担心我，我会回来的。我一个人可以承受，受打击受惯了，也不在乎这一个了
再见，我爱你！虽然我没有勇气说出口，虽然还要在你们面前假装好朋友，虽然会经常想起，但是在现实面前，我们都选择投降，其实也挺好，就这样吧！世界的两个尽头，一个白昼，一个黑夜，曾经说好了一起去吃美食，一起去旅游的那些就算了吧！就这么结束吧！
再见，我爱你。还记得我们以前以前开玩笑说，你会忘了我，你是怎么回复我的吗？！？算了，你可能已经忘了，但是我也不奢求什么，只希望你别忘了我，别忘了曾经有个傻傻的女生帮助过你，给你带来过快乐！当你提起你在中国的经历的时候，想到我。记得在中国还有个女生支持你，不论你和谁在一起，不论你在什么地方，我都会默默祝福你，希望你幸福，虽然你深深的伤害了我，但是我不恨你。我们还是朋友，很好的朋友
再见，我爱你。我想我会过的很好，和朋友，和家人。因为通过这一整件事，我知道她们爱我。虽然我很喜欢你，但是如果让我在他们和你当中选的话，我会毫不犹豫的选她们！因为你不值得我付出那么多，而她们值得。虽然我舍不得放弃，舍不得成全，舍不得放手去过我自己的生活，偶尔想你的时候，就让回忆来陪我，回忆是你留给我最美好的礼物。我想我这一辈子都不会再遇到向你这样的人，向你这样让我难过的人了！其实以前也有常见到你，但是我觉得我永远不会认识你，永远不会和你有交集，哪知，缘份。也可惜，缘份。
再见，我爱你。再见，再也不见。那么多的回忆，那么足够，足够我天天品尝寂寞！终于你身影消失在人海之中，才发现笑着哭最痛！
再见，再也不见，我曾经喜欢过你，肯。

Failed book idea

During my first year at Jiangsu Teachers University of Technology I had quite a novel idea. I had been writing on this blog and learning about Chinese culture. I was incredibly struck by almost every story I heard from my students about their high school lives. So, I thought, why not interview a bunch of students and organize all the information into a book. Chinese high school is vastly different than that I experienced at West Des Moines Valley (Go Tigers), and probably that experienced by most American young adults. China is also of rising economic and political importance (so much so that some people dub the G20 summits, G2 summits). So, I thought that it would be pretty interesting and valuable for American and Western audiences to learn more about what life’s like for Chinese teenagers. I made it to one interview. This makes it pretty clear that I prioritized spending nights drinking Snow beer and chatting with David, Danthemanstan, Clark, Sean, or Sarah more than writing my idea of a book. Nonetheless, I find the interview I had with Zhao Min about her high school experience incredibly interesting, so, it is posted below. If you have any questions or want to learn more, let me know, and I bet that Zhao Min would be happy to email you a response.

Name: 赵敏 Zhao Min
Birth date: November 10, 1986
Hometown: 大丰，盐城， 江苏

Hometown size/description: lives in a village of 5,000 in the region of DaFeng a medium sized city, average wealth within Jiangsu province, in the northern part of Jiangsu province. According to Zhao Min, people from Northern Jiangsu are better at the sciences and tend to work harder, while those from Southern Jiangsu province are better at the liberal arts.

Parents’ occupations:
Father was a PE teacher, is now retired and runs a hardware store. Mom runs the hardware store with her father.

When did you begin high school?
Fall of 2002

Where was your high school located?
In DaFeng city
How far was your high school from your house?
40 minute bus ride

Was your high school free? If not, how much did it cost?
No, 1,200 yuan per semester

Where did you live during high school?
In a dormitory.

(if in a dormitory) how many roommates did you have?
11 roommates (12 total in the room)

Describe your dormitory (amenities)?
‘it was a very small room, no fan, only one tap’ ‘life there was very hard’ ‘it was very crowded’ had to wait a long time in the morning to wash. Estimates room was 1.5 meters by 5 meters, with one small window at the far end. Three sets of bunk beds along each wall. No heating, no air conditioning. Electricity was turned on at 5:00 and turned off at 22:20. There were two bathrooms on each floor, with six toilets each, serving 264 girls per floor. The shower building was a 20 minute walk away. No televisions. No computers, no personal computers allowed. No desks in the room. Teachers would come to monitor the dormitory rooms after 10:20, talking was forbidden. Zhao Min would often pretend to sleep until the monitoring teacher had left. Clothes were washed by hand but were difficult to dry because there was no rack or porch in the rooms, so they were forced to dry them in the courtyard, which was shaded.

How many hours of class did you have each day?
Class lasted from 5:30 to 22:00 ‘it was really hard for us to finish the high school life’


How many days per week did you have class?
Seven days a week. One day off per month. They were free at 11:00 and had to return at17:00 on the one free day. ‘it was very crazy I think, we hate that’. ‘In fact my teachers were very kind, I loved them’.

Summer vacation lasted how long?
Two months, from beginning of July to the end of August.

How many vacations during the year?
National Day (October, 7 days), Labor/Worker’s day (May, 7 days) Spring Festival (January, 20 days)

Describe the normal day, from waking up until bed?
We often got up at about 5:00. Arrived at the classroom then had required reading/studying, which was monitored by the teacher. At six o’clock they jogged 500 meters. At 6:15, returned to the classroom to read, monitored, this reading period was assigned. At 7:00, breakfast. At 7:20, returned to the classroom for half an hour silent study hall, occasionally monitored. 7:50, first class began, which was followed by four periods of 45 minutes each, 10 minute breaks between classes. 11:20, lunch, the dining hall was ‘very crowded’ ‘if you came too late, there was no food for you to eat, so you had to run, you had to run’. After lunch, 12:00, back in the classroom, for study hall, 30 minutes. 12:30-13:30, rest/nap in the dormitory, or silent studying in the classroom, often monitored. “We often slept in the classroom”
14:00, four more classes, same schedule as the morning, lasted until 17:35. Dinner from 17:35 to six. From six to seven, study hall, monitored. From 19:00 to 22:00, three review classes, 50 minutes with a ten minute break. At 22:00 they returned to the dormitory, “just twenty minutes we had to wash, wash our clothes, brush our teeth, do something casual” –I asked, did you shower, “in fact we only showered two times a week, on Wednesday and Sunday, the public bathrooms were very crowded”. They would shower during the rest time on these days. (they did not have the same classes each day, many were daily, but some were only once or twice per day)

What spare time activities did you engage in?
None, there was no free time.

When did you take the college entrance exam?
In June 7,8,9, 2005. At the end of the third year, this ended the third year (earlier than normal).

How many hours per day did you prepare for the exam?
Over one semester, they reviewed all the subjects in preparation for the exam, all the studying for the exam was done with the class. She ‘seldom studied during vacation’

How many students were in each class?
60-70

*the teachers worked about seven or eight hours per day, but the class master/teacher had to monitor the students during all the studying and otherwise monitored period. So she did not necessarily work for 17 hours, but had irregular hours because she had to monitor very early and very late.

Summary/Comments?
“I had too much pressure” “I was a good student in our class, so I often sat in the second desk, in fact the second line, third line, fourth line were the good students, but the students who didn’t study well, often sat behind in the classroom, so we seldom talked to them. I didn’t know why.” “The teachers there were very hard working, they also had too much pressure”

Chinese Profile #9: Yan Zhen

Hopefully these profiles, although only a tiny sample of nine out of 1,350,000,000 or so Chinese people, will provide a small insight into the people of the world’s most populous and third largest country now boasting the world’s second largest economy. Although, I would like to offer a very valuable statement I picked up from Mr. Wacker that “the differences within groups are much greater than the differences between groups.” This last profile will probably be the most difficult for me to write, yet also the most enjoyable. For the subject of it is not just any student or friend, but the beautiful young women who was foolish enough to date me for eight months during my second year in China. To those of you who are tried and true blog readers, you may remember my story in October of 2008 when a “visit to a park in town” turned into an all day adventure visiting Changzhou prefecture’s (key word: prefecture-not city) two most famous tourist attractions. I went on this trip to provide a junior student a chance to practice her English, arranged by her father and Mr. Li, a professor at JSTU. Well, I saw this girl, Yan Zhen (严真), a few more times on campus, but never said more than hi. To this day we both claim that the other one was the one that dropped the ball and didn’t email/text/call. Fast-forward to September 2009, and on my second tour of duty at JSTU there is a girl in the class that I know I’ve seen before, but just can’t place. When I get the attendance sheet with all the names, I realize, it is Yan Zhen (or Serena in English class) from my mysterious adventure to the lake and bamboo forest. Fast-forward two months, and it’s official.

I had ended a relationship as part of the process of moving to China, and for many reasons was not looking to get into one right away. First, I did not speak a lick of Chinese when I arrived at Pudong International, and didn’t think a relationship without communication would be too prudent. Secondly, I didn’t know what the differences were, but had heard that there were some pretty fundamental cultural differences between China and the land of the Stars and Stripes. After two years, I can say this is absolutely true, and many of the differences involve the conservative nature towards romance, love, and sex in China, not to mention the individualist/collectivist cultural schism. Lastly, and although I don’t consider myself anywhere near a moral paragon, I was aware that many Asian women, often from poorer, less educated families, are eager to fall in love with a Western man for all sorts of non-romantic reasons and that many Western men take advantage of this situation. I think that both sides of that situation are filled with misguided passion that is anything but responsible. So, I was single (I mean available) my whole first year in China. The two closest brushes I had with romance was having to get a friend to call the campus police to remove an adoring student from my porch and thinking that a friend had the hots for me, only to find out she really liked David (which really shouldn’t of been a surprise).

Back to November 2009, and I started dating Yan Zhen, who, from now on we’ll call Zhen Zhen (真真), as everyone does. We had (or at least I had) an amazing time together throughout my second year there. Make all the judgments you want about me dating a student, but I will provide a few attempts at excuses to try to rescue some dignity. For starters, she was only eight months younger than me (not a difference that many teachers can claim). Also, foreign teachers dating students at JSTU (and at Chinese universities in general) is a very common theme, and thus doesn’t meet the disdain that it might in other schools/cultures. This is mainly due to two factors: one, the lack of age difference and two, that many foreign teachers teach at teachers colleges, where a large majority of the students are females. In fact, I was often chastised during my first year for not yet having a Chinese girlfriend.

Dating Zhen Zhen turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life, and trust me; it was a tough decision to not stay in China with her. Because of her, I was able to participate in all sorts of activities I otherwise wouldn’t have, was able to really ratchet up my Chinese, gain much greater insight into Chinese culture, travel with much greater ease, and get to know an incredibly smart and equally sarcastic young women. I will highlight a few of the interesting experiences that I was able to enjoy (generally) with Zhen Zhen.

After we had hung out together a few times, I was talking to Zhen Zhen one night on QQ (look into it, there are more people on QQ than there are Americans). By this point I had made the decision that this was a relationship worth investing in, so I brashly invited her to go on a trip to Shaolin Temple the coming weekend. Because time and money are very sparse for most Chinese college students, they generally plan their trips well in advance. Thus, almost any student would’ve rejected this ridiculous (to them) offer outright. But, I was hoping that Zhen Zhen was just smitten enough with me (a ridiculous prospect, I know) that she would say yes. She said she would need to get some friends to come with, as a trip with her teacher would be just too preposterous. So, Zhen Zhen and Chuan Mao came with me to Shaolin Temple. During the trip they actually convinced me to hit up another tourist site, Yuntai Shan, which was quite pretty. One things that were fun during this trip was the girl’s utter disgust at my hotel picking choices. I generally travel with a towel of sorts, maybe soap, and all the toiletries that I need. I enthusiastically agree with the old Motel 6 ad campaign that all hotels look the same when I’m sleeping aka the majority of the time I’m there. So, essentially, I’m looking for a roof, a flat bed, and maybe heating/air conditioning if it’s really, really freaking cold/hot, respectively. Well, let’s just say they didn’t see it the same way. But, the great thing about this was that I was obstinate about not paying more than we were quoted at the first dingy hotel we visited, so mark a win for KFerr. I can’t not admit that I watched an episode of Gossip Girl on Zhen Zhen’s cell phone one night at the hotel, as the local TV offered little entertaining, even for the two Chinese speakers. I figured if a third of my female students picked English names from this (insert negative adjective here) American export, it wouldn’t hurt to find out what it’s all about.

From the third wheel vacation to quite an interesting evening featuring me, Zhen Zhen, her friend from high school (female), her friend from middle school (male), and another friend from middle school (male) in what could be called a double date, with one half blind date and a fifth wheel thrown in for fun. Zhen Zhen’s friend from middle school (male) had been bugging her to set him up with one of her cute friends. So, she relented, set him up, and then informed me I would be attending. I was full of nothing but excitement to 1) observe a blind date 2) practice my Chinese 3) be able to make fun of Zhen Zhen to some of her friends I just met, thus throw a huge curveball at the Chinese/Asian art of saving face. It was quite an interesting night, I had to slyly ask Zhen Zhen halfway through the night who the guy being set up was, as the set up girl was talking way more with the fifth wheel, thus exposing the one big flaw of the third wheel/fifth wheel concept (your friend might be more attractive than you). It was also a good chance to interact with some Chinese people my age who were not my students. Needless to say I had to have Zhen Zhen explain to me some of the dirty jokes told, pretty embarrassing, but it may have been just as embarrassing for her and her friend to explain the jokes to me.

Similar to the previous story was another date story. Eleen (Xuan Ke) was a classmate of Zhen Zhen’s and had gone to one of the two high schools Zhen Zhen attended. So, Zhen Zhen informed me that Eleen wanted to go on a double date with us. (Yes I told Eleen that her English name should be Elaine, she didn’t go for it.) Again, plenty of reasons for me to say yes, not the least that I love learning about other cultures, and well, there’s lots to learn about Chinese culture. As a symptom of the one child policy (now amended significantly) and Asian culture’s incredibly strong penchant for male children (read: heirs) China has a giant surplus of men between ages 10 and 30. (The one child policy was in greatest effect from 1980 to ~2000.) A surplus of men puts women of this age in high demand. So, Xingwang (Eleen’s boyfriend) and I waited and held purses for about half an hour while the two girls looked at perfume and makeup. Looking around the mall, this seemed to be a pretty common activity for men our age. After this we had a delicious dinner at the Korean restaurant downtown (a favorite of Zhen Zhen’s). Now, going out to dinner in China involves something I really don’t like. No, not chopsticks. No, not the lack of ice water. No not the lack of a non-smoking section. Not even the lack of kind and courteous service. It involves ordering in groups. When I go out to eat I want to eat what I want to eat. To me this is totally reasonable. But when the Chinese go out to eat, they order a few dishes and share from all of them, exactly the way they eat at home. This was a sticking point with Zhen Zhen and I, as she would generally expect to have half of what I ordered, regardless of whether I wanted what she ordered or not. It wasn’t her being greedy or impolite, it was her being Chinese, and well, we were in China. So, on this date I succumbed to the group ordering thing after failing, in my pre-school Chinese, to explain the virtues of ordering for one’s self.

My pre-school Chinese was actually part of the most interesting and different part of the date. Four is a great number for a conversation, big enough to get different opinions, but not big enough to have people splitting off into their own little groups. Well, lets just say that I spent the two hours daydreaming. I think the only time I had any idea of what was going on was when Zhen Zhen would poke me, repeat a question in pre-school Chinese, and then wait for a response from me. I wasn’t really concerned about making a good impression with my answers when I didn’t understand the questions. Double dates might be stressful for some boyfriends, but when my conversation offerings for two hours consisted of “My name is Ken. I am American. I like drinking beer. I like to read. I like to travel” I wasn’t all that worried about what the other couple thought. When foreign businessmen come to China, their Chinese hosts will speak in English the entire visit, to accommodate them and recognizing that English is the international language. Well, Zhen Zhen, Eleen, and Xingwang did anything but accommodate me that night. I’m sure my dad and mom are smiling with joy that for at least one night nobody had to listen to what I had to say.

The last little tale I’ll tell of my time with Zhen Zhen was our trip to Hong Kong. Well, rather, some travel details of the trip. I’m a sucker for overnight trains, because, it’s like a hotel and transportation for the price of one, and, well, I love me some 火车的方便面(train Ramen noodles). So, she and I were going to take a trip down to Hong Kong to celebrate her birthday by eating crazy good Hong Kong food and visiting some of her old college classmates. Well, the train plans got cancelled because Zhen Zhen couldn’t take the train, because she didn’t have a visa. Why, you ask, isn’t Hong Kong part of China? Why would she need a visa to visit her own country (Zhen Zhen is a card carrying CCP member to boot)? Well, China does own Hong Kong, it’s part of the “one country, two systems” program. Which really means “two countries, one really messed up system.” This lack of a visa also prevented Zhen Zhen and I from flying straight from Shanghai or Nanjing to Hong Kong. Zhen Zhen didn’t have a visa because a regular Chinese citizen can only visit Hong Kong as part of an approved tourist group. Yes, Hong Kongers can visit China whenever they want. This was a problem that even Zhen Zhen’s high-ranking father couldn’t solve. So, we took a flight down to Shenzhen (the city where the world’s electronics are made). We then took a bus to the border where we would cross the border on foot (side note: I am a HUGE fan of foot border crossings). But, like every problem in the world, this visa problem had a solution. For, there are visa pirates/peddlers/hawkers that lurk around the border station doors. People like Zhen Zhen have to find one of these hawkers, and wait around for enough to show up to make a group, pay the ‘service’ fee, and a seven-day tourist visa is hers (with 1.34 billion people, these groups form pretty fast). For the record, US citizens-decidedly not the country that owns Hong Kong-get 90 days visa free in Hong Kong. Oh how I love the blue and gold passport. Whether its cultural sensitivity, maturity, or consideration, I definitely didn’t have enough of it not to make jokes about this disparity the entire trip. We had an awesome trip filled with beach chilling, a beachside barbecue, karaoke, eating crazy good street food, introducing Zhen Zhen and her best friend to Mexican food, enjoying the amazingly cool views from the escalator between Central and SoHo, eating freshly caught oysters on a Pacific Island, and eating more crazy good street food. The diversity and richness of those experiences is very emblematic of my time with Zhen Zhen, full of flavor and fun.

Chinese Profile #8: Qin Chen

The penultimate profile of those who greatly affected me during my little gig in Changzhou will feature the goofy, comedic, short and (self-admittedly) slant-eyed Qin Chen. Qin Chen was, with Cao Xingxing and Zhao Min, a senior studying business English during my first year in China. Before I say anything else about Qin Chen, I have to mention that Qin Chen is a person that carried the Chinese people’s reputation for hospitality to a whole new level. Chinese people are rough and disrespectful with others in public, and Chinese customer service generally amounts to little more than either “there’s nothing I can do” or “you should find the manual and read it.” But, when dealing with visitors to either their home or country, Chinese people treat them with the utmost consideration and kindness. I can’t count the number of Qin Chen took time out of her day to help me with some frivolous task or non-essential question over the past two years. Qin Chen and her family (I visited twice) also embodied something I have found true in many countries, that often those with the least to offer are the most generous.

Qin Chen is front and center, w/ her family

For me, besides a great friend (with an annoying penchant for pinching), Qin Chen is very emblematic of the monumental change that has occurred in the past forty years, and more precisely in the past twenty. For a quick refresher, after thirty years of autarky (or attempted autarky) under Chairman Mao, in 1978-9 China dramatically changed from a state-planned and controlled economy to a capitalist economy open to the world market. Now pretty much everything that isn’t made in the US or Japan is made in China. The differences between Qin Chen’s life and those of her forebears are perfectly representative of this magnificent change. Furthermore, because I was teaching English during my two years in the People’s Republic, Qin Chen’s story is personal for me, as English played the pivotal role.

Qin Chen is from a small town called Qutang, which is part of the Hai An district, which pertains to Nantong, a prefecture on the northern side of the Yangzi (Shanghai, the world’s fourth biggest city, is on the southern side). So, technically, Qin Chen comes from northern Jiangsu province, although cities just north of the Yangzi like Nantong and Yangzhou have a lot in common with richer, more developed southern Jiangsu. Qutang is very small by Chinese standards, consisting of no more than eight or ten main streets, with streets like the one Qin Chen lives on shooting off. Qutang is an agricultural town, with peanuts, soybeans, various greens, and chickens being raised by many of its residents. The other main industry is manufacturing (big surprise in China, eh). Her father works at a valve factory, in what Qin Chen describes as a tiresome, repetitive, and manually tough job. I do not know exactly what he does at the factory. Her mom used to work at a silkworm factory (silk is also a big industry in parts of Jiangsu) but it downsized and now she works at a grocery store, which Qin Chen says is a much less tiring for her mother, who also acts as a caretaker of Qin Chen’s grandmother and uncle who has Down syndrome. Qin Chen’s house is rural and basic, but filled with the awesome personalities of her gracious mother and fun loving father. The kitchen table is often the site of mah-jongg games. They cook with fires powered usually by rice or other plant stocks, and the toilet is a simple latrine. Her grandmother still tends to some rows of greens and other vegetables that are 10 meters behind the house. Qin Chen is the first person in her entire extended family to have attended and graduated from college, and is one of few who have a high school diploma.

While her grandmother cooks over a fire, and pulls weeds in her rows of cabbage and bok choy, Qin Chen will sit in her room, texting her friends over the cell phone she bought with the money she earns working for an “international” firm, and downloading the most recent episode of Lost or Gossip Girl on her laptop. Qin Chen is single and has no children, and has people underneath her at her job. Needless to say that Qin Chen’s life at 22 is pretty different from that of her mom at 22, not even to mention her grandmother. Now, you might say that’s true for everyone around the world, and it probably is. But, in all of China except two or three cities, the mobile phone, television, Internet, washing machine, high school education, cars, intercity rail, foreigners, and women in the work force all arrived within the same twenty years. While David and I very well may have been the first foreigners her parents saw up close and personal, Qin Chen had a slew of foreign teachers in college, and now engages with Brits and Aussie’s on a fairly regular basis. She does this because she works for a company that makes golf trolleys. If you, like me, have no idea what this is, here’s your chance to learn something new today. A golf trolley is essentially a mechanized golf bag stand on three small wheels. It serves that niche market of people who cannot afford or choose not to use caddies, do not want to carry their own clubs, and are playing on a ‘no-carts’ course. Qin Chen is the translator of choice whenever the buyers come into check on the factory. I say that Qin Chen works for an “international” company because it is owned by a Hong Kong firm, which, although part of China, has its own economic and political system. (Insert your own “One country, two systems” joke here.) Qin Chen lives a life so different than all her ancestors because she can speak, read, and write English. She is also the first member of her family to not work in Qutang, her hometown, yet another difference. It makes me feel like my two years in China were just a tad bit productive to know that my classes helped develop a skill that is so useful in China (you can’t sell the things you make if you can’t communicate with the people that want to buy them). Moreover, it’s that this skill can help open up new avenues for the students I taught, providing them a glimpse into new cultures, industries, and income generating activities. If you know me, you know how highly I value learning, seeing, and hearing new things. Maybe all some of my students will use their English for is to better understand Gossip Girl, but, for high achievers like Qin Chen, English has opened her up to new cultures and industries (like the incredibly essential golf accessories industry).