85% chinese

In the past six weeks, I have gotten used to...

• paying in RMB - I no longer convert back to the US dollar (unless I am trying to rationalize a seemingly expensive purchase)
• responding to "Teacher" and "老师" and even "Hamburger"
• speaking slowly and using direct/easy vocabulary
• saying "haiya" (pronounced hi-YAHH) to express frustration. Often.
  
• running on a treadmill that tracks my progress in km - again, the conversion to American units is no longer necessary
  
• biking and running in a city where cars drive on sidewalks while bikes pulling entire truckloads use the road
• eating at a restaurant or street vendor 2, 3, and sometimes 4 times a day
• drinking disgusting canned coffee that tastes suspiciously like the container it comes in
• using chopsticks - even for pasta in my apartment. Can anyone find a fork around here?!
• overseeing my students' morning exercises and eye exercises. Hard to believe how foreign these seemed just a month ago!

8:00 "morning exercises" in the courtyard of the ISS

• living in the tropics - this Minnesota girl even put on a sweater when it got down into the sixties last night
• eating meat with relatively little idea which animal, or part of that animal, it originally belonged to
• my rock hard bed
• being unable to understand the majority of signs and conversation around me
• bartering, sometimes to 1/4 the asking price, for seemingly everyday purchases
• pretending I knew the computer in my classroom wasn't going to work and that I really did intend to play Bingo/hangman/murder mystery/20 questions/charades for the last 15 minutes of class
• unexpected surprises in class at the last moment. Key example from this afternoon: my year 1 class had an extra student, Enson, who is my Year 4 low-level English Corner. He couldn't explain his presence to me with his limited English, but when I asked another teacher later, I found out that he had been "acting like a Year 1 student so today he will be a Year 1 student." This would be the classic degrading punishment, made altogether more degrading by the fact that in our spelling contest, Ben and Coco beat Enson on every single word.

Enson, Ben, and Coco caught in a rare quiet/studious moment

Of course, there are some things I'm still working on: the absolute mess of the Chinese planned-one-day-at-a-time school system; being stared at and photographed endlessly ("外国人!"); and my 7th-9th grade class, who openly state that they have no interest in learning English, and instead belittle each other and me for 40 straight minutes each week (seriously: this week after they left, I locked the door, sat in the empty classroom, and cried). But my assimilation list is growing longer and I am already getting the sense that leaving in February might not actually be all that easy... It's nice to feel at home on the other side of the world.

another one-way ticket

This summer I sent over 20 emails into African cyberspace in search of a volunteer position with an NGO from the spring of 2009. My tagline about a Yale Law student on a one-year deferral must not have been as catchy as I had hoped, because after a few months of dedicated effort I received exactly zero responses. Then, in mid-September - over two months after I had sent the initial correspondence - I heard back from Andrew Youn, a Korean Yale (BA)/Northwestern (MBA) grad who founded One Acre Fund in rural Kenya. He happened to be in Minneapolis on a fundraising run that week, so we arranged a "casual meeting" at a Starbucks downtown the day before I left.

The casual meeting turned out to be a fairly intense hour-long session in which I mapped out business and experiment plans for hypothetical situations faced by the rapidly developing agricultural NGO. I had little background with this type of interview question - although I am told they are quite common in the business world - but apparently I did fine because Andrew told me they would try to find an available niche for me with One Acre Fund for the spring after my teaching contract ends in China.

Between the blog entry title and this little background story, you can probably guess what the latest development in my life has been: Andrew officially extended me an invitation to work with One Acre Fund this spring. However, the terms are less favorable than he had hoped; since I can't get there until February and planting begins March 1, he will have to staff the major projects with employees who can be in Kenya at the beginning of 2009. So while I get free room and board (granted, "free room and board" in a hut with no running water or electricity), I have to pay for travel and immunization expenses. I don't really mind; I sort of expected this from the beginning, and if I were trying to capitalize financially I would not be working in a country where the currency is worth roughly 1/7 of the US dollar!

I should add that even after all my excitement to move to Africa, the decision was not easy - I am feeling increasingly at home in China, understanding more and more Mandarin, and finally learning the ropes of being a teacher. I hate to cut short the happy episodes of my life, but the anticipation I feel thinking about Kenya makes it impossible to turn down this opportunity. Oh yes, and of course I had to take into considering the winning vote from the poll on the right-hand side of my blog... Yes, my loyal readers, your vote does count!

a night in the HKG.

Harbor seen from Stanley (south side of Hong Kong Island)

After a joint pot-luck with the Chinese teaching staff on Friday night, I awoke early on Saturday morning to catch a bus into Hong Kong. I had originally planned to meet up with Sarah Hawkenson, a high school friend who works for Northwest. After she failed to board her flight, I debated for only a few minutes before deciding I would go anyway.

It's sort of ironic, given that Hong Kong is technically part of China, that I was not previously allowed to visit - but you do in fact need a passport to cross the border and a valid Chinese visa to return. However, as with Macau, now that I have my residence permit I can come and go freely, making it a 1.5-hour trip (and only US$12 round-trip) into the bustling downtown area of Hong Kong - including the time spent going through customs at the border.

I had been warned that Hong Kong was quite a bit more expensive than mainland China - on par with New York City, in fact - and also an incredibly amazing place. Both turned out to be true, which could be a dangerous combination given its proximity to Shenzhen! What impressed me most about Hong Kong was first its size: it squishes all of its 7 million residents into a 426 square-mile area. It appears that not a single of these square miles is wasted; either jam-packed with high rises and extravagant office buildings, protected as a nature preserve complete with hiking paths and look-outs, or dedicated to tourism in the form of international cuisine (!) and endless shops with knock-off designer/"authentic Chinese" goods.

Since the trip went so smoothly, there is less to report - guess that is the downside to easy travel - but still a few key stories that I'll share here.

• While riding the metro from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon, I relaxed against the glass door. I know there are always signs indicating that this is exactly what not to do, and I soon found out why: as the doors slid open, the back of my arm (we will call this part "muscle" and not "flab") got caught in the door, preventing it from opening beyond a small crack. One man immediately tried to pry it open, and I cried out, "MY ARM!" It couldn't have been more than a few seconds that I was stuck like that, but it left a big red mark on the back of my arm and gave me a terrible case of the giggles - as only comes when you do something absolutely ridiculous and are then trapped in a small confined space with the very people who watched you do it.
• While not as humorous, taking the tram to Victoria Peak turned out to be a veryworthwhile, albeit touristy, activity. The peak is adorned with a huge shopping mall (how Hong Kong of them), and for HK$12 (~US$2) you can go to the top for a lookout. The view was amazing and the walk back down adventurous and scenic.

View of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak

• While walking back through SoHo, the up-and-coming district of Hong Kong with the stereotypical booths and wide variety of cuisines, we chanced upon a sign that read "BELGIUM ON TAP." Despite the afternoon hour and the fact that we had just eaten, Andy and I went in to check it out. We ended up drinking a glass of beer each in front of an open window overlooking the bustling tourist streets of SoHo. As I cherished the juxtaposition of images before me - my Belgian beer before the Hong Kong streets; the dumpy shops in the foreground of huge polished glass buildings; traditional Chinese medicine sold next to a shoestore stocked with Converse All-Stars - I came to realize that the last time I observed a similar coincidence of cultures was also over a Belgian beer. Hip, hip, hooray for international trade!