Karoke and crowds, naturally.

So I've been travelling around for about two and a half weeks now and have finished my first country, Malaysia. All around, it was amazing. I flew into kuala lumpur and spent 3 days meandering around the city. Since Malaysia Is a Muslim country as well as one with a huge Indian influence, it's quite unique in it's culture. It was nice to see diversity in an Asian country. I spent most of the days walking around seeing things like the petronas towers and thr batu caves. At night, since our hostel was right at the end of the street with all the nightlife, a big group from our hostel went out together. It was about 90% tan Australians at my hostel so it was like rubbing it in that my skin hadn't seen the sun for a few months.

Next stop was my first island, pangkor. It was gorgeous but a bit too quiet. The good thing was that my hotel had a sweet pool with only like four other people using it so I had four whole days to use my SPF 50 and get rid of the blinding effect when my skin is too white and the sun hits it.

After pangkor was langkawi. This might possibly be my favorite place out of the whole trip. It's not a huge island but is growing in tourism. We stayed at a guesthouse called geckos that was fantastic. Super cheap and tons of fun people. Everyone that I made friends with during the ten days was having so much fun that they stayed an extra day or two. My days here consisted of beach all day until sundown, shower, get some dinner then head back out to thr beach at night with everyone. The highlight of my time there might have been during one night on the beach with everybody when the resident 40 year old weirdo and self proclaimed world citizen proceeded to hold me responsible to America destroying freedom across the world for the past 50 years. Yuck I hate freedom. Hate it! THEN the next night went America all over everyone when my team of mostly Americans absolutely destroyed everyone else is the international pub quiz at the guesthouse. So much for Americans being stupid and not paying attention to anything outside of America. Anywhooo all in all i had a fantastic time there and was sad to say goodbye to everyone but I was also really excited to meet up with Sam and Lizzie in Thailand.

More on thailand in a few days and sadly no pictures since I am only using the Internet through my itouch.

Tomorrow I head out to begin my travels through SE Asia for spring festival. I'll be traveling for about 40 days which is outrageous!! I'll be starting out in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a few days then island hopping in Northern Malaysia for a week and a half. After that it's Thailand for about two weeks then finishing off the trip with Cambodia or Laos before I have to head back to Bangkok, Thailand to fly back to China on Feb 24. We don't have any hostels booked besides our first few days or any tickets purchased besides the flight back home. The plan is just to wing it. Not really consistent with my travel methods in the past but I guess that's how you do it when traveling in SE Asia. Hope it all turns out! I should have access to internet pretty frequently so I'll try to update here from time to time. Pray for no sunburns in 40 straight days of sun...

I walked downwind of a pile of burning trash right outside my apartment today. That makes the top of the list on smells so far in China. For some reason, I thought that burning trash wasn't exactly legal? I can still taste the trash in my mouth...

Let me preface this cute little story by saying that every time I go out in public here, someone approaches me to learn english and be my friend. I try to keep moving and not stand in one place for more than 10 seconds because that's when trouble starts. I also tend to look as unapproachable as possible with my blank face and headphones in but alas, they still approach me. So onto the story!

CHAPTER ONE

A few weeks ago, I was walking to my school to meet up with another teacher for lunch. My pace was brisk, my face was set, and my headphones were a blaring. All of a sudden, someone pops up on my right side. A forty year old chinese fellow in a sweet leather jacket is there smiling away halfway through his sentence before my headphones are out.

"Hello!"
"Umm, hello."
"I work in a pharmaceutical company (necessary info?) and I want to learn english from you and be friends!"
"Ahh, I would but I have three jobs so I am already very busy! Sorry!"
"Then maybe we can just be friends?"

By this time we had already reached the gate of the school and I see my friend so i force a goodbye and a wave and speed over to my friend. She looks over my shoulder and sees mister mister backing away from his latest approach with his phone out to hopefully get my number. All I see is him scurrying away.

CHAPTER TWO

Yesterday after class, I walk home from the school, stop and a street vendor on campus for about 20 minutes to wait for my lunch then make my way back to my dormitory. About 10 feet from my front door, I hear someone trying to talk to me over my headphones. I take them out, turn around, and who could it be?? Oh pharmacutical dude in the leather jacket! Awesome. What could he have to say to me today? Turns out he wrote me a 5 page letter...here's the jist of it.

Hello Miss,
Shijiazhuang is 200 km from Beijing. Rent in Beijing is this many RMB. Rent in Shijiazhuang is this many RMB. Shijiazhuang is a great city to live in. I work in a pharmacutical company but have to work one day, then rest in my apartment one day. I have lots of time. I earn this many RMB a year and have this many RMB in my savings account. My parents would be very happy if I found a woman and got married. Can we be friends and you teach me english? Thank you.

I used my go to escape lines and ran into the building away from my future husband. Imagine him sitting at home saying, I need to find that girl again and give her this letter! That won't be creepy at all.

THE END

Last tuesday, Hebei province got the largest snowstorm that they've had in the last 54 years. Wonderful. It snowed for about 3 days straight. Towards the end of the first day of snow I decided to make the trek over to the middle school to visit the other teachers. The bus ride normally takes about 45 minutes to an hour but I was lucky enough to come across a car accident in the middle of an intersection where each road had 5 lanes in each direction along with an entrance ramp to the freeway that was impossible to drive up without each car getting stuck for ten minutes. This nice little trip lasted about five and a half hours. At one point, the bus didn't move one inch for two hours. Another time, I had to jump my bus that had been turned off for an hour (i.e. no heat) to another #5 bus that was trying to sneak up the bicycle lane. Although it was crowded beyond belief, (I was shoved up against a door that kept opening at random times smacking me quite hard) we managed to maneuver our way out of there about an hour later. Needless to say I spent the next few days avoiding the roads like the plague. Apparently this area of China only gets snow about twice a year and when it does snow it's only about a half an inch and melts right away. This of course means they've never had much need for snowplows...I wish I could have taken a picture of the people trying to clear the highways and main streets with little shovels. Quite the undertaking. On a positive note, the snow storm prompted the city to turn on the heat a few days early! No more sleeping in my winter jacket!

As for Halloween, don't think we let it pass us by just because none of the Chinese celebrate it. I spent the week leading up to it trying to explain the point of it to my classes. Imagine trying to explain the idea of halloween to a sea of confused faces. Costumes? Collecting candy from your neighbors? Faces in pumpkins? Oh well. My favorite part was when I had all my students come up with their own ghost stories. My students apparently tend to avoid scary movies in general so it was interesting to see what they could come up with. The costume part of Halloween was a bit tricky. No costume shops here. I dressed up as a Panda while Sam, Lizzie, and Laura were the three blind mice. Andre dressed up as a 10 year old boy, Evan a zombie, Jordan a professor, Grace a football player, Jason a vampire, and the Russians... well nothing. They tried to pull undercover Russian spies in normal clothes. Weak. We had a Halloween party over at the middle school complete with decorations and orange lighting then went downtown to a club called Mazzo where there were surprisingly quite a few costumes. Below are some pictures from Halloween. Check out that sewing job on my Panda shirt. I was sewing this while Project Runway. Fate?

If you guys want to contact me outside of the blog you can connect with me through email, skype, or mail. My email is stephanie.buckland@gmail.com and my skype name is stephaniebuckland.

Below is my mailing address. The image is the address in chinese characters. You'll need both the english and chinese version of the address on the package or letter to send it.

Stephanie Buckland, Rm218 Int'l Student Bdg

Hebei Normal University, #113 Yuhua Donglu
Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province
P. R. China
Zip Code: 050016

So I just picked up a second job on the weekends to earn some extra cash. It's another english teaching job at a private kindergarten close to my university. I went to go visit the school today to take a tour and I'm actually pretty excited. I've never been one to enjoy babysitting or dealing with kids in general. I don't seem to handle the inane questions every 5 seconds very well but I've found the solution! I'm going to be teaching a class of 12 4-6 year old chinese kids who can't speak english. My first lesson this Saturday will be covering the abcs. I've been told to just read to them out of picture books, sing songs with them and play games. Easy...I hope. I'm seeing a pattern for myself here in China, singing. Who would have thought?

There are a lot of odd jobs around town for foreigners from tutoring to modeling to making an appearance at a ribbon cutting ceremony but this one takes the cake. We recently found out that you can make close to a month's salary in two days over christmas eve and christmas day. What could I possibly do to make that much money you ask? It turns out that the really fancy hotels in town will pay quite a bit of money for foreigners to SING christmas songs in their lobbies. Lizzie, Sam, Laura and I have officially started our own signing quartet. Rehearsals have already begun and positions have been assigned. Our musical line up will include little ditties from the movie Sister Act 2, the finale song from Love Actually, and classics from the Christmas albums of Nsync and Mariah. We are pretty good if I do say so myself. The Sister Act 2 rendition of Joyful, Joyful went quite well on Saturday night. I'll work on getting a video recording of these performances. Maybe a little youtube action!

This last week was an epic failure with food. My kitchen so far hasn't been in working order so I took it upon myself to buy an electric plug in cooking pot for $4. I guess that was where I first went wrong. You get what you pay for. Apparently the cooking pot only has one setting, full blast. As soon as I turned it on, the electric ring started melting through the metal on the bottom of the pan and burned the wood beneath the chair. I ended up with food that tasted like burnt metal not full cooked through, a giant scorch mark on my wooden chair and a toxic burning smell in my apartment for 3 days. Nice.

The next day, Laura, Lizzie, Sam and I went out to eat at a whole in the wall restaurant over by their school. It was a hot pot restaurant so you order what meat and vegetables you want in the pot and they bring it out to your hot pot on the table. We managed to tell the waitress chicken, carrots, and potatoes. The pot that came out consisted of chicken heads, feet, bones, and some mystery seasoning that managed to burn all of our lips. We poked around the dish for about five minutes, threw some cash and the table and scurried over to kfc and proceeded to have a fantastic meal complete with an ice cream sundae at the end.

Hey everyone,

We just got back from our Mid Autumn festival and National Day vacation. In my last update I mentioned that we were going to go to Hangzhou and Shanghai. The trip couldn’t have gone better. I think the biggest shocker was the FRESH AIR in both cities. I thought with Shanghai being such a big city, it would be similar to Beijing but it turns out that they shell out a lot of cash to clean up the air. The whole last week was pure sunshine and a perfect temperature. It was great to get away from pollution for a bit.

Once we got to Hangzhou the first day, we went straight to Shanghai for three days which is only two hours away. I’m not ashamed to admit we had western food for every meal and Starbucks at every opportunity. My highpoint of Shanghai was probably downing a humongous iced coffee outside on the patio at Starbucks under the sun. Don’t worry, no sunburn this trip. Stay tuned though, I’m sure SE Asia will kill me.

Since we were traveling during the busiest week in China, we had to switch around our travel plans so we were only able to spent a day in Hangzhou at the end before we headed back to Shijiazhuang. Hangzhou is known as heaven on earth to the Chinese. We spent most of our time in Hangzhou around the lake. Since it’s China, we were promptly yelled at my a security guard if we had our feet dipped in the water or if our bodies were lain back at anything other than stick straight. Apparently no lakeside naps on the grass are allowed. We did attract our very own tourist group though. Eight foreigners do indeed draw a lot of attention so after feeling like animals at the zoo and partaking in photo shoots for all, the security guard decided to become our personal protecter.

The train ride back from Hangzhou was about 18 hours. We all had our own sleeper beds and our very own entertainment in the form of a sassy 7 year old Chinese girl named Nancy. She didn't speak a word of english but had quite the comic routine.

West Lake


Apparently white people draw a bigger crowd than the most famous lake in China.

Hanging out at West Lake.

More like this to come...

Pagoda on West Lake

Shanghai at night

Best western brunch buffet in existence. A dozen scrambie eggs please.

The other side of the sightseeing ferry cruise. What a sight.

Tacky fools.

Shanghai skyline

Check the shirt. "Balla what's your style?"

I believe this was hour 2 of 18 of faking surprise at having a fan stuck in our faces.

Oh Nancypants...

So i've finally started teaching all of my classes since i've updated last. 6 out of the 7 of my classes are college freshman and pretty much all girls. There are two boys per class and they generally scurry to the corner seats and only reveal themselves about once a class to make a joke that has all the girlies giggling with their hands over their mouths. Having said that, all of the girls look and act like they are 14 years old. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get the quiet ones to talk and when I march over to them in frustration and ask them a direct question they look like they are going to pee there pants. As they should, I apparently command fear and respect! Even picking out english names was a feat in itself. "Okay class, let's brainstorm some english names. Raise your hand and i'll write them on the board." If you are wondering, the only raised hand in the classroom most of the time is me simulating the fact that SOMEONE should be raising their hands. This is about the time where I get frustrated and ask them "Really?!? NO ONE knows ANY english names? You've never seen an american movie? Don't have a favorite american singer? Nope? Naturally." After this, I zoom in on one of the girls and make them tell me a name. "Beatrice" Brilliant. In every class there about 5 girls that actually participate and some classes are more outgoing than others so teaching is enjoyable most of the time. Don't worry, I don't scare them to death the entire class. Just when I ask a question and all I hear is crickets.

So i'm sure most of you are making the safe assumption that I will contract swine or avian flu at some point during this year. I am healthy as a horse according to the intensive medical exam they put us through last month of the ultrasound to the rib cage, the chest xray with no protective gear, and the makeshift ekg with clamps that were resting in cups of water. Oh by the way, there were no places to wash your hands anywhere in the clinic. Not even in the bathroom But GOOD NEWS! They have hired a girl to sit at a table right inside the front door of my dorm and her job is to take the temperature of all us foreigners whenever we walk back into the building. Never mind the fact that I generally run about 5 degrees hotter than the average person but just imagine little ol me coming back from the gym, after riding back on a crowded 120 degree bus for 25 minutes walking into the door still sweating with my patented red face. One of these days I'll go over the allowed temperature range. I'm sure of it. Once this occurs, two men in haz mat suits will show up immediately, throw me in an ambulance and cart me of to the hospital aka swine flu central where if I didn't have swine flu to begin with I sure as hell will once I leave. Maybe I need one of those water bottles with the battery operated fan that sprays water on my face to cool me down.

October 1st through the 8th is China's national holiday combined with Mid Autumn festival so we get school off. The problem with trying to travel is that it is the busiest travel week in china. It's like combining Thanksgiving and fourth of July and multiplying the amount of travelers by a billion. You can imagine the fun time we had trying to get tickets to somewhere, anywhere really. After 3 hours and 5 different "travel counters" that all sell different things, we were able to get train tickets to Hangzhou, a city right outside of Shanghai. Once we get to Hangzhou we will take an hour train ride into Shanghai for most of the week. This is sounding too simple to all of you isn't it? Well rest assured, it isn't. In China, they decided to make things exponentially more difficult on everyone by not having round trip tickets available. So the chance that we will arrive in Hangzhou, then immediately get in line to by our return tickets back later that week only to find out that they are all sold out is pretty good. It's best for me not to think about it too much or else I'll have a panic attack I honestly cant wait to get to Shanghai because they have MEXICAN FOOD. I am going to spend my first few days there tracking down guacamole if I have to. It's necessary.

So I seem so be settling in here in China. Orientation is over and i've been in my new apartment for about a week now. I'm living in the same building that I was orientation so I just had to drag all my luggage down the hall while everyone had to repack which was nice. It's a bit like being in the dorms after everyone has moved out for the summer though and now the remaining people in the city are anywhere between a 10 minute or 45 minutes bus ride away. I constantly have my map of the city that has both the chinese characters and the pinyin names of the streets which is a lot easier than the one that I had before. Im pretty sure the first one was made by a five year old with a red crayon after a long day of coloring based on how well I could read it. With my new fancy map, I have managed to master the bus system and have once again turned into the Magellan of the gps world. I've started popping on my ipod when walking out in public or using the bus to tone down the effect of chinese people STARING at me. I am the only foreigner as far as the eye can see and depending on my mood for the day, people are the recipients of my best glare or an actual response to the "Hallos" from tiny children with split bottom pants. FYI, China doesnt believe in diapers, it's not ecologically friendly. I won't even go into the sanitation considerations of this statement. Due to this, I have know bought my very own pair of Chinese house shoes. No bare-footing it here, that would just be crazy.

During my last few days of orientation I was given the pleasant surprise of being informed that I would partake in a mandatory home-stay for two nights. Lovely. My family was quite nice. Well, lots of smiles and forcing food on me since the parents couldn't speak a word of english and they just laughed at me everytime I tried to practice Chinese. I'm sure you all interested in what pearls of wisdom I learned during those two days. Get ready.

1) After dinner the first night the highschool girl and I go into the tv room to watch the chinese news (in chinese! weird, I know) and so I sit down. You must be thinking, Stephanie, your new chinese friend must sit down on the coach to watch tv. It just makes sense. Well, my friends, apparently standing for 30 minutes after every meal is GOOD FOR HEALTH. So just get the mental picture of me sitting perfectly upright on the coach with the girl standing one foot from me, just standing. Standing. Naturally.

2) Always do things that are GOOD FOR HEALTH. When I asked her about coffee, concerts, tv, junk food, etc the response was always BAD FOR HEALTH. Welp, that's news to me.

3) After some other odd encounters, I just figured that this was all normal. Only letting your houseguest out of the house to take walks in the park after each meal and planning no activities for the weekend is perfectly normal. NOT TRUE. Once reunited with the rest of the program, I found out that one went go cart racing, another got on chinese tv for going to a tap dance lesson, and another got a cell phone! Oh well, at least I know what's GOOD FOR HEALTH now.

I would have to say that by far my favorite thing about China is Karoke. Private classy karoke rooms for you and your closest friends?? Perfect. I have now gone twice and have successfully sang myself horse both times. I just LOVE the whole performance aspect of it. Twirling the mic? Check. Fancy feet dance moves? Check. Lots of hand and arm movements? Check. Turning my back to the lyrics screen to prove that if you are a REAL Karoke singer, you do not need a silly screen? Check check check. BADASS. Towards the end of the second night, I was asked if there was a song I didn't know every word to. Well the answer is no, not when people keep picking classic songs like Billie Jean, Adleviess, Boogie Wonderland, Mariah Carey, Whitney, and of course Rod Stewart's Do you think I'm sexy. Challenge me please.

I guess you guys are probably wondering if I have started teaching yet since that is why I am here. The answer is no. Ha. The word today is that I will start monday but that's changed about four times already. That's fine with me, I'm okay spending my days tooling around the city until they decide to start making me work.

For those of you with macs, you have absolutely no excuse not to be on skype videochatting with me since you've got the built in video and mic. My parents figured it out and I'm going to want a little change up from seeing Carter and Molly held up to the screen barking at me. For the rest of you, if you just get a headset mic, you should be able to use skype for it's audio and we can chit chat. Skype is completely free to use between other skype users so check it out. www.skype.com. If you already have skype, add me! My skype name is stephaniebuckland.

Well that's about it for me. Hope all is going well with all of you!

Hello all,

So i've been in Shizijazhuang for almost two days ago for orientation and I decided I should probably wander across the street to the internet cafe to let you guys know i'm still alive. I finally am adjusted to the time change but not the heat, never the heat Things have been going well and I'm learning to like the shiz more and more everyday. The first morning that we walked around we must have ended up in a pretty sketch part of town that had me a little anxious but it's a decent size city so we've found some gems. There is a park across the street from my university with basketball, tennis, and badmitton courts. Now, I just need to find someone to play with me I've even learned how to desensitize myself to the smell of trash and urine everywhere. How endearing I was lucky enough to see the sky yesterday when the pollution/smog clouds parted for a few hours in the afternoon. Other than just looking cloudy and the smell, the pollution doesn't seem to affect me much.

I found out today what campus of the university I'll be living in as there are two. I am by myself on the east campus while the other two are on the west campus but everyone is kind of equally spaced out between the 9 people at a total of 3 schools so i'm not totally isolated. I'm also right on the main road in the city so I just have to pop on a bus for 30 or so minutes and go straight west to get to the other campus. The folks over at the science and technology university look like they are going to have apartments about a 10-15 minute walk from me.

Chinese lessons are interesting to say the least. My partner and I got laughed at on the first day by the teacher when we went up to the front of the class to act out our little convo we created. The teacher now smiles and laughs at me whenever she sees me. I'll just keep telling myself I'm her favorite

Since i'm still in orientation this week, all 25 of us are in dorms partnered up with roomates but I should be moving into my permanent apartment in a few days. I'm excited to just unpack everything. I spent a solid 10 minutes looking for a certain pair of shoes this morning in my bottomless luggage. Once i'm in my apartment I should have wireless and hopefully i'll get around to making a blog of some sort. Top on my priority though is to find a store with some cheap black market dvds. No computer trail for this. No need to worry BJ. China doesn't have any laws against copyright infringement. Hey, maybe i'll even live a little dangerously at some point after some intense recon and download a song or two off the internet.

On a side note, china has blocked facebook and I have yet to find a way around it but a friend of mine here has a program that allows her to get onto all the blocked sites so hopefully I should be up and running in the next week or two.

Later,

Steph