The Great Pocky Experiment.

Food is an enormous part of any worthwhile travel experience, and being in China for a good part of a half a year means eating a lotta things. Some tastes have been less successful (stinky tofu, anyone?) while others I could (and try to) eat everyday (muslim noodles, please). I believe I had had Pocky before coming to China, but it’s got a cultish following here despite it’s Japanese origin. The kids here HATE Japan. They aren’t shy about it either, please see Hannah’s blogpost for more details. I had stashed a box of the chocolate dipped cookie sticks in my backpack one day which had Blaze dropping to his knees begging me to give him a piece. Considering Blaze’s English skill, it was pretty impressive to hear him say so many words in English to get his point across. It’s pretty good stuff and comes in a rainbow of flavors. Hannah had the stroke of brilliance to buy as many flavors as we could find at the local Suguo and talk to everyone in the group to find a combination worthy to name after themselves. We are talking 15 boxes of Pocky and 23 flavor combinations. As the flavors piled up, the idea of the Great Pocky Experiment got more and more difficult to resist.

Rows and rows and rows of the stuff.

Despite our love for Pocky, there were Nanjing sites to visit, kids to teach, and translation mistakes to be made. Life gets busy here in China. It was surprising difficult to find the time to start the Pocky project. The rows of boxes sat atop a box shelf, tantalizingly taunting us before bed when all you want to do is chow down on new flavors of the stuff.  They sat quietly, like row of books atop a shelf you are dying to read but you can't just blitz through because you want to give the whole process justice. But no; we had to wait. But the payoff was worth it. This morning, we decided dozens of Pocky sticks would make for an excellent breakfast. 

Half way through the matching up process...yum!

Hannah started by laying out all the flavor combinations; White Mousse and Double Chocolate, Strawberry Cream and Banana, Almond Milk Tea and Matcha, etc. Before too long, a couple dozen perfectly angled pairs of Pocky soon lined our desk. Hannah made her predictions, I made known my favorites, and then, only then, did the tasting begin.  Hannah filmed herself tasting the suggestions paired by our fellow teachers and graded each flavor combination on three fields of criteria: aesthetics, flavor blending, and overall taste. There were some surprises; I was not a fan of any of the strawberry flavors which nixed out a few contenders. "Strawberries and Cream”, “Strawberry Cheesecake”, "I Like Smoothies Berry Much"; all of which got low scores on my leaderboard. There were no surprises when my top rated were the chocolate contenders. The thicker mousse Pocky’s were divine and only got better when paired with more chocolate. Shocker: the very best flavor in my opinion was the S’mores combo. Basically, take all the chocolate Pocky’s you can find (Mousse Milk, Double Chocolate, Classic Chocolate, Regular Milk, Mousse Dark Chocolate) and eat them all in one go. It. Was. Delicious. My “Black and White” combo is the poor man’s version and was quite tasty, prejudice aside. 

By the end, I was so sick off Pocky, but there was one last flavor to go; “The Fruit Smoothie”; A mixture of all the fruit flavors, from Mango Mousse to Double Strawberry; It was disgusting and a sad ending to the Pocky Experiment. Luckily, the overall winner as dubbed my averaging mine and Hannah’s scores was the “Banana Split”; a classic combination of banana and chocolate. I pushed aside my sugar sick feeling to let that taste linger in my mouth before heading to class. 

Later that evening, we had all the other teachers over to taste some new flavors of Pocky (and to get rid of the remainder) with a little Pocky Mixer. Tried and true and new combinations were made, and everyone seemed to have rediscovered a love for the sweets. I think I’ll be off the stuff for a while…but I will be bringing home a few boxes. 

The remains of the Great Pocky Experiment.

“I like to eat Duck Tongue”

Abby is the queen of construction paper
iPhone Selfies. She's a cutie. 

Between weekends in Shanghai and trips down to Southern China, I teach a gaggle of darling 2nd graders and slightly less-cute-but-more-articulate 4th graders. There’s more teaching going on for the older kids; Language Arts lessons and Spelling tests occupy my afternoons while construction paper iPods and musical chairs with 7 year olds is how I spend the rest of the day. I’ve been teaching these kids for several weeks now and have all but gotten used to the hilarious stories and quirky names; but there are still moments that catch me off guard. The stories are funny, made even funnier by the fact that some of my kids have the most absurd names. You have the traditional titles like Josh and Kyle, Steven, and Taylor. Then, there's group that must have gotten their names out of the 1950’s sock hop registration list; names like Gary, Oscar, Scarlett, Linda, and Vicky. I’m also partial to the names are those that are not so much as names, but are objects; Cookie, Robot, Daisy, Honey and Kitty. However, my very favorites are those that aren’t really names at all: King, Happy, Blaze, Sweetie, and Michael Potato, to name a few. They are cute, they are sweet, they are naughty, and they are my kids….and their stories are hilarious. 

I’ve got a dozens of little tales that I painstakingly write down to make sure I remember them well enough to give me a giggle years down the road (or still make make my stomach turn). My 4th grader’s have more bewildering anecdotes. I’ve got one kid, Blaze, who doesn’t know much Englis

h. He can string together a few words to let me know he’ll be getting drink or going to the bathroom instead of writing down this week’s new Spelling list, so when he came into class wanting a “small this”, or a “little bag”, it took a minute for me to realize what he was asking for. “No Blaze, I don’ have a ziplock back…this is Spelling class. Why in the world would you need a bag or container?” Blaze opened his clutched hands, releasing about a dozen ants that immediately started crawling between his fingers. Luckily, a small houseplant was available to be the ant’s new home. I’m often asked for objects that don’t really make sense (“Teacha, do you have a lid for this?” “Teacher, do you have a picture of a hedgehog?”) but I have taken to carry around tissues in case they are needed. Once during reading, a boy named Jerry (there are about 7 Jerry’s in the ILP program, go figure) asked for a tissue, and I didn’t have one. He then proceeded to stand up, walk out the door to the bathroom, then changed his mind…spilling a loogie into his hand, then wiping that on the rubbish bin. In. His. Hands. 

Gross. Gross. Gross. 

My second grader’s are much cuter (see photo) but sometimes that gross. We end each day by piling all the kids into the gym room for a song and the chance for them to report their behavior to their Chinese teacher. Most of it is conducted in English, though sometimes it’s in Chinese. The American teachers usually tune out during the Chinese parts, but our attention was called once Hanson’s eager hand was finally called on, he said his comment, and the whole class chuckled. Lily, the Chinese coordinator replied sheepishly: “Thank you, Hanson: Chris; We mustn’t eat things out of the rubbish”. These kids will eat anything. Sunny (a 4th grader) once dove down to lick what turned out to be baking soda off the floor because it had fallen out of the fridge. You would think they didn’t get fed all day; they do, I promise. One afternoon, my horde of cute 2nd graders came running in to tell me that “James eat an ant!”. The girls were grossed out, the boys smiled and shrugged their shoulders when I asked them why in the world James would eat an ant, but I never got a straight answer.

Sometimes that communication barrier makes conversations even more hilarious. I teach a ridiculously cute and ridiculously loud 7 year old named Simba. He has the puffiest eyes that hide behind yellow rimmed glasses and the child shouts everything. His face is often found freshly flushed from yelling his report or screaming hello at friends. He is so-oo cute. Chris is his classmate (the rubbish eater) who is very naughty but has taken to giving me hugs for what I’m sure is some ulterior motive. He came into class and said sweetly “You are milk”. I looked to Simba who speaks slightly better English, who made a drinking-something-motion to confirm my question of “Milk?”. Simba replied “YES, MILK”. I asked again: “I am milk?”, utterly confused. Simba screams back at me: “NOT ME! CHRIS THINKS YOU ARE MILK! MIILLLLKKKKK!”. I have no idea what that even means. 

Simba is the star of one of my very favorite stories. My lesson included asking the kids what sort of pets they had at home. Some were eager to share their cat just had kittens, or that they have a bird at home that’s their very own. Simba rain forward to get right in my face and screamed at the top of his tiny lungs “I HAVE A BUNNY, 2 BIRDS, AND A DOG BUT THEY ALL DIIIIEEEEEEEDDDDD”. I was laughing hard, meaning I wasn’t paying him my full attention so he felt the need to shout the follow up: “TEACHA, I HAVE MANY, MANY FISSSSSHHH”. Oh Simba. My heart and eardrums won’t be the same ever again. 

King tries to play it cool, even on the St. Patrick's Day
slash Easter party.

This is usually how pictures go. 

There are also the offhanded comments that lower your self esteem in one swoop. King has to be one of my favorites (also he’s in my homeroom, so that’s a plus). He is sooooo cute, which is good because it means he gets away with saying things like “Teacha, so soft” when he jiggles my upper arms. Thanks, King. It’s a good thing I like you. 

The girls have sweet stories; shocker, I know. Pictures are often drawn and have the most heartwarming anecdotes. Taylor I think is the sweetest student I have; bonus points because she’s in my homeroom. Taylor drew a picture of Superman with hearts and when I asked what her Superpower would be she pointed to her paper because “She would make the whole world love each other…”  Could she be cuter?? 

Don’t get me wrong: the trips to exotic and exciting places have been wonderful, but it’s nice to come back home to my kids. I’m going to miss telling me their favorite breakfast food is duck tongue, or needing Michael Potato to make sure I don’t forget the “Potato” when I roll call his name just as “Michael”, or drying off leaves before class one by one for the pet silkworm for my 4th graders. Oh, I'm going to miss these kiddos. 

Stinky Tofu Takes the Cake

As someone well versed in how to spend a Saturday morning and afternoon, the very best days always include peeking into alleyways, investigating closed doors and eating as much street food as possible. Our darling second grade Chinese teacher Lily took it upon herself to take a group loud American teachers to the nearby Confucius Temple district for a Saturday of doing just that.

We all got up pretty early to meet Lily at Qinhuai; from our school it was over an hour on the metro, but well worth it. The walk through the neighborhoods to get to the area near the Confucius Temple were just waking up, riddled with tiny steam-filled alleyways, bike mechanics and towering apartments, windows slung with laundry still drying from yesterday's wash. Where we met Lily was gorgeous – even though most buildings were little shops or eateries, they all subscribe to the same style of gorgeous architecture. A massive gate towers above the whole main street, casting a shadow over the still sleeping store fronts. The streets were quiet when we first arrived; old men played Chinese Chess on tables while a handful of "early birds" noshed on skewered foodstuffs.

Lily brought her husband and darling son along for the ride, and we started our day. Lily wanted us to taste the local food of Nanjing; we started out with sugar syrup covered fruit on sticks, then sesame seed covered pastries filled with a salty and oniony paste that flaked all over your shoes and onto the mossed covered cobbled streets. Both were big hits. We spent time in between courses wandering the alleyways that shot off from the main drag, poking into stores completely dedicated to pandas or tea ceremonies before stopping at another vendor to test out another goodie. Some were more successful than others; I'm into tasting the local culture, but stinky tofu is not my cup of tea. The wildly popular snack looks harmless enough, yet was able to pack quite the punch in the smell and texture department. I didn't mind the spicy vinegar atop the slightly crunchy exterior, but minded the uncomfortably chewy texture and aroma. As far as the strangest thing I think I've put in my mouth, I think stinky tofu takes the cake. 

A group of 13 loud Americans certainly drew a crowd, so it wasn't too long before a group of feathered-hack-sack-playing locals invited us to pay and get a picture, or a man stopped us to sing some Adele, complete with custom lyrics. We admired the Ming Wall for a spell before snagging an early lunch consisting of very traditional dishes. While the salted duck wasn't too dissimilar from cold Thanksgiving turkey, and I adore bao zi (steamed soup dumplings), the duck blood soup is one that I don't think I'll order again...but I tried it. Lily also ordered sweet taro root in a sticky saccharine sauce, and another similarily sweet dish that consisted of soft balls of rice swimming in a thick and cloyingly sweet sauce. As if that wasn't enough food, we snagged a stack of guotie (potstickers) and then had this strangely textured type of noodles I think were made out of beans. It was sort of like a cold slaw topped with fresh chopped garlic and some vinegary sauce that packed a punch. Lily knew right when to take us to the most popular restaurants; the little pastry bakery we began our morning with was quickly swarming with people, dozens and dozens of hungry breakfasters were waiting in a queue that was quickly snaking down the now busting alleyways, wrapping around the tiny stops. People were walking around with bags bursting full, slightly opaque with the steam of the warmed pastries. After tasting them warm, I don't blame them; I've made plans to bring a smallish wagon with me and cart the lot back to my apartment. 

While an afternoon of nibbling, it's difficult to pluck a specific moment to title as my favorite, however, there was a man pouring the most incredible sugar drawings of Chinese characters and Chinese zodiac signs is an obvious favorite. Due to the fact that I'm into any sort of sugared novelty item, and it being the year of the monkey and I am also a monkey and the fact that I'm in China in the zodiac year I was born made it irresistible. Sugared versions of your zodiac sign? Yes, please. 

Shortly after, we said our goodbyes to Lily, then took a bus adventure to the Confucius temple. By bus adventure, I mean we have no idea how the buses work (yet) so we boarded and found out you need exact change or you don't get your 10 yuan note back. We weren't sure what stop to get off of so we made a guess. There is an oddly liberating aspect of traveling in China and not being able to read a single character. 

It means you get to stumble on unintended adventures because you have no idea what you are ordering or buying tickets for. Hannah and myself thought this garden place looked neat, thinking it was an entrance to the Confucius Temple and ended up being serendipitously incorrect. 

We happened to find a delightfully beautiful garden behind the entrance gates. Everything is starting to bloom which meant gorgeous white and pink blooms framed pagodas which framed waterfalls and various ponds. I can't wait until the blossoms are in full swing on campus and all over Nanjing. We happily joined the small kids climbing over rocks to find hidden alcoves and hopped over rocks to check out the other side of the jade green pond while vividly orange  orange fish bobbed to the surface for crumbs.  It also felt nice to be out in nature after spending so much in the city, taking the metro, and gazing up at the skyscrapers at Xinjiekou.Additionally, it was lovely place to be bombarded by an entire tour group of middle aged Asian men who each wanted an individual photo of Hannah and myself. What happens to those photos, I haven't the slightest, but it didn't get uncomfortable until we were still being photographed after a solid 5-7 minutes. It was a quiet park, nestled in a bustling city and a delightful finish to an afternoon of noshing.

Nanjing: Things I Love

I don't take the word "love" lightly. Yes, it's tossed around when people talk movies or music, but this list of Nanjinian things are not just frivolous statements of love. I'm coming up on three weeks in this sprawling city, and I love the normalcy I've felt. Isn't it odd how somewhere you've never been, somewhere seemingly so different from your life at home can feel so normal? Of course, there are aspects of China I've yet to embrace....the fact that people everywhere just hock loogies is something I will never appreciate. I have taken to look upwards when I walk for two reasons. One reason being the skyline is almost always more interesting than the ground, and the second being I just don't like seeing the wads of spit I inevitable step in. Yum.

Nanjing Museum- shortly before I was bombarded by college students who filmed me and asked for my signature. 

In all seriousness though, there are some things I do love about Nanjing and about China. For one, I'm enamored with the fruit stands and speckle every street corner. Bins piled high with vibrant oranges, artfully peeled pineapples with their green spiny tops peeking out from behind boxes of lychees, dragon fruit, apples, and pomelos. Breakfast used to be a trip to the school cafeteria, but I've taken to snitching from my fruit bowl and taking a swig of red date milk for that meal instead. The Asian pears here are especially good, and make for a great walking around snack. I'm especially partial to these oranges that I bought purely because they were so beautiful. Turns out, they are my absolute favorite....and are really pretty. Seriously, if you walk for more than 7 minutes in one direction you will hit a fruit stand. I've taken to keeping my little recyclable back in my camera bag just in case. It's delightful.

I can't be the only one who squeals at the site of a bin of tiny oranges. 

I love Muslim noodles. In every sense of the word, I love Muslim noodles. There are restaurants dotted around everywhere here, but you have to find the best ones. Luckily, one favorite haunt is just a stop over on the metro which is very convenient. There's also one rather smashing place right around church, and just a few restaurants down from this cute old man who sells the best cream puffs. Needless to say, every Sunday I stumble through ordering in my terrible Chinese, pointing to what other people have ordered, and then repeat everything in English and sit down to a bowl of delicious noodles, then a walk down to get cream puffs. Some weeks it's been pulled noodles in a salty broth, or pulled noodles with potatoes, peppers, and onions. I cannot tell you how delicious it is. As for the cream puffs, the first week I bought 2. The second week, it was 5. I don't want to say what last week's total was.

This is everything to me. 

And, of course, I completely love my kids I teach, but that will be another post entirely...probably more like 47 more posts, but yes. I do love my kids.

There will be more to come of course, but lastly I love Nanjing. I sorta love being stuffed in the metro while the man siting next to me screams into his phone in Mandarin, or when someone comes in holding the largest (and loudest) chirping black cricket I've ever seen. I really do love getting off at a random stop to discover the tiny old woman who makes these teeny fat pancakes that are stuffed with a thick custard. I love the random English words scrawled on sweaters and shoes. I am not sure I will grow to love the chicken feet and I know I won't ever love the loogies, but there are definitely things about China I do love.

A Night in Nanjing

It’s been about a week since we all landed in Nanjing, but time is a funny thing here in China. It’s been barely 7 days, but there’s a group of us that have gotten very close, almost like we’ve been friends for years. Total, there’s 13 of us here in Nanjing, and the set up is pretty sweet. We teach Monday through Friday, with a few long weekends, long vacations, and holidays off from teaching sprinkled through the semester. We call the 5th floor of a set of apartments home (the foreign language staffing apartments, that is) so we got to know these flights of stairs quite well, even after a few days. A tiny little kitchenette and a set of teeny washers bookend 8 rooms. There’s two to a room for most of the group, and it’s great. I could do with a shower curtain in the bathroom, and a shower that had hot water more than 4 hours a day, but other than that, no real complaints.

The fabulous 13 on Nanjing Campus

This first week has been a whirlwind; not only are we experiencing a new culture, a new apartment, a new language and new cuisine, we also have been busy planning and teaching our primary level and elementary level classes. The kids are the cutest, and I don’t use any sense of exaggeration with that statement. I mean, honestly; The program has a strict “No Chinese” policy in class, but they are so cute when they jabber on and on before class it’s hard to stop them. I’ve had as much fun as the kids through the various lessons, especially the primary levels. I teach the fourth graders in the elementary levels, but I really do love my second grade kids. It’s fun planning little games and art lessons because they all get so excited to play dress up or make ice cream cones with construction paper and muffin liners. Maybe that excitement will wear off as the school year goes on, but I sorta doubt it. It’s been 5 days and I already know I’m going to miss my kids. 

While the lessons  have been fun, it’s also been extremely time consuming. I want to go out and explore the city, but we need to plan out a few week’s worth of lessons which means less time to explore alleys and hop off at random metro stops. By the way, the metro here is top notch and is crazy affordable to ride, which is fantastic. It’s also a prime place to look at the cutest little Asian babies; they are always bundled up in huge coats with random English words scrawled across them, or wearing little booties in eccentric colors. 

Classes on Fridays are only from 10:00-3:00, meaning we finally got the chance to explore more than the 3rd stop over due to time and responsibility restraints. Obviously, I’ve known I’ve been in China, but wandering around the bustling city streets of Qin Huan cemented that fact. Glowing red lanterns illuminated an incredibly busy walkway, steamed buns created a smoke the curled into the night sky, framed by characteristic Chinese gates and towers. Add in the fact that tiny children were wearing the most fabulous crowns that had streamers that reached 3 feet above their head, and it was quite the sight to see. 

Not a bad view, right? 

I’ve been dying to eat something off a stick and a caramelized kabob of fruit seemed harmless enough - I”m working up to the scorpions in Shanghai - and proved to be right. Happily munching on mandarin oranges and tiny little apples covered in a hard candy coating, we made our way to the river for a look. The city square was insanely crowded, making it difficult to navigate and window shop for a place for dinner. I ducked into an alleyway that expanded into a long row of food vendors and cooks, serving up the good, bad, and unusual. Perfect. Most of us stumbled through the ordering process and were rescued by some kind soul who bridged the communication barrier. Dinner was hit and miss- most of us had no idea what we were ordering. Points for culture and experience, I suppose. 

(I'm working up to eat all of China. I'm easing into it...)

To top the night off, an evening boat ride on the Qin Huan river seemed fitting.Magical would be an accurate word; red lanterns illuminated the river as the boat slowly drifted through canals and under bridges. I’m sure the Chinese narration would have been quite informative, but it added some nice ambience all the same. The pictures don’t really do it justice because what’s missing is the electric thrill of being in China. The night was a good opener to countless adventures waiting down dimly lit alleys and other adventures. Welcome to China, folks. 

Fridays, am I right? 

Bon Voyage

After several months of planning, packing, and preparing, I’m off to live in China for a spell. I’ll be teaching English at a university in Nanjing, a couple hours outside Shanghai until mid summer. I’ve been inching towards China for a few years now, going further and further east, until it just made sense to go. Israel got me closer, India got my feet wet, but I suppose it wasn’t official until I landed in the Tokyo airport (Okay, airports don’t officially count, so I suppose it really wasn’t official until we stepped into the congested air of Shanghai). We flew in rather late, and tried to sleep in some sketch hotel in Shanghai (blood on the sheets kind of sketchy), then woke to manage breakfast equipped only with chopsticks. I’ll be taking the bullet train to Shanghai in the future, but a 3-4 hour bus ride to Nanjing did allow more of glimpse of China. Eventually, we arrived. The Nanjing campus is huge and gorgeous, and oddly reminds me of college in the States. The foreign teachers live up on the 5th floor which meant maneuvering several suitcases up a slippery staircase to our floor.  There’s a tiny little kitchen on one end, with a set of teeny little washing machines at the other end, with rooms sandwiched inbetween. The rooms are quite nice, with cubbies and lockers for clothes,  a mid sized fridge, a shower curtain-less shower and bathroom, and a flat screen for all the Netflix we won’t be watching.  Unpacking and settling in took most of the afternoon, but even eating dinner in the huge cafeteria didn’t seem to let China sink in all that much. The lovely miss Hannah is joining me on my adventure, and we both concurred the best way to celebrate our arrival was to sleep a solid 11 or so hours to get a solid start on the next day. 

We will start teaching on Monday, which leaves the weekend for teaching orientation, a tour of campus, and time to figure out the internet. We’ve already stumbled into a smattering of cultural differences, mainly the 2 inch “mattress” on the bed frames and a temperamental heater which means pajamas have expanded to include a coat and doubled up socks. But it sorta already feels like home, even with the Chinese character Crest toothpaste.