Rules to Live by.......in China

1. Try to keep you eyes in front of you
       -spitting is a real problem here. Almost every one spits, but instead of spitting in like the grass or dirt area around a sidewalk tree. The people spit right on the pavement. So if you turn around and walk backwards or are talking to someone with your head turned....then you might step in a nice "pile" of spit.
2. Watch out for babies and puddles
       -So there are no such things as diapers here (for babies and adults). What the chinese do is they cut a slit where the crouch is on the baby and you know babies. They just go whenever. I was walking along the other day and there was a baby just walking and pissing. Which brings me to the puddles. Most of the time the parent will make the baby go. They have their way. But usually they go anywhere. Which is why you never step in any kind of liquid. You see what might look like water but it is is baby pee.
3. Fearless in crossing the street
      -At major intersections there are crosswalks in which people follow the signals, but in most areas in town you just have to jaywalk. Pedestrians do have the right of way if you are fast enough. Cars will not stop if they see you are trying to cross the street. You just have to find a gap between cars and go. Most of the time cars will swerve around, but you just have to trust that you will not get hit. Also, if you are walking along and here someone honk at you, it is just because they want to let you know that they are there. As if you dont look both ways before crossing the street.
4. The honk doesnt mean anything.
      -People honk here for no apparent reason sometimes. Sometimes it means here i am. Sometimes it means move. Sometimes it means i am bored.
5. FAKE, FAKE, FAKE
     -if you buy things that are in a bottle at local convenience stores, chances are that it the cheapest item they could buy and rebottled with a different more expensive label so they can sell it for more money. I have a friend who purchased head and shoulders shampoo, and it was actually some cheap chinese brand inside the bottle.
6. Never travel by bus during rush hour
     -notice i said rush hour and not a specific time. Apparently, there are a lot of people in china. Most people travel by bus. So the buses are usually crowded from 7-12:30pm and 4-9:00pm. I try to get out and do my shopping or travelling between the hours of 1:00-4:00. Otherwise, i walk. Side note. Even taxis do not pick you people at meal times because they want to eat.

Still working

Still working on curriculum development.
I received my new schedule this week at odies language school. I added on four more classes and then, one more at the korean school.  So i teach everyday now except for tuesday. I teach a class tonight and tomorrow night and they still do not have the books for me to teach out of. The class is in six hours. That is china for ya.

Community

So the fellowship that I go to has a young adults group that is going to start going to a youth center on Wednesday nights. So I am really excited about going to that.  I will tell more on Thursday after going to the youth center.

So the soccer league starts up this coming weekend which I am pretty excited about since we have been just playing friendlies and the competition has really been bad. Only the good teams join the league. We played the loas team yesterday and they we were hardcore. They all had matching custom made jerseys and socks and shorts. They had a coach and a translator. It was a little intimidating, but we still beat them 3-0. I scored. They were actually pretty good. We do not have the fast bunch of guys so that is how they were getting their chances. It is just we finished on our opportunities. They had a really nice ball that we used to play. I could kick that ball about 80 yards down the field. So the school that we were playing at was having their closing ceremonies for some month long event. So a lot of the participants came to watch our game. Ever time I went to kick a goal kick you would hear this ooooohhhhhh or wwwwoooowwww. It was like being in college and as our goalie (Dutch) would go to punt the ball and fans would do an OOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!! until it hit the ground. It was nice having fans.

Well, I got the craving….i had not had a hamburger since September and I was really starting to hunger for one. Now, when I was in the states, I never ate at McDonalds (except for breakfast), but I had been told that they had the best hamburgers in town. Got a nice big mac with fries and a drink. Here they don’t even ask you what you want to drink. They just give you coke or pepsi. I have a pop a couple of places and here they load it up with sugar. It is like eat sugar straight almost.

JACKHAMMER, JACKHAMMER, JACKHAMMER, JACKHAMMER. Still doing construction outside my apartment.

Joyous Song

So apparently yesterday, I guess someone decided that there needs to be two holes dug up outside my apartment window. Well, they apparently need to get through about a foot of concrete to get low enough to get to where they need to be granted the hole is only about 5x7ft. Luckily, they brought their own generator to power the jackhammer and saw. So the generator drowns out most of the noise that comes from the jackhammer. Also, they keep a pretty rhythmic pattern so it is like waking up to a church choir humming Amazing Grace.

So there is a strong enough community of Americans here that a couple of places are having thanksgiving meals. Pretty happy about that....Turkey, mash potatoes, gravy....and hopefully etc...

I sent out the newsletter so if you didnt get it and would like to then email me at jaredkprice@gmail.com requesting the newsletter. The next one will come out right before Christmas.

Great Day Today

I had an amazing day today and i really did not doing anything worth noting. I do not know why it was so great, but i feel like a million bucks. Day started off with waking up....you know typical day spend another hour laying in bed because i just wanted to.....Then off to the dumplings shop...where i eat a little breakfast.....after church it is off to the soccer fields where we play every sunday against some random chinese. We absolutely destroyed them by double-digits...I did get an assist and a goal so i was pretty happy. The one problem is that weather...It was like 65 degrees today, but when the clouds cover the sun...it gets down to around 50 degrees which is a little cold while standing around on the field especially when you have been sweating and the sweat feels like it is starting to freeze....Then i went and walked around cafe street because me and a friend are going down there tomorrow night for foreign game club (board games) at the game cafe. So it is always good to get an idea of where the place is before you go because usually places are hard to find. After walking around for two hours after the game...I made it back home by around 4:30 (our game ended at 2:00). If you are ever in China, never travel by bus on a sunday....IT WAS CROWDED....like i almost kissed three people because we were so close. Anyway, no worries...I am at home...I found a new place to eat though....pretty happy about it...just a 10 minute walk away. The biggest thing is that they served rice here. Remember they eat noodles in this area...well, i was kind of getting tired of fried noodles and boiled noodles...so this place...you get tea (obviously), rice, a meat dish, and 2-3 side dishes....So i will probably eat at this place like everyday and get tired of it and then move on back to noodles. Then there was a pastry shop next door to the eatery...so i walk in hoping for some chocolate bars or something of that nature....well, red bean paste is like chocolate in the America. Everyone eats it and it is what they put in their pastries. Well, I DO NOT LIKE RED BEAN PASTE!!!! but i did manage to find a blueberry cream filled pastry...it was good. After thinking about the great day, i think most of the happiness that i had today comes from teaching yesterday. I love the kids. Sunshine, butterflies and flowers!!!

Also, newsletter comes out this week…If you do not receive it by Saturday and would like to, then email me at jaredkprice@gmail.com requesting that you be added to the list.

Sticking to the main food groups and other

So i went on a little bit about eating in the house in the last post. Well, lets turn our attention to outside the house. So most people think that rice is the big thing to eat in China and in most areas it is the case. But kunming people eat noodles. There are wheat noodles and rice noodles. You can order either fried or boiled. I try to stick to the fried wheat noodles because i do not know where the water in the boiled noodles comes from.
There are alot of little places to get the noodles at, but that is for my other blog (chizhongguocia.blogspot.com). Fruits are a must but you have to be safe as they do not clean any of the fruit or vegetables. So i try to stick to bananas (with peanut butter), oranges, grape fruits, etc (fruits that i already have to peel anyway). There are also street vendors who sell hotdogs (not good though), meat on a stick, deep fried bread (something), deep fried potatoes. I am very reluctant to eat the deep fried food because these vendors change the oil about once or twice a year. I stick to the things that are over a charcoal fire. But dont worry, when i get my two week vacation, i am going to eat some of the food out of the oil which will give me plenty of time to recover if i get sick. Food is good hear.
American eats:
So the owner of the school took me out to eat at Papa Johns for my birthday meal. It was so good. We got meat lovers pizza which was spectacular. So then the next day i treated myself to KFC. I ordered a beef wrap meal and popcorn chicken. Well, The beef wrap was covered in a hot sauce which took me a couple of minutes to figure out where i had eaten the sauce before. Well, apparently they used the same sauce in the packaged noodles that i eat. It was definitely a step down to reality in China. Then i turned my attention to the popcorn chicken. Well, guess what, it tasted like fish. and the fries tasted like fish. Fish oil is big in china. So KFC deep fries all of their stuff in fish oil. Needless to say, it was not the best meal. Go in expecting KFC and walk out smelling like long john silvers.

off subject:
My blog is blocked by the chinese default proxy, so i can only access it when the free unstable proxy is up and available. If someone wants to set me up with a http port on a computer or server where i can access through a proxy that is always available, it would be great.
Thanks.