Holidays

When you teach in a second language classroom and ask your Chinese students to make a skit that includes the Easter Bunny, Santa Clause, and the Thanksgiving turkey…you’re going to hear some pretty funny stuff.

Easter Bunny: “I am better than you. I can hop!”

Turkey: “I can hop higher than you, and hop on one foot. Watch!”

Santa Clause: “Don’t be so confident. You are animals. I am a person!”

Turkey: “On my holiday, people eat me. I think it is ok that they eat me. Eating makes them happy and when they are happy they give thanks.”

Easter Bunny: “Oh you are so kind!”

Santa Clause: “But we will not see you again in the future.”

Morbidly cute, yes?

95+123

Simply, I thought I was going to die.

I mean, who in their right and stable mind would volunteer to live on the 6th floor?

That's just the thing: I wasn't in my right and stable mindset. We had just gotten off a 9 hour train ride, after a month of training, on top of awaking at 4am to catch the 6am train. We hadn't a blessed clue as to where we were. We just knew that it was hot, and that we had approximately 130 pounds of our belongings that were itching to find a place called "home". To speed up the process, someone needed to volunteer. 

What I didn't know is that there would be 95 stairs to climb in the process of getting 'here to there' [and two inches of dust waiting for me at my new abode]. Now, in all seriousness, I'm not ridiculously out of shape. Sure, exercise can be painful, but that's true for everyone. Lets do the math. Doing those stairs at least 3 (if not more) times a day to go places, get lunch, get dinner, visit friends. It's a lot.

and that was before the first week of school.

Once we started teaching classes we actually had to report to the office. That office is in the building across the street, also on the sixth floor. In the beginning, I found it funny that the trek to the office was much more miserable than the one back to my own apartment, so I quested to figure out why. Then I found the answer: the trek to the office includes 123 stairs. Not 95! What were they thinking?

Those on my team who live on the 6th and 7th floors joke that we travel more vertically than horizontally to get to work everyday. There's not many jobs out there where people can say that :). Now it's November, and I can't even tell you the thousands, yes, even tens of thousands of stairs that I have climbed since coming to China. Even though for a few weeks I was sure that those stairs would be the death of me, I'm still alive and well and kickin'! {bah. bad joke} Truly, through all of those stairs and enduring them every single day, I've learned endurance. I've learned that things that may be an inconvenience at one point can, over time, become a part of your routine. And needing to endure things can help you set goals. And over time, you can look back and say 'man remember how hard that was then? Look at me/us/you now!" Eventually, things get easier. Although I'm here to teach English, I have learned one fantastic and crucial math problem:

95+123= killer calfs 

;)

Traffic

How many muscles do you engage while riding a Chinese bus?

All of them.

Anyone will tell you that trying to get around takes a physical toll on ones body, whether that be walking, climbing stairs [China loves stairs, but that's a post for another day], or even taking the bus. Often I wondered "why am I so tired? I just sat on the bus for an hour!" Little did I realize how often every muscle of my being was engaged to keep me from flying into the people around me, to keep me upright. Riding the bus is the equivalent of a Richard Simmons workout video.

Chinese traffic definitely fits every stereotype we may ever imagine it to be. Lucky for us, the city of Harbin is in the process of constructing a subway system. What does this mean? First of all, it means that transporting oneself across the city will be much faster and efficient. Key words: will be, meaning that currently, it is not. Secondly, it means that you take every stereotypes of Chinese traffic and condense it down to only two lanes [instead of six]. Then, add some massive construction vehicles every so often. Oh, and huge pot holes and the occasional flying sparks that attack the bus. Welcome to Harbin!