Songpan (pictures only)

I'll be posting all about the trip later (we just got back and I'm too tired now) but for now I'm just doing pictures. :) The trip was...amazing. The other foreigners in the pictures are friends that we made while there.

Last day in Chengdu for a while

Hi everyone!

I am leaving tomorrow morning to go to Songpan. We will be back on Monday evening, I think. If you are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songpan_County

Things here are good...there's actually not much to report right now. Yesterday we met with some pharmacists from the US who are here with an organization called MSI. It was really interesting to talk to them because they are a Christian organization and (obviously) a NGO, but they have developed a really good relationship with the Chinese government. Basically, they put themselves out there as an organization that was willing to help and now the Chinese government requests that they do certain projects. We'd heard that it was difficult for NGOs to work here, but based on our conversation with him it seems that the approach makes a big difference. They were here conducting pharmacy seminars for students at Sichuan U.

Other than that, we've been going to the pool, which is fun because we meet a lot of people there. They're so friendly and really like to practice their English on us. On Monday, we met with a student named Lily and her friend Anita, just to talk. She had wanted to come to one of our workshops but couldn't because of exams. Lily wants to get her MPH in Hong Kong and then a Ph.D. in the US- she seems really ambitious. They want us to come to their hometown one day when we get back, so we may do that.

I finished Harry Potter and now am reading book one over again. ;)

I'll check in when I get back! Hope everyone's doing well.

Pictures from Giant Buddha/Mt. Emei

China Days

In case anyone is wondering why I'm blogging when I'm supposed to be on a trip, unfortunately the cold I had got a lot worse and I had to come home early. It wouldn't have been a big deal typically, but trying to hike up a mountain all day and deal with altitude changes would have been really difficult and I would have probably made everyone else miserable. A surprise migraine also came on this morning- awesome. ;) I was quite disappointed- and still am- but this has turned into a good day. Also, at least I got to see the giant Buddha and the lower part of Mt. Emei. I'll try to post some pictures of that. Everyone else will be back tomorrow morning, I think.

I spent a lot of the afternoon in bed and, being quite hypochondriacal, convincing myself that I either had rabies from all the animals I pet or had been poisoned by Chinese food (I happened to look on CNN/MSNBC and there seems to be a TON of news regarding food imports from China, huh?) Luckily I then started feeling better, so I left the dorm for a few hours. It was a HUGE success! I cheered myself up by 1) finding the new Harry Potter book- in English!, 2) getting french fries from McDonald's and 3) getting a green tea frappucino from Starbucks. Definitely American consumerism at it's best. The french fries were greatly deserved after hiking all day yesterday with hardly any food I liked! I didn't get lost or feel uncomfortable being alone at all, and loved being greeted by the women at "our" supermarket and "our" fruit stand. The woman at the fruit stand is so funny because she talks to me the ENTIRE time I'm there and I just smile because I have no idea what she's saying!!! I think she will miss our regular business when we leave as we are very loyal to her. ;) There is also a guard that works in our dorm who is so nice...he speaks no English but always greets us very happily and the other day we talked about going swimming entirely through gestures. I think I'll miss the small town feel of the area around campus, even though we're in a city of 11 million people. There are a lot of students around, but the area doesn't really feel like a college town...just a nice, relaxing place.

So anyway, this evening turned into an "I love China" day, which I don't think I've explained before. We have "I love China" and "I hate China" days. Neither is extreme as it sounds and each serves a very important purpose. I get through the "I hate China" days because I know that an "I love China" day is right around the corner. The "I hate China" days remind me that as sad as I am on that I'll be leaving in a few weeks on the "I love China" days, it will be really good to go home.

I think this summer has taught me a lot and given me confidence in skills that I didn't know I had- or at least wasn't sure I had. I've especially learned that I am pretty adaptable, or have become that way (hello, "strengths" answer in job interview, lol) and that with the right attitude, I can succeed in challenging situations. I love China, at least for today. ;)

Going to see Buddha

It's 11:20 PM and I have to get up at 6, but I thought I better write an update before I forgot everything that's happened...not that too much has actually happened, haha. I went to the pool for the first time yesterday with Jackie and her cousin. It is HUGE- 50 meters. I didn't realize swimming was so hard, but I probably haven't really done it since I started lying out by the pool at age 13 or whatever. There are no chairs or anything here so there's not much to do but swim. It turns out the pool is right behind our building- I have no idea how we've missed it all summer! Janell and I went today...Janell is a really, really good swimmer. I am not. At all. A guy congratulated me on my butterfly stroke and I had to correct him because that was definitely not me! He and his Nepalese friend really wanted to talk to us because "it was the first time EVER that white girls had been in the poor...it's like big stars coming in or something". LOL, I'm pretty sure no one has ever told me that in the States! Anyway, we were there a few hours and everyone was very eager to give me swimming lessons. Apparently my freestyle is decent, but I need to learn how to breathe. I kind of learned how to do a breast stroke, though. Hopefully if I get decent enough at it then 50 meters won't feel like 974329873 miles!

I went out shopping today without Janell. The goal was to find a fleece in preparation of our upcoming trip to Songpan. I realized that it is not good for me to go shopping without her for 2 reasons:
1) I spent twice the time that I spent shopping being lost (it's a big city! found my way in the end, though), and
2) the people working in the store are so nice and they followed me around to help me the whole time. Maybe this isn't actually "so nice", haha, and more like a ploy to get you to buy something because you feel bad-- or at least it worked that way for me!
Anyway, the end result was that I never found a fleece but I did end up with 2 mediocre shirts. So there. Going out with Janell is harder because I notice the stares WAY more-and I think each of us gets them more when we're alone because it seems odd to see a foreigner walking alone. I did have many people offer me a watch, though, lol.

We visited 2 hospitals yesterday. The first one was the hospital for occupational injuries. I thought it was really interesting that there was an entire hospital dedicated just to that. It looked pretty much like an older hospital in America, but more open-air than it would be in the US. In parts of the hospital they didn't have enough room so people were sleeping on beds in the hall. The saddest part was when we went to the hospice floor...the doctor there saw us looking around and wanted to tell us about the ward. It was a pioneer project in China and the money was donated by a Chinese billionaire. He had good English and it was really nice of him to give us so much information, but it was really difficult seeing the patients (he took us in some of the rooms). Firstly, I felt bad that we were in there staring at them like they were zoo animals...I hope they didn't think of it that way, but I probably wouldn't be so pleased if I was their family member. We saw a 4-year-old little boy who had been abandoned by his parents at birth, was raised in an orphanage and now had terminal eye cancer, along with an 18-year-old boy who was dying from a stomach tumor. His dad was with him, and that was so hard to see. I admire people that want to be doctors, because it must be a very emotional experience.

The second hospital we went to was HUGE and very nice and modern. It is at least the biggest hospital in this part of Asia and perhaps in all of Asia- I can't remember for sure. You could never, ever imagine the amount of people that were there, but it resembled a VERY crowded airport. There aren't really any physician practices in Chengdu- almost all of them are based out of the hospital, so that's where everyone who gets sick goes. One of Jackie's roommates took us around the laboratory where she works and we saw all the machines they have (I sound stupid there since I have no idea what all the machines were!). Their lab tests things like glucose, electrolytes, etc., while there are other labs dedicated to diagnosing disease and other things. I wanted to go to one of the other buildings after that- specifically to the floor of "Western and Chinese traditional medicine". It was REALLY interesting. They Chinese natural remedies in conjunction with western medicine. The doctor we spoke to (everyone was very helpful and eager to talk with us) told us that she's seen the results and she thinks they're good- that was/is her major. However, she said there have been no studies done to compare success rates among wards in the hospital that use only western medicine, wards that use only traditional medicine (I THINK there was one of those) and their ward, which combines both. If I was going to be in China for a while that is totally what I would want to study.

On Tuesday, I gave a presentation to the bar waitresses about communication! Professor Zhang wanted me to do this because of my counseling/psychological background, but also wanted me to incorporate a lot of discussion and games into my talk. In China, they typically are only lectured so this is unusual. I was a little nervous, but it went fine and they were all so sweet! It may have been a bit too simple, but going into it I had no idea what to expect about their knowledge of communication skills, etc. It actually was fun and I'm glad I was able to do it.

Hmm, it's getting close to midnight and I can't think of much else that stands out about the last few days right now. We had a meeting with Professor Zhang on Monday and with Connie on Tuesday. Connie wants to organize nightly meetings with all the grad students for the last week that we're here. Tomorrow we are leaving early to go to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha, then we are going to Mt. Emei until Sunday. "We" means Janell, Jackie, Jackie's cousin and I. We were supposed to go to Leshan with Professor Zhang but he had something come up so he wasn't able to make it. Next week we are going to Songpan for 5 days to ride horses- just Janell and I. More info on that later. Hope everyone is doing well!

Opera

Last night we went to the Sichuan Opera, which really wasn't an "opera" as you might traditionally think of one. There were several different performances that weren't related to one another...this might be the best explanation: http://english.dreams-travel.com/guide/chengdu/sichuanoprea.htm

The pictures turned out better than I thought they would considering how high up we were, so I'll attach some. The videos I took are better, but unfortunately I don't know how to add those here.

Not many exciting things to report from this week. The Transformers movie was actually pretty good! We met a few new people there, so that's always nice. On Thursday and Saturday we went to the English salon thing again- where a group of Chinese people and foreigners go so they can practice their English (or meet Chinese people, like us). This is different from the English Corner where there are over a hundred people all trying to talk at once...this is organized by a guy we know named Tony and there have never been more than 20 people there. We play games, watch Friends, have debates in English, speeches, etc. There is one picture above. On Thursday afternoon we went to the training for the bar waitresses at the CDC. It was about nutrition, but we only had very limited translation so we didn't get as much information as usual. The bar waitresses usually work really late and then sleep all day, and they drink a lot and are around smoke often. They typically only have about 1 meal a day so the lecture was about how to get more vitamins/nutrients throughout their day. David (they guy giving the lecture) spoke about how the street food is really unsafe because sometimes they use paper instead of meat...we had no idea what he was talking about until David C. sent me this article from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/12/cardboard.food.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch
This Tuesday I am giving a lecture/discussion on communication to them...I'm excited but a little nervous. It will be interesting to see how it goes with translation, etc. I really don't like speaking in front of groups, but I know that I'll have to do it in my future career so it will be good for me.

On Friday, we went to DuFu's Thatched Cottage. Here is some information about DuFu:
http://www.poetrymagic.co.uk/poets/dufu.html

The cottage area was beautiful and we learned a lot about Chinese poetry and arts during the Tang Dynasty period. Actually, I don't know if we learned a LOT, but considering that I knew nothing about that time period before I went, it was really interesting. We saw a lot of artifacts from the period that had been excavated there...it's amazing how things like bowls really haven't changed over thousands of years! The picture of the pagoda above is from the cottage area.

I had an experience with my email being blocked after I accidentally put a forbidden word, which I definitely won't put here since I don't want the same thing happening to my blog! I could get onto my email after about 5 minutes but I couldn't click on the email that had that word. Strange. Janell and I were talking about this and how most (not all) of the Chinese people we have talked to are okay with this. It seems as if the most important thing is the end result, regardless of the means. So, for example, if people died during Mao's ruling period because of decisions he made, that wasn't a great thing but "China wouldn't be where it is today without him". Also, if the government feels the need to censor things, it's ok because they have the best interests of the public in mind and it will be best in the end. It's an interesting perspective that I think is similar in SOME ways to how we typically think in America and very, very different in other ways.

You can also see a picture of my room above and a picture of the dragon candy I won from the sugar blower at Jingli street!!! I had to spin a wheel and when it landed on the dragon, everyone around me was so excited because it means I will be lucky. :)

pictures