APARTMENT

After 2 days of sifting through spectacular and disgusting apartments, Alison and I have locked in on a beautiful new home—96 square meters of hardwood floors, 2 bedrooms, 1 western bathroom, TONS of natural light, etc etc etc—in an oasis of an apartment cluster complex. The apartment complex has a large park ringed by the buildings and a fence, is very safe (you need a key to get to the park and a different key to get in the building), and is between the subway/fancy mall area and the new art district. For those who know Beijing or who want to look it up, we are in the Pingod neighborhood near the Shuangjing subway stop. We are SO excited and can’t wait to unpack our suitcases and get settled tomorrow.

It wouldn’t be a day in Beijing without some sort of hysterical “mishap.” Right before we signed the contract, we invited our English-speaking realtor to lunch at the restaurant of her choice to discuss our top two apartment choices. She asked if we wanted authentic Chinese from the province she’s from (don’t remember which), and we said, of course, so we went to a little hole in the wall place she knows. As we sat down, we asked what type of meat they’re serving, because it seemed to be that the only menu option is variations of the same meat. As in, mystery meat soup or mystery meat taco-like treat. She replied, “Oh, I don’t know how to translate it. The combination of horse and donkey.” Alison and I looked at each other and I said under my breath, “I wish she hadn’t told us that.” But, low and behold, when our food came, we learned that MULE TACOS are delicious.

We also braved Carrefour, which is the French equivalent of Walmart, and a 7-minute walk from the Casa de Two Mushu Jews. Once again, I was amazed by how many people can be crammed into one space. Another Chinese twist to shopping at Carrefour is that, as soon as you stop walking, 3 or 4 employees start hounding you to buy whatever you’re looking at or suggesting more expensive versions. Since we don’t understand a word of Mandarin, it’s easier to keep walking.

However, being illiterate and non-communicative is usually not an asset like at Carrefour. We are entirely dependent on the linguistic abilities of other people and unable to do the most basic of tasks (for example, at dinner tonight, we asked for water and the waitress disappeared and came back with spoons). So, every little thing we do is an adventure. Luckily, we have friends who are bilingual, including Ben, who was born in China and moved to LA when he was 9. So, after a delicious dinner last night in a really cool Hutong that we will take all visitors to, Ben wrote out in Mandarin characters, “I am very allergic to shrimp.” Now, at least, I have a card to show the waiters and don’t feel that I’m playing Russian roulette with anaphylaxis every time we eat out. I also think we are lucky because we are white and in a country that respects, or at least tolerates white people. So, when we stand up and point to the water jug at the neighboring table because we are thirsty, people laugh and don’t seem insulted. I couldn’t imagine how much more difficult it’d be if we were Chinese moving to the US, because if I were eating at a NYC restaurant and the Chinese couple next to me started mooing to make sure they were getting beef, I would definitely not be too understanding of their perspective.

Off to sleep. Hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday!

PS We’re having trouble loading pictures at the hotel. Will upload a bunch once we get settled in our apartment, including pics of the apt and neighborhood!

China eats

We have been running around the past few days looking for an apartment, going to schools (scholastic, also known as red-yellow-blue or RYB) and hospitals (CICAMS and the foreigner medical registration hospital out in bfe), and getting acclimated. The most interesting part has definitely been the food!  We have learned that our stomachs are stronger than we thought—even Adam’s!—and that neither of us is adventurous enough to try chicken feet, duck neck, oxen ear, or pig fallopian tube….yet.

On Friday night, we went out to dinner in Sarah’s new neighborhood, which is very, very Chinese. We were absolutely the only white people to be seen! In the restaurant, the host knew a few English words and that was about it. Luckily, most restaurants have pictures of the food, so we ordered according to what things looked like. We had 3 dishes (spicy tofu, garlic string beans, and chicken with an unidentifiable vegetable) and rice, but the waiter did not believe that this was enough. He tried and tried to have us order more because, as we learned, the standard is to have a variety of meats with contrasting flavors and a few vegetables.  We noticed this when the 4 girls at the table next to us got a second HUGE fish platter and several vegetables. The 3 of us just looked at each other in astonishment—these were small Chinese girls eating more than we had eaten all day! It was hilarious, and we then understood more of what the waiter meant. We have also learned that food in Beijing is known for its saltiness, and this place was no exception—we guzzled water when we got home!!

Our breakfast standard has been American—a zone bar or oatmeal in a mug with boiled water from the hotel room. It’s easier to just eat something quick and be done, especially because we will be eating Chinese food for the other 2 meals.  We stopped into a grocery store to look around on Thursday and saw lots of oatmeal and cereal—some Chinese, and some American, recognizable by Tony the Tiger or the Captain Crunch. It’s good to know we will be able to have a regular, low-key breakfast once we get into an apartment and go grocery shopping.

On Saturday for lunch, we went to a dumpling restaurant in an artsy neighborhood near one of the apartments we visited. Everything looked delicious and we weren’t worried because every restaurant has had pictures thus far….until now.  We knew we were going to get dumplings, which was good, but trying to tell them that Adam is allergic to shrimp was hilarious!  He wrote the phrase down, but his pronunciation is so off that the waitress had no idea what he was saying. She kept giggling and laughing and brought her friend to try and understand. Adam gave them the card, and they were absolutely lost. Then the waitress friend went through the menu and said stuff in Chinese—probably cow or pig or something—that we didn’t understand. Finally, the mutual phrase was Adam MOOing at her and giving the thumbs up sign!! In the middle of a restaurant in the middle of Beijing, Adam Lewkowitz mooed like a cow. It was awesome. The reward? 16 delicious soup dumplings! When you bite into the noodle, soup broth spills out. Yum!

We went to dinner on Saturday night with Adam’s fellowship friends in historic Beijing. Luckily, one of his friends, Ben, was born here, and he knew where to go and what to order. We had a wonderful array of mutton, an entire duck (head and all!), and assorted vegetables and noodles. Afterwards, Ben lead us to a 300-year-old “cheese shop” in one of the hutongs (an alley) that had a dessert yogurt, sort of like rice pudding. It was a great night of eating!

We’re off to go apartment hunting; hopefully we’ll be putting up pictures of our home in China next time!

**addendum: I'm having trouble loading pictures, so hopefully that will be fixed in the next few days. We also found an apartment this afternoon!!! More to come....

success!

Yesterday was a success on all fronts.

Alison went to a Scholastic kindergarten to observe and met a new spitcracker Peruvian teacher who invited us to her birthday party tonight and gave us the phone number of an English-speaking realtor (we're going apartment shopping in a few hours!). She also returned home from work happy, which is a HUGE change from last year!

As for me? I used a squat toilet.

Decide for yourself which person had a more momentous day.

First Day Recap

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the delay in posting; I'm sure everyone (aka my mother) is chomping at the bit to hear our first impressions of China. So here's the problem. Our time here has been too hectic to reflect yet. But don't worry, as the pace of our life settles into a more mundane/realistic rhythm, the posts may change from oh-my-god-can-you-believe-what-crazy-things-happened-today to be more reflective. Having said that, in the next post, Alison will probs talk about our crazy adventures of today involving Chinese hospitals for foreigners who need health approval to live here...resulting in getting blood drawn for unknown reasons. Maybe I'll find out that I don't have syphillis/HIV or maybe I'll find out that my cholesterol is high--lord only know what they drew the blood for. At least they used disposable needles ;)

So, back to yesterday. We go to leave our hotel and grab our free water bottles to find...

...that PBR had entered into the Chinese bottled water business.

Because my Principal Investigator is at a meeting in another part of China, I don't officially start the research until August 24th, so I decided to accompany Alison to her office to have our first adventure in China together. It was a good decision. First, nearly every car that passed us was a taxi, but none were empty, so it took about 20 minutes to finally hail one. (It was worse than being stranded downtown at midnight in the rain in Manhattan). Then, we were betrayed by all of our guidebooks. Everything we read in our pre-trip preparation says that you need to have the address of where you're going written out in Chinese characters, and you simply give it to the cab driver in order to get there. We had the front desk do exactly that and entered the cab very confident. He then proceeded to call 3 different drivers to ask where to go and then resorted to driving in circles, stopping to ask pedestrians the correct address.

To make a long story short, we arrived after tipping the nice cabbie--ps: no tips in China. He was so very grateful that Alison and I figured we had made a tourist's mistake. Alison had her first meeting with her school people, and we learned that the districts that are between our job are very modern and foreigner-friendly (but not true expat communities--don't worry Mama). The best part is that they are by a subway station to take Alison to her job and by a bus stop that will take me directly to the hospital!

After lunch, Alison ran errands for work (all alone in Beijing!), and I took a taxi to the Cancer Hospital to meet with Dr. Shangying Hu (my twin, on right), Dr. Ron Li (Sarah's twin, on left), and Sarah. Here they are!
We then met with Dr. Zhao, the head of the cervical cancer research program there, had a tour of a hospital that was comfortably modern down one corridor and strikingly rural-Mexico-esque down the other. As in, they have a new 10-story beautiful surgical oncology building, but to get to it, you walk on a semi-paved pavilion and look into a shed where people are hang-drying what looks to be hospital pillow cases.

Fast forward 3 exhausting hours of cell-phone buying (you have to buy a phone then buy a number, and the prices are different based on how "lucky" the number is, because four in Chinese is pronounced similar to the word for death. We got the cheapest numbers, with 4s in them, bc I figured we'd have such bad accents no one would confuse the two words), picture taking for aforementioned hospital visit, and waiting for 30 minutes for a broken ATM to never be fixed. Ended up being majorly frustrated when we got home. But, we dined with my friend Kate at the most delicious restaurant in the Beijing in the nicest shopping mall I've ever seen (don't worry--everyone who comes to visit will be taken there). Peking duck is delicious! So the day ended up wonderfully. Here we are at Da Dong Peking Duck restaurant, after a grueling first day:

Ni Hao!

(that's basically the only thing either of us can say in Mandarin!)

Ohmygosh I don't know where to begin. I cannot believe we're in CHINA!! After all that talking and planning, we're finally here! We already have tons of stories and have had some veeery interesting experiences in our 15 hours in China. I think it will be easier for me to bullet point some of them to keep it somewhat concise.

We made it!!!

FLIGHT: relatively painless. 13 hours (we landed early!), several solid naps, a little reading, and a little movie watching. The highlights include a girl across the aisle watching a Harry Potter movie on her computer sans headphones--very loud--and a guy eating pizza with chopsticks.

AIRPORT: after going through customs, we piled into a tram to get to baggage claim. We were looking out the window when Adam commented that it was funny to put grassy areas along the sides of the tram's path because we were still indoors--his [very logical] reasoning was that there was an orange ceiling above us. I agreed, but Sarah (Adam's co-Fogarty) looked closer and realized that it was not, in fact, an orange ceiling, but the night sky!! That was definitely a strange revelation. I guess you don't really know what to expect with the smog until you actually experience it. (Side note: today is also extremely overcast, but it's also the worst time of year for the smog. The combination of humidity, lack of wind, and pollution creates the thickness in the air. It should dissipate somewhat by early September).

Thank goodness for the little buggies--
we piled our stuff as high as we could!

Try understanding this!

HOTEL: Adam's Chinese counterpart (his "twin), Shangying, has been very helpful in picking us up from the airport and arranging a hotel for the first week that we're here. We are very close to Adam's hospital, which we got to glimpse as we drove in last night. This hotel is a maze; our room is on the 2nd floor, but we had to take the elevator (with all of our stuff) to the 3rd floor because it only goes to 1, 3, and 4. We walked down 2 never-ending hallways to get to the elevator that took us down to our room. After settling in, Adam and I tried to go back to the lobby, which was no easy feat. We tried 4 different staircases before eventually succumbing to the elevator scramble. When we finally got back upstairs, I went to shower, but was completely confused by the sign on the shower door. At least there was a picture to help! Read it carefully and see if you can translate the English into something that makes sense. When you do, let us know!

When we were FINALLY ready for bed, we realized that we couldn't turn off the lights in our room! To get power, we have to put our room key in a slot by the door to turn on the power (lights, A/C, power outlets). We tried everything to get the lights off, but when you take out the key, it also turns off the air conditioning and the computer that we had set up to function as an alarm clock. After testing a bunch of things, we realized that we had a big decision to make: sleep in a cool, bright room or in a warm, dark room. We ended up putting the A/C on super low for 20 minutes to cool it down and then went to sleep. However, we just learned that there are light switches hidden behind the bedside table--tonight is going to be a cool, dark room. Thank goodness because we're exhausted!!

Jet lag has caught up, so I'm off to bed after a crazy/overwhelming/hilarious/ridiculous first day in Beijing! Adam will probably write about Days 1 and 2 tomorrow--he fell asleep in the cab on the way home from our Peking Duck dinner with Kate (an Amherst friend in Beijing--what a great way to start us off in China!)

holding pattern...

Hi everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates! Basically, Alison and I have been in running around Phoenix like chickens with our heads cut off doing a billion last-minute errands, including 7 trips to Best Buy (this place is no genius bar) and Alison buying an awesome new camera...We also had a whirlwind road trip to LA to watch my brother compete at US Swim Nationals (pictured below, looking pensive on Camelback Mountain after a hike a few years ago). But mixed in with the dreariness was scheduled family time--Alison and I were able to visit with all of my Phoenix immediate family at least once, which was wonderful. All I kept hearing were rave reviews, with much discussion about how well she fits into my family...I guess, as my mom says, "the shoe is in my court."

But now, let the whirlwind begin! Tomorrow morning, we fly to Chicago for my cousin Emily's wedding. (Selfishly, I couldn't ask for a better opportunity to say farewell to everyone on such a happy occasion, so thanks for choosing this weekend, Emily and Vance!). We'll hopefully make it to their post-wedding brunch on Sunday before our flight to Minneapolis to join celebrating in Alison's study abroad friend (and my new NYC friends) Naomi and Justin's wedding that evening. Then, that Monday we return to Chicago, pick up our aforementioned luggage, meet my co-Fogarty buddy Sarah in the airport and head to CHINA!!!(This picture is from my birthday party. After surprising me with a picnic in Central Park with my friends, people came back to Alison's apartment where we had a China-themed party!)

NY is trying to keep us here

We had a fantastic last few days saying goodbye to New York. Both of us were able to see lots of friends, eat at our favorite restaurants, and enjoy beautiful NY humid-less summer weather. It was definitely a great send-off, though a little sad to be leaving such wonderful people and what has become home. Good thing it's only for 10 months!!

We were quite amused by the amount of stuff we managed to pack into our 200 lbs (checked bags) and 4 carry ons (which probably weighed more than 200 lbs!). This picture was taken as we left my apartment to carry it all down 4 flights of steps. Thank goodness my roommate Liz and her boyfriend Julius were able to help out! Most exciting part of this adventure thus far: we made it into ONE cab with all of our luggage!!!! The cab driver was more amused than we expected ;)

When we got to the airport, I was so focused on keeping the luggage straight that I proceeded to walk into a glass door. I mean, full speed ahead into a [non-moving] revolving door. Adam thought it was HILARIOUS, probably because it was. THEN we get to the check-in, only to realize that one of my bags was 8 pounds too heavy (in my defense: at least 3 pounds of that was whitefish and rugelach...thanks Herman). We were absolutely the Clampets do New York, rearranging everything in front of the JetBlue check in counter. THEN both of Adam's carry-ons were searched in security! Seriously??! Oh, but it gets better. We finally made it to the gate (the last gate of the terminal, clearly), and our flight is 2 hours delayed. Thank goodness for free wifi!

We'll get out of here eventually...next stop, the Southwest!