A Typical School Day in Xiamen

Mike asked me about my typical day in Xiamen and I thought that would be an excellent blog post! So here is a run down of my typical “school” day in Xiamen. My “school” days are Mondays and Wednesdays.

Wake up at 7:00 AM and get ready for the day. Do a little reading. Get breakfast at the hotel which consists of a hard-boiled egg, a steamed roll, and some sort of warm milk – I think it is rice milk . . . maybe. And take a multi-vitamin.

breakfast

Have a prayer with the group in Catherine’s room at 8:25 AM.

Walk to class on Xiamen University campus and marvel at how hot it can be that early in the morning (the temperature variation between night and day is only about 5 degrees!). When walking to class we hear all the cicadas in the trees. There are a lot of them. They are so loud that they sound like one of those electricity power stations that are always humming. And we also walk under some trees that appear to be spitting on us – we’re not really sure what the liquid is that is falling on us. Hopefully it’s not cicada spit or pee. Ha!

a dead cicada on the ground

Start class at 8:55 AM. We always have to turn the air conditioning on once we get to class since they turn it off if there isn’t a class in there. So there is no immediate relief from the heat when we first get to class and I’m always ready to pull up my hair by that time since I try to start out the day with it down.

I sit in the front of the classroom by my Chinese teammate, Sky. She’s a hoot. Then Carol teaches the class and gives us some time on occasion to discuss what she’s just talked about with our Chinese teammates to make sure they are following the lecture. Generally, Sky is pretty good about keeping conversations on topic, but every now an then she wants to ask me (out of the blue!) what I think of a Chinese person marrying and American, or if her friend that has been promiscuous with men should tell her future husband about her promiscuity. Ha ha!

Class gets out at 10:55 AM and, at first, I went to lunch at the canteen with everyone. But now that the other BYU students have wanted to take day trips on Tuesdays and I can’t say “No,” I have to stay back at the student lounge and work. And I have to work long hours! Like 5 hours on both Monday and Wednesday so that I can be sure to get my full 10 hours of work logged.

Before I get started on work, I’ll Skype my family and Mike. And then I’ll respond to some personal emails or mess around on Facebook for a bit. Then I’ll start working around 1:00 PM.

working in the student lounge or coffee shop

Then around 6:00 PM, I go “home” to the Luxury Hotel and . . . work on homework and do laundry. Some times we’ll all go to dinner together, and sometimes I have to say “No” so I can work on homework. 

Eating in China

Let me tell you what. I have a mantra for eating in China that has to be applied most of the time (but not in Shanghai because the food was so good there): 

“A spoonful of rice helps the mysterious food go down.” 

Guess the movie. Some of the food can be very mysterious and scary.

I’m never going to knock someone for eating at McDonalds or KFC or Subway in China. I do it fairly regularly just to get some recognizable and familiar and non-greasy food on occasion. Although I greatly prefer Subway since the grilled chicken sandwich I got at McDonalds one night did not look, feel, or really taste like grilled chicken. Even the food at KFC and McDonalds isn’t what we’re used to seeing at the same restaurants in the states. I think I’ll stick to just ice cream from those two places and meals from Subway since their stuff is the same as in the states.

Other foods…. I can’t even begin to describe some of the stuff I’ve seen. Chicken heads in airplane meals for the meat. Fried whole fish with their eyes, tails, and scales still there. Seaweed. Bamboo – which is actually quite good.  Lots of bok choy.  And they have the same thing for all three meals generally.

Shanghai was different because they served us Chinese food that we’ve heard of! Kung Pao Chicken. Mongolian Beef. Egg Drop Soup. Orange Chicken. Sweet and Sour Pork. Pork and Cabbage. Stuff like that.

So far, at all of the meals we’ve had, they serve Sprite/7Up or Coca Cola and that’s it for your drink. Unless you’re lucky then they also serve a little bit of water. And they fill up these tiny glasses to the brim! The dinner place setting also consists of a small plate, fork, chopsticks, a small bowl, and Chinese soupspoon.

Interesting Cultural Findings (Part III)

The Chinese say that Beijing is their political center, Xi’an is their cultural center, and Shanghai is their economic center.

The Chinese totally believe in ghosts, but they believe the ghosts can’t lift themselves off the ground or turn corners so they build raised thresholds into their doorways and lots of turns into their hallways and homes.

We saw a bunch of fruit in Buddhist temples so we asked what it was all about. Apparently, the people pay to leave fruit on the altars so that it will become enlightened and then when the people eat the enlightened fruit, they become enlightened!

The red, round lanterns are for festival whereas the carved wood and paper/glass lanterns are for their homes.

80% of the Chinese population lives in the country/rural areas and are farmers, and 50% of the Chinese population lives along the Yangzte (Yellow) River.

In the Chinese language (Mandarin to be exact), “x” in words is pronounced like “sh” and “q” in words is pronounced like “ch.”

I'm beginning to pick up on the language a little. "Shan" means mountain. "Daxue" means university. "Lu" means road. Ha! Some of the Chinese characters that I see a lot are for entrance and exit and both have a common character that looks like it is just a box. That box literally means “mouth” while the character before it (when intending to mean exit) means “leave” – but together the two characters mean “exit.”

Entrance

Exit

Hong Kong

Hong Kong was fabulous. Nothing was planned so we had some free time to enjoy and do what we wanted to do.

The day we arrived in Hong Kong we went straight to Ocean Park – a massive theme park. We spent hours there going on all the rides. We thought about going to Disneyland, but after hearing from the locals that we made the right choice, we’re glad we did Ocean Park. We went on all sorts of roller coasters and water rides. They even had some animal exhibits interspersed throughout the rides – like an aquarium, a penguin house, a house for walruses, seals, and sea lions, and even a house for panda bears! We had a blast, and the scenery was amazing because it was on the backside of Hong Kong island and over looked a bunch of other islands and the China Sea. The day we arrived also happened to be the USA’s Independence Day so thankfully the park had an evening show with a few fireworks. So we felt like we celebrated a little.

Our second day there was the day we went to the Hong Kong LDS temple and participated in an endowment session and some sealings. It was beautiful. I loved hearing the sealing ordinance spoken in Chinese (I think). It reminded me of the Lord’s promise that he’ll speak in our own language so that we might understand.

After the temple, Catherine and I went to the LDS Church’s area office building and visited with an acquaintance of hers that is the Executive Secretary to the Area Presidency (which includes Elder Gerrit Gong who used to work at BYU). He told us some fascinating things about the work of the church there in the Asia area.

• Their area covers half of the world’s population and 25 countries, while they only have 1,100 missionaries (out of 70,000 worldwide) and the church only has a presence in 18 of the 25 countries.

• They have an “everyday branch” that holds worship services Tuesday through Sunday for all of the Filipino women that work in Hong Kong. It sounded like they worked in the service/hospitality sector and don’t have any say in when their one day off of work is. So the church holds church services all those days of the week in order to accommodate those sisters.

• The church is looking at a new model of holding church services for those that are too poor to send their whole families to church every week. They are thinking of holding “group services” with 10-15 people in a neighborhood/village on three of the Sundays each month, and then gather the whole branch/ward together once a month for more traditional services.

After meeting with the church, Catherine and I visited with NetDimensions with whom I work for my job at BYU. They host and provide our learning management system that houses all of the online training courses we have. It was so fun to meet all of the support people that I regularly correspond with. They were so nice. They stayed with me for 1.5 hours and answered all of my questions. They seemed excited to see me, especially because they said that they don’t get very many visitors from their clients.

Then Catherine and I headed off to Stanley Market on a bus that took us along the coast of Hong Kong Island. The market wasn’t all that impressive, but it was still cool to get around to the less busy side of Hong Kong Island. Then we came back to take the train/funicular up to the top of Victoria Peak and see the city lights at night – which were beautiful!

On Saturday, Erin, Kara, Bryce, and I took a ferry to Lamma Island. It was a much-needed laid-back kind of day. We slept in. Ate breakfast to our heart’s content. Left to catch the ferry when we felt like it. And then once we got on the island, we just wandered around. We had some of the famous seafood that the island is known for. And then we started walking to the other village on the pathway that takes you there. The cool thing about this island is that there are no roads on it nor are there any high rises. It was truly a tiny little island. The paved pathway between the two villages is how you get to each one. We did see some tiny little vehicles on the island, but they had to be tiny to fit on that pathway. We also stopped by a beach and stuck our toes in the water. The most interesting sight on the island is when we got over to the other village and found that people apparently live on some sort of floating dwelling out in the bay. There are a ton of these humble little floating houses. I also loved all the little houses along the pathway. But I did not love the huge, freaky spiders that hung over the pathway.

We stayed in Hong Kong for Sunday so we could go to church there at one of the international branches. The church services were held in the area office building that Catherine and I visited previously. Then we ended our stay in Hong Kong with some very hot and spicy Indian food before heading off to the airport to catch our flight.

Xiamen University

The university where we attend class is beautiful. The architecture of the buildings is diverse and beautiful – meaning you have some pretty modern looking buildings while others (like the one in which we attend class) are older, more traditional style. There are palm trees all over. There are a million basketball courts all over! They love their basketball. In fact, one of our Chinese classmates, Chris, loves to play and the other students go meet up with him to play. Chris is really quite good at playing!

Their School of Public Affairs building, where we meet for class, is beautiful. It has ivy or something growing all over the outside of it. The classroom is pretty standard. But the building has a coffee shop slash lounge where we all hangout to work on our homework since it has free Wi-Fi, is air conditioned, and is pretty nicely furnished. I spend hours in the lounge working. That’s where I do my work for 10 hours per week.

For class, Carol – our professor – teamed us up with Chinese students for our group assignments. My teammate’s name is Sky. All of the students in our class are graduate students and they are getting their Master of Public Administration (MPA) too. Sky is a hoot. She is almost hyper to be in class with us and get started working on our group assignment. She’s really on the ball. Her English is excellent and she understands most things shared in class. On occasion, Carol will give us some time to chat with our Chinese teammates to make sure they understand everything that Carol is teaching.

Then usually we go to lunch with Sky and Chris after class at their cafeterias that are called, “Canteens.” The food is . . . interesting. They don’t eat a whole lot of vegetables. Nearly every dish is hot – the only stuff that isn’t hot are the drinks, watermelon, yogurts, and ice cream. The Chinese looooove watermelon. It is everywhere. Seriously.

campus sidewalk

Xiamen University administration building

a cool building on campus

basketball courts galore on campus

a cool building on campus

dorms on campus (two fo my classmates too)

the School of Public Affairs building where I attend class

Chinese Laundry

So last week, I had to do my first load of hand washing and line-drying laundry. This is the real deal. No hand wash mode on a clothes washing machine. By hand. In a bucket. Sitting on a chair in my hotel room’s shower. Ringing out my clothes by hand. And hanging them on a clothesline that is strung up from the window to the fire sprinkler in our hotel room. I kind of had to think through how to wash them by hand. This was my process (for good or bad, but it’s the best I could think up!):  

1. Soak them in my bucket with detergent
2. Work on each individual article with my bar of detergent rubbing the bar on the article and then rubbing the article on itself
3. Ring the piece out and put it in Erin’s bucket (Erin is my roommate)
4. Soak them in my bucket in clear water for the first rinse
5. Rinse each individual article with the shower head
6. Soak them again in the other bucket
7. Wring each article out as best as I can with my hands
8. Lay all of the clothes out on a towel
9. Roll up the towel and kneel on it to get more water out
10. Fold the rolled up towel in half and kneel on it again
11. Hang the clothes up on hangers on this cool clothesline that has slots for the hangers to keep them separated

I did my first load of laundry early on Tuesday morning, and they were all dry by Wednesday evening. I’m glad I avoided bringing cotton clothes because they are the ones that took the longest to dry. I mostly brought polyester clothing.

Interesting Cultural Findings (Part II)

The humidity continues to be oppressive and inescapable. Even my books have been affected by it because their pages are warping. I find that I have to drink a lot more water here because I’m sweating it off before it can get through my system for me to pee/tinkle it out.

Our packing list suggested that you pack lots of bug spray and anti-itch cream and they weren’t kidding. In my first day of being in Xiamen, I got two pretty good mosquito bites. I can usually tell when the mosquitos are biting me when they are in the middle of biting me, but not these. We call them “no-see-ums” because you don’t see them biting you! The bites also last a long time! I think I still have my bites and it’s been a week, and my classmates still have theirs from the week before I arrived. Consequently, we all wear bug spray like it’s perfume.

Here in China, the sun rises at 5:20 am and sets at 7:00 pm. It’s crazy early on both ends for the summer! I wake up with the sun that early! And did you know that all of China (which has a greater land mass than the USA) has only one time zone? Kind of crazy considering the contiguous/continental USA has four time zones.

Air travel is awesome in China. Mostly awesome. Let me tell you why. Yeah, maybe the flights are delayed (regularly), but everything else makes up for it. So far I’ve flown on airlines I’ve never heard of such as Hunan Airlines and DragonAir, but they are amazing! Their airport security doesn’t make you take your shoes off nor do you have to take your baggy of liquids out of your carry-on. And best of all, they serve meals on every flight even if the flight is less than an hour long, no extra charge.

Everyday we get a couple new rolls of toilet paper in our room. It has to be a couple rolls because the rolls they give us are seriously mini-rolls. I’m talking they maybe have a quarter of the paper on them when compared to the amount we have on our regular-sized rolls in the USA.