The food here is marvelous - from the silk worms in the market (haven't tried that yet), to the grocery store chocolate bars with security tags (chocolate is relatively new and pricey), to KFC (yes, the Colonel is here with a fleet of bikes to deliver to your door).
Our favorite corn lady always has a distinctive call, making it easy to track her down. Like many folks here, her cell phone is always at the ready.
This butcher had an enthusastic audience (including a dog who is just outside the picture). Inner Mongolia is the land of meat and wheat, rather like our Canadian roots.
Bread pockets are universal - be they pita, quesadillas, dumplings, or baozi - and are good any time of day.
A fall treat is candied apples and grapes.
Just outside the College gates are steam tables set up with grilled meats and vegetables. Make your selection, put it in the bowl provided, and eat up. Students line up for this one.
The mid-Autumn Moon festival here is a three day holiday, so instead of teaching we enjoyed some of Baotou's parks.
Musical groups gather to play among the trees. These aren't buskers and onlookers just seem to come and go. We also heard traditional opera, and saw tai chi and sword dancing as well as some serious card and checker games.
In the plaza some older men were doing calligraphy, writing ephemeral poems on the flagstones with water and big pointed brushes.
We buy fruit and vegies from these friendly sellers on our street -- fresh, inexpensive, and convenient.
The lake at nearby Workers' Park is a great place for a Sunday stroll; there's a small zoo, children's rides, and a hilltop pagoda.
So far we've said what we're doing but not much about where we live, which is now feeling like home, sweet home.
Our home in Baotou is above a row of shops on a busy street -- that's the way we like it, since we're city people. Our front windows are on the 2nd residential floor.
Looking out our front window, across the street is one of the entrance gates of the College where we teach.
We survived our two weeks of training in Yangzhou and took in some of the sights.
A boat trip down Slender West Lake (it sounds more poetic in Chinese) helped us escape from the hot (95F/35C) and humid weather.
We now know all classical Chinese gardens must contain bamboo, weaping willow trees, rocks, and water.
Daniel is learning to write his Chinese name, which is Yang Danyi. Diane's Chinese name is Li Yaqi.
At the Da Ming Temple, built in the Song Dynasty (1048) we watched people burn incense to their ancestors. Westerners are pretty rare here, and one family took pictures of us with their little girl in front of the 30 ft high statues of Buddha.
Here's our group -- five teachers, eight young German volunteers, and the Chinese student tutors and program faculty. Armed with language lessons, culture classes, and teaching practice sessions, we're ready to go.
We're starting with several weeks of training in Yangzhou, with an emphasis on teaching preparation and optional classes on language, caligraphy, music, and history.
This banner greeted us in the classroom where we'll be most of the time. Three of us will continue as college teachers and the eight under-age-30 German students will work as young volunteers in middle schools.
Part of our group at the welcoming banquet, where we sampled about 20 different culinary specialties of the area. Local Chinese students are our tutors.
Escaping from the Houston-like heat and humidity, we shopped in the air-conditioned IT Mall and the newly opened Wal-Mart next door. Places like Pizza Hut here are really upscale.
Our tutor, Iris, is a journalism student at Nanjing University. She's helping us buy yummy steamed buns from a sidewalk vendor.
We worshipped in a 1930s church built by the Baptists, now part of the Christian Church in China. It's a large congregation (about 4000 members) with an wonderful music program. This selection sounded like "if you're happy and you know if clap your hands" -- we are, and we did.
We're getting ready to depart for a year of teaching in China. Stay tuned for the next chapter -- we leave Aug. 3 and expect it will be a few weeks before we get an Internet connection in our new home.
A week of orientation with Church World Service in New York gave us invaluable training for teaching English as a foreign language, a better understanding of the ecumenical support in bringing this mission about, and some tai chi lessons as well.
These are the people we'll really miss, especially our two granddaughters. But in the scheme of things, what's a year? We keep in mind a Confucian saying, "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."
The Baotou Teachers College has about 10,000 students. Our job is to teach English to students who are studying to be teachers, help faculty with their English language skills, and like every job we've ever had, "perform other duties as required."
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Baotou (Mongolian for "place where deer live", pop 1.5 million) is a port and industrial city in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It's on the Yellow River on the far side of the Great Wall. Beijing is about an hour by plane or 12 hours by train. So this will be our new home.
Our favorite corn lady always has a distinctive call, making it easy to track her down. Like many folks here, her cell phone is always at the ready.
This butcher had an enthusastic audience (including a dog who is just outside the picture). Inner Mongolia is the land of meat and wheat, rather like our Canadian roots.
Bread pockets are universal - be they pita, quesadillas, dumplings, or baozi - and are good any time of day.
A fall treat is candied apples and grapes.
Just outside the College gates are steam tables set up with grilled meats and vegetables. Make your selection, put it in the bowl provided, and eat up. Students line up for this one.
