Mei Laoshi hao! 梅老师好!

I've been working in China for one week now. I know, I never mentioned it to some of you. My mother knows, seeing as I called her frantically, feeling super overwhelmed after my first day of class. So a week ago last Thursday, I got a phone call from a preschool asking me to come in for an interview. I went thinking that's all it would be. Instead, it turned out to be more of an on-the-spot orientation, with me sitting there thinking, "wait, wait, I haven't even said yes yet!" So I walked out of there with an assignment to teach English lessons to seven preschool classes daily for the next two weeks. And with no lesson plans or materials. And it was to start the next day. Time to start stressing out. As Eric can tell you- I am very good at that. This is where the frantic emails and phone call to my mother came in (who is an amazing elementary school teacher).

That first day was definitely hard. Each class is only 15-20 minutes but who knew 15 minutes could ever feel that long?! Add to everything the fact that I speak next to no Chinese. Really. None. So here I am, standing in front of 20 toddlers and their teachers, none of whom I can communicate with. For the first couple of days, I made a huge vocabulary list with words and phrases that would help me in communicating what I was saying and wanted them to do. That tactic didn't seem to quite work. Either I would forget all the words I had just memorized or they would not understand me when I said them. That first day I came home feeling like I was going to cry.

But, as all things do, it got better, The children seemed to actually get excited when I came and the teachers began to at least attempt to communicate with me. Today as I left the last class, three or four of the little girls ran up to give me hugs. And every time I enter a classroom the children yell out, "Mei laoshi! Mei loashi hao!" (Teacher Mei! Hello Teacher Mei!) Teacher Mei is what they call me since Kiersten was way too hard for them to say. The kids are really adorable. There is this one boy in one of my classes who, every time I ask or say anything, gets a huge smile on his face and shouts, "Bu zhi dao!" (I dont know!) Its really cute.

It's been interesting working here. Definitely different than in America. For example, the lunch breaks here are super long. Its not uncommon for places to close for a couple hours during lunch time. But do I get a two hour lunch break? Oh, no, I get FOUR hours. Why they think I need four hours to eat lunch I don't know. All I know is that it means that I am stuck at this place that is close to absolutely nothing and way to far for going home. But the children must have their nap I suppose.

This next week is China National day. Everyone is required to get eight days off from school/work. But as we have discovered, this is not like normal vacation in the states. Here, you have to make up some of those days that they 'give' you off. What that means is that today- Sunday- I had to go into work and the Saturday after the break the teachers have to go in to work again. Isn't that crazy? I would much rather have six real days off instead of the eight.

But besides those few oddities, it hasn't been that bad. It's been fun actually. I've been able to relearn some of the little kid songs that I haven't sung in years and I get to jump around in front of cute little Chinese kids and pretend like they are getting an English lesson out of it. And they pay me for it. :)

Cooking in China

Baking in a Rice Cooker?

Yes, it can be done. Surprisingly well too.

I love baking and 10 months without making cake or brownies or bread or something is a horrible thought. Since we have no oven, though, I thought this was to be my fate. Shortly after arriving here, I said to Eric, “I wonder if you could make banana bread in a rice cooker?”… And so it started. I googled it and found that other people have already had the same thought as me. I began experimenting. My first adventure was to make carrot cake. My only problem was that I did not trust the rice cooker to know when it was done. After about ten minutes, it switched from cook to warm. Of course that’s not long enough to cook a cake! So I proceeded to jam a chopstick in the switch to keep it on cook. Pretty soon, burnt cake smell was filling the apartment. Lesson one: Don’t jam a chopstick in the rice cooker power button to keep it cooking!

A few days later, and with tired hands from scrubbing the pan, I tried again. This time: rolls. French bread rolls- yum! And they turned out amazing. I let the rice cooker do its thing- letting it switch to cook and steam for a while and then switching it back to cook when it would let me. Result? Perfect, soft, delicious rolls.

So then it was back to cake. I was not going to let the rice cooker win with this one. Banana chocolate cake. I greased that pan like crazy, put it in, turned the switch, and crossed my fingers. About three cook/steam cycles later- perfectly moist cake! Success!

I have now tried quite a few things- cookies, apple bar cookies, and more cake. All wonderful! So far though I think our favorite has been my mom’s amazing bread recipe. It turns out incredibly delicious in the rice cooker. Eric and I usually sit down and eat half of it right away! So good!

Here are some of the recipes I have tried. They are normal recipes that can be made in an oven. Though if you have a rice cooker, I would definitely suggest you give it a try…

Carrot Cake

Ingredients:
2 cups + 1 Tbsp flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 ¼ cup canola oil
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups grated carrots

Sift dry ingredients together. Add oil and beat for 2 minutes, slowly increasing speed. Add eggs and 2 tsp vanilla. Beat 2 minutes, scraping bowl. Stir in carrots. Pour into 2 greased round pans. Bake 45-50 minutes at 325. Cool 15 minutes and then turn onto rack.
** For cooking in a rice cooker, half the recipe and make sure the pan is well greased and floured.

Double Chocolate Banana Bread
From sisterscafe.blogspot.com

1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups mashed bananas (about 3)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 350. Spray bottom of 8x4 inch loaf pan with cooking spray.

2. Beat sugar, eggs, and oil in large bowl at medium speed until combined. Beat in banana and vanilla at low speed. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl; beat into banana mixture at low speed just until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

3 Spoon batter into pan. Bake 60-70 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely on wire rack.

Florence’s Bread
About 9 c. flour ( I usually use 3-4 c. whole wheat) 2 tbsp. yeast
½ c. sugar 2 eggs
½ c. powdered milk ½ c. oil
1 tbsp. salt 3 ¼ c. warm water (about 120o)

Mix 3 c. of flour with other dry ingredients. Add liquid ingredients and mix well with spoon. Stir in as much more flour as you can with the spoon and then change to your hands. When you have a ball of dough, turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place in oiled bowl; turn to coat with oil and let sit covered until doubled. Punch down and make into loaves. This recipe makes 3 large loaves or about 2 large pans of rolls. Let rise again and then bake at 375o for about 30 minutes or 20 minutes for rolls.

You can leave out the powdered milk and just use the water. Eggs can be left out as well if you don’t have them. If you cut the sugar when leaving out the milk and eggs to about 3 tbsp. it makes more of French bread type of bread.

French Bread Rolls
From mykitchencafe.blogspot.com

1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, stir together warm water, yeast, and sugar. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.

To the yeast mixture, add the oil, salt, and 2 cups flour. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough has pulled away from the sides of the bowl. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat. Cover with a damp cloth, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.

Deflate the dough, and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into 12-14 equal pieces, and form into round balls. Place on lightly greased baking sheets at least 2 inches apart. Cover the rolls with a damp cloth (or greased saran wrap), and let rise until doubled in volume, about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

Bake for 12-13 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.

A Month's Recap

This weekend marks the end of our fourth week in Nanjing. Time has flown. As you may have realized, it took us a while to figure out how to post on our blog here in China, and it was just last week when we finally found a way to post pictures. A lot of convenient tools are blocked on the internet here for the time being, so we have had to find ways around to do what we want.

That being said, you may have imagined that you (reader) have missed out on quite a few things in the past month. We are sad to inform you that your suspicions are correct. So, in sympathy for you, here is a recap in pictures of our past month. A few things are missing, since our camera seems to love running out of battery power at the most inopportune moments, but we hope to find ways to recapture those lost moments.

Kiersten in front of Xuanwu Gate (玄武门）, one of the original entries into the then capital Nanjing, built over 600 years ago by the first emperor of the Ming dynasty.

A large gate marking the Confucius Temple in Nanjing.

The beginning of a long walk way (including hundreds of steps) up to Sun Yat-sen's (founder of modern China) mausoleum, also located here in Nanjing.

A little change of scenery in the French Quarter's in Shanghai.

For pictures like this, I make Kiersten stand to one corner of the picture so I don't look too obvious in my desire to capture cute elderly Chinese folk on camera (taken in Shanghai).

This is one of my favorites, also taken in Shanghai.

Oh, the things we have to go through just to get to the other side of the street. This is East Nanjing Street in downtown Shanghai.

Kiersten made me do this one. The first of many pictures at Zhonghuamen (a.k.a. The Castle at Zhonghua Gate), the largest existing gate fortress, built 600 years ago, and really quite a remarkable structure.

Kiersten looking out over Zhonghuamen.

And, another shot of Zhonghuamen.

Kiersten and I "being" the tunnel at Zhonghuamen.

A characteristic doorway at the Zhanyuan Gardens in Nanjing.

Another view of the Zhanyuan Gardens.

And, another view of the Zhanyuan Gardens.

There are so many more, and I wish we could post them all online. It takes a while, though, and until we can figure out how to access our picasa web albums, these will have to suffice.

Shanghai Trip!

We were really tired when we got back from Shanghai on Sunday and so this post has been slightly delayed… But what a fun weekend! Aside from Eric having to deal with a very tired and hungry Kiersten (I do not do well when I am super hungry!) it was great. Our journey to Shanghai was very uneventful compared to our last time being there. We were also with a group of students from Eric’s program which made figuring out the train and subway stations a lot easier. The subways (and really everywhere else in Shanghai for that matter) were so much more crowded and crazy than in Nanjing where we live. It made our city of over 6 million seem small in comparison. In fact, when we stepped out of the subway in Nanjing and started walking home, we commented to each other on how quiet and peaceful it seemed.

We spent Saturday morning and afternoon visiting the Shanghai Museum and French Quarters. We were so happy when we got to the museum and realized it was free! We had researched it and thought we would be paying at least 60 Yuan each- but they just waved us through. Isn’t it great when that happens? Eric was in heaven there. He could have easily spent the entire day looking at ancient jade, painted scrolls, and calligraphy. Long after everyone else in our group had left the museum, I asked Eric if he was getting tired or hungry (I sure was!) and he said he felt great. So four hours later, we finally left, really just to appease his hungry wife. Rather than stopping for lunch right then, however, we opted to head over to the French Quarters, planning to raid the scores of French bakeries we hoped to find there. After a long walk, which included a nice security woman using both her walkie-talkie and cellphone to call people to find out where exactly this French Quarters was, we found it. I was never so anxious to find a good piece of warm bread. Alas, none was to be found. Apparently the days of small French bakeries in Shanghai are long gone, replaced by super expensive boutiques and restaurants. We did find the building where the First Congress of the Communist Party was held, though, which was definitely interesting.

So, we headed back. Next on the agenda was District Conference. The real reason we had even come to Shanghai. And it was wonderful, by far making up for the tired feet and empty stomachs. Elder Perkins (the Asia Area President, member of First Quorum of the Seventy, and Eric’s former mission president) and Elder Oaks were there. It was really exciting to be able to see Elder Oaks in a smaller setting such as this District Conference. So much more intimate- we got to talk to him and his wife and shake his hand a few times. Most importantly though, we got to hear and learn from him.

After conference on Sunday ended, we wandered some more in the city, visiting the Bund and Nanjing Road. And finally, here we are. Back home.

Testing the Black Market in Shanghai

Tomorrow morning we take a train to Shanghai, where we will be spending the weekend. The main occasion is a district conference for the Shanghai China International District, but we are excited to spend the day Saturday exploring museums and gardens.

In the spirit of the occasion, though, I thought I'd recap our first experience in Shanghai. Our plane flew into Shanghai on the night of August 22nd at 8:15pm, about two hours behind schedule. Although it was going to make for a little longer night, we weren't too worried. By chance we were on the same plane as Sharla, another flagship student, and we were confident that our Chinese ability could get us from Shanghai to Nanjing. We passed through customs without any setbacks, and the bus leaving for the train station was easy enough to find. We had already exchanged our money in LA, so we were equipped with well enough RMB to make the trip. Unfortunately, though, the normal bus route was apparently partially closed off for an unknown reason, and our bus driver made a few wrong turns. This delayed us arriving at Shanghai train station until close to 11:00pm. And that's where things started getting interesting.

As soon as we got off the bus and were quickly trying to get our luggage from the compartment below, we were surrounded by taxi drivers and "bus scouts." The taxi drivers quickly left, I imagine after seeing all of our luggage, but the bus scouts were determined to have us take their bus. We confidently told them that we were taking the train, only to hear their tale that the last train for Nanjing had already left and the first one in the morning wasn't until 5am. Still confident that I had read the train schedule right, and not quite wanting to trust these men, we decided that Kiersten and I would stay with the luggage (it was a lot to carry) and Sharla would go into the train station to check the schedule. They were right. The last train had left at 11:00. We still didn't trust our pursuers, however, and we tried to locate a bus schedule to find out when a real bus would come. After all, a real bus probably doesn't have bus scouts trying to get people on it. Again to our dismay, we discovered that the last bus for Nanjing had already left. There were two decisions: find a hotel for the night or trust our fate with these men. We went with the latter.

The men had promised us that they had a bus leaving at midnight, and it would only take three hours to get to Nanjing. This sounded doable. Their price was high, but not outrageous, and Sharla's bargaining skills helped drop it down to reasonable. However, after walking twenty minutes to where the bus was waiting, we discovered that we were the first ones on the bus. We didn't like this, but we seemed to have few other choices. However, we realized that this bus would not be going to Nanjing if we were the only ones on it, and it would especially not be leaving at 12 sharp if we were the only ones on it. So, two hours and many more confused and scared faces later, we left for Nanjing at 1:15am. I tried to sleep, but sleep just wouldn't come, and I stared out the window. I was sure we'd get to Nanjing, but this was not making for a good first impression of China. The promised three hours turned into five hours before we finally arrived at Nanjing train station. Being the last ones off the bus, and hoping for some sympathy from someone, we asked our driver if he could take us to our hotel. For an additional 100RMB, he obliged, and we happily took our bags and checked into our hotel at 6:45am, Sunday morning.

That's the condensed version of that night. Both Kiersten and I will both agree that we do not want to experience that again. China has been good to us since then, and we are very happy here. We are definitely hoping for a better impression of Shanghai this time around, and we are confident that we will be able to navigate our way better.

Home Sweet China

We have been living in China for 2 ½ weeks. And as crazy as it seems, it is already feeling like home. Our apartment, now that it is cleaned up and has some dishes and pots and pans, seems like our place. We even put up a picture of Christ and the LA temple (where we were married), along with the Family: A Proclamation and some family pictures. We also finally got a water dispenser and water to go with it today so now we don’t have to rely on running down to the community store to buy bottles of water or boiling our tap water. Yay! I still haven’t gotten my rice cooker pot completely clean from my scorched attempt at cake baking the other day (hint: don’t jab a toothpick into the rice cooker cook/warm button to keep it on cook…not a good idea…), but besides that, things are smooth and settling into normal. And we have yummy cake to eat. :)

To add to feeling more at home here, I, almost all by myself, bought fruit today at the market. The little ladies selling the fruit seemed quite amused at my attempts and kept saying ‘Ok, ok, ok’ to mock my foreignness. But they understood me! And the peach we just ate was amazing- yup, that was me who bought it.


***Here are some older entries that we weren’t able to post while Blogspot was blocked. We will add pictures as soon as we can. A friend of ours figured out how to do it so we are working on getting that info from him. So, those will be coming soon…

Washington!!
(August 17, 2009)

Eric and I just got back a couple of days ago from spending a few days in Washington with his grandparents there. We had just quit our jobs so what better thing to do than go on a road trip. So we took off. I had never been to Washington before and was amazed as we drove through Washington at how beautiful it was. Being from Southern California, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anywhere so green!

We went to see all the places on the Grandma and Grandpa Matthews tour of Seattle- Pike’s Place Market, the Locks, Deception Pass, and of course, the Flight Museum with Grandpa Matthews. It was all so much fun! When Eric asked me the first day what my favorite part was- I told him it was probably watching the salmon swim upstream. There is a place near the locks called the fish ladder where the salmon are able to go in order to pass through where the dam is so they can continue swimming upstream to wherever they are headed. There are glass windows so you can watch them. Maybe it is weird but I thought it was so amazing. Those poor fish looked so tired and seemed to hardly move. Yet they are so determined and keep going.

I got to meet a lot of Eric’s relatives who live up there. They were all so much fun. There was definitely no dull moment with them! From a game of Balderdash spiced up by Aunt Janet’s responses to crouching over the tidal pools with Grandma we had a blast.


August 21

It’s August 21, and we are sitting in the airport waiting for our plane to come. This day has only been on our calendar for the past few months, but the moment we would pack our bags and board a plane to China has been a conversation in our relationship from the very onset.
Both of us still remember the night spent together before we left for Christmas last December. Up until then, we tossed ideas back and forth of activities we would love to do during the summer, but that is where our plans stopped. Hardly anything was mentioned of life after August, when I had already committed to board a plane to China to continue my studies. For me, it was a topic I tried to avoid, fearing the time when Kiersten and I would not be together.

But that December night, as Kiersten and I sat and listened to Neil Diamond singing Christmas songs, I couldn’t hold my question any longer. “Kiersten, would you be willing to go to China?” The response was a yes, and from then on we both knew that our relationship would not end in August. I must admit, that was perhaps one of the most relieving and comforting pieces of knowledge that I’ve ever known.

The past eight months have been hectic with finishing school, getting married and preparing for China, but it has all been allayed by the knowledge that neither of us would be doing it alone.
And so, to rephrase one of the Who’s classic lyrics,

'Got a feeling ’21 is going to be a good [day],
That is, if you and me see it in together!'

And they're back!

Yes, in grand and glorious colors, the Andersons return.*

We are in China and have been for fifteen days now. As you may imagine, a whole lot has happened, and we will try and update you on things as we go along, but trying to recap the past two weeks seems too monstrous a task to tackle today. Our advice to you, as remembered by Rigoletto's unparalleled butler Hans, is..."Curiosity killed the cat."

In case you were wondering, though, WE LOVE CHINA!! Every day is an adventure. Simply said, China is not America. Whether it be buying food for your home, trying to withdraw money from the bank, or attending your first day of class, China is very different. I know that is completely void of details, but keep reading, and we hope to satiate all your desires to know about living in China in the days, weeks and months to come.

*To our current frustration and your loss, we have not figured out how to post pictures yet using our current proxy server. Using a proxy server is the only way we are able to access our blog, but the picture attaching option (and all other post addition options) seem to have vanished. If anyone has knowledge of proxy servers and how to navigate them, we welcome your input.