Andrew's Locked Out

Well he's not really sure what's happening, but Andrew is unable to log onto his blog. So he trusted Mom with his secret ID and asked me to pass along the message...

All is well, the papers are coming together, and he's looking forward to getting home in a few weeks. But when he comes home, he'll first be taking a detour by LA to meet up with Stephen, Miss Miriam and Andy. Andrew and Stephen will both be home on the night of June 3rd.

So if he can't get blog anymore, it's not because he doesn't want to!

That's the message. Hope Andew will be back on soon.

Gail

BBQ- June 6th

Taking a break from writing my final paper for my Modern Chinese History class, it's on the the motivations of various groups during the intellectual movement known as the May Fourth Movement in 1919... don't worry mom, I'm almost done.

It is almost that time, most of my friends have already finished their finals and are back home and I'm about 5,500 words, two tests and eighteen days from heading back to the good ol' US-of-A. I've been informed by my mother that on June sixth (a Saturday) that there will be a BBQ happening at the Leiser household, and I would love to see all of you who can make there to share even more stories, pictures and good food with all of you. I am also planning on giving a presentation at church for those locally who may have a conflict, as for those a little further away (Grammy, ala), we'll figure something out.

Sorry I don't have anything ground breaking to share with you, been spending a lot of time staring at a book or a computer (apparently I have to do real school work). The weather has been a little nicer (aka, cooler) the last two days, and I had chicken tongue for dinner the other night.

Mark your calenders.

-AL

HOT

Happy Mothers Day to all the mama's out there, I remembered and wished both my Meiguo mama (aka Gail) and Zhongguo mama (aka host mom) a happy day.

The cold and rainy weather that I wrote about to not too long ago is just a distant memory at this point as the temperature and humidity here continue to rise. It's 7pm here right now and my computer says it's 81 degrees with 45% humidity, numbers that I'm not really accustomed to. Of course my house is equipped with A/C but we never use it, also it has become painfully apparent to me that there are no cold meals in this country, everything is served piping hot, not helping to relive the heat.

Whats funny to me now is that even though it hasn't rained in quite some time you can still find plenty of umbrellas, its just this time they're to keep the sun off. I think this probably has less to do with it being very warm and more to do with avoiding a tan, the pastier you are in this country the prettier. This also means that people (mostly women) wear an outrageous amounts of clothing. The other day we had a BBQ, courtesy of our program, and all of the host moms came wearing either pants or a long skirt, long sleeves, jacket, hats, gloves (I'm not kidding) and holding an umbrella; it was probably close to 90 degrees.

Just about three weeks till I fly home, starting to get excited about seeing everybody and eating lots of American food.

-AL

Forgot something...

Meant to mention this in my last blog. I was out the other night wearing my "Rendezvous" t-shirt (thanks Grammy), and this guy came up to me and asked me if I was from Memphis. This of course led to the whole story about how I'm not but I have lots of people near Memphis and how we both loved Rendezvous and yadayadayada. I thought it was a good example of how small of a world it is.

Oh.... another similar story that is even closer to home. There's a girl in the program from Madawaska. And I thought I was from a small town. She's the only other Mainer I've found over here.

Anyways, I thought it was kind of funny.

-AL

Back to Work

Hello all, sorry I've been neglecting my blogging duties, been spending a lot of time on Chinese and paper writing. In case you hadn't heard, I'm back in Shanghai (have been for a few days), and I'm back to the usual grind. Just to recap my trip for you briefly, spent time a few days in Chengdu which is in Sichuan province (also where the earthquake was last year) and then five days in Kunming in Yunnan province. Overall we had a great trip met some really cool people along the way, most of whom were passing through as they spent a few months traveling the world.

Really glad that I decided to go where we did just because it's so different from the big cities of Shanghai and Beijing. It was kind of fun to be the only white people and we certainly got lots of Chinese practice (I was actually complemented a lot on my Chinese) as very few people spoke any English. The way of life in both of these relatively "small" cities is also very different, people in Chengdu seem very content to sit and drink their tea as the day rolls by and in Kunming I've never seen so many people playing Marjiang, a game sort of resembling domino's.

Overall it was a great trip, had a lot of fun but glad to be back in Shanghai with my Zhongguo Jia (Chinese Family). Hard to believe that I'll be flying home in less than a month now!

Hope you're all doing well.

-AL

still going

Hello all, so we never went to Dali, just stayed in Kunming the whole time which has been fine. Went and saw this giant lake from some cliffs that over look it, went to a temple, and also stopped by an ethnic village but didn't go in because it looked more like epcot than a legitmate village.

I've caught a little bug in the last day here which isn't ideal but better now than when I'm back in Shanghai trying to get ready for finals. We fly out tomorrow, I'll supply greater details when I'm back home.

The weathers been perfect, hope all is well.

-AL

Travels

S'up, in Kunming right now in Yunnan province. Left Chengdu Sunday morning after seeing both pandas and the worlds largest Buddha (it's pretty big), spent the day walking around this sleepy little town of just over a million. Not sure what we doing today, but I think tomorrow we're going to try and jump on a train to Dali, which wasn't part of the original plan but turns out that Tiger Leaping Gorge is about 9 hours away, which is a little further than we thought.

Good trip so far (no ones cried), having fun, update you when I can.

-AL

Chengdu

I made it. Got into Chengdu at abou midnight last night, found our hostel no problem (it's really nice, not what I expected at all). Think we might go see pandas today.

-AL

Migrant School

Taking this opportunity to be productive while procrastinating from studying for my Chinese test tomorrow.

Last week was my first week of going to the migrant school to teach English. I believe I wrote on this way back when I first found out that I was going to be able to do this, but I'll refresh your memories briefly. So the students who attend the migrant school are children of migrant workers, or persons from outside of Shanghai, these are the people who do the lowest level work as street cleaners, street vendors and other work. For them Shanghai, and other cities that have benefited from the economic reforms of the seventies, is an opportunity to find work. However, wages here are not quite what we're accustomed to back home and they make very, very little. Normally these parents would have to spend an incredible amount to send their kids to school, even more than for a Shanghai person (it's messed up). And of course education is a means to a better end.

This is where the migrant school comes in, I can't remember if the students don't pay anything or pay very little, but it's much better than if they had to go to another Shanghai school. The school itself is unimpressive, a cement building with a few levels that holds about 700 kids grades k-8 (I think). They have desks, a blackboard, chalk and textbooks... that's about it.

I'm teaching sixth graders with one other kid who speaks much better Chinese than I do, but he's never done any teaching and I've at least taken an education class, so I guess we're a good pair. There's probably at least 30 kids in our class, maybe closer to 40, all sitting two by two in neat little rows. It's one of two sixth grade classes, apparently ours is the more well behaved one while the other fails to cooperate frequently.

So basically we kind of just threw ourselves into it, they have textbooks (we each have a copy also), so we picked up where they last left off and started practicing words for that lesson. The words they are learning are not exactly practical, but in theory they've been learning English since the first grade, so they should have a decent grasp on the language. We started off writing the words on the board, words like "whale," "quarter," "crop" (they kept pronouncing it as "crap," it was pretty funny), and about a dozen more. So it would go I would say the word and they would repeat, then we go back over the words that they didn't pronounce quite right. Then we played hangman, which seems to be pretty popular.

All the kids are kind of like a small army, whenever we wanted them to say a word they would shout it, closer to scream in many cases. Also whenever we called on them to pick a letter for hangman they would first stand up and then tell us... a little different from my memories of the sixth grade.

Going to give them all English names next week, I think they'll enjoy that.

-AL

Spring Break to Chengdu and Yunnan

Here it is, the long awaited plans for my get away. On Thursday evening April 24th I'll get on a plane in Shanghai and head to Chengdu in Sichuan province. Sichuan has most recently been in the news last year where it was hit with those devastating Earth quakes (hoping that doesn't happen while I'm there), but It's also famous for being the home of the Panda Bear, and having melt-your-face-off spicy food. So for two nights we'll be staying in Chengdu which is the capital of Sichuan where we will go see Pandas, eat spicy food and explore.

Sunday morning we fly from Chengdu to Kunming in Yunnan Province in SSW China. Yunnan borders all of the south-east Asian countries of Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Laos and I think Thailand too so were pretty far south (should be warm ala). We spend Sunday just exploring and then first thing Monday we're on a bus headed to Lijiang, about four hours away from the capital of Chengdu. The main attraction in Lijiang: Tiger Leaping Gorge, looks beautiful, supposed to be some great hiking too. We're staying at an Eco-lodge overlooking the gorge for two nights (it's our most expensive accommodations at $7 a night). So that puts us at Wednesday when we drive back to Kunming for the remainder of our trip. Not sure what we're going to do in that time, it's apparently a pretty cool town. Then on Friday we fly from Kunming back to Shanghai with a few days left over to sleep and do the homework that we'll be neglecting while we're gone.


It's not Tibet, but I think it's going to be a great trip. Really excited for Tiger Leaping Gorge, and seeing some "natury stuff."

Hot and sticky in Shanghai this week.

-AL

Easter in Shanghai

I think probably one of my misconceptions about China before coming here was that Christianity was not a significant faith for Chinese people. While I do not have exact statistics, I can tell you that there are a number of Churches in Shanghai that on Easter Sunday were packed with Chinese and Expats alike. I was one of the Expats who went to worship on Easter. Following the direction of one of my friends, we were going to go to a Catholic mass where we thought the service was in English. It quickly became apparent that this was not the case as we were the only foreigners in the church. Using a English telephone service called Shanghai Help, we quickly found a service that did offer an English translation, grabbed a cab and made it in time for the 10 O'clock service.

The church we ended up at was Shanghai Community Church, I'm not sure what denomination it is, but definitely a protestant branch as there were two women celebrants. The church was packed with people standing outside near the windows trying to look in. We sat in the balcony where they supplied headphones and had someone translating. The church itself is bigger than St. Saviour's but smaller than Trinity Church in Boston. The service itself was 90 minutes, including a 40 minute sermon that I cannot describe any other way than very 'Chinese.' During the course of the service four different choirs performed, singing songs all with tunes that I recognized, but very different words or course.

After the service we decided that Easter wouldn't be complete without some hot cakes, so we took off to a meiguo fandian (American restaurant) called City Diner, which is probably serves the most authentic western food in Shanghai.

Following a few hour break which involved going back to the fabric market for a Chinese project (ended up buying corduroy jacket while I was there), met up again with the SLU crew (all the kids from my school aka SLUzers) plus a few for Easter dinner. Since were all on budgets we didn't go to any of the more expensive Easter options that various restaurants were offering, but rather to Yao Ming's very own "Yeeha" restaurant, featuring Texas BBQ. It was pretty surreal feeling, felt like I could have been anywhere in the US (it was kind of nice), TVs with NBA games and the Masters being broadcast, the walls lined with NBA jerseys and cowhides and to top it off a mechanical bull in the corner. We all indulged in our western food then called it a night, completing what was actually my second Easter abroad (I was in Costa Rica two years ago while I was a senior in HS).

Happy (belated) Easter!

-AL

PS. Booked my spring break trip tonight, going to Sichuan and then Yunnan provinces, will provide details later.

Chinese Opera

Yesterday evening I got to go to the Chinese opera for one of my classes. The opera is called "Dream in the Red Chamber" or it's also referred to as "The Story of the Stone." It's based on a book which is, as my teacher puts it, is the Chinese equivalent of all of the great western novels that you read in high school combined into one. We read the extremely abridged version, but the actual book is in five volumes and a few thousand pages. The book itself is part love story and part religious transcendence, but the opera only did the love story part of it.

Getting to the play alone was a bit of a nightmare, fighting the swarms of people in the metro heading home from work, but it was not nearly as bad as the opera itself. Nightmarish is the first word that comes to mind, it wouldn't have been so bad except what I thought was a two hour show, was more than three hours (no intermission either). Three hours of Chinese music and singing, which isn't particularly pleasing to the western ear.

I eventually couldn't stand it any longer, the seats were so close together that my legs were starting to cramp up and when I looked over and saw what looked like my professor being asleep I decided it was time to leave. Overall it was not a pleasant experience. Fortunately the school bought the tickets (which were fairly expensive), and I guess if there's one good thing, it was a really cool looking theater.

So, moral of the story, if your ever in China and someone suggests you go to the opera, DON'T.

-AL

Small Problem

你好我的朋友们！(hello friends!) Finshed my midterms today, think they went pretty well.

So I've had my first problem since I've been here occur the other day. Stopping at the ATM on my way to class I pulled out my wallet only to find that my debit card was not where it should've been. Of course I searched my wallet before relizing the fact that my card was not on my person, leaving me to think that somebody who's not supposed to have it does, and has probably spent every dime to my name. Fortunately, thanks to technology I was able to check my account on line and find that no money had been withdrawn since I last used my card. So my card was either stolen by a bad thief who has yet to spend any of my money, or more likely I lost it somewhere (still don't know how I could've lost it).

Did a thourough search of all my clothes and room but to no avail. However I do have a second card that I normally use when I'm at SLU, so I still have funds availible to me. I figure for being here nearly two months if thats the worst thing thats happened, things are going pretty well.

-AL

Change of plans

Ni Hao, taking a break from writing my IR paper to let you all know that my Tibet plans fell through. Guess I wasted all that blog space for nothing. In the end instead of the 8-10 kids we thought we had interested, we had 5. Combined with the fact that if we were going to be able to get back to school on time we'd have to fly at least one way, the costs and time constriants were just too great.

So Tibet didn't work out, but on the plus side I have a great excuse to come back...

Have new plans in the working, but I think I'll wait till I've bought my train ticket before I give you my itinerary.

-AL

Spring Break

This week for me is midterms (aka: no fun week), and while that stinks it does mean that spring break is just around the corner at the end of April. I have ten days to go just about anywhere in Asia that I want to (although they encourage us to stay in Mainland China). Some people are going to Thailand, a lot are going to Hainan, the Hawaii of China with lots of beaches, but I am going to Tibet.

Now if you don't know why going to Tibet is so significant, just google it and I'm sure you'll find plenty. The idea of going to Tibet arose when I first found out that we were going to have a free week to travel and it sounded awesome, but It's also about as far away from Shanghai as you can get (50 hour train ride one way), you need all sorts of special permits, you have to go with a tour group and it's expensive.

In fact when some of my friends talked to me about going they had found a tour that was reasonably priced, but it was also only for four days and we spent a total of 24 hours driving from one spot to the next, not what I wanted to do. I actually talked two of the three who were committed to going to Tibet into going to Sichuan instead which is where the earthquake was last year and also the home of the Panda. We were all settled on this idea, go do some earthquake relief, see pandas, eat really spicy food etc.... and then I told our other friend who REALLY wants to go to Tibet about this change of plans, and she, being much, much smarter and craftier than I talked me back into going. She made the valid argument that I've already come this far and that I shouldn't let $200 come between me and this opportunity. She also used three words: Everest Base Camp. I don't know the details of our trip but I do know that we spend one night at Mount Everest base camp, I don't care what we do before or after that is what I'm most looking forward to.

So we spent all day yesterday figuring out 1) what was the cheapest way to get there, 2) what was the fastest way to get there and 3) what we wanted to do when we got there. This process lasted for quite some time and involved dragging in Chinese students because apparently you can get better airfare deals if you book in Chinese as opposed to English. Turns out to fly from Shanghai to Lhasa (Tibet) was going to cost an arm and a leg, but we didn't want to waste four days traveling, so we were going to fly from Shanghai to Xi'an and then take a train for like 30 hours to Tibet and repeat on the way home which would've saved us about a day and was within everyones price range.

Turns out this was moot point because the best way to plan a trip to Tibet is to have someone else do it for you. So going with the recommendation of a travel agency a few kids who are doing a whole year used last semester we started getting quotes for what it would cost for four of us to go to Tibet including getting there, back and everything in between. With only four of us it was going to cost too much and it seemed that hope for Tibet was fading fast, and then we started recruiting.

With only four people it was going to cost a fortune, but with seven or eight people it only costs a small fortune. So what started out at four people quickly ballooned into as many as ten (not sure what the final count is).

So yeah, going to Tibet, pretty excited about it and I'll let you know more when we get closer and finalize everything.

-AL

School

While I am abroad in a really cool place, I'm here not just to eat, sight see and have fun. I do take classes at East China Normal University in Shanghai through an abroad program called CIEE. I have classes Monday through Thursday (all Fridays off!) and take four classes.


Monday- 10-12 Modern Chinese History with Andrew Field, a Boston guy who first visited China in '88 and has been living in China on and off for about 6 or 7 years, speaks fluent Chinese (jealous). He did his undergraduate at Dartmouth and graduate work at Columbia (smart guy).

1-3 Chinese: Beginning 1 with Shao Laoshi, (Shao is her last name and Laoshi means teacher, this how we address all of the language teachers and some others as well.) Shao Laoshi is very young (24) but has been teaching Chinese as a second language for two years with CIEE. Shao Laoshi is orginally from Xinjiang province which is in the upper left hand coner all the way on the other side of China, where the Islamic ethnic minority Uyghurs live, Xinjiang is also known for their hand made noodles.

3-6 Cultural Currencies- A literature class where we compare western and Chinese texts with Amy Goldman. Amy did her undergrad at Princeton and graduate work at UC Davis (smart gal). She's lived in not only China but France and also frequents India. She has a lot of energy. She also comes from a renowned movie making family apparently.

Tuesday- Chinese 1-3

Wednesday- 10-11 Modern Chinese History
1-3 Chinese

Thursday- 1-3 Chinese 3-6 International Relations with professor Teijun. He is my only Chinese professor who doesn't teach Chinese. While he is Chinese he studied in Stockholm and seems to be as well traveled as any Chinese person (it's difficult to get a passport to leave the country). Speaks good English but his teaching style is very different from what happens in our other classes and from the US (good and bad differences).

So that's my class schedule, combined with Chinese homework, stuff for my other classes and lifting I don't see much outside of 'my' little corner of Shanghai Monday thru Thursday. But we do have long weekends so I try to take advantage of that and go explore the city.

-AL

Top Ten: China Edition

Here's my top ten things that I like about China so far.
10. It's acceptable to burp at the dinner table.
- Not to say that I do it, but I think it's really funny when my host mom and sister belch them out while we eat.

9. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
-- I told my mom the other day that we should forget about going to Bermuda for family vacation, lets go to China! Once you get here everything is cheap, food, hotel rooms, travel within China, everything (excludes Hong Kong).

8. You're a celebrity.
-- Anyone who knows any English automatically is interested in talking to you, if you have blond hair and blue eyes, they'll ask you to pose for pictures and hold their children.

7. Spitting is socially acceptable.
- everybody hauks lugies (spelling?) all the time. From middle aged men to college girls, there is no problem with spitting anywhere (inside in some circumstances is also acceptable).

6. Infinite cell phone service.
-- Good thing about communism, if they say they're putting a cell tower up, it goes up, ASAP.

5. You can get anywhere from anywhere via train.
-- It might take 52 hours to get there, but I can sit on a train and be in Tibet in a few short days, all at the fraction of the price that you would spend to fly a relative distance in the US (probably even cheaper than driving).

4. You never know what you'll see.
-- Just the things people carry on mopeds surprises me everyday, from oxygen tanks to barrels of water. I don't think there's a day that goes by where I can't say "never seen that before."

3. You can have a full sit down meal for less than five dollars.

2. You can have a filling meal on the street for about 50 cents.

1. Everyday is an adventure with new things to see with seemingly infinite places to go and explore.

-AL

Beijing Parts three, four and five.

Sorry I've been neglecting my blogging duties, I'm always really tired when I get a chance to do so that I sleep rather than type, but my batteries are charged right now so I'm going to try and recap the last three days of my life for you in about 500 words or less.

So Tuesday morning was the big day, we were going to visit the Great Wall. Got on the bus at 8am and drove about an hour and a half through some small towns surrounding Beijing up into the mountains and to a very small section of the Great Wall. I say small section for two reasons; firstly the Great Wall isn't just one Great Wall, it's many Great Walls, that is to say they're not all connected, so it's impossible to just walk continuously on the wall without having to get off at some point. Secondly, the Great Wall is 2,000 miles long, we might of covered two of them.

I think I might have mentioned in an early post that this was the part of the Beijing trip that I was most looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. Where we were there were a few small villages, but no remnants of the vast city of 16 million people that we had just left, lots of beautiful mountains and other "natury" stuff (that's for you mom). Can't decide if it's more impressive that water carved the Grand Canyon or that man created the Great Wall. Very cool.

From there we drove through the country side for about an hour and visited the Ming Tombs where 13 of the 16 Ming emperors are buried, not that cool.

Wednesday we visited the Olympic Village, also very cool. We were able to tour both the water cube and the Birds nest (Birds nest is a lot bigger in person and water cube much smaller). We actually got down to the floor of the birds nest where we could sprawl out under a perfect sunny day. Kind of a surreal feeling being there after so many great athletes competed while I was half way around the world watching on TV.

Thursday we visited the Beijing urban planning museum which wasn't that cool but it did have an awesome model of the whole city. From the museum we went and checked out some old Hutong neighborhoods which date back to the Qing dynasty (200 years). We toured a guy's house, rode on rickshaws and visited the Drum and Bell tours which were how they use to communicate time back in the day before clocks.

Going to go check out some street markets today then we're back to Shanghai via train later tonight, it's been a great visit that has gone really fast. Hope all is well.

-AL

Part Three Beijing: Summer Palace

So yesterday (Monday) got up and went to this cool little cafe/library called the bookworm where we have all of our talks in the morning. Talking to us was one of my professors friends who is an American born Chinese but lives in Beijing today. His name is Kaiser and was and is a big part of the Chinese rock n'roll movement, he certainly looks the part also, long hair, blue jeans and a leather jacket he certainly looked like a rocker. So the first half of his talk was all about his story and the evolution of rock/pop/metal in China, then in the second half he changed hats and started talking about his life as an Internet guru and how the Internet has shaped China (especially the young people of China) today.

Following Kaiser's talk we headed out to the Summer Palace which is like the summer home for the emperor. It's pretty impressive to say the least. There's a great big man made lake that a few of my pengyous (friends) and I cruised around on in a paddle boat. There's also a huge stone ship that was built at the end of one of the Dynasty's (can't remember if it was the Ming or Qing) anyways it was built by the emperor's concubine who is basically blamed for the down fall of the dynasty.

Overall had a great day. Forgot to mention that for lunch in between Kaiser's talk and the summer palace we went to a western restaurant right by the bookworm where they had 1 quai wings. Anyways if you ate 40 wings you got a free t-shirt. A couple of my buddies and I couldn't turn down a challenge, only problem was we needed to eat the last twenty in like 15 minutes so we could catch the bus to the summer palace. It was a challenge, but we got it done.

-AL

Part Two: Tiananmen Square/ Forbidden City

So after getting off the train we met our tour guide for the week, Robert (he's Chinese but a lot of Chinese people have English names also), from there we got onto our bus and went and checked into our hotel (that's another blog) and had breakfast. This was all to be done in an hour and then be back on the bus to go to this little cafe/ library where we are going to be having guest lectures all week. Lecturing us yesterday was one of our professors friends who is an American but has been living in Beijing for the last twenty years working as a journalist for United Press International (UPI). He was actually at Tinanmen Square in 1989 when the Chinese army rolled in (I'll explain below for those not familiar with this incident). He was giving us a talk on the last 600 years of Beijing history and the different phases its gone through. It was a really good talk, but it would of been a lot better if the only thing on everybody's mind hadn't been trying to stay awake.

So after we broke we went to lunch (pizza, first time while in China), and then thanks to the begging and pleading of our class our professors agreed to let us go back to the hotel to take an hour long nap (a bit of a tease, but much needed). Following the hour to nap/shower/whatever, we were back on the bus headed to Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen Square is most famous for the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, a lot of you probably remember this, but for a while there had been protests happening at the square when the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) rolled in and turned their guns on their own people, kind of a big deal. So the square is directly in front of the Forbidden city where all of the emperors lived since the Ming Dynasty (a long time ago).

Extravagant is one word that immediately comes to mind when describing the Forbidden City, huge is the other. It is 72 hectales (not entirely sure what a hectale is), something like 900m by 600+ m, with 8,004 rooms. You get in there and you just keep walking through these huge doors and it keeps leading to more and more city, it looks like it's never going to end. Of course all of the rooms are painted with unbelievable detail, stone carvings, everything fit for an emperor.

Finally, after climbing this hill overlooking the whole city, we climbed on the bus and headed back, shower, dinner, bed. Headed to an art district today, supposed to be pretty cool, I'll let you know how it goes.

-AL

Beijing Part one: Getting there

Ni Hao wo de pengyous he jia (Hello friends and family). So I've made it safely to Beijing, had a good time on train (didn't sleep much, but had fun). So we were supposed to leave campus for the train station at six sharp on Friday evening, we didn't end up leaving till about 6:30 and trying to get through rush hour traffic to get to the train station in time was a little terrifying, but we made it. So their are 33 students on this trip and three teachers so we had enough to have a whole car to ourselves, which was nice since we didn't have to worry about disturbing others with our rowdiness. It was dark for the whole time we were on the train so the only time we able to see outside of the train was in about the 15 minutes before we pulled into the station while we were all waking up.

My professor having done this trip a few times before was thinking ahead when he brought his guitar or as he called it "a karaoke machine" (karaoke is actually really big in China). So about 12 or so of us climbed into a cabin built for four and started belting out classics. Needless to say we had a pretty good time.

So we rolled into Beijing at seven am on Saturday, almost exactly twelve hours after we had boarded the train. While we did have soft sleepers, and were theoretically well rested, sleeping on a train is not exactly sleeping well, combined with having to be up a lot early than most of us are used to, we were all very tired. This was not ideal because as you'll see in the next segment of my 'Beijing series' we had a jam packed Saturday.

-AL

Headed upta Beijing

Hello all, so after four weeks of class and five weeks in Shanghai, it's time to take a break from it all and head north to Beijing, the capital city of China. So for all of next week till the 28th I'll be "reporting live" from Beijing (I'll try to write lots while I'm there ala). So we get on a bus here in Shanghai at six tonight that takes us to the train station for a 7:30 departure, then we have a nice 12 hour train ride to our final destination. Fortunately the program forked up the cash to get us soft sleepers on the train so we should be able to catch some zz's on our way up (I'm actually really looking forward to the ride, never been on a train before).

So we're doing a lot of sight seeing in Beijing, I know we're going to some old emperor's tomb, touring an old Beijing neighborhood, checking out the Olympic stuff, but the part that I'm am most excited for is the day we visit the Great Wall. One of my friends here who has visited before said that it's "awesome" and "won't let you down" (of course now I'm terrified it'll let me down). But it sounds like it has a lot of the same characteristics of the Grand Canyon in that pictures don't do it justice.

We are getting on a train for twelve hours that's headed in the northern direction, so the weather is going to feel a little more like Maine rather than Shanghai where everyday it's a little more like Memphis (Probably hit 70 yesterday, starting to get a little humid too, but no rain for a while now so everyone is happy). Not everyone is thrilled about traveling back into winter, but I think everyone is excited not to worry about Chinese homework for a few days.

So I'll be writing next from Beijing, hope all is well.

-AL

Modern China

Once again my Aunt Lee Ann is supplying the material for my blogs. In my last post she commented that she didn't realize that China was a developing nation, and she cited a few movies that make the argument for China as a super modern nation very effectively. Actually last Friday I had to go to this conference for one of my classes where a whole bunch of people who know way too much about China and have all written books proving it were talking about Shanghai's future. One professor was talking about how Shanghai in particular has always been at the forefront of modernization in China and how it's often served as the back drop for science fiction novels and movies because a lot of the city looks like IT IS science fiction.

Do a google image search of "Shanghai, China" sometime and just look at the pictures of the skyline, it's packed with not just skyscrapers but with some strange looking architectural feats. The maglev train that runs from the the airport into the heart of the city "is the first commercial high speed mag-lev train in the world" traveling at the mind boggling rate of over 300 mph (Wikipedia). And Shanghai, or china in general show no signs of slowing down (that's a whole other post).

But China is a developing nation, even though you would probably never guess it if you visited the Bund (that's what all the pictures are of). Some of you might remember a China that was by all means a communist state with a government operated economy (as opposed to a capitalist system). I'm sure you've all heard of Chairman Mao, it wasn't long ago that his campaigns in many ways nearly destroyed an entire generation in attempt to industrialize rapidly. But in 1978 the Reform years began with Deng Xiaoping who basically reinvented China's economy, opening things up and giving birth to the rising power that China is today.

So in just over thirty years China has gone from being almost a non-factor in global terms to a rising power that, by the way, just recently took the title from the Japanese of owning the most US bonds. China's growth is nothing short of incredible but it is still a developing nation.

Why China?

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, been pretty busy and I haven't had a lot of ground shattering news to share.

For those who didn't see one of the comments on my last blog my Aunt Lee Ann asked me why I chose to come to China rather than a European nation, I think this is blog worthy.

I was actually talking to my mom the other day (via skype) about how I really didn't have much of a desire to go to Europe other than to say that I've been. To me Europe is very similar to the US in that we operate with similar political institutions, we have comparable wealth, and is a very 'secure' kind of place. When I chose to come to China I was looking to get outside of my element, I figured my background in developed, wealthy, western countries was all ready pretty good. For this reason developing or undeveloped countries are much more attractive to me (China is developing).

Now I really shouldn't be judging Europe considering that I've never been. There is certainly a lot of rich history, great food, drink, architecture and language, also you can apparently see a lot of Europe in one trip thanks to a great train system and the European Union. So maybe I'll visit Europe some day and love it, but till then I'm very happy with my decision to come to China.

Chinese Test

So I had my first Chinese test on Tuesday, got it back today and I did well by any standard as far as I'm concerned. I got a 93 (out of a hundred), which just so happened to be the highest grade in the class. I would call that "feichang hao" (very, very good). Just had to brag myself up a bit.

-AL

One year later...

So it's dawned on me while I procrastinate from writing Chinese characters for homework, that at the end of the week spring break will begin for my classmates at St. Lawrence. Now I distinctly remember my spring break last year not because I was lying on a beach in some tropical climate, or was traveling visiting friends or even doing nothing besides sleeping. One year ago from this weekend I was in the restaurant dusting, and dusting, and dusting (of course we did the project of putting in the big windows on the second floor in front of the restaurant). So last year I spent spring break dusting.


Of course at this point in time I hadn't even thought about studying abroad, let alone going to China. The idea of studying abroad wasn't anywhere near my radar screen. But here I am one year later in one of the most populated cities in the world (20 million, NYC has just under nine million inhabitants), learning Chinese, eating 'weird' food and living with people who four weeks ago had never met, or even knew existed.

It's amazing what can happen in a year.

-AL

whoops

So I've posted a new blog, but because I started it, saved it and wrote other ones since, it's down a few, just scroll down to check it out. It's titled Conservation.

-AL

The Gym

While I am abroad, I am also still a college athlete, and therefore expected to still be lifting and getting stronger. So I've joined a gym with two other SLU football players (and a bunch of other kids who are in our program), and we lift every Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. The gym is about a 30 minute walk from my home stay, but their is always a lot to look at so I don't mind too much, granted it is a lot further than at school or even at home.



The quality of the gym is fairly high, they have all of the necessities in terms of weights as well as a big multipurpose room where we can do abs and stretch. The weights of course are all in metric, so I don't know exactly what I'm doing for weight, but 'heavy' and 'light' are international measurements.

We definitely stand out when we lift, we are certainly all a lot bigger than almost everyone else in there, and with that we're usually lifting quite a bit more. The other day when I was getting ready to squat, I picked up the bar, stepped back and looked into the mirror and saw about five or six Asian faces staring back at me... it's really pretty weird.

One of the first days I was there I wanted to use some dumbbells that someone had put down, of course I couldn't actually ask him if I could use them because I can't speak hardly any Chinese, so I just kind of gestured toward them. He was very confused about what I wanted so a kid from the program who happened to be there at the same time and speaks really good Chinese interpreted for us. Afterward they were talking and apparently the Chinese guy thought I must of been some Russian weight lifter.

Anyways, a trip to the gym is always pretty eventful.

-AL

PS. I know I wrote about being able to teach at a migrant school, and I'm going to, but so many of us signed up that they split us into two groups, and my group doesn't start till April. So when April comes I'll be sure to write about that but till then it's just 'gym' stories.

Fabric Market

Just got back from shopping at the fabric market with two of my friends from SLU and my host sister. The fabric market is three levels of stores packed with vendors selling coats, suits, dresses, silk, ties, belts, jewelry and more. I was sure to bring a limited cash supply going in, but I made out much better than I thought I would, even considering the cheap prices.

I bought... four ties (100 quai), 1 cashmere coat (500 quai), 1 grey suit (330 quai) and two shirts (190 quai). Keep in mind that all has to be tailored because I am much larger than most Chinese men. Thats a grand total of 1,120 RMB, or about 160 USD, pretty good deal.

My sister said I did a good job of bargaining down the price of my jacket, they initially offered it to me at 680 RMB, I told them I could get the same thing for 500 (truth). They then tried to convince me that theirs was of much higher quality (truth), I told them I didn't care (lie). Anyways they went from 680 to 620 to 600, to 560 to 550 to 520 and then very reluctantly to 500 (yes!). 500 RMB is about 75 dollars.

Anyways we had a good time, also got some good quality time in with my Zhong Guo chichi(China Sister).

-AL

P.S. I've been neglecting to tell you all my Chinese name, Li Anze. Li is my family name and Anze literally translates to "safe water land." There is no symbolic reason why that's my name it just happens to sound the closest to 'Andrew Leiser.'

Conservation

For those of you who have not visited China (I think that might be everyone), I imagine that the image of China's environment you may have is not exactly flattering. You are right. Shanghai's air quality on a good day if worse than LA's on their worst (and much of that pollution is correlated to China). The poor air quality combined with the fact that the vast majority of Chinese people smoke has led to pulmonary disease becoming the number one killer of Chinese people.


But at least for my self when I think of air pollution back home I picture SUV's and pick up trucks, things that are very few in China. The pollution that China endures is mainly the product of 1) their very fast growing economy, many, many factories dot hundreds of cities along the east coast of China and with a poor incentive structure for environmental protection they are largely responsible for the gross pollution of the air and water (although tighter regulations are beginning). 2) The incredible population of China (1.3 BILLION people) has led to deforestation, causing flooding and all sorts of other problems. But the source of the problem is not individuals unlike what many would argue is the source of America's environmental woes.


Example: very, very few people drive cars. If you have a car in Shanghai, you do very well for yourself. And most of the cars that are on the road are fuel efficient, lots of VW's, Toyota's, some Chinese models and the elite drive BMW's and Mercedes.' But if you have a veihicle at all in this city it probably has only two wheels. Mopeds, bicycles, bikes with the wind up electric motors are all very common as well as fleets of motorcycle taxis (caught one on the way home from the gym the other day, beats the heck out of any roller coaster). There are very few SUV's and no pickups.

Also Chinese people generally don't heat their homes as I mentioned previously. There is no central heating system that I've been able to find yet and while homes seem to always have heaters in them, they are almost guaranteed to be off, meaning no electricity, meaning no burning of fossil fuels, meaning no pollution.


An example of Chinese conservation: In my host families home, their bathtub has a leak, rather than allowing it to drip down the drain (or fix it) they put a bucket under the faucet and catch the water. That water is then boiled and put in big thermoses around the house (probably three or for of them). The water from the thermos is then used to fill hot water bottles that we hold and sleep with to help stay warm, because they don't use any heat.

So why is it that Chinese people seem to take conservation very seriously, at least on an individual level? The simple answer is because to be wasteful is very expensive by Chinese standards. Apparently electricity rates during the day are through the roof, so the solution is to simply not use any, or as little as possible. But some would argue that there is a deeper more philosophical reason that has led to this. Confucian ideology is big into the environment, saving water, and nature, there are many sayings in Confucianism that support the protection of the environment from waste and destruction.

So is China's environment really, gross? Yes. Could it be worse? Definitely.

-AL

Funny story.

So the other night at dinner my host mother abruptly stood up and walked into the kitchen, she then proceeded to bring out a pair of my boxers. My host mother (voluntarily) does my laundry (I couldn't tell her not to if I wanted to, my Chinese isn't that good). Anyways, she had been doing laundry that day and they have a washing machine in their apartment but no dryer, which fairly typical in Chinese homes apparently. So to dry the clothes they have a clothes line set up in the living room and they also hang some things out the windows. Of course I written about how cruddy the weather has been here, with all the rain. This makes drying clothes very difficult.

Soooooo, she appears with my boxers which don't appear to look quite right and then she holds them up and I can see that one whole leg is very singed. Apparently what I gathered through charades is that because it had been raining, and the clothes weren't drying she took my boxers into the kitchen and held them over the gas stove to speed up the drying process, she then dropped them and they caught on fire.

She seemed rather distressed about the situation, I thought it was pretty hilarious. She kept say "Wo dui bu qi, wo dui bu qi" (I'm sorry, I'm sorry) and I kept responding "meguanxi, meguanxi" (no big deal, no big deal).

Anyways I think it's pretty funny. These types of stories are definitely part of the home stay experience.

-AL

Street Food

So after the first 10 days or so of being cautious and not trying any of the food available from various street vendors around the school I have come to try and love this food option. Fearful of poor sanitation and to quell my fathers worries of me catching some food borne illness, I did not knowingly eat any street food. However, my host mother feeds me the same thing every morning with few exceptions, and it is always very good. Like clock work she leaves the house about 8:40 and is back at 9 with a piping hot breakfast consisting of a bundt (not sure how to say or spell it, but I think that's right) which is like dough stuffed with a pork filling. She also brings me something else, which kind of reminds me of Mexican food, it's a little spicy and crunchy, with like a very thin 'egg-crepe' like wrap.

Walking to school one morning I noticed that people were buying the same thing that I had just eaten for breakfast from a street vendor. Seeing this I decided that it must be ok for me to start becoming slightly more adventurous with my dining choices. So far my favorite vendor food is this dough that they fry on a skillet with an egg, then they wrap a hot dog (or something that looks like a hot dog) and brush a little bbq-esque sauce. All available for five quai, or about 75 cents.

Of course I eat two squares at least at home with my Chinese family so I don't have too many chances to indulge. And just for the record I am yet to be ill on this trip from anything that I've ate or drank.

-AL

Got back from the "small" city of Nanjing this afternoon (population 5 million) I also found out the Pat's traded Vrabel. Nanjing as I mentioned previously was the former capital of China back in the day, so it has a very rich history. We left Shanghai on Friday morning and drove the four hours (I had to pee very badly for at least two of those), and arrived at the Nanjing massacre memorial hall.

In 1937 (I think) the Japanese invaded China taking over Shanghai, Nanjing and other surrounding areas. When the Japanese forces reached Nanjing the Chinese army seeing that they were no match for the superior Japanese forces had already started to retreat, leaving civillian men, women and children unprotected. The result is the Nanjing massacre, where 300,000 Chinese were killed in a six month period (it's a very gloomy museum). Saw lots of artifacts and skeletons, but it was a good experience overall.

After visiting the museum we were able to check into our hotel, which was a very nice place, and I preceded to take a very long, very hot shower. Had the evening to ourselves and went to dinner with a group of classmates.

Saturday Morning we started by getting on the bus and driving to Sun-yat-Sen's Mausoleum. Sun-yat-sen was the leader of the democratic movement in China and the founder of the KMT which is now the government in place in Taiwan. His tomb is set up in this 'mountain' that you take a bunch of steps to get to, great views from above, except we couldn't really see the city because of the weather.

After that we checked out a Buddist temple, and climbed up a big Pagoda and got an even better view. The best part about this location was it was tucked away in the woods and there was a lot of green space rather than the concrete that makes up all of Shanghai.

Overall good trip (it didn't rain or snow!) had fun hanging out with the classmates and seeing the sites but now it's back to work learning Chinese.

-AL

One more...

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of playing basketball against some of ECNU's (East China Normal University) finest. Myself and three other kids from the states went down to the outdoor courts they have in the center of campus. It's a pretty nice playing surface for outdoors (think Tremont gym), they probably have at least ten hoops lining a fenced in area. Once we figured out how to get in we didn't have too much trouble finding people to play against (I think the assumption is that because we're American we must be good).

They play a little differently than we do back home, four on four on this particular court, make it take it, but no checking of the ball at the top of the key. Also if the ball went out of bounds you take it out like you would in a regulation game rather than taking it to the top of the key to check it first. Game's to five.

In our first game... we got stomped. We stepped onto the court cold, and I think we underestimated our opponents. They were blocking shots, playing super aggressive and overall making us look very bad. We lost 5-0.

This meant that we had to sit the next game, which was good for us, we talked strategy in English since no one could understand us, next game in we represented the states well and won 5-3.

It did get really physical later on, we had a bloody nose, cut lip, scratched eye lid, but no one was being malicious so it was alright with everyone, Chinese and American.

There were some very decent players there for sure, and not short at all, probably as tall as 6'4" and really long arms. This one kid would post me up and get the ball about 10 feet from the hoop, I was playing wicked tight defense and he would just spin away from me and drain a fade away jumper...unreal. Of course there were also some kids who just stunk.

Every time one the American players made a good move resembling an NBA player the Chinese team on the side line would shout out the NBA players name, "Tony Parker," "Kobe," "LeBron," (picture it with a Chinese accent and it's pretty funny). I was named, more for my size than basketball abilities "Shaq."

We probably played for an hour and half or so, it was fun to interact with the Chinese students they were very warm and welcoming toward us and invited us back to play again sometime.

-AL

I'm on a roll

The weather here has been less than pleasant. It's not brutally cold, probably in the 40's most days, but is a raw kind of cold. Combined with the rain that has plagued us I believe everyday since I've been here, walking around can be a pain (and we walk everywhere). Also if you happen to get caught in the rain and decide that you can't stand to walk any longer it's nearly impossible to find a cab.

Because of this persistent rain people carry umbrellas constantly. Although I never use one at home or school, I have graciously accepted one the my host mom has lent to me. However it seems that even when it's not raining many Chinese people still use their umbrellas as they walk around the city. It's pretty odd.

Along with it raining everyday, I'm yet to see the sun shine in Shanghai, not sure if it can through the smog that lingers over the city. We were told that it will probably start to warm up in about a month and everything will start to bloom and be very pretty. This "pretty" state lasts for about two months through May and then June becomes unbearably hot (thankfully I leave the last of May).

I guess I shouldn't complain about the weather though, I could be home shoveling snow!

-AL

Crazy

Have to tell this crazy story. Walking to the gym earlier and there was a moped going by with three people on it, this is fairly common as usually a small child sits on the lap of the driver closest the the handlebars, an adult drives and either an adult or child sit in the rear. It appeared as though this was a family with the son in the front, dad driving and mom on the back.

From a distance you could see the mother was holding something above her head, and it wasn't an umbrella (It rains a lot here and people riding mopeds while holding umbrellas is fairly common as well. As they got closer I and the people I was with relized that she was holding an IV bag (like from the hospital) over her head and it was connected to the boy's arm in the front.

Strange if you ask me. A day in the life of Shanghai.

-AL

Chinese

Sorry I haven't written in so long, partly the reason for this is because classes started on Monday. I'm taking four classes, Chinese Modern History, Cultural Currencies (it's a Litt class), International relations and Chinese 1.

So far I think I'm going to like all my classes (I'm yet to have my International Relations class), nice part about the Chinese school system is every weekend is a three day weekend (no classes Friday).

My most intense class by far is going to be Chinese, while my other classes meet for only three hours a week, Chinese classes meet eight hours a week, plus two hours with a tutor, plus the homework, which is not easy. Everyday we are quizzed on the homework from the night before which is made up of characters, and recognition of syllables and their tones. The reason why Chinese is so difficult to learn is because first of all there is no alphabet, only the characters. Each character is it's own word (although parts of characters can go together to make up similar words). Also Chinese uses tones. There are four in Mandarin (five technically but the fifth one's neutral so I don't count it), other variations of Chinese (Cantonese for example) have as many as nine tones. So depending on how you say the same syllables determines what word you actually say. For example the syllable "tang" have four different meanings based on how you say it.

So needless to say I've been spending a lot of time practicing characters, listening to CD's and meeting with a tutor that they give each of us. Fortunately tomorrow they are taking us to Nanjing about four hours from here. It is the old south capital (nan- south, jing- capital), should be pretty cool, although the weather may not make it as pleasant (It might snow).

I'll try to write again soon, hope all it well.

-AL

Host Family

So on Wednesday I moved in with my host family, I have a father, mother and older sister. They have a good size apartment very close to school (it's like a 10 minute walk to my classes), their level of English is comparable to my level of Chinese, in other words, not good. They are very sweet people though and have been very welcoming of me into their home. We spend a lot of time pointing at various objects, them saying it me repeating and them laughing (I can say, chopsticks, bowl, cup, very good, hello, goodbye and thank you fairly well).

The living conditions are pretty comparable to that of the US, but at the same time there are some differences for sure. For instance they have a nice plasma TV with surround sound and a big fish tank, but there is no shower curtain. Also there is no central heating in China (not that I've found at least) so instead of baseboard heaters they have heater/AC units on the walls, but they never use them. I can literally see my breath in the apartment, I swear some days it's warmer outside than in.

The reason for this is apparently because utilities, electricity in particular is very, very expensive. Before moving into our hosts family the staff at CIEE made sure that it was clear that we should make certain to turn off light and switches of power strips when we leave a room. I'm starting to get use to this no heat thing, I definitely did not bring enough warm clothes, but I have to keep reminding myself that it will probably be uncomfortably warm in a short month.

Another different and perhaps concerning feature of the host family life is that after dinner, rather than clearing the leftovers (which we always have, they make way too much food) they simply leave it on the table and but a mosquito net over it. We had shrimp (I didn't eat it mom) the first night I was here on Wednesday, it's Saturday now and the same shrimp are still on the table. I guess it's so cold that there is no need to refrigerate.

Overall been having a lot of fun with them so far, they have been very kind and are taking good care of me.

P.S. sorry about the lack of photos, I can't figure out how to put them on and I tried to e-mail a few home the other day and it wasn't going to happen, the Internet connection just isn't that good. I'll see if I can't get it to work later on.

-AL

Migrant School

Just came back from a local migrant school in Shanghai. The migrant school is for students whose parents are migrant workers, meaning they come from more rural parts of China to work in Shanghai, not surprisingly these people are very poor. We visted the school in preparation for when some of us go to teach English once a week.

The students were very excited to see us and shouted out lots of "hi"s, they were all very cute. I'll probably have a lot more to blog about on this topic as I spend more time with them in the weeks to come.

-AL

Chinese Food

Got some time to kill before going and exploring the French Concession. Food and food service here has been very interesting so far. Chinese food in China is not surprisingly very different than American Chinese food, there is not the sesame chicken or pork fried rice that are staples of American Chinese food that we have been able to find so far. The food is not so much greasy but oily, dishes that are a combination of meat (mostly pork) and vegetables are sauteed, I have not been able to find any sort of raw vegetables in the time I've been here. Breakfast is a little strange, there isn't that much variation in my opinion between the three meals, we have had fried eggs and hard boiled eggs at breakfast each morning, cereal exists but is expensive by Chinese standards and coffee for those who want it is hard to come by.

There are also a lot of dishes consisting of chewy/bread type balls that are sometimes filled with pork or bean paste. They're pretty good too.

Eating out is pretty cool, Chinese food is shared family style, often there is a large "lazy susan" in the center of the table where the food is placed and then you dish a variety of foods onto your small plate. Napkins are hard to come by, usually they give you the equivalent of a wet wipe to use at the start of the meal, but no dry napkins for the course of the meal. They also only give you one menu (I assume usually only one person orders for the table) and then the waitress stands by the table until signaled to come take the order.

Bought a bottle of wine at dinner last night and we were asked if we wanted red or white, but they did not offer us a selection to choose from but simply brought us a bottle and poured it all before any of us tasted. Not sure is this typical custom or just because we are American.

One positive for sure is the food is certainly cheap, haven't paid more than four dollars for a full meal yet.

Feel free to leave me questions and comments, I'll write again soon.

First Days.

Hello followers, I'm here safe in Shanghai after a long day of traveling (30 hrs total), having a great time so far. There are 119 US students here from all over (ND, GW, Georgetown, Texas, Miami, UMass and others) theres a lot to see, trying hard to observe and take it all in.

Yesterday was the first day of orientation, lots of lectures and inital guidelines. Best part of the day was traveling to a homestay to have lunch, it just so happens that it was the family that I'm staying with. Great spread of food, not sure I'll be losing weight as predicted, the family seems very nice and happy to meet me. THEY DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH. Of course I do not speak Chinese so the incentive for me to learn quickly is greater. I did manage to buy a cell phone for use in China all on my lonesome, which I thought was a pretty good acomplishment.

Today is a lot of meetings, the US consulate, local doctors and professors coming to tell us about their classes... registration is tonight.

Overall its going very well, moving in with my new family tommorw evening, and I think I'm over the jet lag.... one other thing, went to dinner last night w/ two buddies from school, less than $4 a piece!!!

I'll be sure to write again soon.

Pre- Trip

Hello all, at this point I am still at home waiting to depart for Shanghai, China in a short nine days. While in China I will be studying at East China Normal University and living with a host family. It is my goal to use this blog to share pictures and stories with you, my friends in family for the three and half months that I'm am gone. My hope is to post at least once a week but I make no promises now. Can't wait to start sharing my adventure with all of you very soon!