Other Languages' Words I Wish We Had In English

I know many of you are bilingual; so cool! I wish I spoke another language fluently/native-like. I don't. But I do like adopting the words I love in other languages into English, without translating them. I've talked here before about a few words I wish we had equivalents for in English. Here are a couple more:

1. Sancha

Origin: Spanish. Means: 'The girl on the side.' We don't have a great translation for it into English. Concubine? Mistress? Illicit Lover? None of those really capture how I heard sancha used in everyday conversation, which in San Antonio, was frequently. (What this says about San Antonians, I'm not sure.) Anyway, I always heard it used as a girl on the side you flirt with and have feelings for, but not necessarily doing anything about. Although you might be. It covers a wide range of doing-ness or not. But if you are in a monogamous relationship, you probably don't want your SO to have a sancha.

2. Ganbei

Origin: Mandarin. Means: Empty your glass in one shot. We do have some equivalent words in English, such as shooting, shot-gunning, chugging, etc. But ganbei is a more elegant word, I think. (Pronounced 'gawn bay.') It's used in the same manner as our word 'Cheers!' but it always means you have to empty your glass all at once. It doesn't have the frat-boy overtones of our words, it's just friendly and fun. The Chinese can drink, yo.

3. Hao bu hao?

Origin: Mandarin. Means: literally, 'good not good?' but is used to find out if someone finds your idea agreeable. It's shorthand for, "Is what I've proposed agreeable/ok with you?"  Of course in English was can say, "Okay?" But there are so many ways to intonate this word it can be difficult to make sure your tone is coming across the way you mean it to, especially in writing. To me, 'hao bu hao' is more clear in it's meaning. When I text, I often start typing this and have to delete it if I am talking to non-Mandarin speaking friends. It's the first thing I want to teach my friends, so I can use it with them. I love it. (Pronounced 'how bu how.'

You guys, this alphabet thing is getting teeedddiiiooous. And judging from the number of comments, it is for you, too! Turns out I have far fewer interesting things to say when I am not talking about China. Which is great, because China is infinitely interesting to me! I SHOULD be far less interesting than China. Also, I don't like having to do things in order. So, I hereby resolve to finish my alphabet project at will, and in any order I choose, as long as I hit them all. That's much more my style.

Hope you all have a great week!

Moving Forward

I was going to write today about China, but you know what? I realize my memories will never mean as much to other people as they do to me. And that's okay. I think if you've read my other posts, you have a good idea of what I loved, and what was difficult, about China.

Sometimes I miss China so much my heart aches. Sometimes I'm relieved to be back in America where I understand the culture (although this took several months-- reverse culture shock is a real thing). I'm feeling much more comfortable here.

Some big changes for me coming up. China did a good job preparing me for the rest of my life. It was a graduate course in flexibility, creativity, strength, courage, acceptance and doing things you never thought possible.

I read an analogy recently that made a lot of sense to me, so I want to share it: if you think of life like a river, a lot of us are preoccupied with where we are in the river: what we have materially, or relationships, what we've achieved or acquired. But really, what matters is the direction you're heading. If you are constantly trying to hold onto things that are not moving you forward, you are expending a lot of energy fighting the natural ebb and flow of life. What you hold onto isn't what supports you in your journey forward. But when you know what supports you, and you can let go of what you hold onto that isn't supporting you or moving you forward, you are more able to progress toward your life's goals and purpose.

So, I'm making a conscious effort to let go of the things that aren't moving me forward, that I am expending energy holding onto instead of being supported by. I wrote a list and I think every day a little bit about letting those things go. Some are mental, some are physical, but I am now focusing my attention on moving forward. So I'm going to keep more of those memories of China to myself, in my past, where they belong as a happy part of my life.

Ultimately, this picture is what China was all about for me: my students. I taught a lot of girls, and I hope they  know their education means something, that they have value in this world. If they believe that, I did my job. Based on the good hearts of my students, I have high hopes for the future of China.

10 Things I Love About Life in America

Three months in, a few things I love about being back in America:

1. Walking into a store that has clothes and shoes in my size, and no one telling me I am too big or fat for their store.
2. Buying produce without having to weigh it first at a chaotic produce counter where if you don't shove to the front, you never get your stuff weighed.
3. No one screaming "Hello!" in my face as I'm walking by.
4. Super clean public bathrooms!
5. Everything smells so good. (Americans are very particular about smells, aren't we?)
6. Indoor climate control everywhere you go.
7. People smile at you and hold the door*.
8. Target.
9. So much cheese!
10. No firewall, no need to censor what I'm Googling, and I can take pictures of whatever I want.**

*Stores in my part of China don't have doors, just an open wall, but no one smiles.

**In the video I posted recently of my neighborhood, you might not have noticed I was being very careful to keep the camera on my side of the street. That's because across the street was a large firehouse, which in China is a military installation. You're not allowed to photograph that kind of thing, and they had an armed military officer at all times outside the firehouse keeping guard. You always need to be careful in China where you're pointing your camera.

Tomorrow, 10 things I miss most about living in China.

Giving Back In Your Honor

It is not an exaggeration to say I would not have made it through my Peace Corps experience without the support of folks back home. So many people did so much for me. I'm putting together this week care packages for Thanksgiving/Christmas for some folks over in China; it means a lot for me to be able to give back for all the kindness shown towards me. It's so fun picking stuff out, knowing it'll be a treat for them. Thanks again to everyone who supported me, with packages and warm thoughts and kind words. I'm paying it forward in your honor.

"The Girl" and Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Soap

In Chongqing there aren't many foreigners compared to other big, populated in cities in China. This led to 'Panda Syndrome': we were often treated like special pandas at the zoo. Sounds nice, but really? It's not. I learned I could never handle being famous.

One night a few of us Americans were having dinner with some Chinese students. They made a dish for us called 'hui guo rou' known in English as 'twice-cooked pork.' Someone asked what the dish was called and I answered with the correct name. The students started teasing him for not knowing the name and then one of the students said, "The girl knew what it was."  The girl? The girl teacher? The girl version of an American? The girl what? It bothered me at the time because it was a bit dehumanizing and I was fighting for every bit of my humanity, but now it's kinda funny. Of course the guys who were there started calling me The Girl. It ended one night at dinner when J. was trying to pay for our meals: "Come on, at least let me look cool in front of The Girl." I put my foot down, no more calling me The Girl! I hated that nickname. POSTCRIPT: After reading your comments, I feel like kind of a jerk for thinking this way!

Then this past summer when I went to visit T. at the teaching project, I found out after I left the students asked, "Is the girl coming back?" Sigh. So now I choose to believe this was their way of saying I was special. After all, I never heard anyone say "The Boy." Yeah, special.
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A product I love: Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap. I love it so much I packed a bottle to China with me. A little bit goes a long way; I had to throw it out when I came home, I didn't even use it all.  I have eczema, so I steer clear of soaps and detergents (whenever possible) that irritate my skin. I bought a small foaming handsoap pump, dumped out the soap that came with it and mixed up my own soapy mixture with Dr. Bronner's. They also sell it in bar form. The liquid version is very inexpensive because it lasts so long. $6 for two years worth of soap is quite a deal! It's a hippie soap with all kinds of kookie writing on the bottles, but it's a good product. I recommend it.

Youngest and Oldest Kids: Adventures of the Chongqing Nanny

I get along well with youngest children; most of my best friends and men I've been out with are youngest kids. I'm an oldest, so perhaps it's just an easy paradigm to fall into. My second year, most of the new volunteers assigned to Chongqing were guys. (New volunteers arrive every July; because we serve for two years, you serve with a different group your first and second years.) And almost all of them were youngest children.

Because I'd already been in Chongqing a year when the new volunteers arrived, I was happy to take on the role of 411 if they needed it. I told them about getting around the city and food and shopping and whatever else they needed to know. But then I started getting calls from restaurants, asking me to talk to their server to order their dinner. One of the girls sometimes called me and she was always "Hey, can you help me out? I've tried and it's not working." But the boys were like, "Hi, order my food, 'k thanks bye." I started to get annoyed by the boys. I started to feel like I wasn't their friend, I was their nanny. On the one hand, it was flattering they thought I knew so much. On the other hand, I'm not your mom. It's funny now to me how easy it was for us to fall into this pattern, because both sides were willing to take on the role of youngest/oldest. (Yes, I am stereotyping-- not all youngest or oldest kids act like this. But we did.)

I finally told them I felt like their nanny, not their friend, and I didn't like that. They started making an effort to make sure they knew I was their friend first, nanny second (haha), balance restored. Even now I sometimes still get emails asking for help with something Chongqing-related. I'm happy to help out. And they taught me more about being very laid-back, carefree and fun-loving. Youngest and oldest: it's a dynamic that works.

Happy Halloween! Hope you have a great time. Be safe! Here's a picture from last year I don't think I've shared before. He didn't know what to be for Halloween, so like a good nanny I took him in at the last minute, gave him my Chinese silk dragon robe, cut off the sleeves of this t-shirt, blew dry his just-washed gym shorts with my hair-dryer and gave him a (make-up based) black eye. I also taped up his hands but it disappeared by the time this picture was taken. I had to rush him past the guards outside my apartment because at the time they were still housing swine flu quarantinees in my building. But look at him: would YOU mess with this boxer? I still love the memory of us trying to get a taxi in our Halloween getups. Crazy Americans.

Quiet Time and Meditation

What do you do for quiet time?

I like my quiet time very early in the morning. In China I had the habit of waking up verrry early because the birds that lived in the bamboo growing outside my window also got up early. Older people did daily tai chi in the courtyard outside my apartment at the break of dawn. I loved seeing their quiet, uniform movements. It inspired me to find quiet time of my own.

I began the habit of sitting quietly every morning on my mat, thinking about what was important to me that day and what I wanted myself to know. I hesitate to call it 'meditation' because I wasn't trying to clear my mind, have some kind of experience in enlightenment, etc. I just wanted to focus my energies and be aware of what I was bringing into myself in the best way possible.

Now that I am home, I've had more time to focus on this process. I downloaded some podcasts about meditation that focus on breathing and relaxation. I've been reading a book my good friend J. sent me about forgiveness of yourself and others, and being positive. It sounds new age-y, but it's an important message. I started paying attention to the messages I send myself, and so many of them were negative. I've made a conscious effort to change that. I guess I always felt if I weren't really hard on myself, I wouldn't be a better person? I'm realizing that when you send yourself positive messages, you feel inspired to change things in a positive way. Positive reinforcement works with yourself, too!

Focused quiet time to reflect isn't easy. It requires you to give up a lot of your own ego. That has been the hardest part for me. Often I cry after this kind of meditation, but I think it's a good thing; it's releasing all those hard feelings I've had for myself and others for so long. If you don't have quiet time for yourself now, I challenge you to start taking 1 minute, then 2 minutes, and so on, and think about what message you want yourself to know. You are really smart, incredible people. I hope you all believe that about yourself.

Fish Sellers and My Block in Chongqing (Yangjiaping)

I’m going through pictures and videos I took while in China, and I’ll be posting the ones that I think share a lot about what it was like to live in China and Chongqing and that I hope will be of some interest to you. They’re all short videos, 2 minutes or less.

This first one was a common sight on the sidewalk at night; small sidewalk restaurants sold fresh fish pan-broiled in hot spices with veggies. As you can see, there is a basin of oxygenated water keeping the fish alive. You pick out the fish you want and the guy weighs it on the scale; you pay by weight. As you can also see, the fish was flopping around too much. It really shocked me to see this the first few times, and then I got used to it. When he chucks it down the sidewalk, he’s throwing it to the person who will cook it. I know we think it’s gross to kill and eat meat on the spot, but without access to good refrigeration, this was the safest way to eat meat in China for a long time, and now it’s tradition.



This second video is of the block where I lived; it begins as I step through the main gate where my apartment was located, and continues to the end of the block. The thing I remember most is all the noise of this street. This was during the lunch/naptime block, so there were fewer people on the street.

This block is where I caught buses to go to the train station, bus station and to V's house and the entertainment/shopping district of Shapingba, where a few other friends lived. (I had to cross the street and walk a ways further to take buses to R.'s and T.'s homes.) This block is also where I bought beauty items, tea drinks, street snacks and other misc. items. Crossing at the end of the block led to the subway station and the Yangjiaping (my 'hood) main entertainment/shopping district, where we went for the big grocery store, bank, movies and nicer restaurants. I spent a considerable amount of time walking this stretch of my city, and I made friends with some of the sellers who set up on this block.



If you have any questions about anything you see in the videos, please ask and I will answer in the comments.

Traditional Chinese Comb Gift, Neat Thermos

I didn't know before I lived in China that wooden combs are a traditional gift to give to girls/women, especially as a goodbye gift.

At the tourist neighborhood of CiQiKou in my city, there were shops selling decorative wooden combs and hairpins, but I didn't think much of them, I thought it was just a tourist trap item. But in the days before I left Chongqing, I received several nice wooden combs as a going away gift.



They’re made of wood and painted with enamel. All the combs I received came in these nice boxes and were made by the same company; I’m not sure if this company is well-known for combs, or if they are the ones who sell in my area of China. One student wrote cute little messages for me all over on the box itself:



The combs are often stylized, such as this yellow comb I use on a daily basis and is carved to look like a fish:



All of the female volunteers I know were given combs as gifts, so I think it’s a pretty common practice, but one I’d never heard of. I asked someone why a comb was a traditional gift and she said, “Because it’s useful and beautiful.” Yes, they are both of these things! I find the wood makes my hair look more smooth than using a plastic comb, too.

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My Chinese friend Cassie gave me this neat little pale pink/gray thermos as a going away gift; she knows I took a liking to the Chinese custom of drinking hot water and tea, so this was a really thoughtful gift. It’s extremely lightweight, well-sized for your hand and the thermos lid has this neat screw-off compartment for holding dry tea, instant coffee or any kind of mixer. Ingenious! It’s made by Tayohya, but I couldn’t find any stores selling these in the U.S. online. Maybe in Chinatown I’ll come across one. I use it constantly, it’s very well-suited to being carried around.

Gratitude And Socks

You guys, let me be honest for a minute: the past month has been tough.

I gave up my apartment in San Antonio to go to China, and just before leaving I moved all my stuff to my mom’s. So that’s where I am while I job search, at my mom’s. This is not a bad thing at all; I’m closer to my brother and sister and extended family, and my mom is easy to live with. BUT, it’s certainly not where I want or expected to be. I’ve had to change my attitude the past week or so; I’m choosing to be grateful for gifts and opportunities I have in my life right now, rather than focus on what (I think) I lack. One of the great things is that my mom lives in a colder climate than San Antonio, so I get to indulge my love of socks.

I LOVE socks—cute and versatile and less expensive than buying shoes and purses. In San Antonio I hardly ever got to wear socks because it’s just too warm most of the year; I had an extensive collection of chanclas, but hardly any socks.

In Chongqing, I wore tall socks all winter long because it was so bitingly wet and cold and I didn’t have indoor heat. My sister sent me some great thigh-high gray socks, and I had a nice collection of argyle over-the-knee socks. It was popular in Chongqing to wear thick ‘skin colored’ (meaning, Han skin coloring) footless tights with socks over the top; I did this look with skirts and chunky heels mostly:



I wore through most of my socks and threw them away when I was packing to come back. Now, with winter approaching, I get to replace them!

Some of my favorite socks I get at REI; Smartwool socks are very warm and long-lasting—these were the only socks I took with me to China that made it back with me. I highly recommend them, and they come in both cute and functional. This pair is now on my wish list:



You can see some more here.

The Joy of Socks and Amazon also carry great over-the-knee and knee-high socks. Target, too, but I couldn’t find any online today.

Happy socking!