Rebecca A. Foster

1. I have never been so white in my life. I don't like it. There is no sunshine here, so it's very difficult to get any kind of tan. Of course, this is a selling point with the locals; because white skin is prized as the most beautiful type of skin in Chinese culture, people are always saying Chongqing girls are the most beautiful in the country because they get no sun and it's very humid here.  Well, I have to admit part of this is true: my skin as never been so clear and moisturized. On the other hand, I don't like being this white!  What I would give for a tanning bed. 2. The stuttering. Those of you who don't know me in person don't know that on occassion I stutter a bit. It started about 2 years ago. It's always so weird to me when it happens, I just cannot get the word out that is in my brain!  Anyway, it's still happening on occassion. Does this happen to everyone? I'm just letting you know so when it turns out I have a brain tumor, none of yo...

One of my favorite things about walking around in China are the super-cute, chubby babies everywhere you go. Families don't use babysitters or strollers, so babies are carried in their parents or grandparents arms all hours of the day and night. Small toddlers are allowed to waddle around in front of their parents and grandparents. It's nice that the kids recieve so much direct contact with adults, hearing their speech and being watched over. Of course, there is also the concern here that children are growing up very spoiled. All I see is the cuteness, though. Btw, the traditional family unit here is 1 child, 2 parents, and 2 grandparents. Both mothers and fathers are expected to work full time, and the grandparents spend all day with the child. So there is none of the 'work/life' balance concerns you read so much about (or experience first-hand) in the west. The parents work to support the family, the grandparents raise the child. And the cycle continues when the chil...

I've noticed that some of the English translations of Chinese sound rather nefarious. For example, my almonds, which say on the packaging, 'Absolutely you can not resist such palatable food!' I feel like someone will be watching over my shoulder to make sure this is true.  There is no Chinese equivilant of 'yes' and 'no' because they think it's bad to just say how you feel. It's not really a big deal, you just repeat the verb in either the positive or negative form for yes or no. If someone asks you if you want something, you reply 'want' or 'don't want' or whatever the verb is. But they think Westerners are always very direct, so I've noticed the English translations are very direct in a way the original Chinese is not.  I always tell my students, hey, Americans ARE direct, but we also have things such as tact, manners and good taste too. And I've seen so much public fighting and yelling here, I don't really believe a...

It rains a lot here, but there are hardly ever thunderstorms. I miss them. 

We had a Peace Corps Volunteers party for St. Pat's day here in Chongqing. About 20 people came. We are all spread out over this huge city of 13 million people, so it's nice when we can all get together. I am wearing the Miss St. Patrick's Day crown. You can click any of the pictures for the full size. First, me and Chris. He is from NYC and very sweet to me, he gave me a heavy coat when it got cold here suddenly and I didn't have one. I would LOVE to hear his students' English; I always say when I meet a student and they have a NYC accent, I'll know Chris was their teacher.  Me and Austin. He is a maniac, the most extroverted person I have ever met. We also went to Xi'an together. He lives about 2 hours away but came in for the party.  Me and Phil. We love Gossip Girl, so we are doing our best Chuck Bass impressions here. 

I've noticed when I watch American movies, television shows, etc., I pay a lot of attention to what people are eating. Attention as in, "Oh, that hamburger looks good! Wait, what did she just say? Oh, pizza too!  Yum..." and I have no idea what the plot is or what's going on because I am transfixed by the food. Even foods that appear to be the same, sodas, chips, etc., have different flavors and formulas. Don't get me wrong, it's fun trying new things, but I miss *my* food sometimes. Here is one example of how much I miss it: one of the volunteers here in Chongqing plays rugby with some other expats. They play against an expat team in Chengdu (about four hours away) and THAT team is made up of marines stationed at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu; they guard the consolate. I told him I would come to watch one of his games as long as it was against Chengdu.  He was teasing me about wanting to date a marine, but I was thinking that maybe a marine could get me ...

I've been reading about I Ching , the ancient Chinese philosophy of the 64 guiding principles (called hexagrams) of life. As I understand it, the underlying philosophy of the I Ching is that life is in a constant state of flux; happiness comes from understanding how to roll with the punches and make the most of change.  My favorite part (so far) of the I Ching is hexagram #56, The Traveler. (Also sometimes translated as The Wanderer and The Sojourner).  This principle states that at some point in life, we are all travelers. Some people stay in this state for a short while, while others become lifelong travelers, constantly looking for more they can learn and accomplish, and never feeling committed to a certain place. They are cautioned to set limits for themselves and be humble in their desires in order to find contentment. And to respect those they come into contact with on their travels.  Knowing that the ancient sages believed some people would stay in the traveler state far ...

I think men and women who care for each other, whether friends, romantic relationships, or whatever, should do things for each other to show their care and concern. But, I'll admit it is sometimes hard for me to know what these things should be, for several reasons.  First, men are different and what one guy likes, another guy may not care about at all. Duh. But, most of us don't broadcast this information right up front. So until you spend enough time together to know what they like, it's basically a blind stumble.  Second, yeah, yeah, I KNOW what men like. It's pretty easy to play to the lowest common denominator. But, surely there has to be more than that? Right? If you only try the lowest common denominator stuff, you might never get to the second tier, personalized stuff. I think the second tier stuff is great. I don't want a relationship without it.  Third, well, some men are just not great at giving feedback on what they like and don't like. I'm tryin...

I got this email today from our school secretary regarding time off in May. It is so very Chinese, I just had to share it. " We have May Day off in May. It should be 3 days. But now I can tell you the exact dates. Most probably from May 1st to May 3rd. It is pretty much impossible to get an exact, definite answer to anything, because no one wants to be left with egg on their face if things change. Or get in trouble for making their superiors look bad if things change. So everyone just accepts a constant state of 'maybe'  and 'probably.' As frustrating as it sounds, I've pretty much learned to deal with it. In fact, I've even learned to use it to my advantage. I commit to nothing here!  Another cultural difference: when you read the above, you'd think we get three extra days off, right? No, my Western friends. The three days includes the two days we already get off for the weekend. In my mind, I really get just one day off, Friday. In their minds, it...

I had a blog that I kept for my family when I lived in Texas, and my dad used to leave comments on it. After he died, I couldn't bear to delete the blog, but I couldn't bear to write on it anymore, either. Too many memories. I still have the blog, but it's set to private. Sometimes I still go and read his comments, even though reading them makes me sad. I really miss him. 

Stampers* is the foot version of the Clapper, that thingy where you can turn the lights on with a clap of your hands. With stampers, you stamp your foot really hard and the lights come on. These kinds of lights are installed all over here in stairwells and hallways of buildings. It's actually a good feature, it saves electricity when no one has walked through for a while. After you stamp your foot really hard two or three times, the lights stay on for 10 minutes or so, enough time to let you walk through the area with full light.  But the other night I got into my apartment and started stamping my foot to turn on the lights in  my apartment; I don't have stomper lights in my apartment, I have to actually hit the light switch. I had a little laugh to myself when I realized what I was doing. I am going to come back to the U.S. and stomp my feet in dark places out of habit! Just call me Thumper.  *I made this word up. 

In Spring of 2007, I went on a solo vacation to Ottawa and Montreal, Canada. Ottawa is a beautiful and charming city, I highly recommend stopping by if you are in the area. Although Montreal is a bit more cosmopolitan and well-known, I actually preferred Ottawa. If I had to do it again, I would cut back on the days I spent in Montreal and spend more time in Ottawa.  I stayed in Byward Market , which is within walking distance to Parliament, restaurants, shopping, pubs, the National Gallery of Art, the Musuem of Civilizations , the Canadian War Museum and an all around enjoyable entertainment district. There is also a large mall in the Market area, if you are intersted in that. I stayed at the Marriott Courtyard because I had some connections for a room discount, but there is also the Byward Blue Inn B&B  nearby. I walked by the Inn and it was very nice, on a great street. If I were going back, I'd have no problem staying at this B&B.  And, the Market is ringed with delicio...

Thank you all for your ghost support. No more shenanigans, so either I am sleeping more soundly, or the ghost realizes they can't fool with me. Sucka!  Now the real message of this post. I read this in a book about China today: "Another key factor in the emotional impact that China has on foreign residents is that no matter how long they may have been in China, whether years or a lifetime, they remain outsiders. For most foreigners this inability to merge themselves into the local scene and become one of the crowd, to not be stared at or singled out for special treatment or discriminated against for no reason other than the fact that they are not Chinese is a burden that eventually becomes unbearable."  It was like the author read my mind. And other Peace Corps Volunteers here. We had dinner together a few weeks ago and the main topic of conversation was how frustrating it is to be treated like an ignorant outsider in a place you consider a second home. At first it didn...

When people find out I was an English major, they often ask me what my favorite book is. I kinda hate this question. Would I be an English major if I had just one favorite book? No. I'm here reading 6 books a week because I love reading all kinds of books. So, in no particular order, five books I think are worth reading:  1. An American Childhood , by Annie Dillard.  Non-fiction, autobiographical. I had to read this book for AP English my senior year of high school and it is still one of my favorite comfort books. It's a memoir of her childhood in Pittsburg, and she writes about the way in which our views of life change and grow as we age. The best word I can think of to describe this book is 'charming.'  2. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers , by Mary Roach. Non-fiction. The title explains it well: it's a book about all the things dead bodies do, from medical school labs to car crash testing to forensic science. It's not creepy, I promise. It made me ap...

If they sell 'coffee and chocolate chip' Chips Ahoy cookies where you live, you should buy some and eat them right away. You're welcome. 

I believe in ghosts, but I'm not sure I believe in a ghost so bored they would play these kinds of tricks on me. But some very weird things happened in my house last night!   I set my alarm clock on the desk next to my bed, but in the morning I woke up without the alarm and noticed it was getting light outside. Hmmm. Not only did the alarm not go off, I couldn't even FIND the alarm clock! I finally found it on the other side of the desk, in the middle of the bottom shelf. I thought maybe I had knocked it onto the floor by accident in my sleep, but the bottom of the lower shelf? How did it get there?  And it was still ticking, but IT HAD LOST THREE HOURS. So my alarm clocked not only moved, it stopped keeping time for three hours, then started back up again. SO WEIRD. (And it's a new alarm clock, so the battery is only 6 weeks old or so.) Then I turned on my tv and the kids channel I always watch had been changed. I NEVER change the channel. For the past 6 weeks, it has alwa...

There is a Chinese character that means "Chinese character." I think it would be hilarious to get a tattoo of this character; kinda poke fun at all those "peace, love, harmony" character tattoos. Of course, only other Chinese speakers would get the joke, but I'd laugh pretty hard if I saw someone with this tattoo.

Have I mentioned they have really good, fresh tea here?  My favorite is Jasmine tea, followed by Oolong. Jasmine has a sweetness to it, and cold brewed Jasmine tea is very popular, you can buy it bottled everywhere on the street. The Chinese believe rashes and other skin problems are the result of excess humidity in your body, and that both Jasmine tea and spicy food cleanse your body of humidity. They also think meat adds to humidity. (Except duck, which cools it.) And hey, who's to say it doesn't? It would certainly explain why when I cut out meat, my eczema outbreaks went waaaay down. So maybe I'm a believer.  Oolong is an acquired taste, because I'll be honest, it tastes like the water leftover after you steam asparagus. But it really cleanses the palate. And in my opinion, curbs desire for sweets. The Chinese say oolong tea attaches to the fatty acids in the body, keeping them from being absorbed. They think drinking oolong tea is why so many Chinese people are so ...

Did you know that if you buy something in NYC and have it shipped out of state by the seller, there is no sales tax?  So instead of paying the tax, you can spend that money on ground shipping and save yourself the trouble of having to haul your purchases through the city, subway, airport etc. You'll have to wait about a week to get your stuff, but then you get the excitement all over again of discovering what you bought.  I did this on one of my trips to NYC that was mostly about shopping (back when I had a job that made money). At each store, I just had my purchases shipped back home for a small fee, and I was able to spend a week in NYC with only a carry-on sized bag. I always travel by subway in NYC when I am there for pleasure, so having a small bag is very convenient. (When I went for work I had paid car service, but most of the time I was there for pleasure.) 

I joke about how low my standards have gotten since I've been here, but it's really true. If things don't taste terrible, they're okay. A tv show is good as long as it is watchable. Restaurants aren't clean or not, what matters is if the food is edible. I noticed when I visiting the States just how low my standards had gotten when a friend of a friend was complaining about her napkin in a restaurant and I secretly wanted to tell her to shut up. At least she had a napkin! And we knew that most likely the food we were eating was not going to make us sick. We were way ahead of the curve.  So if I talk about something here and you wonder, wow, she likes that?  Just remember where I am. 

One of my favorite things to do these days is go to a pharmacy and just walk around and look at all the products. A lot of them have English translations, like the one I saw today, 'Kangaroo Essence.' I had never heard of taking kangaroo essence before, so I googled it. They extract if from kangaroo testicles and it's supposed to give you energy and fix your immune system. Hmmm...I'm leaving that one on the shelf. You can also buy sheep extract, I assume it's the same sort of thing.  They also sell animal placenta, I think it's supposed to keep your skin looking young. Air quotes animal air quotes. I don't want to know.  I think most things here won't hurt you, but they won't help you either. I did buy a potion that is supposed to relax you for sleeping. It tastes terrible!  But it does make me feel rather relaxed. I wonder if there's opium in it. Grandpa (a pharmacist) used to give us opium cough medicine, so I feel okay about taking it for medi...

These are a few of my students. Top picture: Dana, William, Michael, Peter, Arabella. Next picture: Long, Autumn, Sin and Prince. (Yes, they choose their own English names. There is no such thing as a "traditional" name in Chinese, anything goes, so they do the same in English. I have a student named "Little Mosquito," too.) And look at the size of Autumn, now you know why I can't buy any clothes and shoes here! I am an Amazon woman over here.  Anyway, the point of this post, one of the English tasks my students had to do this week was collaberate to make a prom dress out of toilet paper. There is nothing like the Prom here, so they enjoyed learning about it. This task was the final part of the lesson, to practice giving commands and instructions in English. Here are a few pictures I took of the students hard at work. I was pretty impressed, they did these in about 15 minutes. And because Chinese students are not encouraged to be creative, it's not easy for ...

Sometimes the collective knowledge of my students amazes me. For example, one of them chose to do an assigned speaking presentation on a U.S. President. She got up and said, "My presentation is on the best president America has ever had."  And the rest of the class all answered in unison, "Roosevelt."  I was a little taken aback. I had no idea Roosevelt was our best president, but my Chinese students were taught this somewhere along the way. They also all know the day the Nobel Prizes are awarded. It's just a part of their collective memory, in part because China has never won a Nobel Prize. (Btw, they are the ones that told me that, I didn't know China had never won one.)  Collectivism is the goal in China. My students are always giving answers in unison. I have learned that to ask them to speak up and be individuals is very difficult for them. They are much more comfortable when I let them function as a group.  Of course, this doesn't mean I don't...

So, one of my challenges now in my language learning is not just learning the vocabulary, but how to use it. For instance, in Chinese, you don't read books, you watch them. And you don't turn on the light, you open it. Things that are broken need to be changed, not fixed. These are just a few examples. You always hear how hard it is to learn Chinese, and yeah, for English speakers, I agree!  I think it's because in Chinese, one sound can mean about 18 different things. You have to learn by the context what is actually being communicated. For example, the word 'zai' (zye) means the equivilant in English of in/at/around/on/again/in the middle of doing/exists/carry and a few more. So on the surface, it's easy: instead of having to know four of five pesky prepositions, you just need to know one.  But, listening to someone speaking Chinese, it can be difficult to know what they are trying to communicate.  (And by the way, that is just 'zai' in one tone, ther...

Here is an essay one of my students wrote this week: "I was lived in a poor village when I was a child. There was only one school in our village. It was so poor. It is said that it was left by a rich man. He made it as a school for all these children. It consisted [of] four rooms. The time I studies at this school almost all the windows were broken. There was no chairs. We must bring chairs to school every morning. So my mom and dad made a small one for me. I would bring my bag with books and a chair to school. It was not convenient to take a chair with me because I was so small to carry it. So my dad lined it on my back and ask my teacher to loose it. One day it was rain heavily. I must take a umbrella with me. It too hard to walk on the narrow road. So I skinned into the water. Because the chair on my back, the legs of chair into earth. I can't stand up. The whole body include head all in water. I said, "Help, help!" The water flow into my nose and mouth. I'm l...

Here are two pictures I snapped this week. I'll explain why I think each one is meaningful to my China experience.  First, this is how common smoking is in China: an ashtray over the urinal. (And no, I was not in the men's room, it was a combo male/female stall.) There are no smoking or drinking laws here of any kind. Anyone can buy alcohol or cigarettes, anywhere, at any time of day or night, and drink and smoke wherever they want. It's interesting to me how the concept of "freedom" differs in China vs. the West: we can access whatever webpages we want and say whatever we want on them, but we have strict health laws. Here, it is the opposite. But we each think our way of doing things is correct.  (On the whole-- there are those in China who resent the Firewall too.) I think about these things a lot over here.  Second, this "No Pedestrian Crossing" sign (blue and red round signs, in the middle of the picture). Instead of just one person, it's a pers...

I am back in the classroom now, and I love it. Most of the time I think, "What on earth am I doing here?"  I feel so out of place, socially retarded, and just weird here. This culture is so different from my own, it's a constant battle to find the balance spot in the teeter totter. But being in the classroom is the only time it makes sense to me why I gave up what I did to be here.  My students are awesome and have tough times ahead of them. I hope I can help them find their strengths and the confidence to make a difference in the world.  Now, in my last list, I left off the things OTHER people have sent me so I didn't have to bring them back that have also been very helpful!  And no, these lists are not surreptitous requsts for items. I've got a good supply of stuff here right now, and my mom will send me more when I need it. But at various times we all know people going overseas. So, here are some things people have sent me that really helped:  Dried and canned ...