Rebecca A. Foster

Most of you know Chinese culture views privacy differently than American culture, most easily explained as 'there isn't any expectation of privacy in Chinese culture.' I knew this affected personal space, family and friendly secrets, neighbors knowing what you're up to all the time, everyone always in your bidness, etc.  but I didn't realize it also extended to the body. It does. In my experience, bodily functions aren't considered private in China. Sneezing, burping, coughing, passing gas, peeing: all these things are viewed as natural functions of the body, so you don't have to say excuse me, you don't God Bless anyone, and you definitely don't feel embarrassed when they happen...if you're Chinese, that is! Many North Americans...it might take a while to get to that point. (I think this is also why babies and little kids pee everywhere and no one freaks out. Babies pee and poop...why NOT on the sidewalk?) When you first get to China, you...

I wrote about this briefly before , but I want to expound on it today. As a university teacher in China, I was coming to the cultural game about 20 years late; my students all shared the same cultural background, and because culture just 'is' in China, not very often do they explain or expound upon cultural reasoning or traditions. So sometimes things like this would happen: I devised a lesson plan for my English major students to help them feel more comfortable using the subjunctive tense, i.e. 'If I were...., I would....' and so on. I made the theme 'Superheroes', something I thought they would enjoy talking about, and asked them to choose what superpowers they would have and how they would use them for the benefit of humankind. After giving them time to prepare, I asked a few students to share their answers with the class. "If I were a superhero, I would have the power to read minds so I knew if anyone was going to do something bad, and then I chan...

I'm planning an East Coast trip for October; not only a chance to see my favorite parts of the U.S., but a chance to reconnect with good friends. My dream schedule is: fly to Chicago, visit the Art Institute, take a bus to Minneapolis and hang out with R. for two days; fly to NYC,  hang out with a few Peace Corps friends for a few days, bus to Boston to see E. who just moved there for work, back to NYC to take the Chinatown bus to D.C. and stay with friends there for a few days, fly to Orlando and see N., backtrack to Atlanta for a day or two, then fly home from Atlanta. Sounds great, eh? Most likely, though, I'll fly to either D.C. or NYC (whichever is cheaper) and take the bus between DC, NYC and Boston, then fly home. NYC is truly one of my favorite places on Earth. I've mentioned before that it is not as developed as Shanghai, but it has a flavor and character I adore. I need to add to my historical buildings photography project, go to Washington Heights, Chinatow...

When we agreed to be Peace Corps volunteers in China, we also agreed to never ever, ever, never, ever discuss the ‘3 T’s’ with any Chinese Nationals: Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square. Those topics were pretty easy to avoid; I think the entire time I was in China, people only asked me about them 3 or 4 times. And it is fairly easy to deflect conversations in China; if you change the subject, they accept that means you don’t want to talk about it. But there were other questions asked that weren’t necessarily verboten, but for me, awkward to answer. Such as: 1. “What do you do in America to spot the counterfeit money?” There is a problem with counterfeit money floating about in China. It’s quite common to be passed fake money, to the extent that if you get fake money from an ATM, the bank is not responsible for reimbursing you. (The safest way to get money is from a teller, because they check it before they hand it to you.) So you learn to inspect the paper on everything higher than a...

I think South Asians pretty much win genetics. Thanks rest of the world for playing, here's your silver medal. Remember this guy? There's a reason Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle is my favorite movie: I don’t know who this dude is, but he’s cute, eh? And then there’s this video (embedding disabled by request, I shake my fist at you!); these are just some really attractive people! Now, I know the people in tv and movies tend to be a little more attractive than the average population, but I’d take one of these guys over Bradley Cooper any day.  I think it’s the lips. Sooooo kissable.

Caution: this is kind of a girly post. For those who don't know me personally, I am half Chilean, half American. I inherited my mom's darker Chilean coloring and my dad's American features. I'm a mutt! And all my life people (salespersons, friends, etc.) have been telling me my coloring is Winter, because I have dark hair and dark eyes. Winters have pink undertones in their skin and look great in lots of white, black, navy blue, cherry reds, purples, etc... And gray. I LOVE gray. My mom would always tell me I looked like I was constantly dressing for a funeral because I wore so much black, gray, and white. But I noticed in lots of pictures, I looked kinda terrible. I thought I just really didn't take good pictures. So one day I'm in China innocently looking something up on the internet and I read that many Latina and Asian women are not Winter, they are Autumn: dark hair and eyes but with gold undertones to their skin, not pink, and that a quick way to check...

I caught the flu, so I've had lots of time to sleep/rest/read. What I hate most about being sick is how boring it is! And how I lack the motivation to do anything about that! (I'm actually a little relieved it's the flu, because initially I thought it was food poisoning, and I was sad that my Chinese-germ immunization to food illness was over. But yay, it's just the flu!) Another weird consequence of reverse culture shock I didn't anticipate: being in a crowd of people where everyone speaks a language I recognize freaks me out. In China, because I lived in a city where most people spoke the local dialect instead of Mandarin, I still didn't understand most of what was going on around me. (This is not true of all volunteers; many of them are much, much smarter than I am.) I got very used to tuning out what I could not understand. So even though I was surrounded at close range by literally millions of people, I existed in this little mind bubble where I didn'...

My last day in China, I was flying out of the Chengdu International Airport, the first flight of the day to Shanghai. It was delayed (I'm pretty sure the pilot was still eating breakfast or something), so I was caught in a big cattle call of a waiting area. Every so often an employee would get up and yell into a megaphone about one of the 10 or so departing (late!) flights from that gate. Chaos in China? I know, shocker! So I pushed my way to the front of the crowd, and after about five minutes went by, I realized I was resting tmy arm and hand holding my boarding pass on the back of the guy standing in front of me. Like, my forearm and hand were full-on laying all over him. And it took me five minutes to notice I was doing this. And he never even turned around. And today this guy at the gas station was standing a full 8 feet behind the person in front of him in line, and it just annoyed me to no end. WHO NEEDS 8 FEET? It took all of my restraint not to cut in front of him in l...

Stuff I've done: 1. Driven away from the gas pump with the hose still in the tank. SO EMBARRASSING. 2. Maced myself by trying out my new mace in my bathroom. A small enclosed space is not the place to spray mace, y'all. Just in case you were tempted to try it. 3.

I was going to write about coming back to an English speaking country and how sensory overwhelming it is to be in a group or crowd of people and understand everything that is being said, but it will have to wait for another day. Instead: Did you ever date someone, casually or otherwise, and they did that one thing that just made you know for certain: this isn’t going to work out? And even if you ignored your gut for a while and tried, you could still always pinpoint that moment you knew? Yeah, here are a few of mine: - The time we went through the drive-through at a custard shop and you didn’t ask me if I wanted anything. Who does that?? We got back to my house and while you ate the custard, I told you I was sort of done with you. You looked surprised. And never offered me any custard. -The time you told me you had always dreamt of going to a Phil Collins concert. Really? Phil Collins is your dream concert? So never going to work out. (Apologies to PC fans, but that just ain’t my...

I've changed the title of this blog to reflect that I'm no longer living in China; Stuff I Love was the original name of this  blog, before I moved to China, and it still seems appropriate. Depending on where I get a job, I'll probably change the name again. It might be familiar, and might be someplace new. I'll keep you posted!

1. My Mandarin teacher is from Taiwan, which means I am learning some of the cultural differences of how Mandarin is spoken on the Mainland vs. Taiwan. For example, where I lived, every baby was called ‘erzi’ (boy child) regardless of gender. In fact, when I tried to use the gender neutral ‘haizi’, I was corrected to just use erzi. So yesterday in class I had to use the word ‘child’ and I said ‘erzi’ as I had been taught. My teacher said, “No, that means boy, use ‘haizi.’” I said, “That’s interesting. I was corrected to say erzi where I lived.” My teacher, knowing I lived on the Mainland: “Yeah…I don’t like that.” It was a private, friendly exchange between me and my teacher, but it was one example of the way in which language can reflect culture. (I don’t need to go into details, do I?) 2. I’ve been watching a lot of rerun tv (Seinfeld: still funny!), and hence watching a lot of advertisements, something new again to me. And I’ve realized over the past two years that if I really nee...