Well, hear I am, at the end of week 3 in Xining!
This has been an interesting week because most of our partners have had final exams all week, so we haven’t seen them much. As a result, we’ve spent more time hanging out as a team or exploring Xining.
Things are still going well between me and my partner. She is still the queen of random questions… at the end of each culture lesson we, as Canadians give a Journal Question intended to stimulate discussion between us and our partners. Most are quite deep and require lots of discussion. While they have all been very interesting and good questions, Jenny usually doesn’t respond to them and asks me random questions like “What do you think about people who have sex change operations?” “Do you think gay people should get married?” or “What do you think about what Japan did to China during WWII, why should I forgive them?” Needless to say, it is keeping me on my toes!
Yesterday (saturday) we went to visit the large mosque in town. There is a significant Muslim population in Qinghai province (2 different nationalities here are muslim – Hui and Salar people) and the mosque here is the largest in China. It was quite large!
The other night, a bunch of us brought a guitar out into the big square in the centre of the university and just hung out singing songs. As much as it pained me to sing them, the “classics” like Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” and Bryan Adam’s “Everything I Do” worked well to draw a crowd of Chinese students and we had them involved in our singing and added in some of our worship songs as well. They love to sing here! A few of us ended up having a discussion with some Tibetan students studying at the other university in town but who were visiting our university.
Friday night, we blasted Tibetan music in the square and learned how to Tibetan dance. After about 5 minutes of doing it, about 20 students joined in and were helping to teach us and about 50 more were watching around the edges (probably wondering who this crazy group of white people were dancing rather badly).
Last night, we had ‘Guys Night’ in the guys dorm and ‘Girls Night’ in the girls night. Yesterday most of the students in the buildings had to move out, so it is only those of us on our program still in the dorms. It is kind of eerily quite, but much cleaner! I’m not sure what the guys did (although i heard it involved a marathon game of p0ker and lots of food), but the girls had spa night. Who knew that makeup was such a novelty here! It doesn’t seem expensive to me, but I guess to the average student it is (It is a little cheaper than it would be at home when I convert from yuen to $, but not much). I wish I had brought more makeup! In any case, 2 of us ended up doing makeup on most of the Chinese girls and we all participated in having our hair done. I think that my short hair is a bit of a novelty and way too much fun for some people to play with. I had about 5 different hair styles over the course of the evening, culminating in one which saw all of my hair stiking out in different directions.
And a note on photos – I had intended to try again today, but this net bar is kind of dodgy, so i don’t want to risk a virus on my camera.

For those of you in PG, I will be up there the weekend after I get home (along with Anna and Jeff Van Tol) and will be at Lakewood Sunday morning, hopefully we’ll be able to share a bit about our trip with you. I’m not sure the exact dates we’ll be there (Anna’s sister is looking after getting our plane tickets for us), but the weekend is the 19th/20th of August. I’d love to see as many of you as I can!
For those of you in Victoria, I’ll be there the following weekend for sure (probably a little longer as well as there’s some other stuff I need to do in Victoria) – so that’s the 26th/27th. I’ll be at VPRAC Sunday morning and will share about the trip then.
Easterners and Lethbridgians – I haven’t forgotten about you, but it will likely have to wait until December.

I’ve successfully sent out some postcards (although I think I forgot postal codes on some, so let me know if you get it!)… or I think I have. I paid the guy at the post office but all he did is stick my postcards in a drawer. I hope that drawer was the “Out” drawer… Let me know if it arrives!
In other news there really isn’t.
I’d appreciate thoughts for the team though. Lots of people have been getting sick lately. One or 2 of them might be food poisoning and the others are mostly sinus things. I’ve been fine so far, so that is good. I have my vit. C and echinaeca that I take every day so I think thats been working…

I’ve devised a little Q and A with myself to describe China so far.
Favourite thing so far: The people in Xining are very friendly, its been interesting to learn the language, and the places we have visited are incredible (Great Wall, Tiennamen Square, Forbidden City, Ta’er Monestary…), but possibly the food tops it all… wow, I never knew Chinese food could be so good!
Least Favourite thing so far: Squat toilets… need I say more?
Thing I’ve had to adapt to the most: Fetching hot water for the day from a building every morning, not showering when I feel like it, squat toilets, unable to drink from the tap even though it is so much colder than the hot water we drink, reading Chinese on the computer and trying to figure out which button says “Post” and which says something completely different.
I never knew it was like that here: Rice for breakfast, eggs for lunch and dinner… Lots of Muslims in Xining, and its pretty hot here too despite being at such a high elevation.
Thats all I can think of to ask myself right now, but if you have any other questions, fire away!
What I’m bringing home with me so far: (physical items) – lots of chopsticks – I like eating with them way more than knives and forks, a sweet dress I picked up in Beijing, other souvineers I haven’t bought yet. (not physical items) – a new appreciation for the Chinese language and culture, a few words and phrases in Chinese, new friends.

…I guess I can get on here in China!!
Below is my email that I just sent out to everyone in case you’re not on my email list. I didn’t have a chance to put anything on here when I was in Beijing, so the brief summary for those who didn’t get my email was:
Great Wall x2 – WOW!!! This was my “I’m in China” moment. Absolutely breathtaking and quite dramatic. We even got Nicole up the wall in her wheelchair!
Tiennamen Square/Forbidden City – stunning architecture, history came alive.
Orientation – very usefull and so informative. I learned a lot that I have been keeping in mind while I am here.

And now for the most recent update:
Hello all,
I’ve been in Xining for 5 days now. The first couple of days were spent getting into the routine of things here. We are living in dorms with our language partners. Instead of the usual 6 or 8 people per room in Chinese dorms, there are just the 2 of us. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time with each other! Our mornings are spent in classes – first we have 30 minutes of Mandarin lessons followed by 1 hour of teaching on Chinese culture and customs. After a short break, it is the Canadian student’s turn – we teach on Canadian culture with a focus on English vocabulary and pronunciation. Our lessons are typically quite interactive. All of the students have fairly good English skills, especially in reading. We are helping with the spoken aspect as well as teaching them about Canada. It has been interesting to see how each culture views the other as we learn from eachother. After lunch, our afternoons are largely free, although there are somethings planned some days. On Friday in the afternoon, we are headed to the Tibetan Buddhist Monestary in the area. Apparently it is quite a big and important one for one of the Buddhist sects in the area.
My partner is lots of fun. Her english name is Jenny and she is from southern China originally. She is in the middle of exams now (they still have exams for the next week or 2 – off and on) so you can be thinking of her with those. Her major is foreign languages so in addition to English, she is studying Japanese as well. I think we get along well (it has only been 4 days, so it is a little early to tell!). She is older than some of the other students, so around my age which is nice. She is also quite independent and doesn’t feel the need to babysit me 24/7 which means I am able to have some down time by myself which I need being the committed introvert that I am!
It is really hard to believe, though, that I have only been in Xining for 5 days – it feels like we’ve been here forever! (In a good way…!) I could talk for hours about the differences I have noticed between Canadian and Chinese university life, but I’ll save those for a later email because I am afraid this one is already getting quite long.
Keep thinking of us – for unity for our team, for strength for us, that we wouldn’t run out of topics to talk about and that I would be able to help Jenny with her English skills because that is what I am here to do!
For those of you to whom I promised postcards, you’ll have to wait a few more weeks because the stamps I can get in Xining won’t fit on my postcards 🙂