hello hello!
Only 1.5 days left of teachers college! can you believe it! We are getting ready to start our south east asia adventure, packing up our stuff and getting a package of 'teacher clothes' ready to send home to be replaced by bummin' it clothing that will be more suitable for lounging around and trecking through the jungle. I can't wait to be a smellly backpacker and not have to think about what to wear! So nice!
Last night our teachers took us our for an amzing seafood dinner and tomorrow night we will be having another dinner here at Boren.
I have begun to notice the similarities between Chinese and Italian cultures. the most apparent one being food! EAT EAT EAT, is it okay? do you like it? do you want more? However, the chinese have many more rituals and things to do before dinner begins and they don't drink as much wine. Also, their goodbyes are not half as long as the infamous Italian goodbye i've experienced my whole life (oh the pain in my fathers eyes!) Also those damn chopstiks. I'm begining to improve in my chopstick skills and have also adopted my own freestyle way of handling the little buggers but it is still a struggle to eat noodles. That's another similarity. Lots of noodles.
another difference is the volume. Italian=loud, chinese not so much.
One thing that i love about both cultures is the importance of family. Here, the grandparents are always with their grandchildren. It's especially cute to see the grandfathers come to pick up their grandchildren from school and take their backpacks for them. They walk home holding hands and the there is a sea of grandfathers wearing bright pink miniature 'hello kittie' or ninja warrior packs or their backs.
Yesterday we went to buy jade from a store recommended by our teacher. Luckily Julie speaks cantonese therefore we were able to speak to the woman about her life and situation as well as the meaning of al the beautiful jade peices in the store. She was telling us about her children (3 girls, we expect she was trying for a boy) and the extra tax she had to pay for each child after the first. Se said that each of them cost an extra 40,000 RMB which is just about 6,000 Canadian. However noe the price has gone up to 70,000 RMB (which is about 10,000 CDN). We talked her down for the peices we wanted with our limited budjet and once we came to an aggreed price she began to put the peices together for us to pick up later that afternoon.
When we returned to the store she had made us both a beautiful necklace with a jade pendant representing "from the heavens" and "wealth in life" as a gift for us to take home. We are all putting together a package to drop by the store for her kids. some canadian things (that were all made in china)!
Well thats all for now, the next post will most likely be from Vietnam!!!!!!!
Talk to you soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment