November 4, 2007
Wow, so what a crazy night I had last night! My roomie and I were walking around downtown after going out for dinner. It was raining lightly (as it has been the past 4 days) and we were all bundled up because the temperature has dropped this past week. (Don't worry; it should be back up in the mid-70's again by tomorrow). We were trying to think of something fun to do for the rest of our Saturday night. My roomie suggested we go get a massage. So we did. And, it was so stinkin' hilarious I don't even know how to explain it!

First of all, it was about $4.50 US Dollars for a 70 minute massage, which is a bit expensive for this area, but we decided to splurge. We went to this place my roomie has been once before. They had three massage beds in a room and so we got to be together the whole time. They gave us these sea-green thin cotton outfits that looked like children's pajamas. Immediately I got the giggles and I pretty much was containing belly-laughs throughout the rest of the experience. I learned this summer that laughter is a natural response when you're uncomfortable, and that might have been part of it - but mostly it was just so hilarious!

Some highlights of my "massage" was when the lady brushed her hair up and down my wrist and then gently blew on my arm. Also, when they got up on top of the massage beds to walk and kneel and crawl on our backs. They had bars in the ceiling to hold on to when they walked back and forth on top of us. My other favorite moment was when she had me sit up, then she got on the table behind me, put her knees into my back, and then rocked back on the table, holding me up in the air with my arms and legs kind of sprawled out to the sides. We just stayed like that for a while - with me suspended in the air on top of her. I couldn't hold it back at that point - I really started laughing out loud. Fortunately my roomie was going through the same thing, so she was laughing too. What else can you do in that situation? The whole experience was such an odd thing that I just tried to hold in my giggles as best as I could. Here are some pictures we took once we were done with our massages and the ladies had left the room.
    

Earlier that night we had gone to this yummy restaurant. We ate up on the second floor and I had to take a picture because the rooms had really low ceilings - at least for someone my height.    I am a giant in this land!

We went out to eat with our language teachers at the beginning of last week. They took us to this traditional restaurant, in the style of this country about 600 years ago (which isn't all that different from how it still is here today). The food was GREAT!

I finished my first week of classes and start week #2 tomorrow. It's really hard and I feel like a big moron most of the time. I have three teachers and none of them really speak English, so we do a lot of gesturing. It is an inefficient way to learn a language, but it's the situation I'm in so I'm trying to make the best of it. I have my classroom all to myself and my teachers come to ME for each class. I am the only one with a key to the classroom. There are a lot of things that are very different about college here compared to college in the states.

They put us "international students" in their oldest building, which is pictured below. It's all concrete walls with no insulation. My class is lowered into the ground a couple of feet so I kinda feel like I'm in a dungeon. The windows and doors don't close very well, so the bugs, cold, damp air, and wind are all a factor in my daily classtime. It's also very dusty in my classroom because we use the chalkboard a lot. It rained almost all of last week, and was pretty chilly. I sat in class each day with about 4-5 layers on, and gloves. I bought a blanket this weekend, which I'll keep in my desk in my classroom. Then on cold days I can sit there, wrapped up in my blanket, trying to learn the language. Here are pictures of my classroom, the international student building, and the classroom next to mine where my friends have their class. These were taken on my very first day of school in this country. The next day is when the cold front hit us.
              

   

I went out with my friend from school, Stacy, on Friday afternoon. She speaks English pretty well, and is good at helping me learn the language. From now on we're going to hang out a few times a week so she can informally tutor me. We spent the whole afternoon and night with me focusing primarily on learning to say one phrase: "Please I ask, do you know where the toilet is?"     I still don't have it memorized.    Stacy and I had a lot of fun hanging out, taking pictures of ourselves, and getting to know each other. Stacy has already heard the greatest story, and has decided to say "no" for now. I told her my personal story and my thoughts on what is most important in life. So at least she knows where I stand, what I think, and what my hopes are for HER.
   

   

Oh, the last thing I wanted to share was pictures of my new couches! Last time I posted my blog the couches were being delivered. We live on the sixth floor (obviously there is no elevator) so the delivery men carried the couches all the way up for us! That's standard stuff around here. My roomie, the great negotiator, got the couch store to buy our old couches from us, so the delivery guys had to try to take away the old couches before putting the new ones in. The old couches were too big for them to take out our door, no matter which way they tried to do it, so eventually they had to completely take the couch apart into small pieces. This was a big long process, and I passed the time by taking pictures of them as they labored away. We LOVE our new couches! They're really comfortable and brighten up our home.
  

   

That's all for now. Have a GREAT week! We don't have day light savings time here, so if you're in central standard time, I'm now 14 hours ahead of you. bye bye for now!

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November 14, 2007
I am about to become an international athlete. That's right. In one week my college will be having a 3-day track meet. All the college classes will be cancelled as the students compete. I have been given the opportunity to join in the festivities and I have seized that opportunity with great gusto! I think they didn't expect me to be so eager to participate, because I have had to beg and plead to be allowed to compete. For a while I was told that they thought it would be unfair to the other students, because I might beat them all too badly. This is pretty hilarious to me for several reasons. I guess they think that I am a superior athlete or something... maybe because I tend to be at least a foot taller than the other girls in the city. But I am also about 10 years older than most of the other students, so I would assume they're in much better / younger shape than me. Who knows... I might get totally creamed, or I might dominate, but either way it will be a pretty exciting 3 days.

I will be competing in 4 events. Only one of these events have I ever done before in my life. I will be running the 800 meter race, jumping high jump and long jump, and throwing the javelin. Do you know me well enough to know which of these events I have done before?

Ha! It's the high jump! And I started practicing last Friday as soon as I found out that I would be doing this. It has been 15 years since I have done high jump, but I was pleased to discover that I still have the basic technique to get myself over the bar. I convinced the other international students to help me drag out the high jump mats and equipment so I could practice. My teachers and friends at school all seem to think it's both exciting and hilarious that I want to participate in their track meet so badly. For me it's an unforgettable and priceless experience. I hope I do well enough in one of my events to get some sort of a ribbon or something, because I would frame it and keep it forever! Here are pictures from my practice last Friday afternoon. I taught everyone how to do it and we all had a GREAT time playing on the high jump.
           

        

     

     

   

I went out one night last week with one of my American friends. She likes to go dancing in the park near our apartments. Every night of the week you can find large groups of women doing choreographed exercise dance routines to loud music at every public square and park in the city. I had a lot of fun trying this out, but it's not something I will do regularly. We played a little badminton to warm up before we danced. It was a fun night.
     

        

I went out to dinner with some friends, and I couldn't help but notice a large crowd of people standing and sitting in the sidewalk. A downtown store was playing an old movie and everyone just decided to stop and watch the whole thing. It was funny to me.
            

I went back to my favorite town again this past weekend. I had my first exposure to the VERY popular past time of Karaoke. We were in our own private room, so it wasn't like the huge Karaoke bars I've seen in movies. We didn't stay very long but it was fun to see how much these people LOVE to sing very loudly to their favorite songs. I sang an old Michael Jackson song for good measure.
                

Here are some other pictures from my weekend, visiting lots of my new friends, and always adding to the people I know in my favorite small town. We could never stop very long in one place because people kept crowding around us to take pictures of us with their cell phone cameras or shout English words at us. Seriously - this is my life here - every time my roomie and I are out in public and stop for more than 2 minutes in one place, people start standing around staring at us to see what the "foreigners" are about to do next.
   

    

  

     

     

     

I am totally used to sitting in tiny chairs now. It's kind of nice once you get used to it. This first shot is from a common street-side lunch place in town. The second picture is of a new friend of mine that I was able to tell some great news to. I took forward to telling him more stories very soon. His name is Peter.
    

Every time I venture out into the countryside I travel via public bus. That is a whole special experience by itself. The buses and bus stations are like everything else in this country; anything goes and you never know what to expect. I have been bringing my guitar with me lately, so I can play it when we hang out in the town square. With my purse, my guitar, my camera, and my backpack - I feel like a true traveler.
        

        

         

I'll leave you with a picture I took a couple of nights ago from my apartment complex.

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November 23, 2007
The people in this country are in love with certain American TV shows. Specifically; Prison Break and Heroes. I have never seen Prison Break, but feel a little more connected with it after this past week. My college wanted to take pictures of us (their foreign students from America), to use for advertising on their website and in college brochures. So they had us pose for many pictures. We tried to be creative and have a lot of fun with it. The teacher taking our pictures had one shot she REALLY wanted us to pose for. She told us to pose like the TV show Prison Break. You might think it is difficult to capture a whole TV show with one picture pose, but once we did what she wanted we realized she just meant the pose for every "we-think-we're-cool" TV show in America. See below:
(top row is our Prison Break pose)
    

    

    

Right across the street from my apartment complex is a very large soccer stadium. We heard that they were having some international soccer games so a bunch of us got tickets. We watched some fun soccer games and observed more unique things about this country and culture. Our country did not win their game, so everyone threw garbage on the field.
    

       

    

I went out last Friday night with many of my teachers from the college, along with my roommate. We went to the KTV - which is the name for the Karaoke places everyone loves so much in this country. We had our own private room, and I guess that is always how it is when you do karaoke. We had a great time singing and laughing and performing for each other. I was surprised at how much fun I had. There were many English songs to choose from, so I picked lots of older songs that I know by heart; Dancing Queen, Love Shack, Vogue, and many more! Later in the night my friends must have felt like they needed to hear my roomie and I sing some more, so they chose every single Brittney Spears and Backstreet Boys song in the computer, and made us sing them ALL! I was surprised at how well I knew each one, considering that some of them were almost 10 years old. We stayed there for probably 4 hours, so we were all very exhausted by the end of the night.
    

    

    

    

    

This past Monday all of the international students at my college were taken on a field trip. First we went to an art gallery full of paintings of peacocks, flowers, waterfall landscapes, men with swords, and women in pretty silk robes. If you know me well you will know that I was thrilled to spend an hour walking around looking at all of these pieces of art.
After the art gallery, we went to a college campus where they teach a class on how to perform traditional formal tea ceremonies (kind of like in Karate Kid 2). The girls who take this class dress in traditional outfits and practice pouring tea.
We got to see a beautiful demonstration and then they had us go sit with the students and try it ourselves. Because I don't understand any of the language here, I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be learning how to do the tea ceremony, and instead of observing carefully, I spent much of the time goofing off and making silly guesses at what they were saying. So when I had to sit down with the students and try to perform the whole ceremony by myself, it turned into a spectical that I'm sure the girls around me will not forget. My tea ceremony performance reminded me of the time when my dad, brother, and I all put on a sycronized swimming show for the people sitting around the pool on our vacation.
    

      

      

After tea we drove out into the countryside to this park where we were going to have a picnic. We found out when we arrived that they had a big meal fixed up for us, including some great dishes that had been slowly cooking all day. It was great fun! We ate a wonderful meal and then hung out around the park for a few hours. I played frisbee with some friends, we climbed on the playground obstacle course, and then I found some men sitting around with motorcycles parked nearby. I had a friend ask them if they'd teach me how to drive one, and one man was happy to bring his motorcycle out and give me step-by-step instructions on how to drive it. (my teacher translated them for me) I stalled it out a couple of times and then did really well - even on the thick gravel all around us. I drove the motorcycle around the park for a while, which was fun. It was a nice day, overall. But one of my teachers was out walking around the park by herself and was mugged. Her purse was taken and she was cut up a little with a knife on her chin, neck, and shoulder. That was very upsetting for everyone as she walked up to us with blood on her face. So our field trip ended with my teacher riding off on some guy's motorcycle to help the police try to catch the bad guy. She is okay but I think it shook us all up a little bit. I won't be going anywhere by myself anymore.