The Nanjing Massacre Museum

On December 13, 1937, the Japanese army invaded the city of Nanjing.  The next 6 weeks were some of the most inhumane, brutal, bloody, and horrific to occur in the history of man. 300,000 people were slaughtered.  Not just soldiers; men, women, and children.  The city was torn apart.  Some victims were shot, and those were the lucky ones.  Many were burned alive, buried alive, raped, gang raped, and a number of other unspeakable atrocities. 

The city of Nanjing has a free museum to memorialize the victims of the massacre.  A few weeks ago, we all decided to go check it out.  It was

the most brutal museum I've ever been in, but it was amazing.  There were photos, journal entries, videos, artifacts, and all kinds of other interesting things.  As we walked through the museum, we all kept remarking to each other that we couldn't believe we hadn't ever heard about it.  Why did we not learn about this in school?  The only way we can avoid repeating past mistakes is to learn about and from them.

Towards the end of the museum were the mass grave sites of some of the victims.  The brutality done to those people was astounding. Some of the skeletons had nails and spikes driven into them.  The experience was pretty jarring for most of us.  Fortunately, the last part of the museum consisted of an eternal flame in memory of the victims and a peace garden.

The Peace Statue

As the human race pushes its way into the future, I hope that we learn to be more compassionate and more understanding.  The Nanjing massacre was a result of power lust and hate.  Let us all strive for something more and love our fellow men. 

Engrish

 Here are some of our favorite pieces of "Engrish" that we've come across:

Only harmful chasing allowed

We loved this wonderfwl shirt

Mmmmm...skin food for my face!

Can you rephrase the question?

Enjoy a happy what?

Funny things about China

As it turns out, China is pretty different than the US.  I think I forgot just how much until I came back.  There are the standard differences, like everyone is Chinese, they have squatters instead of toilets, and everything is written in Chinese. But there are also lots of differences that you just don't expect.

When I was super sick last Wednesday I spent a lot of time watching Chinese television.  Although most of the programs are in Chinese, I found one channel with English documentaries.  They don't believe in continuity or closure with their tv programs.  I was watching one documentary about China that completely changed in the middle of the program. The first half followed this Australian guy who was trying different kinds of foods.  The second half was narrated by some guy you never saw and it was about a Chinese businessman who built a Disney World-type theme park.  Same program.  Also, when things run short or long on the air, they just throw in random highlights from sporting events.  I was watching one highlight on speed skating in the Olympics. I was getting super into it when they suddenly switched to their regularly scheduled program. Lame. Soren and I have also watched some Disney cartoons in Chinese. It's funny, but they always cut off the punch line.  No closure.

They like to do things at very inconvenient times here.  Like the other day, they decided to turn off all the water in our ILP building just before teaching.  This meant the kids couldn't go to the bathroom or wash their hands.  The water didn't come back on for the first hour and a half of class. There were some very unhappy kids.  Eventually, we started letting the kids go even though they couldn't flush the squatters--sort of a "go now, flush later" mentality.  I gave most of the teachers hand sanitizer since the kids couldn't wash their hands.

A couple days ago there was an International Festival held at the school that we all took a part of.  It was a neat event, but no one knew what was going on: the participants, the students, or the teachers.  We knew the time, the date, the tentative place, and that we'd have a poster.  No one told us what to prepare for, so we came prepared for anything.  A few of the ILP teachers (Me, Krista, and Soren) were at the United States booth.  Maddie was in the Great Britain booth (even though she's never been there). Heather and Jenna were in the Canada and Zambia group (Heather went to Canada once, Jenna hadn't been either place).  Morgan was supposed to be in the US group, but she was still super sick. I guess the school figured that if you're from one foreign country, you're from all foreign countries. Soren and I took the Ukelele and taught a group of students how to sing "Oh my Darling, Clementine." Most of the time we just talked with the students about random things.  When it was over, we were told that it was a success.  I thought, "Oh course it was a success. There were no expectations!" Pictures of the event are below.

It would seem the cafeteria food is prepared in a very strange manner.  Like the way they cut meat.  They seem to put it sideways through a bread slicer to maximize the amount of bone per piece of meat. Maybe here in China, getting lots of bones in your meat is good luck, but where we come from, boneless chicken wings are a delicacy.

To contrast, delicacies here in China consist of things like dried sea cucumber (going up to 5820 yuan). Yum.

Delicious (and expensive) sea cucumbers

Rock Me Mama Like A Wagon Wheel

Notice how I'm holding a football...very American

Soren chatting it up

The Great Britain Group

Zambia and Canada Group

The United States Group

Highlight of the Day--or not

Emily:

I've had a crazy sickness for the past few days.  Instead of getting a stuffy nose, I got a stuffy ear.  Plugged up, hard to hear, echos in my head, basically, not very much fun.  Unfortunately, Morgan has also been sick. Only her sickness is worse. As head teacher, it is my duty to teach for a teacher when they are unable to.  So today I was at the ILP building preparing my lesson.  At the same time, a Chinese lady was at the ILP building watering plants.  As I was walking from the kitchen classroom to the supply room, I decided to try popping my ears...just for the heck of it.  To my surprise, it worked!  I heard a huge GGGLLLlllurrrrpppp-ing sound and it felt like the left half of my face came back to life.  I was so surprised, I threw up my arms and let our a "WOAH!"  I held this pose for a few moments before I realized that plant lady was crouched down on the ground, one foot away from me. We made eye contact for a moment. She was quite alarmed.  After about half a second.  I muttered something like, "I'm okay...I'll just...hello." and walked away. 

Soren:
I have nothing to say.
nothing?
yes nothing.
Are you being g'wumpy?
no.
Yes you awww.
No. I'm not.
Come on- say something.
no.
Fine. You don't have to say anything- I'll say it for you!
You aren't authorized to represent me on this blog-
SO! Soren wants to say this but but isn't-
Stop it!
there was this funky international festival thing. And when I say "thing" I mean it.
Look, you. You can't just go about on this blog pretending to be me!
I never!
You did!
No I didn't.
Did!
No, I said that you wanted to say it- I didn't say that I was representing you or that you authorized me to say it for you- I simply said, and I quote, "Soren wants to say this but isn't..." Etc. etc. etc. So don't go accusing me buddy! I'm a Lawyer!
Really?
... no.
HA!
Anyways- Like I was saying- umph!
...
...
Like I said, I have nothing to say.

Our Nighttime Visitor

A couple nights ago, we were having game night in one of our apartments. It was a pretty typical night: we played some Bananagrams, ate some Pocky, and talked about teaching. It was calm and relaxing. After a while, Jenna left to go get something from her apartment. When she came back, she slipped through the door and said, "I think there's a bat in the hall."

We all had varying reactions to this:  A few of the girls and Soren jumped up to take a look; I didn't really care so I stayed in my spot; Maddie is terrified of bats and she started freaking out.  I was a little mystified as to how the bat got up to our 5th floor hallway, but then I remembered that there are holes in the wall in the kitchen area, the door at the bottom of the stairwell is always open, and the window at the end of the hall has no screen. So the mystery quickly faded.

Soren was the hero.  He went out into the hall and played with the lights, tricking the bat to go towards the stairway.  The bat exited and that was the end of that.

Or so we thought.

The next night, Maddie, Morgan, Jenna, and I were chatting in Jenna's room.  As it was getting pretty late, I decided to call it a night and went out into the hall. Jenna's room is the last one on the floor, so I had a good view of the entire hall. I thought i saw something fluttering in the distance and I was pretty sure our batty friend was back.  This didn't alarm me, but I thought I should warn the other girls.  To avoid frightening Maddie, I whispered to Jenna, "The bat is back.  I'm going to shut the door."

But Jenna wanted to throw caution to the wind. "I wanna see!" She exclaimed and threw open the door. She stepped out into the hall just in time to see the bat dive bomb toward my head.

Seriously, I thought I was going to die.

We both screamed and jumped back into the room. I'd never been that close to a bat before (except at Disney's Animal Kingdom--and that was a very controlled situation). I opened the door once or twice and stepped out into the hall, but it seemed like every time I tried to make a move toward my room, the bat would head straight for me.  We all made a fair amount of noise.

My room was the farthest from Jenna's and finally I decided I just needed to go for it. With nervous shrieks and squeals, I maneuvered my way down the hall. I was to Krista and Morgan's door when the bat came for me. With a short scream, I thrust myself into Krista's room.  Krista happened to be right there watching a movie on her laptop.  She took out an ear bud and asked, "What's going on out there?"  "The bat is back." Was all I could muster.

Unfortunately, all our screaming had disturbed one of our neighbors down the hall. She popped her head out and gave Jenna, Morgan, and Maddie a light verbal thrashing. They told her we'd been spooked by a bat in the hall, but she didn't seem to care. Perhaps in the bat had come flying at her head, she would've started caring a little bit.

This is not the actual bat...but it looked pretty similar

I did finally make it to my room.  My nerves were shot.  I told Soren what happened and he was like, "oh."  He's a calm, brave man. I'm lucky I married him.

The Teachers and Their Students

Teacher Jenna's Homeroom

Teacher Heather's Homeroom

Teacher Krista's Homeroom

Teacher Maddie's Homeroom

Teacher Morgan's Homeroom

Teacher Soren's Homeroom

The Plum Blossom Festival

This past Saturday, our branch had an unofficial activity to the purple mountain for the start of the plum blossom festival. At first I was like, "What's the deal with the plum blossoms?" But as it turns out, the plum blossom is the flower of China and it only blooms once a year.  Big deal!  And super awesome.

So we met at the metro station at 10 am.  We were pretty nervous when we first got there because we had no way to contact anyone if we couldn't find them.  Fortunately, a group of 7 white people standing outside the metro is pretty conspicuous.  Once we were all together (about 45 minutes later), we set out.

It was the first day of the festival and it was packed and the line to the ticket booth was about a mile long. We didn't have to stand in it because Sister Yu, our Branch President's wife, bought everyone tickets ahead of time.  There was a bit of confusion as to where to pick the tickets up, so we ended up waiting around for about another 45 minutes. Eventually Sister Yu came back. We gave her money, she gave us tickets, and we were on our way.

Me and Soren with our tickets

The different groups within the group split up almost immediately and we started to explore.  A few of the branch members gave us some good ideas as to where to go.  We started down the Elephant road which was lined with all kind of different animals.

I couldn't get on the kneeling camel and yet Soren managed to get on the standing camel.

A lot of our time was spent in and around Plum Tree Hill.  The blossoms were beautiful and it was fun to see the Chinese people having picnics under the trees.  Some of them had tents to shelter their skin from the sun.  Others had umbrellas to shelter their skin from the sun.  They love fair skin over here.

After a while, our grumbling stomachs brought us back down the hill.  All I wanted was a sandwich or a salad or something, but they don't really believe in cold meals in China.  All you could buy were warm bottles of water, corn on the cob, Chinese hot dogs, and cup o' noodles.  Soren and I ended up buying cup o' noodles out of necessity, but we weren't really happy about it.  First of all, it cost us 10 Quai (as opposed to 3.50 at the Suguo).  Second of all, it's a boiling hot meal and it was about 85 degrees that day.  But, we ate it and were happy.

Cup o' noodles

Once we finished eating, we made our way to the Ming tomb.  We went through many fun, beautiful buildings, saw little temples, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.  Maddie and I also spent some time trying to ditch a crazy Chinese lady in a mask who was obsessed with taking pictures of us. It was crazy crowded though.  We had to go through a small, long tunnel with about a thousand other people.  Totally worth it though. We also passed by some giant stone soldiers.

Not to mention the hundreds behind us

We spent a while climbing around the Ming tomb area.  There were a lot of stairs, and a lot of walls pretending to be stairs.  Unfortunately, to leave the Ming tomb area, we had to squeeze through the same tunnel. 

Going back down

Climbing the wall to the tomb

And another wall

It was an awesome day. And to top it all off, on the way out we found some guys who found the perfect place to play poker...under the stone elephant.