Being a Tourist

With our April rush of visitors here in Guangzhou, we took the opportunity to be tourists within our own city. Guangzhou is a huge city with many diverse neighborhoods and area. It is not, however, where people think of visiting when they go to China. When you think of China, everyone thinks of Beijing and Shanghai with a stop in Hong Kong, not Guangzhou. You will not see the Great Wall of China here. You will not see the ancient terra cotta warriors of Xian. You will not see Tiananmen Square. You will not see the bustling cosmopolitan city of magazines. Instead, you will see a city that has exploded in the last ten years. You will see a city of migrants. You will see a city of old and new built practically on top of each other. You will see a city of change.

While Guangzhou isn't heavily frequented by western tourists, there are a lot of cool things to see and do here. We love the Chen Clan Academy, the historic "dorm room/hostel" of the Chen clan for those who were coming to take the Imperial exams.

One has to check out the Qing Ping market with all its fun items for sale, including scorpions, turtles, assorted paws and hooves. Rumor has it Qing Ping used to be where one would go to buy the most hidden delicacies such as tiger's paw and assorted reproductive organs.

There is the Canton Tower. We have yet to venture to the top of the Canton Tower as it is quite expensive, but we certainly will one day.

There are markets here for everything. Some of the most popular ones, for tourists anyway, are the jade market and the pearl market.

No visit here would be complete without checking out Shamian Island, the former foreign concession.

Finally, the food. Oh the food. It is a delightful mix of traditional, fusion, and imported. There is northern food, southern food, western food, and everything in between.

Human Interaction

One of my favorite parts of my day happens sometimes when I am fingerprinting. These moments are brought to you by the precocious children and happy elders of China. Today, it was a child. Often when I say, "ni hao" and wave to the kids, their parents smile, and the kids hide. Today, a spunky little seven-year-old responded with, "Hello!" and a huge grin. The look on her face made me melt. When I had finished with her mother's fingerprints, she gave me a perfect smile and said "Goodbye, have a happy day!"

A few weeks ago, I had another adorable child, this time a 10-year-old boy. After I had fingerprinted his parents, he looked up at me and said in flawless English, we had this conversation.

Child: "Hello madame. May I please give it a try"

Slim: "How old are you?"

Child: " I am 10-years old" (said very proudly)

Slim: "Sure, left hand. Right hand. Thumbs. All done. Perfect!"

Child: "Thank you very much. Have a good day."

Finally, the elderly people often make me smile. I have had old women jump up and down and tell me how beautiful I am. I have had older men tell me they are sorry I am married because they would like me to marry their sons. And I have had many people smile and laugh at my Chinese, but I know they are doing it in a loving way.

Fingerprinting can be long, it is four hours of doing the same task over and over again, however, time flies when you have fun people to interact with.

The Life of a Consular Assistant

My first month of work has been tiring. Very tiring, but also very exciting. However, I have gotten to do some really awesome things that make the job a great fit for me.

In the last two weeks:

- I got to help a fellow Minnesotan get home for an emergency despite having an expired passport.

- I got to watch several families go through the final steps in their adoption from China.

- I got to help stop people traveling under fraudulent pretenses from getting a visa to the US.

- I got to play an essential role in the non-immigrant visa process by collecting biometrics of almost 100 people per hour for hours a day.

In reality, my job involves many different things. I am a Consular Assistant, which means I get to, well, assist in the consular section. To explain what that entails, there are a few things you need to know first. There are four parts to the consular section here in Guangzhou (not every U.S. Embassy/Consulate has all four). The consular section here is comprised of: 1) Non-Immigrant Visas, 2) Immigrant Visas, 3) American Citizen Services, and 4) Fraud Prevention. Right now, I work in three of the four sections.

I start my days in American Citizen Services (ACS). The ACS section helps Americans overseas. Some services offered include: Passports (i.e. adding more visa pages if you are almost out and issuing Emergency Passports for those who had theirs lost/stolen or expired and have an immediate need to travel), Death of a U.S. Citizen abroad (they are the ones who notify next-of-kin), Marriage in China (to marry a Chinese person, you need an affidavit stating you are single), Consular Report of Birth Abroad (if a U.S. Citizen child is born overseas, this document states they are a U.S. Citizen), Notarial Services, and Emergency Assistance (Prison visits are a common one). While all of these services are approved and processed by Officers, I get to assist with some of these services, which is really exciting.

After two hours in ACS, I move down to Non-Immigrant Visas (NIV) for biometrics collection, ie: fingerprinting. Every person (with a few age exceptions) who is applying to a visa to travel to America gets fingerprinted. Fingerprinting must be done my a cleared American. In Guangzhou, we process hundreds of thousands of visa applicants each year, so that is a lot of fingerprints to take! Each day I spend four hours saying, “left hand”, “right hand”, “two thumbs”, and a few other phrases in Chinese. A lot of people find fingerprinting boring, but I enjoy it. It is a chance to interact with people and to practice my Chinese. I often turn it into a game and try to guess people's ages before they show up on the screen or make up stories about what I think they might be doing for work or why they might want to travel to America. While I don't get to find out most of that information, it is fun to guess.

I end my day in the Fraud Prevention Unit, helping with some of their databases, it is all very interesting work.

Quite a few people have asked PM and I how it is working together and to be honest, we enjoy it. Very rarely are we in the same area, and never are we working next to each other interacting, but it always makes me smile when I am moving from one section to another and I get to see him for a couple seconds. I think I can speak for both of us when I say that we also really like that both of us are getting to know more people at the Consulate. I have met some people he hasn't yet and visa versa, but to us, the Foreign Service isn't PM's job, it is our life and it feels really good to be even more a part of that. I hope this is the first of many jobs at the U.S. missions abroad.

Paparazzi

Today I was approached by some locals who wanted to take my photo. Now, I know others have snapped away photos on their phones, but this was the first time I was asked if people could take my photo.

I was walking towards the metro to head to the Consulate when two college-age kids approached me- one armed with a camera and the other with some basic English. They asked if they could take my photo. I was a bit thrown off, but was happy that they actually asked instead of just doing it. Sure, why not let some kids take my photo.

They wanted me to walk forward smiling at the camera. Easy enough. After I walked the 20 feet, they told me I did a great job and I found out a bit more about what they were up to. I was told they were photography students who had been sent to take photos of people. They went to the mall near where we live hoping to get a photo of a westerner as the mall is very high end and a great place for westerner sighting.

Happy I could help them out, just hoping my face doesn't end up all over some weird inappropriate site!

Multitude of New Year's

PM and I now have three different New Year's to celebrate. We start with what we know as simply New Year in America on December 31st from the Gregorian calendar. Next comes Orthodox New Year on January 14th, which is based on the Julian calendar. Finally, this year, we ended with Lunar New Year on February 19th, which is derived from the lunar calendar.

Most people are familiar with how America celebrates New Year's Eve and those of you who have followed our blogs since Macedonia got to learn about Old New Year, but this year was our first celebrating Lunar New Year.

Some of you may be confused because you have heard of Chinese New Year, rather than Lunar New Year. They are one-in-the-same. I am choosing to use Lunar New Year as it is celebrated elsewhere, not just China (China is just the largest population to celebrate). Lunar New Year is also celebrated in Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and Tibet.

With the New Year drawing closer, PM and I were asking around about how the multi-day holiday is celebrated here. Most people we talked to, compared it to American Thanksgiving. There is lots of food and lots of family. There is a great documentary about all the migrant workers in China who return home for the New Year's celebrations and I can only imagine how packed the train stations were here in Guangzhou.

For PM and I and our friends at the consulate, Lunar New Year means time to travel but also many amazing decorations displayed everywhere.

Joking Around

Everyday when I go to, or leave, Chinese class, I pass by the friendly security guard of the building my school is in. Usually, we just acknowledge each other with a smile and head nod as he knows my Chinese isn't good. Today though, it all changed.

I was leaving class at the end of the day and the friendly man approached the exit gate and opened it for me. I told him thank you in Chinese and he smiled extra big. As I was starting to walk out, there was another man walking in. The guard stopped me and started talking to the man and me (although I didn't understand a word he was saying). The two men started laughing while I stared at them with the deer-in-the-headlights look, making it clear I had no idea what was going on. The guard then pointed at the man and held his hand up to show how tall the man was. He then pointed at me and raised his hand up about two feet. They both started laughing again and I joined in, realizing that he was saying I am way taller than Chinese men. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled, shaking my head jokingly trying to convey, "yeah, I know. I am a giant. What can I say?!" As the second man walked to the elevator and I walked out, I could still hear the guard laughing saying in Chinese what I must assume to be, "that white girl is taller than a Chinese man. Hahahahahaha".

Polytonic Dreams

First, I must confess, the credit for the title of this post must go to PM. He finds it very cleaver and witty. I am just too tired to think of anything else and he is clearly pretty proud of it, so why not!

I have been studying Chinese for almost two weeks now. The school I go to is a great little school right near the Consulate. I go four hours a day, five days a week. I have learned a lot already, but it hasn't been without its challenges. Today, I wrote about what I did yesterday using the words I knew. My paragraph went like this:

At 6:30, I got out of bed. At 7:00, I ate breakfast. At 10:00, I went to class. At 3:00, I finished class. At 8:00, I ate dinner. At 11:00, I went to sleep.

Not very creative, but it gets the point across. My teacher said it was a bit too repetitive. An hour later, we had this beauty, which says almost the same thing (with some additions), but in a much prettier, fancier way:

wǒ liùdiǎnbàn qǐchuáng.wǒ qīdiǎn chī zǎofàn, shídiǎn qù shàngkè měitiān dōushì. cóng shídiǎn dào shíèrdiǎn, wǒ zài shàng hānyǔ kè. xiàkè hòu, wǒ qù chī wǔfàn. chī wǔfàn hòu, wǒ zài shàng le liǎng gè xiǎoshí hānyǔ kè. wǒ měitiān shàng sì gè xiǎoshí hānyǔ kè. wǒ sāndiǎn xiàkè. zhīhòu, wǒ qù le měiguó lǐngshìguǎn. wǒ huí jiā hòu, wǒ zuò le hānyǔ zuòyè. zuò zuòyè hòu wǒ zuòfàn gěi zìjǐ hé xiānsheng chī. wǒ xǐhuan zuòfàn. wǎnshàng wǒ hé xiānsheng yìqǐ kàn diànshì. zhī hòu wǒ qù shuìjiào.

To make it clear, my teacher did most of the work on this. I filled in words here and there and can read and understand what it says, but there is no way I could produce something like this on my own! Even now having this template, I don't think I could reproduce it myself as there is no chance I remember all the "then", "after that", "later", and other connecting phrases.

Much of what I have learned so far is pretty useful stuff for everyday life. I know a bunch of foods and can order (if the waiter doesn't ask me any questions and the menu isn't in Chinese characters) in a restaurant. By the time family comes to visit, I should have restaurant ordering mastered. Although if I can't do the complicated stuff,  I can already point at pictures and say "this one" like a pro.

I also have picked out a few words/phrases that I will teach my parents and their friends when they come visit. This started in Macedonia when they expressed an interest in being taught how to say something in Macedonia. The phrase there was, "I saw a cow today". A year and a half later, the phrase is somewhat forgotten, but the memory of "Edna krava" and arms waving wildly has not been forgotten. They have even taken to naming cows they like Edna (the Macedonian word for one/a). I even saw that Edna the cow was featured on my father's Facebook recently.

99.9% of what I have been learning so far has been in pinyin (i.e. the above text about my day). Pinyin is the phonetic transliteration of Mandarin characters. This makes it much easier to read as I understand the Latin alphabet. In addition to the letters though, are the fun little lines above certain vowels, showing the tone(s) of the word. I'm just going to say it- I don't like tones. I know they are important (mā, má, mǎ, and mà all mean different things), but boy is it hard to remember 1) the correct way to say the word, 2) the tones, and 3) the meaning of the word. I find myself focusing on either the tone or the pronunciation, but it is still quite difficult for me to do both at once.

While most of what I have done has been in pinyin, I have been learning a few characters though. I now know about 30 characters. While that may sound like good progress, it takes 3000-4000 to be considered fully literate. No matter how hard I work, its going to take me a looooong time to get there (if ever). I did have quite a bit of fun the other day picking out every character I recognized on signs when PM and I were walking to dinner. And I was pretty pleased with myself one day last week when I put two characters I know together to make a word that I see 100 times a day.

*Not my picture. I am afraid that if I obviously take a photo in the metro I will get screamed at in Chinese.

Chinese is definitely a difficult language. Certainly the most difficult I have ever learned. I am not going to sugarcoat it- some days I hate going to class. It's not that I dislike class or my teachers, but rather I feel so unprepared and overwhelmed. I am still not used to the Chinese teaching methodology of memorization to the extreme and maybe its just me, but my brain can not handle memorizing 150+ new Chinese words a day. I come home exhausted and not wanting to study. Most days, I force myself to study for two to three hours, but some nights, I open my book and just stare at it with words swirling around in my head. I have also had the pleasure of waking up repeatedly during the night thinking of words and saying them over and over trying to get the tones correct. I feel very fortunate to have the chance to study Chinese so I am a bit more comfortable and connected here, but I often find myself wondering, "who thought it was a good idea to study Chinese four to seven hours a day?" and am looking forward to Chinese New Year when I get a long, hopefully relaxing, break.

Exciting Stuff!

The last post was about nothing new happening and life becoming "normal". But life overseas can change quite quickly. Since the last post.....

- I have accepted a job at the consulate and I couldn't be more excited. I will be helping in the consular section, mostly with fingerprinting, but also with some other things. There is still quite a bit of paperwork that will probably take months to get finalized, so I may not be able to start work for a few months, but it is exciting to know I will be able to be a contributing member of the consulate community soon.

- PM is now an adjudicating officer. He is on the line interacting with locals who want to visit America.

- We received our first shipment of stuff! Our apartment is becoming a bit more of a home, which is fun. Eating lunch today was extra happy as I got to use our silverware from D.C. It made China feel a bit more like home.

- We have planned our first vacation. We are excited to go spend some time on the beach. We are looking forward to lounging on the chairs below. More details to come!

- I will start Chinese class this next week. We found a great little language school, recommended by a friend, that is run by some awesome Chinese women. While we are waiting for the work paperwork to be finalized, I will be enrolled in intensive language class so I can communicate with the world around me.

Lots of exciting things are happening here for us.

So its been awhile....

March 26th. That was the last time I posted anything. That was only 8 months ago and only like 3 people even know this site exists so far. However, because one day I will print this into a book for us to have, I figure I should do a short update on the last 8 months.

Since I last posted....
- PM and I have gotten married, not once, but twice. We made it legal in April so we could get all the paperwork started with the State Dept so I can go to China as an EFM (Eligible Family Member) and not an MOH (Member of Household). This was crucial as it means I have health insurance, plane tickets, and the government will ship my stuff too. At our first wedding we didn't have any family present, so to appease them all, we had wedding round two (the white dress one) in October.

- I was offered a job with Arlington County directing one of their summer camps and I spent all summer hanging out with some crazy kids in south Arlington.

- PM studied his little butt off for his Mandarin test. All that studying paid off as two days before the BIG wedding, he not only passed his tested, but did so well, he receives a special language bonus.

- We have said "see ya later" to countless Foreign Service friends who are now all over the world. The good news is if we ever find ourselves in Caracas, Cairo, Sao Paolo, Mumbai, or Abuja, we have friends!

- I learned that the foot and ankle pain I had been having for over a year was due to a fracture. I got the lovely fortune of spending the entire summer wearing a lovely walking cast.

- We received our housing assignment. If you remember, my last post was about the housing options and I mentioned the place with a pillow and blanket menu. That is where we will be living! All of our friends going to Guangzhou had received their housing assignments. Everyone but us. We figured they had forgotten about us, but knew they wouldn't put us out on the streets, so we didn't make a fuss about not knowing four months in advance. The waiting and patience paid off as we received what we have been told is the nicest housing in Guangzhou and some of the top housing in all of the Foreign Service world (minus Ambassador's residences). We would have been happy as long as we had an actual bed rather than a Macedonian couch bed, but no complaining here!

- We received our fancy-smancy Diplomatic passports (yeah, we are pretty excited to show those things off) and I used that to model an American Girl doll sized Diplomatic passport with Brazilian visa, Brazilian money, and boarding passes for the daughter of some FSO friends.

- Both PM and I have taken the Basic Consular Course at FSI (ConGen). It was a required class for PM, I just had the luck of getting a spot in an earlier class so I could take it too. Taking ConGen was one of the first steps in our plan to see if Slim should become a consular officer herself one day.

And that is the last eight months. I mean, there may have been a few happy hours, trips to the midwest, and weekends spent exploring the D.C. area thrown in there, but you get the gist of it.

"Silk Kimonos Upon Request"

There hasn't been much to write about lately. PM is busy learning Mandarin all day, every day. He has moved up to the advanced beginner's class (no surprise there). This guy was born to learn languages. Sometimes, if there is room, FSI will let family into language classes as well. However, I wasn't lucky enough as Chinese is full. I have been granted access to Rosetta Stone and some other online resources through FSI so I am slowly building my vocabulary. I can't say anything useful yet, other than "hello", "good-bye", and "thank you". I can, however, say "The white cat is running with the young girls eating apples" and other wonderful sentences!

I remain jobless for the time being, however I have accepted a job for the summer as the Director of Arlington Youth and Family Service's Summer Expedition Camp at Drew Elementary. I am excited for it. It seems the structure of their camps is different than what I am used to in St. Peter, but I think it will be a good challenge. I especially am excited to have a more diverse group of kids than I have had previously. The kids here don't get out of school until the middle to end of June, so camp doesn't start until July. In the meantime, I have contacted a local adoption agency in hopes of volunteering with their International Adoption Coordinator. The US Consulate in Guangzhou handles all US-China adoptions. Soon, I will start looking for a job in China and my hope is that any more specialized experience might be advantageous. I still haven't heard back from them yet, but I am hoping to soon.

Our life has been filled still with happy hours and events with PM's A-100 classmates and their families. This past weekend there was an international potluck where we all brought food or drink from our future homes. Then Monday we said goodbye to the first of the 175th group to head to post. This is only the start. By January, everyone will be off exploring their new countries.

Our life has also been filled with Chinese at all hours of the day. PM is working really hard at learning the language. I often wake up in the mornings to him practicing the tones and making all kinds of weird sounds. Sometimes, I even have to endure Chinese opera. Now, in China, I might be inclined to go to the opera for the cultural experience, however here, I would prefer not to listen to horrible YouTube videos of it! All that said, if this helps him master the language, I am game.

This coming weekend, we are headed to Dim Sum with the whole crew who will be going to Guangzhou. I already know most people, but there are a few that I haven't spent much time with and one husband who is flying in from Nairobi to take the oral exam to become an FSO, so I will meet him for the first time.

The weather continues to act like a petulant child, alternating between being nice and warm and freezing cold and snowy. This long winter has made me even more excited for China as our winter temperature will be about 50 degrees!

One other thing that made me more excited for China is that we received our welcome letter from the Consulate last week. In it, there was a list of the housing options. Can you say AMAZING! I feel as though I am going to get spoiled with housing there. All of the options are super nice and really modern. One of them lists a "goose down pillow and blanket menu" and "silk kimonos upon request". I think I can get used to that!