We are in Cheng Xian!

August 29, 2006

Hello!

How are you? I just want to send a little note to say that now we are finally in Cheng Xian, Gansu Province!!! Today we also got broadband in our apartment so once again we feel like we are connected with the outside world. It is a great feeling! (No real phone yet, but once we get it, we will send out the phone number)

We are very happy to be here, after months of preparation, and after a long trip from Nanjing, by plane to Lanzhou, and then we spent a night there, and then a 7-hour car ride with a slightly crazy driver, but all went well. The drive from Lanzhou was quite interesting, as the landscape changed from very dry to less and less dry, and it ended up looking so nice, in some places even like Colorado, but not with such tall mountains. We arrived in Cheng Xian on Friday night, and since then it has rained and been foggy, so we cannot see too far, but we can see that there are talls hills all around us. The town itself has less than 20,000 people, which for China is tiny. It feels a bit like being in a Wild West town, at least according to my imagination! Our apartment--which is huge and very nice actually!--is located just a few minutes from the college, and then to walk into downtown takes about 15 minutes. Both where we live and in downtown are several outdoor vegetable markets, where people love to gather, and at these markets we can buy freshly made bread (not really bread we are used to, because it is made right there, over an open flame, in a pan, and it is only good right away) and in town we can also buy food made right there. Along the streets people have stands selling fruits which I am sure they have grown themselves, and there are men who stand and roast corn on the cob. All of this is of course ridiculously cheap. Because of all of the activity and because of the smells, we kind of feel like we are walking around at the fair! But of course, the cheap prices show that this area is quite poor. Several buildings are nice, but there are also very simple, low houses around. Of course, I think these are incredibly charming and genuine, but once again, I am sure the people who live there are quite poor. Each trip downtown we see some people walking in very shabby, t orn clothing, and it really is painful to see. The one thing that bothers us a lot here is the lack of a system for handling garbage. All of a sudden one can come across a large pile of it, just wherever, on the side of a road or even at the back of a classroom in the college! Very strange for us. I feel guilty just throwing anything in the regular garbage, and not being able to recycle or compost anything doesn't feel good, either.

Otherwise, we like walking around, going to small restaurants to eat, and trying to speak to people. They stare at us A LOT. Then sometimes when we say hello, they can barely even answer, but they either just keep staring, or sometimes they will burst into laughter! Very wierd. Everywhere we go, because we can understand some of it, we hear people saying, "Look, Americans!" or "Look, foreigners!"

There are little shops all over the town, but not really much that we would want to purchase. We figure we will have to go to a nearby city (2 hrs away we think, Tianshui) to shop. There are many things that we have been able to enjoy in other Chinese cities that we do not have here.

We are both healthy and happy. I have started teaching and Tomas starts next week. Strangely, we have heard that there will be 3 other foreigners arriving (we did not know this) which means that we are not teaching any Oral English at all, because there isn't enough need to go around, so we are mostly teaching Extensive REading, which is kind of a strange way to use native speakers, we think. But I am sure it will go well, it is just that since we came all this way to teach here, in the middle of nowhere in China, we really want to do as much as possible while we are here!

By the way, although we have been to church a few times previously in China, we are quite sure that there is unfortunately no Christian church here. That will be a strange experience for us I think.

In closing, if anybody wants to come and visit us, we have our own bedroom, plus an office, plus a small extra bedroom...

Within a few days, we should have a mailing address label that we will send to everyone.

I will attach a few of our first photos taken from Cheng Xian. The one is the view from my classroom window on my first day of class.

PLEASE write back and take care!

love
Rachel and Tomas

View from Rachel's classroom

View from car going to Cheng Xian

Tomas eating at market

Rachel in Cheng Xian

Local veggie market