40 Hours in Inner Mongolia (Part Èr)

Before I restart my tale, I just wanted to take a few minutes to explain how to comment on my blog, since many people seem to be having trouble and I love reading comments. Once you read a post you want to leave a message on, simply click on the number of comments at the bottom. It will say something like "1 comment." It will open up a box to leave your message. Type it in and then choose how you would like to sign it from the drop-down menu. The simplest is perhaps "Anonymous/Name" - just put your name - though you can also do it through a number of different accounts. Click "post" and you're done!

Now where was I? Oh ya, the midafternoon nap... When we got up we all piled into the car and headed out to a field, where we were to pick some famous Mongolian flowers. I got to see more of the grasslands and animals (horses, cows and sheep) as we drove. I mentioned to Tana that this reminded me much more of home than the rest of China -- sort of like Saskatchewan actually. About 30 seconds after we got out of the car we decided that our plan was not going to work because there were a gabazillion mosquitos (if you are not clear on the concept, this is a gazillion bazillion mosquitoes). We quickly ran back to the car, where I discovered that somehow I didn't have a single bite whereas everyone else had been eaten alive. Apparently this was not exactly true as some of mine appeared the next morning, but there were still only five or so even though I am usually the one whose blood they love!

 

 

 

 

We drove for a little while longer and ended up in a new field with a bit more wind and very few mosquitoes :) We got out to walk and climbed up a little hill. There was sand everywhere, so Tana and I both took off our shoes and ran as one might on a beach. Except it was better than a beach because there was a hill which lead to... you guessed it... running/sliding down it and getting covered in sand. Perhaps you had to be there but I think it might have been the highlight of my trip. I got lots of wonderful pictures which I will try to post tomorrow when my internet starts working better again, so do check back.

Tana's niece also had a great time and started crying when we had to leave. We drove back and had some leftover dumplings for dinner (as too many were bought for lunch). They were just as wonderful as before. Tana's husband is working on a paper he is trying to get published about plants, so he asked if I would be willing to proofread it for him. I happily did so and found it quite interesting. I sense my arts and science degree coming together -- Tana was surprised to hear I used to do this for friends and tutor English.

I'm going to leave my tale here for tonight -- at bedtime and pick it up again tomorrow (or whenever my internet lets me blog again).

On a more recent note, somebody please explain to me why tonight, in the middle of a thunderstorm, not one, not two, but three of our groups in our houses decided they wanted to have barbecues! Crazy people!

New recent words: Bus, Intern, pancake bread, hat, sofa, go home, house, mutton, toilet

40 Hours in Inner Mongolia (Part 1)

Inner Mongolia was so Amazing that I think I’m going to have to spread this out a bit over a few blog posts.

We finished work at 6 pm on Tuesday and headed back to the residence, where we met up with Tana’s husband, father and cousin, and then drove to Zheng Lan Qi, Tanna’s hometown in Inner Mongolia, with them. We had a nice time in the car but Tana got a bit car sick and you couldn’t see much of the beautiful scenery as it got dark fairly quickly. On the other hand, the parts that we did see as we were leaving Beijing were magnificent. There was some wild wall and beautiful mountains.

When we arrived, we were treated to a wonderful Mongolian meal of sweet breads, milk tea and mutton. The milk tea and mutton deserve a further explanation. Milk tea is a traditional Mongolian drink that is much like regular black tea with milk, but it also includes salt and sometimes butter. Families keep a large pot of it in a thermos and drink it throughout the day. It also becomes a kind of soup because you dunk all your food -- from mutton to dumplings to bread -- in it. As for the mutton, we had traditional meat that literally translates to “Hand grab meat.” Basically it’s a pile of bones with the best meat I have ever tasted on a plate in the middle of the table. Everyone takes a knife -- or teeth or hands -- and pulls it off to eat it. I have never eaten more or better meat in my life!

I went to bed around 12:30 but apparently Tana stayed up talking to her family late into the night. They gave me a comfortable bed on the couch and I slept very well. In the morning, I discovered that what we ate for our midnight snack was typical breakfast food and got to enjoy lots more. I also met the cutest and happiest 2 year old I have ever met -- Tana’s niece.

Around 9 o’clock we headed off into the grasslands for the Mongolian cultural festival that was going on. We watched singing, dancing, horseback riding and even some poor monkey being trained. Tana’s very generous mother bought be a beautiful traditional Mongolian necklace when I wasn’t looking. They made me try on a beautiful traditional Mongolian dress, but I’m pretty sure it must look better on Tana because I looked very silly.

We made our way back to Tana’s parents’ place and had a large variety of tasty dumplings for lunch (all with mutton of course) and then an early afternoon nap.

I am going to try to get some pictures on Facebook soon and continue my tale tomorrow.

Preview: mosquitoes, sand dunes, shopping and bus ride

Chinese Math

Once again I found myself with no idea what to blog about today, so I will follow my dad’s suggestion and write about math.

His first question: "If you took the entire population of China and divided it by the prime number that corresponds most closely to the population of Shanghai and then multiplied it by the log of the current Yuan/dollar exchange rate, what would the answer be?”

The answer:
C= Population of China=1.35 billion
P= closest prime to the population of Shanghai= 14,009,999
R= Current exchange rate= 6.28073
L=log of current exchange rate=1.83749

Answer=C*L/P=1,770,060.07 (Thanks to wolfram alpha for the data)

This lead to me having to explain what a log is, but anyways...

Other numbers of interest:

Hours I typically work in a week: 54
Price of my favourite stuffed buns in Beijing: Rmb 0.8
Number of new Chinese words I learned today: 3 (wind, door and tree)
Days I have been in China: 85
Pageviews on my blog so far (including the old blog): 619+475=1094
Days until I go to Inner Mongolia: 1
Number of e-mails I wrote today: 16
Current number of interns: 2 (William arrived today)
Number of digits in a Chinese phone number without area code: 8
Temperature today: 35 degrees with 51% humidity
Number of times I said “Sorry, do you speak English?” today: Too many to count...

Chinese numbers: I have never found a language with easier numbers than Chinese. As soon as you can count to 10, you can count to 100. 21 is literally 2*10, 1 (er shi yi) and all the numbers work like that.

yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi

Now you can do it too!

Chinese also has a hand gesture for every number...unfortunately they are not the same as the ASL ones (which I know).

As for the characters, I know the first 3...1 horizontal line, 2 horizontal lines and 3 horizontal lines. I guess it would be a little tedious to continue like that. Oh, and 10 is a cross...