welcome baby!

i have a new nephew. my sister alison and her husband had a new baby a few days ago. he was born at 4:07 am, pst, on 25 february 2006. ken and alison have named him shawn timothy marshall. he weighed in at 8 pounds, and is 20 inches long, so i am told. i haven't seen a picture yet, but i will be sure to share when i do.

so, jazmine has a new baby brother. here's her picture. i took this last october when i was home and alison and jazmine visited cincinnati. i think she has pumpkin all over her face, or perhaps it is carrot. either way, she is a terribly cute little girl, and very pleasant to be around. i look forward to getting to know her a lot better when i am not several thousand miles away. yes, this is one of the difficult things about living in china.

congratulations alison, ken and jazmine!

a very belated account of kate and duffy's time in mysore

We were in Mysore from Friday, January 27th until Sunday, January 29th. The bus from Ooty to Mysore was fascinating. After numerous switchbacks and several very sharp turns, near head-on collisions, and more than one occasion where the bus had to back up to avoid on-coming buses, we were out of the mountains and into much more level terrain. While dangerous, the mountain roads were also very interesting. We were able to get another look at the endless rubber and teak plantations, hillside, terraced farming, and large tracts of land that were, for some reason, being burned. Irrigation in the hills near Ooty is unique. Instead of sprinklers, teams of men using a fire hose were common sights from the bus windows.

The “road” to Mysore amounted to 2 tire tracks in several places and many times road work was symbolized not by bright orange and white barricades, but by a simple pile of boulders making that section of the road impassable. Luckily, our trip went through several wildlife refuges, so we were able to see elephants, peacocks, monkeys, wild boars fighting with monkeys, and deer. After sunset, however, the road became more boring than interesting, with the exception of the nearly constant stream of carts pulled by teams of oxen. We arrived in Mysore at around 8:00 pm, took an auto rickshaw directly to a hotel with much needed hot showers, room service and an excellent restaurant that would become like a second home for the next 2 days.

Mysore’s basic attractions are a large, relatively new palace, large market area, and cathedral. We decided that our first stop would be the palace. The amba vilas palace was built in 1897 for the wodeyar monarchs. The palace grounds are large and open, with several parks, plazas, and temples. The main building is a massive series of reception halls and throne rooms, each lined with paintings, floors of marble, and massive stained glass ceilings and windows. Every surface is covered in bright blue, red, green, and gold paint. One of the more interesting features of the palace grounds is that visitors need to remove their shoes. Since there are hundreds of visitors at any one time, the check room for shoes is one of the more unique and chaotic scenes I’ve ever witnessed. The grounds are also home to two elephants and two camels. And what could be better than riding an elephant around the former maharaja’s palace? The ride was only about 10 minutes, but it was a lot of fun. Somehow, elephants are even bigger than you imagine them to be.

After several hours of wandering the palace, and a delicious pizza lunch, we headed to the north side of town to visit the cathedral. As we headed towards the cathedral, we noticed more and more women in Islamic dress, mosques, and other signs of a Muslim community. We were nearly convinced that we were lost, when suddenly two massive spires appeared in front of us. It turned out that the cathedral was right in the middle of a predominately Muslim area. Another encouraging sign of India’s diversity.

The church was the most tourist-oriented one I have ever seen. There was a brief synopsis of the Catholic faith on the inside front wall, and placards to explain each aspect of a cathedral were placed all over. There were several large shrines and a grotto outside, but the most interesting sign was a two-part history of the world according to the Bible, from Genesis to some future time labeled “Eternity”. It was interesting to see the entirety of Christian past, present, and future neatly arranged on two flowcharts. We left the cathedral shortly before sunset since we had a long walk back and Kate had recently notice several wasp nests a few yards long near the tops of the stained glass windows.

The next day, we headed into the market. I’m not sure what your vision of India is, but mine involves lots of smells from different spices, incense, and flowers, endless rows of stalls selling fruits, nuts, beads, and basically anything else people try to trade, and, of course, elephants. A very Marco Polo-type vision, and we found it in the Mysore market. As soon as we entered the market, we walked past an endless corridor of onions, bananas, and oranges on one side and row after row of vendors selling powder that could be mixed into paint on the other. After wandering around for about 10 minutes with our jaws on the ground and our eyes wide open, a young man began to talk to Kate and next thing we knew, we were at his incense and oil stall. He claimed that he had handmade incense sticks and we, being the shrewd customers we are, were immediately skeptical. He seemed to sense this and told us to come behind the counter where he proceed to sit down at a cutting board and make incense by mixing a paste of gum wood and water, rolling it out, wrapping it around a stick, and sprinkling it with essential oil mixed with colored dust. Needless to say, we were impressed. We bought a few bottles of scented oil each, figuring that in Wuhan, we would need all the good smells we could get, and were about to leave when the salesman thanked us and started handing us about 100 free incense sticks. We also proceeded to buy cinnamon, cloves, curry, masala mix, and a few other spices. It was one of the most memorable mornings of our time in India.

After lunch we headed outside the city to one of the “7 most scared hills in Southern India.” As we’ve said, southern India has a lot of hills, so we thought this one must be pretty impressive to be ranked that high. The view of Mysore was impressive, and reminded us of the fact that while India doesn’t have high rises, it still has a lot of residents. From the top of the hill, all we could see in every direction was city. Our fascination with the view was quickly ended, however, by a passing group of monkeys. A monkey that is 10 feet away is usually much better at holding attention than a landscape.

That night we left Mysore, but not before heading over to the palace one more time. Our friend at the fragrance shop had informed us that at 7:00 that night, all the lights at the palace would be turned on. This interested us greatly, because we had noticed the day before that the palace had more light bulbs than a mid-sized airport. Just before getting on the bus to Hospet, we lugged our packs to the palace just in time. At 7:01, the entire palace started to glow. It was amazing. The grounds around the palace were basically cast in daylight. With that encouraging sight, we shouldered our packs and headed to the bus station for another tooth-shattering night on the road.

have we discussed the brilliance that is hot pot?

last night's hot pot feast. l to r. meghan, jennifer, jessica, sandrine, brad, lindsey, duff, amy (completely hidden by the fu wu yuan), the fu wu yuan (waitress), erin, and everett.


for me, one of the definite highlights of china is hot pot. in chinese, it is fire pot. i had hot pot my second meal in china when i came on the sustainable transportation study tour with huxley college my senior year at western. we visited the great wall, brilliant, but cold, windy and polluted, and then pulled into a small town for lunch. around a large circular table, we each had a personal pot, there was a cylinder in the middle filled with burning charcoal, and a moat of broth around the outside. you cook your own food in the broth, and immediately i was hooked. perhaps it is not the best meal if you aren't used to using chopsticks (it can be quite challenging, and that may detract from the pleasure), but it was fun for a group of university kids to struggle with our food.

after that first meal, it was a long time until i had hot pot again. a few weeks after i arrived to teach, our chinese friend nicole took us to a hot pot dinner. months later, duff and i had a crazy hot pot experience in harbin. we had a book that my chinese teacher made me with different foods, written in chinese, and english with pictures. as we were flipping through it, the waitress though we wanted EVERYTHING in the book, and the two of us wound up with a ridiculous amount of food. the whole restaurant cheered duff to the finish line. i really didn't get hooked, though, until we went to visit nicole in her home town. in a hot pot, there is boiling broth that can be seasoned with no spice up to extreme spice. a variety of raw food is put into the pot, and when it is ready, you grab it with your chopsticks. then, you can dip it in a variety of sauces (my favorite being a sesame butter, zhi ma jiang, or garlic and oil), let it cool for a moment, and eat it. delicious. the best part about hot pot is the frozen sliced lamb. we went to lunch with nicole at her friend's house. they had known each other from high school. duff and i sat down to a hot pot lunch with the two girls and the friend's parents at their home. we had some spinach, and a garbage bag full of lamb. i am not kidding. next to the father there was a plastic bag three feet tall filled with frozen, shaved lamb. the father, who didn't speak english, would grab huge chop stick fulls in put it in the pot. and there was never ending sesame sauce. the best hot pot i have ever had.

we enjoyed hot pot so much, duff and i begged nicole to take us again. she introduced us to a fancy chain of restaurants by the name of guo jia guo. this means pot inside pot. there are two pots, set into the table over a burner. the outer ring is spicy, and the inner in just broth. fortunately duff and i have a great group of friends, most of whom enjoy hot pot as much as we do. last night, we had a feast. it is always fun to go with a big group of people because of the variety of food we can get. these include lamb, beef, tofu, crab, shrimp dumplings, rice sticks, mushrooms, carrots, cauliflower, potato, braided bread sticks, tofu noodles, hot pot noodles, spinach, cabbage, bean sprouts, and probably a half dozen other things i am forgetting. it is amazing. there are also other choices on the menu: brains, hearts, pig's blood, and the like, but as we don't know how to order them....we are pretty safe. one time, lindsey, jennifer and i went to hot pot and the table next to us had a cut up eel served to them which was still flopping. flopping a lot. and the couple who was dining took a while to drop it in the pot, and it just kept flopping. there is also a dog hot pot, that i am excited to try (i have to do it soon, the chinese eat dog mostly in winter to keep warm), it is a little more expensive. and i want to make sure it is shaved, or something. eating dog meat off the bone is a little too out there for me.

come to china, we'll take you to hot pot. it is fabulous. jennifer and jessica, i believe, say they will open a hot pot restaurant in america, and when they do, i'll be there far too often. i love hot pot.

first day back to work

i have just finished my first day of my last semester of my last year teaching in china. i am teaching 16 hours each week this semester, it will be the fewest hours i have ever worked in one semester. gladly, i am back to teaching listening and speaking. i have taught a large variety of courses in china. these include oral english, newspaper reading and writing, the society and culture of major english speaking counties, reading and writing, and listening and speaking. i love listening and speaking. it can be a very exciting and active class, especially with the right group of kids. i also like it because more than the other courses, i am able to get to know the students personally.

each class that i am working with has 40 students. i see 8 of these classes a week. on the one hand, it is good, i only have to write one lesson plan. on the other hand, i have to teach the same lesson plan 8 times. i taught the same lesson plan four times last semester and was bored. i wonder how i will do with this. each class is an hour and a half long. we start on the hour and work for 45 minutes. the students then get a 10 minute break (when total pandemonium normally takes over my classroom), and then i attempt to control them for another 45 minutes. often, because the break can be so disruptive, i work them for an hour and a half and let them go. i think they like it better, and i do too.

the students all have english names. after having been this long in china, i wouldn't have any difficulty with their chinese names, but for a new foreign teacher, it would be extremely difficult. most of the names are pretty average, but there are those who stick out. i have a student named firewolf. he's a great kid. i have kids named rain, sky, write, flick, heaven, and robot. a lot of boys pick the names of sports figures. i have a beckham and an iverson in every class. sometimes they have a little difficulty with which names are for girls and which are for boys. of the eight classes i have, i taught four of them last semester in reading and writing. duff taught the other four classes. now, i have everyone for listening and speaking and he has taken over all of the reading and writing. all of last semester, duff and i compared our classes. the consensus was that my students all came to class and then misbehaved (riotously) and none of his came, but those who did were well behaved and did their work. i am curious to see if this is true, and if it changes this semester. i have only taught two classes so far. duff's students (12 out of 40 showed up) were so quiet!! i couldn't get them to interact with me at all. the kids who i had last semester (38 out of 40 showed up) were boisterous and talkative. i have about half of my classes now in media rooms. this is great for listening and speaking. i took in a slide show for the first day with pictures from our trip. i told them about what we saw in sri lanka, they remembered the tsunami. i showed them some of the more amazing pictures from india. the one of us on the elephant, one of some monkeys, the one of a cow about to knock me over (i was bumped hard, from behind, by a number of cows during our travels. one made me fall over. in hampi, this had happened a number of times. it is a small town and i guess people noticed, because by the end of our time there, people were warning me when a cow was approaching me from behind. duff thinks some of these incidents could be due to my bright red backpack). the kids in class were calling out, demanding to know what items in the picture were called in english, and shouting out words i asked for in chinese. i now know the chinese for elephant, monkey, laundry, and coconut.

overall, a great first day back in class. oh, and we have no night or weekend classes this semester. joy! the night classes last semester were really rough.

perched atop an elephant

duff and i got to ride an elephant at the palace in mysore. i can check elephant off the 'animals i want to ride in asia in 2006' list. now, i just need horses and camels. i don't think i have been on an elephant since i was about 4 years old, at the corner of ridge and highland (i have a picture, and a vague memory).

enchanting ooty

one of my favorite spots from the whole trip was ooty. ooty is known as the 'queen of the nilgiri hillstations.' we didn't visit any of the other hill stations, but i hear the are all amazing. ooty, also known as udagamandalam (check you maps), is high in the western ghats. our elevation in town was around 7350 feet. like so many high elevation spots, the air was crystal clear and all the colors were so sharp! india is a colorful frenzy compared to gray, industrialized china, but all the colors were even more pronounced in ooty.

the bus trip up to ooty was one of the most stressful of the entire trip, but also one of the most interesting. before we left for ooty we read that ooty was a resort town, kind of like aspen, and a favorite of european vacationers during colonialism. we forgot all of this when planning our trip. apparently there is a really nice scenic railroad. it is a miniature railroad, too, which would have been neat. when coming up to the mountains from the west, they rise straight out of tropical coconut palm forests. we were weaving back and forth on roads with hairpin turns, driving straight up the side of the mountain. one of the most fun things for me was to see the changes in our environment as we gained in elevation. we passed from tropical forests to bamboo forests. it was the thickest and tallest bamboo i have ever seen. we came through southern china on the train on our way back, and all the bamboo here looks so puny! i bet it is bigger in yunnan province, where i will spend the may break (with duff, AND katie lennard, AND (hopefully) lindsey and blayne, too!!!). ummm...oh, and then we drove through beautiful tea and rubber plantations. at the highest elevations were either no trees, just grassy hills with sheep and cows grazing, or eucalyptus forests. we had a wonderfully scented bus ride. especially when the bus (the road wasn't wide enough for two busses) had to swerve dangerously to the side of the road to avoid oncoming traffic and hit branches, knocking fragrant leaves into the bus. before arriving in ooty we passed through many small, sun-drenched, brightly-colored towns. the humidity was gone, and people were out enjoying the cool sunshine. in the grassy hills, occasionally, there would be a very distinctive dr. suess-looking tree.

in ooty we got off the bus and thought we were in the most remote place we had ever visited (we forgot about ooty being a resort town). we checked into the cheery raja hotel (a roach resort, we discovered, when the lights go out. they literally climbed out of the walls, and down from the ceiling) and started to walk. people come to ooty to go trekking, we didn't have enough time to trek, so we planned to walk. hiking, or, like the irish say, hill walking. both days we were in ooty, we grabbed some water, walked to the edge of town, and wandered all day in the hills. we were completely free, we didn't follow a map, we just went. it was the most amazing feeling. the first day, we walked up into the hills, and on our way back in found the tourist center of ooty. it was completely shocking to me. i thought we were in a tiny town in the hills! oh, well.

the second day provided the most interesting walking. under brilliantly blue and cloudless skies we walked through small towns and villages. the roads were so dangerous we left them completely and walked on the foot paths that connect the villages. we got to see, close up, the lives of the people of the nilgiris. most everyone was farming, we saw a LOT of carrots being grown. the hills are terraced, and we wandered in the maze of houses and fields. the houses were all brightly colored. mostly white, and light pastel blues, yellows, purples and pinks. chinese small towns that we have seen are gray. the hills were just beautiful, and we got some great views. at one point, we walked up a hill, passed through the village, and entered the forest. there was practically no underbrush. the canopy consisted almost exclusively of eucalyptus trees. we met some boys, playing on the bikes and celebrating republic day. they were flying flags and gave each of us a little indian paper flag. we talked and played with them for a bit. we have discovered that indian kids love the digital camera. love it.

in the afternoons, we saw women laying bright saris out on the grass in the fields to drive. they also laid them on their roofs. every available surface was covered with vibrant clothing drying in the sun. duff and i went photo crazy, once i get a photo site, we will be able to share these better. we walked by a dozen or more churches, and a number of graveyards. animals grazed everywhere, and we saw a giant herd of sheep working their way through the tombstones in one graveyard, nibbling grass as they went. we saw a few people riding horses. we had come to ooty with the intention of riding horses, but i have become an overly cautious traveler (not a good thing), and i didn't find a place i really trusted. so we walked.

oh, all through the nilgiri hills, there were signs requesting no one bring plastic to the area. it was really neat. i am not sure how much people follow it, water in plastic bottles was sold everywhere. but we did notice a lot less plastic, and a lot less litter and trash.

in the town, we enjoyed wandering the streets and alleys. every shaded alley had a bright ending, a colorfully painted doorway, or laundry blowing in the breeze. we passed one amazing three story building with balconies. we could see none of the building's facade because of all the huge pieces of cloth hung to dry. the tea in ooty was better than anywhere else in india, that we tried, and the food was excellent too. at night, it got really chilly, and it was fun to see everyone bundling up against the cold. the indian answer to cold, at least in the nilgiri hills, is just to wrap more and more fabric around one's self. saris were covered with more and more wraps. and hats. everyone had really cute woolen hats.

our time in ooty was far too short. we left and took off for mysore on a bus just 2 days after arriving. the bus to mysore was just as incredible as the bus to ooty. we passed through a number of wildlife refuges, and saw a lot of wildlife. peacocks, especially. immediately after leaving ooty, we passed through an area of grassy hills, like those backing the badger pocket bison ranch (one of my favorite places in the world!). we went through scrub and brush areas, like in central washington. then, we dropped down into forests and streams, and eventually, back to coconut palms and banana trees.

photos!!

duff has some photos up! he has them in albums at his photo website. follow the link under 'photos' to your right.

the new albums include hong kong, sri lanka, kanyakumari, kovallam & varkala, ooty, and mysore.

enjoy!

happy valentine's day!

happy valentine’s day, everyone!

i’d love to tell you what the chinese do for valentine’s day, but i haven’t left the apartment once today...so...

we had a pretty low-key day, duff cooked his amazing spaghetti sauce and garlic bread (a challenge, because no one has ovens in china. it is the kitchen item i miss most, other than the blue spatula alison gave me for christmas a few years ago. oh and then there is my great love of the kitchen aid mixer). we are both fighting off a month’s worth of indian germs, and i am doubled over with doubled over with stomach cramps. we’ve watched 4 episodes of the ‘dick van dyke show.’ this must be how 80-year-olds celebrate valentine’s day. it is super fun. next, we’re going to watch ‘singing in the rain’ which duff gave me for christmas.

india updates coming soon!

a snow day for kate and duff

duff and i are back in wuhan! and we have our computers back, so prepare yourselves for photos and updates. our apartment is great, and it is nice to be back. it is amazing how much dust settled in it during the month we were gone. it is nice to be back, and it is great to see all of the same people. like our breakfast lady. i think she missed our reliable every morning business as much as we missed her food.

we were supposed to start classes today, but the office hasn't yet finalized what we are to teach or when we will teach it. as a result, we have all of this week off. i feel like a little kid with a snow day. i have been on a very definite snow-day-high for 2 days, and it will continue tomorrow when i don't have to get up for class! and it feels like christmas. today i got a 'baker's dozen' addition to my '12 days of chrismas' presents from my parents. this one was HUGE. i carried it home on my head like the indian women carry laundry and buckets. all of the presents have been fantastic, and this one was filled with every available kind of hershey's kisses. and a million other great bits. thanks, mom and dad!

okay, we are going to get started sorting through the thousands of photos we took in the last month. we will share them with you all soon.

oh, and the problem with my hotmail account has still not been fixed, so ignore any messages from KateRiker@hotmail.com. thanks.

Almost home (well, as home as Wuhan can be)

***first of all: if you have received an email from kate's hotmail address (kateriker@hotmail.com), do not open it. it's some sort of virus. best we can figure, someone has hacked into kate's email account and is using it to commit evil e-deeds. to email kate, the real kate, use kateriker@gmail.com***

hello everyone. kate and i are about to begin the long trip back to wuhan, to cold weather, cloudy skies, and, sigh, work. we have also fallen far behind on logging our travels.

we've spent the last 3 days in goa, visiting old goa and pololem, which is a beach area in the far south of goa. old goa was really interesting. it's a unesco world heritage site and was portugal's administrative center back in the 1600s. over the last few hundred years, as the river has silted and the major commercial areas have moved westward, the area that was once a rival of lisbon fell into disrepair. many of the buildings were abandoned or just kind of left to rot. recently, though, the area has been restored and it looks like there is still a lot more work being done. we did the fairly typical 'walking tour' of old goa, which takes about 4 hours and covers only a few kilometers, but it's full of 500-year-old monasteries, convents, basilicas, and cathedrals. it seems like there are 5 portuguese cities worth of massive religious buildings in this small area in western india. most the chapels and churches were undergoing renovations and didn't look like they were used as churches, but the paintings and tile work were still in place and as beautiful as ever. the basilica de bom jesus was the one of the most impressive i've ever seen. there are about 16 chapels and altars on the sides, each with beautiful paintings, statues, and ornate wood carvings. it's also the largest church in asia, and houses the tomb of st. francis xavier, whose body has yet to begin to decay, even though he's been dead for 500 years. sadly, they won't be displaying the body until 2014, and we just can't stay here that long. there are also the ruins of a cathedral that collapsed in the 1800s and excavations only began in 1989. it's so strange to walk through the ruins of such a massive structure. it was also fascinating to watch the excavation going on. there was a group of three women by the main altar that were arranging pieces of broken tile to be cemented back onto the walls.

so, after 4 hours of walking from one church to the other and seeing carvings and woodwork as good or better than that in europe, we decided to head for the beach to meet up with katie, blayne, jacqui, and lindsay (friends of kate from america). after a few hot, stinking hours of trying to change money in margao, which, again, is really difficult when you've got chinese money, and finding everywhere closed because it was friday afternoon, we finally got on the bus to pololem.

arriving in pololem was interesting. we had been expecting a beach area that was a little less crowded and touristy than the beaches we'd been to before, but, for better or worse, the area seemed more tourist oriented. we quickly found bamboo huts back in the coconut trees and sent word to our friends where to find us, and then sat back on the porch with an ice-cold glass of kingfisher beer to wait for them. they arrived, no probelm, that night and after 2 days with them on the beach, that went way too quickly, and some of the best mexican food i've ever had, we had to drag ourselves away from the beach to catch our train to trivandrum. this was made all the more difficult by kate having a case of food poisoning, but she toughed it out, got herself to the train station, and onto the train, and in the process has earned herself a definite spot on the iron-woman indian travel team. this trip away from the beach was not an easy one, since our taxi driver skidded off the road and insisted on playing indian pop, which is not what one needs to hear with an upset stomach.

the train was hot, but uneventful. we bought water, rice, soda, chips and such from the swarm of people that invade the train at every stop. the mantra that you encounter in nearly every station is probably the most unique part of the indian train experience. the one that always made me jump a little was the man who walked by every 10 minutes yelling 'coffee', since it sounded like he was saying 'duffy'. we're still undecided on what's better, the train or the bus. we are now back at kovalam beach for the day, our last in india, and tomorrow we take the flight to sri lanka, then through bangkok, then to hong kong, then the overnight train to wuhan. if all goes well, we should be home by march, kidding, at which time we can fill in some of the extremely large gaps, ie ooty, mysore, hampi, etc, where we haven't had time to use the internet.