DAY 8: Strawberry Museum II

This morning Xiao Hei sent me to the church in which, as before, I prayed in language I don't know. Anyway I needed to thank God for his guidance throughout this journey.
After that she brought me to the Shei-Pa National Park Head Quarters. It's not the real national park but it is like a museum with the exhibition hall, souvenir shop, and theater. They displays the flora and fauna in miniature model and they show the video of the local culture as well. Some of the interesting fact that I found are the local people in the Shei Pa Natioanl Park speaks with native language and accent which is really similar to Indonesian language. If we go up to the peak of the park (which is a mountain), we can find a snow. And there also live one of the rarest bear in the world, moon bear. Here's the picture we took in front of the park's HQ. I feels that I looks dummy here;p. 



From there, we went to strawberry museum again. But this time, I was the one who rode the motorcycle. It was kinda odd at first, because I used to driving on the left hand side both in Indonesia and Malaysia. Here, we drive on the right hand side.
In the museum, we met Xiao Hei's old pals, had a little chat and took picture. I haven't got the picture yet, I'll post it up later.

This time, there were many people in the museum and I had the chance to try out some local delicacies which are strawberry flavored. Here are some pics:

Strawberry ice cream and juice, it was nice to eat this ice cream especially in the sunny day like that afternoon. As you can see, it consists of shredded ice at the bottom, strawberry ice cream with the fruit, chocolate rice and milk. Well, although this one is nice, it's quite common to be honest..  At least more common than this one... 

This is strawberry... pork sausage. Taste nice just like the unhealthy pork, but we can feel the slight strawberry flavor in the first few chews. Weird but nice.

As you can guess, strawberry pork meat ball! It's like eating meat ball and strawberry candy together. It's really a unique mix and kinda popular here. Luckily the soup doesn't have strawberry flavor.

Strawberry egg!

Strawberry roll cake! The lady was kind enough to allow me to roll the cake myself using that machine. 

There are also strawberry noddle, wine, bread, drink, jam, etc. There are just to many kinds of strawberry foods here. OK, enough for now!

DAY 7: Mission Impossible

Today I (who can't speak Chinese) had to teach English to some kids who can only speak "yes/no". Well maybe more than that, but they are just too shy to speak English. Luckily, zhe ge lao shi (me^^) is super patient, hehe. Also, I had Xiao Hei as my assistant which help me a lot with conveying the messages to the kids. She, just like many other girls, has a natural ability to get along with children. That's really the skill that I need to learn.

Teaching kids are tough job, and it's more difficult than teaching junior or senior high school students. Kids keep on losing their interest and there's just no way we can be so serious with the study. Here is the video that really help me with teaching English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_barTKxikvA .

The teaching went quite well, thanks to some idea from the video. The responded well to movements and gestures. They were excited to move their body, play games, draw pictures, and answer quizzes. But, to my surprise, they got bored with learning an English song. I guess, one of the reasons is because, they can't read English, and it's just too hard for them to remember all the lines that they've just heard. Even they couldn't sing simple song like Old MacDonald.

But there are things that I like about these kids: first, none of them are naughty. I don't know how to deal with naughty kids and thank God, they were not there. Second, they are cute! They have shy looks on their faces which make you want to pinch them.

The kids were really good with the names of animals. They quickly raised their hands to give answer when we gave them pictures of animals. Their pronunciation? don't ask..

This is what happened when we showed them the picture of frog.
Marsel: What is this?
Kid: f**k.
Marsel: Sorry? (got my ear closer to the kid)
Kid: f**k.
Marsel: Frog,.. Okay?? Yi, er, san!
Kid: f**k.
Marsel:....

Anyway, it was fun and a little tiring. Apau Jie asked me to teach English every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening to a few kid and to a class every weekend. I'm gonna be doing this a lot and I really hope that I can improve my Chinese along the way. Here's the picture.



On the night we ate steamboat together with Apau Jie's family.. Well, it's kinda similar to the steamboat we usually ate in Malaysia. The difference is, we eat little vegetables while they eat with a lottt of vegetables.

DAY 6: Chinese Caligraphy

This afternoon, I was called by A Yuen to do some stuffs. Oya, before I move on, I'd like to share a little bit about this guy. I met this guy in my first day and it was not a really impressive meeting. It was kinda scary in fact. Here's the little conversation that we had that time.

Xiao Hei: Yohan, this is A Yuen.
Marsel: Hi! Ni hao..!
A Yuen: Nice to meet you. Wo #$&@*$&^@!
Marsel: (waiting for translation from Xiao Hei)
Xiao Hei: He asked whether you like a boy or not.
Marsel: Whattttt??

It was not the first time people think that I'm a gay or have potential to be a gay. But, it was really the first time being asked "that kind of thing" by people whom I've just met! Grr...
... After a few minutes passed in awkward silence...

A Yuen: You are handsome.

.......

I wish I could be flattered by that compliment.

Anyway, later I found out that he is actually a nice boy with a good sense of humor and he always try his best to speak English with me.
He offered me moaci this afternoon and taught me a Chinese calligraphy.

Some of the things that this shifu said to me were:
-"use your gan jue(feeling)"
-"writing is like drawing"
-"we can know people from his writing".
-"u need to relax"
-"keep the brush perpendicular"
-"#$%&&(($%", "^%$^&%", "^%$%"-->message not delivered

I passed my first lesson by writing, "3, people, and mountain", yay!.

Didn't look that hard, did it? Cos it really wasn't that hard(yea,i only wrote very simple characters,hehe). What difficult is expressing yourself through the writing, just like any other art..

DAy 5: Night Market

We went to night market today, and wew, I really want to go there again, there were just to many foods that we couldn't touch... Well, anw, the purpose of going to the market was not to eat but to buy more clothes. It's getting colder here and they said it can reach 2 degree Celsius! That's why they suggested me to buy thicker jacket and more clothes. Apau Jie (boss) was very nice and surprisingly bought me a new jeans. Xie2 boss!

I was too focused on finding clothes that I forgot to take any picture. I'll get one later. Not much story this time, but I found one good drink in the night market. It's a mix between green tea and yogurt, and the taste was great, maybe I'll try to make it myself one day..hehe.

DAY 4: Painting time!

This day was really about going back to kindergarten and play with paints. The workers here were making letter boxes for the houses. Yes, they made the letter boxes themselves and they really used their creativity. I was asked to draw a cute picture on one of the board. I was reluctant at first because I've never touched paint and brush since my junior high school. Nevertheless, I took up the challenge and it turned up to be really fun because it reminded me to my primary school time:). Here is my "masterpiece",hehe.

Looks like kindergarten pic? Then my skill still hasn't improved,lol.
Surprisingly, I was asked again to draw the letter box again, but unlike before, I'm free to draw anything I want. Thanks to Xiao Hei! She gave the idea of drawing Tung Tree Flower or You Tong Hua, a local flower. On the hill, there are many Tung tree, and when the summer comes(no idea why summer), the flower will blossom and fall to the ground like a snow. To bad I can't experience that amazing event. Here's the picture of my painting:



I hope when I come here again someday I'll still see that letter box in front of one of the houses.^^

Oya, also I had the chance to try making ginger food. Jiangmayuen, which means Ginger farm is all about ginger, so they have all kinds of ginger foods. That day, Xiaou Hei asked me to go to the kitchen and try cutting the ginger. Well, this job seems easy but actually it's not something that you can do well in the first shot. Moreover, the smell of ginger is really everywhere, making you lose concentration. (well not that extreme actually).

Outcome?


Don't be surprised that when I meet you later, I'll smell like ginger.

DAY 3: Teaching children English song?

On Tuesday, Apau Jie (boss) asked me to prepare an English Songs and some games for English learning on weekend. Hmm...  If you have any advice on what kind of activities will be fun, please leave a comment:). 

DAY 2 To Jiangmayuen!

I was picked up on Monday morning by Xiao Hei (small black), the manager of the Jiangmayuan Tourism. She is a very kind and friendly girl and she is very important to me because... she is my walking dictionary!:p. 

So, Miaoli is famous for 2 things: strawberry and ginger. There is even a strawberry museum here. What you can find here: strawberry juice, jam, wine, noddle(!?), cookies, syrup, vinegar, and everything related to strawberry which I don't know the name.  

We went to eat Xiao Hei's favorite Hakka noddle and the thing called shui jing jiao. It's an authentic local foods, the jing jiao is almost like pork dumpling actually. I almost droll while I'm writing this!

In Jiangmayuen, I was introduced to the boss, a funny woman who can speak English pretty well. She introduced me to er ge, da ge, er jie, and many of her relatives and friends. Remembering them all really pushed my brain to the limit! There are several shops and office here and people are somehow related to each other and seems to know everybody that well.

Xiao Hei brought me to get familiar with the place and enjoy the beautiful scenery. It's actually a small hill and on top of the hill there is this watchtower. The watchtower is also a place to pray. In each floor, there is a Buddha statue with Kwan Im on the top floor. From the top floor we can see why the this towm is called Da Hu (big lake). From the top floor of watchtower, in the morning, we can see a thick fog covering the area, making it looks like a big lake of fog.