Chinese and Spanish

I can read in Spanish more quickly and with greater comprehension than I can in Chinese. Seriously; after three years of study and one year of post-college life focused on China, I am able to comprehend more written Spanish within a few months of my first visit to Spain. (for oral communication my Chinese is still far stronger than my Spanish)
 
It is disheartening considering how much time I spend on Chinese, and encouraging as to what it suggests about my potential achievements with Spanish. It is also encouraging that I may be able to find books I want to read in Spanish at the public library in Albacete.

The Red Pirates

Hopefully when Dave's band plays at the Bird's Nest it will be this cool

I shout out to one of my most valued friends in China, Dave Cooper (库柏大卫). His band Red Pirates is getting more and more well known, and they are starting to get some pretty big gigs! From an email I got from Dave, Red Pirates will be playing the half-time show for the X-Games (which are from the 27th to the 30th of October) in Beijing at the Birds Nest Stadium!


Earlier this month the band was interviewed by "Beijing Today." As an attempt to help out my buddy Dave, here is the MySpance and DouBan / 豆瓣 pages for the Red Pirates, as well as another piece written about the band in the Global Times.

Food and cooking in Chicago; Lemien Family Pancakes

I am currently in Chicago, having made the flight all the way here from Spain just so that I could pick up a passport and visa from the Spanish Consulate here. It is quite frustrating that my documents could not have been mailed to me, or that I couldn't have someone pick them up for me, so I consider this to me the most expensive visa ever: although there was no visa fee with the application (very nice), the money I had to spend in order to procure all the necessary documents, the costs of sending them, plus the trans-Atlantic airfare made this a pricey visa.

While I am here in Chicago I am staying with the wonderful Isa and her husband Daniel. They have a very nice apartment near Lincoln Park. While Daniel has been at work during the day, Isa and I have spent a good deal of time in the kitchen. Yesterday while Isa made a delicious spaghetti dish with bacon, creme, onions and garlic, I made my fried bananas. Fried bananas are kind of becoming a signature dish of mine. They are very sweet. I had them once in a Dai restaurant in Beijing, and I have loved the idea ever since.

Nutella on pancakes: tastes even better than it sounds

This morning I made banana pancakes, one of my favorite things to make. There is a recipe that my dad used when I was little that has now taken on the name of the Lemien family recipe with me (although he originally got it from a friend, not a family member), and it goes something like this:

3 eggs

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup white flour
2 cups milk (1 1/2 cups for waffles)

1/2 cup oil (sunflower - something tasteless)

dash of baking soda

While that is the basic recipie for pancakes, mashed bananas, slices of strawberry, or blueberries can be added into it for variation. Isa and I ate them with Nutella spread over the top like a think syrup. I love Nutella.

Chinese Restaurants in Spain #2: In Madrid with Yuanyuan

While I was in Madrid at the beginning of September I got to get together with Yuanyuan (媛媛), a friend from Kalamazoo who is studying in Madrid. We met up with a friend of hers, Meiling, from China who is also studying Spanish in Madrid, and we all went to a Chinese restaurant near Gran Vía. Although most of the shops around there are pretty fancy, the three of us wandered up a side street and found a little place that Yuanyuan knew.

As we strolled inside,  I instantly felt an air of authenticity. Granted, it was not identical to restaurants that I had eaten in in China. There were several tables full of Chinese families and groups of Chinese people, and rather than saying hola as we came in, a lady welcomed us in Mandarin Chinese. The three of us sat down and checked out the menu, I was pleased not only to see the items on the menu in both Chinese characters and Spanish writing, but also that dished I was familiar with were there. Yuanyuan's friend didn't even look at the menu, but just told the waitress that she wanted some 炸酱面, whereas I was excited to order 鱼香肉丝 (yuxiangrousi) as soon as I saw it on the menu.

The girls: Yuanyuan on the right and Meiling on the left.

The set up of the restaurant was similar to Chinese restaurants in the United States: the wall decorations seemed half faux-Chinese and half faux-modern art.The furniture was wooden and in a style that I think is common in middle class Chinese restaurants in China. It was also great to have an evening of speaking Chinese.

When the food arrived, I found it interesting to see that the portion was European-sized rather than Chinese-sized. This is going to be something difficult for me to adjust to. Despite the size of the dish being half of what I was accustomed to, I was eager to try it. My yuxiangrousi was definitly different from what I would've eaten in Beijing, but it was similar enough that I would've been able to identify it by taste. I also have to say that, although I greatly prefer to eat yuxiangrousi in Beijing, this was far for similar to Chinese food in Beijing than any dish that I have had in the U.S. or in Spain so far. I enjoyed the place, and I would definitely be willing to go back there again.

Creepiest advertisements that I have ever seen.

I saw these adds in the Berlin Schönefeld Airport as I was getting on my flight to Madrid. I am disturbed enough by seeing the pope photoshopped with a baby, but there were about four more adds that I didn't take a picture of. I think I saw Angela Merkel there, too.

Thor... in Spanish

I had an interesting experience the other night: on the WWOOF farm we watched Thor. That's right. Normally we have dinner at 11:00 or so, (with plenty of red wine) and I sleepily go off to bed as soon as I finish eating while the Spaniards chat, smoke, and drink until God knows what hour. That night, however, we started dinner ludicrously early; perhaps 10:00 in the evening. Edua set up a computer and some speakers next to the table in the yard, and we all stared at the small screen for the duration of our meal. There were plenty of jokes about how (SPOILERS) naturally when Thor comes to Earth he lands in the United States, about how easy American girls seem in Hollywood movies, and something Remi said upon his seeing an Asian actor that unsettled me (due to my unsureness of what constitutes racism) about how the Chinese are everywhere, even in Asgard.

The film itself was nothing memorable; in fact, I would consider it to be less entertaining and of lower quality (in terms of an engaging story/plot that I could not predict) than most American blockbuster movies. Since the film was in Spanish, I didn't catch a good deal of the dialogue, but it wasn't too necessary to understand what was going on. I was, nonetheless, surprised by how much I did understand. Perhaps it was so clear form the context, perhaps, because I could have guessed the lines anyway, or perhaps due to it being spoken very clearly and without any think regional accent. I guess that it is a possibility that most of what I understood (linguistically) was not due to my Spanish language skills, but rather due to my childhood passion for mythology. I guess it just gows to show that not all of my childhood was wasted!

My Future

I know that I will spend this year in Albacete in Spain for the teaching job that I have, but I don't know if I will be in Spain for a second year as well or not. It is a distinct possibility that I will apply for the same program again, in a different location (probably Madrid or Barcelona), and spend a second year in Spain. It would certainly make sense to spend a first year in Spain getting my Spanish up to a good level, then start to learn Portuguese during my second year when I am in a bigger city with (presumably) more Portuguese speakers in order to prepare for a Fulbright scholarship for Brazil.

Then again, maybe I won't want to spend two years in Spain and one year will be enough. Perhaps I will end up applying for the Fulbright scholarship for Brazil during this year (2011-2012 academic year) and be in Brazil the following year (2012-2013 academic year). I can, of course, always re-apply to teach in Spain again as a backup plan. Sarah N tells me that having the language skills of the target country is a big help, so it might up my chances of getting the scholarship considerably if I learn at least some Portuguese before I go to Brazil. I think that this would be easier to do once my Spanish is better, as I would still like to focus on Spanish for a while longer, seeing as I am still far from satisfied with my current ability to use the Spanish language.

What about going back to China? I could (I think) easily get a teaching job just about anywhere in the country, but I am not terribly interested in teaching English in China, so that limits my options a bit. There are NGOs and educational organizations that I am keeping my eye on, so that if an job opening and my ability to take advantage of it happen to coincide I could take advantage of those opportunities. If I could work full-time for a micro-finance or poverty alleviation organization like WoKai, for an educational organization like CET, or for a tourism-focused company, I would love to do any of those. Even if I wasn't living in China but my work was focused on China and making use of my skills and experiences around China, I think that I could be satisfied with that. Working in Brazil, Spain, or the United States in a job that made use of my skill set would be great. There is plenty of Chinese business interests throughout all of Latin America, for instance, so if I could find a way to get involved with that it would be great. I could both make use of my intercultural and multilingual skill set, and I would be happy to improve people's livelihoods or to share and impart knowledge. I could see myself enjoying learning more about and focusing a career on environmental issues in China, Ethnic issues in China, international relations in relation to China (most likely in relation to the United States, although China-Brazil or China-Latin America more generally could be rivetingly interesting). Although at this point I am not really a fan of getting a masters degree or a PhD in any of these areas, I would love to give lectures and power points about any of these issues. If only I could be an assistant professor of Chinese studies with only a bachelors degree. Or if there were secondary schools had such extensive and specific programs as to be able to hire me to teach Chinese history or culture.

Of course, there are other options than merely listing off countries. One career that I have considered in the past (due in great part to the influences of Corinne McKay, Jill Sommer and Benny) is translation. To do this in either of my language pairs (English-Chinese or English-Spanish) I would have to improve my non-English language skills, and lacking any miracle of personal growth this means likely with more schooling. A masters degree is something that I do not think that I would want to do in the United States, merely due to the cost. I could see myself happily pursuing a Masters in translation at a university in Spain, or possibly something similar at a university in China. Studying in the United States is something that would need a lot of other positive factors thrown into the mix in order to overcome the disadvantage of price. I can always apply to work for the State Department again, which I am considering as a possibility a few years down the road. There are ups and downs to working for the Unites States government, but being involved in it certainly provides more opportunity for positive change than twiddling my thumbs from outside of it.

There are some other possibilities that are more distant, such as getting some kind of an advanced degree in China (Chinese language, translation, international relations, or ethnology), getting an advanced degree in the United States (most likely translation, anthropology/ethnology, or international something), applying to the Princeton in Asia program, going back to China to teach English full-time, or applying to the JET program and going to Japan. These are all fairly unlikely, though.

If only I could be a professional language learner like Benny. I have desires of various levels to learn Portuguese, Italian, French, Russian, Ki-Swahili, German, Hindi, Japanese, and Arabic. I doubt all of these will come to pass, but I can recognize that the desire and motivation to learn these languages is present in me. Perhaps I will get to two or three of these in the next decade, but the kind of job or lifestyle that will allow me to travel to the various countries where I would want to use the languages is dubious at best. Getting paid to learn is pretty rare, which leaves me a few other options: I could either continue to be an English teacher for the next 6 years in various countries (a possibility that I am less than thrilled about), find various jobs over the next several years that allow me live in or travel through these places (a possibility), or find a single job that would allow me to visit and/or live in multiple places (a rare a unlikely jackpot).