The Elizabeth Effect

I know you have all been thinking, "Elizabeth has finally succumb to her inability to keep up with blogs." "It's over." Wrong!! I'm back. There has been quite a bit going on since I last wrote to you about anything. I feel the only way to really do anything justice is to give you a few short stories about my life since we last spoke.

The Elizabeth Effect- The End of a Glorious Reign

The namesake of this blog post. One of my teammates, Lori, has coined the term, The Elizabeth Effect. This is my first year in Chongqing, and this year we have gotten air conditioning in the classrooms, hot water in our kitchens, and up until recently, it was beautiful and sunny most days- The Elizabeth Effect. Basically I bring all the good things! No, clearly I'm not going to fight the spread of this term, and I really think it was catching on.

Unfortunately, overnight, the weather took a turn for the worst. And when I say that it changed overnight I mean that in the most literal sense. One day I was wearing a skirt and short sleeves, and the next it was jeans, boots, and a sweater. OVERNIGHT. Luckily, having grown up in Kentucky has prepared me for 70s one day, and snow the next. Unfortunately, my poor little body is not quite as emotionally prepared for the whiplash. I am now sick in bed with the sniffles.

So the Elizabeth Effect came to an end, the sun took refuge behind the clouds and the air conditioners in the classrooms are left unused in recent days (although I feel like they could possibly be the fancy AC and heater dual action guys- here's hoping). The hot water in the kitchen remains, and while I only had to transport hot water from my bathroom for a few weeks, I am so thankful for it!! It's funny how things that I took for granted in the US are just a joy here. Even as the scorching (so hot!!) water burns me, I'm just the happiest kid in the candy store!!!

The Campus Radio Station, and Its Love of Broadway

So the campus radio station is kind of funny unto itself- also kind of annoying. It's not just a radio station that you tune into. It is a radio station that is played over the campus loudspeakers for at least 2 hours a day. It's a nice mix of random English songs- they were playing some sweet 90s jams the other day- a little bit of radio chit chat (in Chinese), and a lot of Chinese songs. Did I mention that it's super loud- very very loud. And I do believe that they installed a brand new speaker right next to our building this year (apparently someone was displeased with the quality of their listening experience). Every now and then, the two closest speakers get out of sync with one another- that's my favorite. My love of silence is not a big fan of this particular CQUPT feature.

Recently however, the DJs have really gotten into Broadway musicals. We had a week of Phantom of the Opera, and just yesterday they have moved onto Chicago. It's pretty dang fantastic. I'm not even a little bit ashamed to say that I walk around campus singing. To top it all off, I have been listening to a lot (A LOT) of Wicked recently (something you are very aware of if you are updated on my Spotify listenings- which is probably no one). So I'm pretty well prepared for this. My life is full of overly dramatic singing, which leads to overly dramatic dance/walking. It's truly magical!! I sincerely hope that this continues throughout the year/forever.

The Man at McDonalds

Let's get this out in the open at the very beginning: personal space is very different here in China than it is in America. There are a ton of people, so personal space bubbles are much smaller. On crowded busses and subways, you are always touching someone. Not a big deal. Students sit in the desk right next to one another even if there are other open desks, and it's not super uncommon to occasionally share a table with strangers at a little restaurant. That being said, the man I met at McDonalds live in a league of his own on the person space front.

So I went on a day trip to the other side of the city to the art district (super fun) a little while ago. We stopped off to eat at McDonalds (which offers its own set of interesting cultural comparisons with the McDonalds in America- maybe for another day). We were done, and were getting ready to leave. I was looking at something behind me, and when I turned my head back around I was face to face with a random Chinese man. Face to face. Not looking at him from a slight, comfortable distance. He had bent over and his face could not have been more than 8 inches from mine. I'm not usually startled by things, but this was very disconcerting.

"Where are you from?" he asked (very loudly I might add- people in Chongqing tend to speak loudly- also something that my love of silence is not a huge fan of). Now, I was expecting him to be speaking in Chinese, so I had no idea what he was saying. I desperately looked to my teammates who also did not understand him. So he repeated himself, and I figured out that he was speaking in English. I told him I was from America, and he said, "Congratulations," and walked away. I watched him walk away from our little, less than a minute interaction, with the look of shock still on my face. It was a very strange experience. Very atypical.

From Scratch

One of my teammates is Canadian, so a few weeks ago we celebrated an early Canadian Thanksgiving (which falls on October 13 for those who do not know- me a month ago). I volunteered to make pumpkin pie, because it's pie and I wanted to make something from scratch. Now when I say I made this pie from scratch, do not misunderstand me. I didn't buy the can of pumpkin and the pie crust and the whipped cream and everything and put it together. I slaved over this pie and made everything! Everything!!

The pie process started the night before. I made my crust dough, pumpkin spice, and my pumpkin puree. I literally started from flour, butter, and a few pieces of pumpkin (it's shaped differently- very squash-esque). I cut the butter into the flour (I don't have a pastry knife-y thing that the recipe was telling me to use- and unlike the recipe suggested, I couldn't just "run out and take the ten minutes to get it"- so I used this nifty curved metal ma-gig that I found in my kitchen. I have literally no idea what it is, but it has a flat edge on it, so it became my pastry scraper. I do not exactly recommend this- because I was not using it correctly it gave me a rather uncomfortable hand cramp). I roasted the pumpkin squash for over an hour and then scraped and smashed it by hand.

Then came the rest of the pie the next day. The eight-year-old daughter of one of the other teachers came up to help me assemble the pie. We rolled out the dough, mixed everything together (luckily the local import section had evaporated milk- I have no idea how I could make that. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's harder than the name suggests). Cooked it. Made our own vanilla, cinnamon whipped cream out of whipping cream. And these two paragraphs cannot fully express just how much work I felt like I was going through to get this pie. Two days of work and only one canned ingredient. I'm not going to put every picture on here, but let me tell you, the photojournalism that went into the production of this pie was incredible.

And that pie was delicious. I have never been so proud of a piece of food in my life. Everything I make here is from scratch. We just don't have access to things. We make our own salad dressing, and sour cream, and I'm working on buffalo sauce at the moment. I look up recipes on Pinterest for extremely basic things. I'm trying to figure out corned beef at the moment in preparation for Christmas. The domesticity in my life is incredible. Cooking here is like a puzzle and a scavenger hut all rolled into one!

A lot of the recipes I find are from people in America who are trying to "eat clean" or hipster/trendy eating from the earth stuff aka: use as many different grains as humanly possible in one recipe. So I get a lot of recipes that say: 1/4 cup of unbleached flour, 2/3 cup or rye flour, 1/3 cup of almond flour, and a pinch of ground, organic hazelnut from the Swiss Alps. I'm lucky to have figured out what was flour at the store (on some bags of flour the English translation is something like: multi-grain glutenous  something or other- at least I think it's flour), so I read that and I'm like, "1 1/4 cup of flour." Don't get me wrong, I'm glad these health foodies in the States are making super complicated things, and I'm especially happy that they make things from the ground up because it's not an option for me. Over here, everything is from scratch.

Peppers

The food in Chongqing is spicy. It's a different breed of spicy than we are used to in the US. It's a slow dry burn that is absolutely miserable. I ask for "a little" spicy on everything, and it still clears out my sinuses every time. All the locals laugh at me. It's great.

But I want to take a moment to recount to you my two experiences with the little hot peppers here. We do team dinners every week, and I was bringing salsa for our Mexican night. So I went to the fresh market, and the recipe I'd found called for 3 jalepeno (spelling?) peppers. So three peppers is ridiculous- we would all die. But I decided to get a little handful of the peppers to keep on hand. The old man I bought them from kind of laughed at me when I got them. That should have been my first clue- he knew I couldn't handle them.

So I got home and made the rest of my salsa. Then I decided to investigate the peppers. So I literally pushed the tip of my nail through the skin of the pepper and just lightly touched my nail to my tongue. SO HOT. So I made the executive decision to not add any peppers, just cut them up and serve them separately. So thats what is did. Later that night, under my nail was kind of hurting, I didn't think anything of it- I accidentally stab myself under my nail all the time. It was when I messed with my nose-ring was when I realized something was wrong. The inside of my nose was burning. Let it be noted- I had already washed my hands multiple times since handling the peppers. Then the terrifying realization hit me- I had to take my contacts out. I decided to apply the bandaid method- quick. In reality, I thought it would be worse. Yes it hurt. But at least my eyes produce tears which washed it out. but that wasn't the end. The tear tracks on my face also burned. After a very long shower and tons of soap, things died down, and it was done.

So the next time I was making salsa for team dinner, I was not going to make the same mistakes.

I've always heard that the smaller the pepper, the hotter it is. So I bought the largest peppers I could find. I didn't have any plastic gloves, so I put on some ziplock baggies (these are a hot commodity, so it's a big deal that I used them for this) as I cut the peppers. I outsmarted the evil peppers.

Or so I thought...

It was so much worse. Apparently, somehow the pepper juice still got on my hands. I washed them and washed them. I had to take my contacts out again. Remembering my past success, I assumed it wouldn't be too bad. Wrong- it was "not too bad" like Walmart on Black Friday is "not too crowded". I thought I was going to die or at the very least lose my sight. Finally the tears did their job, I could see again. I thought it was over. It wasn't. The projector in one of my classrooms doesn't work, so I use a lot of chalk. This dries my hands out. Apparently, because my hands were so dry, the pepper juice soaked into all the micro cuts on my hand, and my entire had burned. To this day I am shocked that there were not welts. It was so bad that I had to set a bowl of water next to my bed to swish my hand around in just so I could get to sleep. It was horrible.

The moral of this story is that hot peppers are the spawn of Satan, and they should be avoided at all costs. They will get you. And I am apparently, incredibly delicate.


So I hope these little stories have offered you a little glimpse into the past few weeks here in Chongqing. Things are going well. Progressing as they ought, I think!