Checklist

As I believed I have mentioned before, my mechanism for coping with my pre-China anxiety was to simply go to sleep, where I could not think about it any longer.  For Bahrain, it seems to be to avoid thinking about it all together.  Unless I get an email from the school asking me to complete the next step in the process of getting me over there (physical, visa, etc), whenever I start thinking about the mundane things I have to do to get ready (what to pack, what to ship, etc) I generally just sort of shake my head, and think, "later, I'll worry about it later...I'll sit down tonight and make a list of what I need."  Well, later is always filled with other things, and so later just keeps getting pushed further and further back.

Well, I finally figured out that it is probably time to stop doing that, especially after a friend reminded me that pretty soon later is going to turn into right now. She also reminded me of how much I do not like being stressed about last minute plans. I manage to roll with the punches, but it takes a toll on my mental well being when I am rushed.  What can I say, I'm a planner.

So, as I started to sit down and make my list of what to bring, I was struck by how different this list is from my list before I went to China.  For China, my primary concern was making sure I had enough professional clothing/outfits to get me through a few weeks of teaching and that were also appropriate for the weather I could expect in Hangzhou.  Well, it turns out in China that as long as you are not in ripped jeans and something showing way too much cleavage, pretty much anything goes.  It is also perfectly acceptable in China to wear the same outfit more than once per week, and even consecutively.  Thus, I found myself completely discarding half of my wardrobe (cuz who wants to wear dress slacks and blazers if you don't have to, am I right?)  However, I am pretty sure my suitcases were stuffed almost exclusively with clothes (I had some make up, bath stuff, and a towel, that I can remember).

Bahrain is a completely different story.  Yes, I am still packing a variety of clothes, but I have been teaching long enough to know what is professional and what is not, and I have been instructed by the school as to what is acceptable for teachers to wear and what is advisable for women to wear (culturally) when out and about town.  So I am good there.  However, I find my self thinking of a bunch of other things that I would not have considered packing for my maiden travel experience.  If you're considering spending a lengthy stay in a place far from home--I am talking at least six months--you might want to think about a few of these things.

Disposable Razors and Shaving Cream:
Naturally occurring body hair is not nearly as repulsive, and therefore in need of regular removal, in other countries as it is in America. Thus, it was difficult (or near impossible) to find razors in China.  And none of them were disposable--they were the electric kind men shave their faces with and not at all cheap.   I would like to tell you that this experience made me appreciative of the ways our cultures manipulate us into buying into certain standard of beauty and I became more comfortable with body in it's more natural (and hairy) state.  This did not happen; I just wore long pants/leggings/tights and was careful not to raise my arms.  Then I had my mom ship me a razor and about three containers of replacement blades.

Brand Specific Feminine Products:
Just trust me on this.  Bring lots of whatever it is you use.

Decor:
Most often in these teach abroad positions, you are given housing--it is an apartment that someone lived in for their two year contract and someone else will live there after your two years are over.  These types of places typically come fully furnished, but do not come fully decorated; most people on a temporary assignment (though two years is a long time) do not invest in decorating.  Thus, this time around I will be bringing photos of friends, family, and landscapes, so I can cover those bare, unfamiliar walls with pictures of people and places that I love.  And there really is nothing more depressing than stark white walls in a new place all by yourself. Tons of photos do not take up much room in a carry-on and can seriously ease that first initial wave of home sickness in a new place. It also helps to make that stark new environment feel like your home.

Brand new small clothes:
I am talking largely about bras and underwear.  I do not think it will be too difficult to find these products in Bahrain, but in China, my chest size was massive (compared to the locals).  It was near impossible to find a bra in my size.  And as you can imagine, wearing the same bras for a year and a half?  Yeah, not so supportive at the end of 18 months.  Thus, this time around I will be bringing brand new never before worn bras and they will go in the back of my unmentionables drawer to be used when my current set has run it's course.
Tangentially related to this, you might want to bring extras of whatever you use a lot.  Run all the time?  Grab an extra (and new) pair of running shoes.  Whatever you have that gets a lot of wear, you should try to bring an extra of it.

Food: 
Okay, now it would be a huge waste of space to bring a lot of food from home.  And hey, the whole point of living in another country is to acquire and develop an understanding an appreciation for all facets of another culture, including food.  All of this sounds well and good for about four months until you just want a taste of home that is not fast food; you want home.  The biggest thing I missed about American food while I was in China was what was made in my parents house, not what I could get at restaurants. Thus, I will be bringing a bag of the popcorn my family uses and the spices they put on it, so when I am feeling like a little taste of home, I have that option.

You may be going through and thinking about all this extra stuff and where is it going to fit in the carry on and one checked bag you are now allowed on international flights.  Well, it's not.   I will be paying a $75 baggage fee for each of two extra bags for my trip to Bahrain; I will not be worried about not having what I need and want this time around.  The extra money is worth it, trust me.

Sweet Tooth

I won't say no one knows sugar like America, because I haven't been everywhere else, and I have heard things about Belgium that makes me think I have yet to really understand sugar.  But China does not do sugar the same way America does sugar.  Maybe sugar is the wrong word, given our use of fructose and other such syrups...let's say no one does sweet like America does sweet, including China.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if we are paying attention to the rise in childhood diabetes and childhood obesity; we should probably cut out the sugar.  Especially all the super refined, not-easily-processed-by-our-bodies sugars and syrups...and  do not get me started on the artificial sweeteners. However, today  I will spare you from the rest of my rant on sugar (it's a good one though, ranging from obesity to the roots of political instability in South America).

While I was in China I had no particular problem with this lack of sugar, not having much of a sweet tooth.  However, if you are someone who really loves a good hit of sugar every once and a while (or everyday), China was like a sugarless wasteland.  Our students would frequently try to feed us, especially if they discovered that whatever they were snacking on was not something we had in the States (which was pretty much everything).  So, they would allow us to sample of their snacks, a treat that we approached with a considerable amount of trepidation every single time.

I mean, I ate some strange stuff in China; most of it was wonderful...some of it was awful in the extreme.  By agreeing to try a snack offered to us by our students we were not only taking a risk with out taste-buds (which could easily recover) but also in disappointing our students if we didn't like it--and were unable to disguise the depth of our dislike.  You also had no idea where the student obtained the food they were offering (most of it was in wrapped packages, but sometimes it looked more like what you would get a bulk foods--a clear plastic back filled with food) and so whether or not your body was going to forcibly eject that food in eight hours was always in the back of our minds.

But when it came to sweet things, our students always felt the need to warn us, "Careful, Rachel, this is very sweet."  So we'd brace ourselves for an onslaught of cotton candy-like sweetness...only to be met with something about as sweet as a Nutrigrain bar or Fig Newton.  Every time we were given this warning, we were given something that most Americans would  not consider overly sweet, and certainly not sweet enough to merit a warning.

Look at their expectant faces...and look at our fear.  MUST. NOT. DISAPPOINT! 

Thus bereft of a bountiful and varied supply of sugar (you could buy Snickers bars almost every where in China, and if you were desperate, there is a Hershey's store in Shanghai)  we began to rely on other sources of sugar for our daily dose of sweetness. 

I would say my largest source of sugar in China was through Milk Tea.  Milk tea is quite literally the greatest beverage that has ever been invented and consumed and its lack of pervasiveness into American culture is one of the most intolerable things about being home.  Now, you might be thinking, "I've had milk tea (and it's even more amazing cousin, bubble tea) here in America!"  Well, yes, we have establishments in America that sell this ambrosia, but in China (and elsewhere in Asia, I'm sure) milk tea shops are on every street.  Sometimes there are three or four on one street alone!  Milk Tea is available everywhere, and we did partake of it on a daily basis.

I don't have a single picture of me drinking milk tea! I don't know how that happened.  But here's a menu from my very favorite milk tea chain. 

My second favorite source of sugar was something called an egg tart.  I cannot remember the first time I had one of these--it may have been through my students, or it may have been through one of the other teachers (Justin was a big fan of trying out local sweets).  However, it only took one bite of them to fall in love with this particular treat; they are not overly sweet (because nothing really is), but just sweet enough to not be bland.  They consist of an egg-based custard that has been baked into a flaky, buttery pastry shell.  You can get them with filling, such as red bean or taro, or you can get them plain (my favorite); they sell for about 2 yuan a piece at vendors that are almost as commonplace as milk tea vendors.

Amanda here continues to be my camera woman, dedicated to capturing those moments I did not get on film while I was in China...and she has an excuse to eat egg tarts.  

Of course, as I was saying above with my students, China has things they consider to be sweet.  They have cakes and pastries and candies.  However, as an American used to the super sweetness of corn syrup, these "sweets" were not all together sweet.  We would try cakes whose texture was altogether more spongy than what we were used to, minimally frosted, and filled or topped (or both) with fruit...this included tomatoes.  I don't think there is anything less reminiscent in the minds of Americans of cake than tomatoes.  But there they were, sitting on top of the cake next to slices of pineapple, like they belonged there.

They also have a variety of pastries; lots of green tea or taro flavored things, or pastries stuffed with taro or red bean filling.  Many were stuffed with a simple cream--these were my favorites. But despite the cream filling, the "sweets" in China were not in the least overwhelmingly sweet, despite any dire warnings from our students.  If you wanted the sweet stuff, you had to raid the imports section in large grocery stores.

Here are some average sweets.  Lots of sesame and black sesame filled or covered things.  Along with red bean, green tea, and taro flavored/filled goodies.  And cream puffs. 

Street Food: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

A few posts ago I wrote about how much effort my fellow expats and I went though to find American food while we were in China.  However, I really must stress (again) how much I enjoyed Chinese food, which is what I ate on a day-to-day basis; the American food was for whenever I needed a cheese fix.

While we mostly ate in restaurants (even if some were the size of a closet), a lot of our "between meals" food was street food.  Many of my breakfasts and lunches were also street food; I would grab dumplings or buns from a vendor before classes, or a sandwich thing from a man behind a window (I don't know if this is street food per-say, as he wasn't in the street, but you couldn't go sit down inside either as their was no restaurant--just a dude selling meat pockets from a window).

My own personal  Chinese food pyramid.  Don't worry, the cool pictures are further down. 

If you are going to be visiting a place for only a short period of time (less then a month) I would consider being cautious with street food.  The lasts thing you want to be worrying about on a vacation is where the nearest bathroom is because you are, at any given time, a stomach rumble away from a gastrointestinal catastrophe (think unstoppable landslide or what happened to Mt. St. Helens).   And given the fact you are going to spending a lot of time on buses and other forms of public transit that do not have toilets, getting a sudden case the runs is going to result in something America has not prepared you for--I have heard horror stories of people who wished they had packed an extra pair of pants in their bag that day.  I have been a part of a mad dash off the bus to the nearest possible toilet. You don't want this kind of experience marring (skidding?) your vacation, trust me.

However, if you are going to be living in a place for several months or even years, then you have no excuse for not jumping head first into all kinds of food experiences, including street food.  What is street food?  Well, I guess I would categorize it as anything sold out of some kind of mobile or temporary restaurant.  So, someone selling it on a cart or stand, or someone who is able to set up a sort of restaurant that can be packed up and  moved to a new location if need be.

In China, the street food is everywhere and covers a lot of different food groups.  Many of them are grills, which are mobile, and are out around dinner time and remain out until close to midnight.  They set up their carts on busy street corners (especially around shopping districts, clubbing districts, or high-traffic night life areas) and start grilling, luring in peckish pedestrians with the tantalizing smells of grilled, cheap food.

The grills are going to offer you any kind of grilled meat on a stick.  Beef, pork, chicken, squid, shrimp (and in more remote areas whole birds, lizards, etc).  They will also grill you up so some rice, noodles in a variety of shapes and styles. Mixed with this rice or noodles are a variety of veggies and your choice of meat, usually topped off with a fried egg (this was my lunch every day at school, although it was not sold on the street, but at a permanent shop--you didn't eat in the shop, you ordered your food and left--there was no seating).

You will also find people standing at corners next to these big round tins.  Th first time I saw one I thought it was a homeless person, because that is sort of what the set up looks like--a homeless person standing around a can with fire in it for warmth.  But that is not what it is; it is a man selling nice, warm, roasted things--typically sweet potatoes and they are so good! Other vendors sell roasted chestnuts, which are also awesome.

For those of you with a sweet tooth, you will find vendors with sugar spun into pretty shapes that you can suck on like awkward lollipops.  Or, my personal favorite, fruit that has been dipped in hot sugar.  When it dries it creates a semi-hard candy shell around the fruit.  They are so good...and it's healthy, because its fruit...

Sometimes you turn a corner that you've walked down a hundred times before, but today there are a bunch of people on the side walk selling all manner of produce--fruits, veggies, live chickens and ducks.  They will also have some fruit all ready and mounted on a stick in case all you feel like at the moment is a quick, cheap treat on your way to wherever you are headed.  Pineapple on a stick was my personal favorite. 

I have some of the best, and some of the very worst, food in my whole life from street vendors.  I have had a hot dog that nearly made me gag, and I have had lamb that nearly made me cry, it was just that good.   My advice for street food is to always try it.  Generally, trust your nose--if it smells good, it probably tastes good and vice verse (I don't care what the Chinese say about stinky tofu (臭豆腐), nothing that smells like that could possibly taste good).  However, take some risks sometimes; eat something you are not sure of; either you will love it and have a new favorite food or you will hate it and have a fun new story to tell everyone back home.  Street food is a win-win...except for your digestive system; always plan on popping some Imodium, but don't let it stop you from trying.

Ah street food. 

Many of these fantastic photographs were taken by Miss Amanda who is still in Hangzhou, and wonderfully willing to take pictures of things I never thought to photograph while I was there.  She's the best.