Midterm Excursion, Part III

The Performance

So the first performance is another A-ban group, and it is awesome.  Absolutely awesomely entertaining.  I don't know what the teachers thought, but as someone whose done more than his fair share of high school assemblies, this performance was awesome.  There was crowd participation, there were sight gags (one dude ordering 9 beers, a Hooters' waitress with balloon boobs), there was a dance number, a chick-fight complete with shoving, whining, hair pulling, and a balloon breast popping)... it was a sight to behold.  There's a dvd of it somewhere.  Another A-ban group did George Bush visits China, and that was a riot.  I've never heard an impression of George Bush speaking Chinese before this.  The best part was when the waiter handed W a menu, he looks embarrassed at his body guard and says, sorry, I can't read Chinese, and then the body guard says, this is an ENGLISH menu!  So funny. 

The C-ban skits were all amazing and fluent, of course.  The B-ban skits were kind of a mystery,  we didn't understand any of them.  Oh well. 

Our skit was 7th in the night, and it went off as planned.  As usual, my lines didn't come out very well, but as I am made of ham, I made the best of my performance.  When we were finished, M asked if we were really A-ban students.  Oh, nali, nali. 

After our performance, I went to bed exhausted.  Some others went out for beer. 

Woke up the next morning when the phone rang.  X answered, I asked him who is that!  Wake up call.  Just 45 minutes to get breakfast buffet and then catch the bus. 

X let me listen to his Chinese pop music on the ride up.  Very nice of him.... I have yet to be impressed with Chinese pop music; to me it seems like some people with a lot of equipment making bad musical choices, but whatever, I'm being ethnocentric.  I think all the talented people with actual musical ideas are in folk music. 

Falling before the Buddha

We arrived at the swimming holes, and X and I went straight to lunch.  We ordered chicken, pansit, greens, and mushrooms, and all of it was good (except the chicken).  I noticed some young chickens walking around in the kitchen; later they were in the yard. 

Went up to the first pool and swam around.  Most of our Chinese roommates were wearing personal flotation devices (PFDs), because most of them cannot swim.  But we all had a good time.  C and I taught one Chinese roommate how to float.  I wanted to say "keep your head back, your eyes open, and your hips on the surface by arching your back" but really the only vocabulary I can say in that sentence is "head, eyes, open."  She didn't know what to do with her hands and feet, she moved her hands like she was petting a kitten.  Oh well, we did teach her how to float for a while. 

Went up to the second swimming hole, the one with a natural water slide.  All the water was crystal clear and clean, but the second pool seemed to be bottomless.  I heard the words "black hole" in Chinese. 

There were 9 swimming holes, total, I only made it to one and two.  Most people went up to nine at first and then worked their way down, but I was moving too slow in my wet trunks and 3 ton ass to go any higher.  On the way back down, I looked up to see a big Buddha in a temple.  Then I looked down, and tripped and skinned my knees.  Really?  And then I kept falling, and I ended up on the ground, feeling like a jerk.  Why did I fall, they asked?  Tripped on something, I said, pointing down to nothing to trip on.  I looked at my toe, and saw that a callus I had been working on had been half ripped open.  I washed it in the clear stream and moved on.

Care-frontation

The bus took us back to Wenzhou, and a long pedestrian mall with lots of stores but few restaurants.  We ended up walking the whole length of it and back  before finding a restaurant, right where the bus had dropped us off. 

In the restaurant, the ingredients were laid out before us, and we just had to point at what we wanted.  Of course, I recognize very few of it, so when X asks me (as he does every time) "what do you want to eat?"  I got annoyed.  I pointed to three things and then when the incompetent people finally seated us at a table, I had a care-frontation with X.  X, I said, I don't know any of this food.  So every time you ask me "What do you want to eat," the answer every time will be "I don't know."  Just order something, if I don't like it, I'll stop you.  But I hate being hungry and standing there with no ideas.  He says, but I don't know this food either!  And we both laugh.  Chinese food is different in every city. 

Snake Dream. 

Back on the bus to the train station.  In the waiting room, we play 'say say oh playmate' and the McDonald's Menu patty-cake game.  We get to our sleeping car, and I trade for the bottom bunk, so that my 3 ton ass doesn't collapse the bunk and kill someone.  This sleeper car is not as nice as the train we took to Wenzhou, there are no compartments, just a rolling dorm.  Still, I was tired enough to be comfortable. 

I dreamt that we were living back in the green house on Tumwater Hill, and everyone was seeing snakes everywhere.  I didn't kill any, but I noticed all the snakes were making their way to my house, climbing up the wall of the stairway, and then hanging there like paintings on the wall.  After a while a good 4 dozen or so snakes are hanging by their fangs on the wall, and people are starting to gather to watch it happen.  Finally, I decide for my mama's sake I don't want snakes in the house, so I grab a mop; it's a Chinese mop, and try to clear the wall.

At that point, the lights come up in the train; it's 5:30, and the attendants want to trade the plastic chips they gave us at the beginning of the ride for paper tickets.  I hear a story about one guy losing his chip; the attendant gets impatient and says it's a 50 kuai fine for losing the chip.  He, being American, whips out the 50 kuai and sends her on her way, saying in Chinese to E, during bathroom time, I use 50 kuai to clean myself. 

We finally arrive back in Hangzhou, get on buses and back to the dorms this morning.  X and I realized we had left my friend the air conditioner on all weekend.  Oops.   We all slept most of the day; went to lunch with E in the neighborhood around 3pm (5 spice beef, eggplant, mala tofu, and some greens).  Had dinner around 10:00 pm; again with E, a salty grilled pork sandwich and some potstickers.  I gave most of them to some beggars I didn't understand.