China Trippin'

This Blog Is Closed

2007-08-21T09:11:00.001-07:00

Thanks for reading, everyone! This blog is now closed; no new posts will be added. However, it will remain available for your viewing pleasure. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do it soon, before I close comments.

Please click over to my new blog, you don't have to read II (and if you have an suggestions for a better title, I'm listening). There, you will find the vast majority of the posts from you don't have to read and China Trippin', as well as all the new posts from my new life in Shanghai, China. This new blog will be easier for me to work with in China.

Home Sweet Home

2007-08-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

So landing in the US was kind of a trip. They showed some practical joke show on the plane right before landing, which eliminated landing anxiety for most people, but I hate practical joke shows; I manually turned my screen to black and looked out the window, to find we were already at treetop level and descending.

Passport control asked me why I was in China and what I was doing there. Not really much of a thing. Then, waiting for my bags, one of the Homeland Security Agents whose job it is to size up and intimidate the recent arrivals saw me waiting for my bag to come down the carrousel, and asked to see my passport and arrival document. Fine, man, I'm woose.

No 'good morning,' no 'sir,' no 'please' or 'thank you,' DHS is too busy protecting us from terrorists to bother with pleasantries.

HSD: Can I see your passport and arrival document?
me: Sure.
HSD: Where did you go?
me: China
HSD: How long were you there?
me: Six weeks.
HSD: What were you there for?
me: Studying Chinese.
HSD: So you speak Chinese now?
me: Better than I did six weeks ago.
HSD: Shay shay?
me: Ok, you're welcome... (are you kiding
me?)...
HSD: (studying my response)
me: ... You said, "thank you."
HSD: Yah, ok I'm workin' here.

He looked at my documents for a few more seconds and I watched the bags come down the ramp. He handed my papers back to me with an "ok" and went to look for the next adult male who looked like he was traveling alone. Two minutes later, another agent, buffer and with a military haircut, came and asked me the same questions, only without the language quiz.

Once I got my bags, I stopped at last check point... and was diverted to agricultural inspection. My bags were scanned another time, and an older, more professional looking agent with better social skills confiscated my beef jerky candies, warned me about the $300 fine. After that, I walked out of the security area. They took my bags a second time, and I walked out to claim them on the other side.

My sister met me at the main baggage claim. Once I got home, it was gifts, shower, nap, lunch (Chinese food!) and then we went out to see the Simpsons' movie.

And that's it. That's how China Trippin' ends. I asked E to write a guest post, but he's a busy man, and I'm not holding my breath. So there I don't expect there will be much more at China Trippin'.

If you'd like to keep reading about my life, please don't hesitate to email me. If you don't already know it, I can send you the link to the semi-anonymous blog I've been keeping since 2003 (which I'm about to wrap up here pretty soon) as well as the new blog I'm planning to start as I fold up my tents in Seattle and start a new life in Shanghai.

For those of you that were reading in China, you no longer need to access through anonymouse.com, you can just use the plain old address.

So thanks, readers, for reading, and thanks especially for your comments (you can continue to comment on any post, I will see them!). I hope you enjoyed my time in Hangzhou as much as I did. If you were one of my classmates in Hangzhou, please don't be a stranger.

I'm home

2007-08-20T13:02:00.001-07:00

I made it home, everyone! Yay! Now for a shower and a nap!

Cannot and Should not

2007-08-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

So I'm watching a K-pop video now in the free internet lounge in the airport. Just the other day I was walking down the street with C, talking about how K-pop videos are better than Chinese pop music in terms of interesing music, music production, video production, and even choreography. C commented that the one Chinese pop song he could get behind, "Wo Ai Ni," he found out it was sung by a Korean dude. Are Filipinos making flashy videos?

So the guys at the hotel desk went home, their shift ended. There was a new lady at the desk, and when I asked her, she said I could go out into the city, just ask information and then ask again at immigration. Sweet! That is so different than the 'yes, but you'd have to check out of the hotel' that the dudes gave me.

(Remind me to learn how to say, "Please don't get up" in Korean. Every time I pass the front desk they stand up to welcome me. I wondered if it was my eye contact that was making them stand, but I'd rather learn how to say, "Please don't get up" than train myself to not make eye contact.)

So I went down to find immigration, and it's not easy. Since they don't require transfer passengers to go through immigration, they've eliminated the exits from the terminals. I would have to go downstairs if I wanted to go though immigration, and I don't know the hell to get down there.

I asked at the information desk, and the lady gave me a recommendation: I should not go out. It would take hours just to get into the city, if you count the time it takes to get through immigration. So I think I'm officially discouraged. I know now that if someone says you can't, you should keep asking until they say you can; but if they say you shouldn't, that's a different story. I'll go into Seoul in October. Maybe I'll take two days, stay in a hotel in town.

So for breakfast the information lady pointed me down the hall to a food court. There was Burger King, KFC, Dunkin Donuts, and two Korean places. I went to one of them, and saw that they have mool naeng myun, yah baby! I'll have that for lunch. For breakfast I had bibimpab. It was awesome. When I get home I think I'm going to buy some gochuchan.

So now what? It's 8:30 am, my flight is at 5 pm. Hotel checkout is 4:30. I think it's going to be like this: eating, blogging, eating, tv, eating... maybe there will be napping. Maybe I'll do a lap around the concourse for exercise. I think this concourse is three miles long.

I lived the dream

2007-08-19T15:21:00.001-07:00

I think it's out of my system now. After a couple years of singing "I Wish I Could Go Back to College" and meaning it, I basically did it. I lived in a dorm, had a meal card, was even in a play (in a manner of speaking). I even went out and bought a dry erase board during the first week, but then E took the pens, and I got a cell phone, so the dry erase board was more nostalgia than anything else.

Before I came, I was never worried about the food, or foreign bathrooms, or getting sick; I was mostly worried about a) whether my roommate would be stinky/dirty, and b) my snoring. Well, X was not stinky/dirty, and he insisted that I didn't snore that loud. Really? Remind me someday to write a post about the lady in a downstairs apartment who went insane and left an insane note on my door because of my snoring, which she could hear through the floor.

Two things suprised me about my "return to college" experience. One was that I became friends with people, something I had resolved not to worry about on this, my fourth study aboad experience. In earlier experiences, I wasted lots of time with people I didn't really care about, just because I was too insecure to strike out on my own. So on the third day, when E said he wanted to go into the city with me, I thought about saying, naw, man, forget it, I want to just go get lost on my own. I had gone into the city the day before, and they had spent the whole time talking to each other instead of looking around and getting to know the place. In that first week, I had a hard time walking and speaking Chinese at the same time. Luckily, E was down for getting lost (and not a lot of talking), and we became friends after that.

The other thing that surprised me about this "return to college" experience was how quickly I gave up on trying to learn for the sake of learning. After the first week, once I realized how long the homework was taking me, I started doing it purely to finish. At midterm the teachers cut back on the homework, but they cut back on some of the drill-type exercises and kept the exercises that were pedagogically problematic, and I was too resentful to spend any more time on that crap. My chair was hard, the lighting was bad, people kept interrupting... I stopped reviewing vocab, and just concentrated on knowing what I needed to know to to get my homework done. Even on exams, there were times I didn't read the question, just scanned for the one key word that would eliminate three of the four multiple choices. Bad student! Bad!

Oh well, I'll be back in China in a few weeks. I will do ChinesePod.com and probably hire a tutor, maybe work out an exchange. My prof from grad school learned Mandarin and Cantonese using tutors, told me she hated classes. I think I was professionally against "hating classes" at the time, but at this point in my life I might permit myself to hate classes. At the time I was worried; what if the tutor was no good? She said, then you fire that tutor and get a new one. At the time, I think I was too insecure to hear that, but at this point in my life, I'm pretty sure I'm secure enough to fire someone who's not doing what I'm paying them for. I think those jazz guitar lessons are what sent me over the edge.

Ha ha, I took jazz guitar lessons.

Airport Bummer

2007-08-19T14:42:00.001-07:00

So I got up early this morning to get ready to go into Seoul. I went and got my boarding pass so I could get back past security, but now the guy at the desk is telling me I would have to check out of my room, which I don't want to do. I'm sure if I had just gone past immigration without asking the desk, they wouldn't worry about checking me out. But I'm not going to risk it if there's a chance I can't come back in.

Oh well. I'll be back in Seoul soon enough, and I'll go sight seeing next time.

So now my plan is to eat airport breakfast, eat airport lunch.... probably eat an airport snack before my 5pm boarding time. It's twenty minutes to 7am now. I'll just put it on my credit card.

I should mention that my hotel room number is 206; very easy to remember.

Airport Hotel

2007-08-19T04:16:00.001-07:00

So I'm at the hotel inside the security zone of the Seoul airport, and it's expensive and small and awesome. I was going to make a list of all the things I like about being here in Seoul, but right now I'm a little annoyed at myself for leaving my ethernet cable in Hangzhou. So instead of blogging from the privacy of my room, I'm in the business office.

Oh well, later I'll go upstairs to the free internet lounge.

For now, I just wanted to let you all know I made it safely to Seoul. And I love it here so far. Tomorrow morning I'll get my boarding pass, and then take a bus into Seoul to see some sights. I can hang out in town until around three pm probably, come back to the airport, check out of the hotel, and get on my flight.

I love unrestricted internet access! So fast! So much I can see! No sneaky backdoors to bypass govt and university firewalls!

30,000 Feet

2007-08-19T04:00:00.001-07:00

So I'm sitting on Asiana Airlines flight 360 from Hangzhou, China to Seoul, Korea. J is two rows in front of me. She is totally getting spoken to in Korean, I'm totally getting spoken to in English. I don't know if it's my loud hawaiian shirt, by the shorts/socks/sandles I'm rocking, but I don't care.

X had said that my current haircut is American hair; he found a past picture that was Filipino hair. I will try to go back to Filipino hair this fall.

A little word about A-ban hua: this is a little dialect of Chinese that the A-ban party crowd created to amuse themselves. So deng yi xia became "deng ish!" wo bu zhidao became "booge." There was also "pengs" for pengyoumen, etcetera. There were attempts to make it more urban, with sth jigga, or whatever, which was just their idea of urban, I guess.

More interesting was the advent of A-ban English, which arose when the language pledge expired and we were allowed to speak English again. It didn't have much time to flourish, but A-ban English was much more of a dialect (and less of a pidgin) than A-ban hua.

Not everyone wanted to speak A-ban hua (why would we create a pigin when our Chinese is basically a pigin?), but A-ban English was undeniable. My favorite sentence was "We can go wherever you want, dude, I'm woose." "Woose is A-ban English for wusouwei.

This flight from Hangzhou to Seoul is basically an hour. So awesome. Within two hours I will be in my hotel resting, probably checking the internet. I may leave the airport to check out Seoul. We'll see.

Before we took off, some snow started falling from the air conditioning. I'm not sure what it was exactly, it looks kind of like kleenex that's gone through the dryer. Now a flight attendant is walking through with one of those rolls that defuzzes and de-pet-hairs your sweater and actually grooming some of the passengers.

Ok, they just served dinner and I devouered it. It was beef and peapods on rice, and the rice was glorious Korean rice. The beef was not overly salted, and I got a little toothpaste tube of gochuchan, which brought a tear to my eye. There was a salad of kidney beans, cut corn, and green pepper strips, which I ate without the dressing, and the non-saltiness of it all was feichang awesome.

The only bad part about this flight is that after I scarfed down my dinner, I looked up and saw that they were playing "Baby and Mr. Bean." And I loath Mr. Bean.

I wonder how long it would take me to learn Korean. Not that I have any plans to, but just looking at the written language after six months of Chinese seems to calm my soul a little. I know I read more Chinese now, but there's just something about the aesthetic of a phonemic alphabet that makes it look more doable.

I am going to have to work hard for a long time if I want to read and write Chinese. Sigh.

I'm still debating whether or not I want to go into Seoul tonight. First I have to see if they will let me back into the airport security zone if I leave. If not, then I have no problem shutting myself in my room for 24 hours, watching tv and surfing the internet. However, if I'm permitted to come and go, then I will try to take the subway into town and spend some of the Korean money I changed in July.

Just Couldn't Resist.

2007-08-18T19:06:00.001-07:00

X is gone. E is gone. My bags are packed, and skies are dark. I think there's a typhoon rolling in. I have three hours to kill before I even have to go get a cab. So one more post.

The first person I talked to in Chinese six weeks ago was the border guy at the airport. He asked me in English why I was coming to China, and I told, him, "xuéxi hányǔ." To study Chinese. He stopped to think for a second, obviously a little troubled, and then he looked me in the eye and said ah, "hànyǔ." And then I smiled and repeated and felt like a dork for getting the tone in my very first Chinese sentence in China. And of course, the word I got wrong was "Chinese language."

Perfect.

Six weeks later, it's my last day in China. I'm on my own in the dorm, and I decide to take my water jug back and get the deposit. So I go down to the first floor ladies and ask them; they tell me to take my tongxue back to the water guys around the corner. My tongxue? My roommate? He left already, I tell them. He left yesterday. I'm just one person in my room.

They said, yes, you can do it yourself, just take your tongxue around the corner and get your deposit back. My tongxue? My roommate?

It then occurred to me that they were not saying "tongxue" but "tongshui." And of course, "tongshui" means water jug. Take your water jug around the corner to the water guys.

Yah.

H and E and I talked about this in Shanghai; the best way to really really know a vocab word is to go out into the world and make an idiot of yourself screwing up the word. You feel embarrassed, and then your brain etches that damn word in stone. E said that after our conversation in Shanghai, he began to realize just how much of his lexicon was "idiot learned."

"Idiot learned?" I asked. And then I realized that if we had been speaking Chinese, "idiot learned" would have been a 是...的 construction.

So I walked E down to the store, and on the way back he stopped to pick up an airline ticket that was on the ground. He didn't see too curious about it, so I had to ask, whose is that? thinking we'd have to fly in to action to rescue some classmate who had.... "Oh, it's mine," he says.

I'm not sure what to say.

Packing Up

2007-08-18T15:43:00.001-07:00

I am packing up my computer now, so this is my last report from Hangzhou, China. I'll probably write a few more posts on the way home.

Hangzhou has really been an adventure! I had a hard time falling asleep last night, so I'm a little tired. I will get plenty of rest in Seoul tonight, and then be back in my own bed within the next 48 hours.

Last Night in Hangzhou

2007-08-18T09:31:00.001-07:00

I'm leaving tomorrow! I'm not really preoccupied by happy or sad right now, I'm more just bracing myself for international air travel. I'm really glad to be flying Asiana, because I think non American airlines are a little more old-fashioned service oriented. I can't wait for my hot towel.

I'm a little tripped out that most of my classmates are flying west, while my flight is eastbound. Yes I knew the world was round, but... I guess I forget that America was that... wide.

We all now have stories about readjusting to English. It's painless of course, but funny when you experience it with others. Swearing too much, over gesturing, using 2nd language strategies to talk, inability to maintain a cohesive thread in a conversation, and awkward pauses for vocabulary gaps... followed by the pleasure of remembering the word. My word was "ultrasonic"... or was it "hypersonic?"

I'm alone in my room (X is gone) and I'm half packed. Today at the bus stop, in the middle of C telling me his packing woes, I remembered my original plan to buy a bag here in China, and that way, I could have plenty of room for everything. Of course it's too late to do that, so I think I'm just going to go buy a cheap zip up shopping bag and fill it with clothes. That will be checked bag number 2. Piece of cake.

The guys have promised to knock on my door tomorrow morning, at least to say goodbye, maybe even to get breakfast (i.e., sit on a park bench and eat a loaf of bread down by the river).

I feel like I'm just getting to know them, because we all just started speaking English yesterday. I also am pretty sure their Chinese is better than mine, and I'm not saying that to be modest. My strength has always been pronunciation, but these guys are remembering words we learned in class and using them in the wild. I think it's because they are more adventurous conversationalists than I am. Also, they are younger, so maybe my language learning instinct has gotten rusty. No, I don't believe that, but I had to throw it out there. Anyway, I admire their progress. I know next year I will have to keep working on Mandarin speaking and reading seriously in order to be where I want to in terms of proficiency.

I want to talk a little more about my current social life. My friends in Seattle are my friends, and I'm a little bummed about leaving them behind. My friends in Hangzhou were mostly X and E, both of whom I've been happy to see every day of this program. There are other people, who I feel like I'm just now getting to know... but tomorrow morning is it. Who knows if I'll hear from them again after tomorrow. Realistically, I probably won't. I I know how this works, this is my fourth study abroad experience, and I know about losing touch.

How odd, I'm in a social transition funk. Me. I haven't felt this funk since quitting grad school ten years ago. I feel like I need to go on one of the retreats that I run. That is, that I used to run, when I was a high school teacher.

E and I went to dinner (for the last time!), we went into the neighborhood, to a restaurant we had been to before. We ordered stewed beef and potatoes, chopped chicken bones, and some greens. While eating, I remembered how much I like Calrose Niko Niko rice, the rice that I grew up on. I know other people think that rice has no flavor, but to me that Calrose rice tastes like sunshine.

After dinner, I packed a little, hung out in E's room a little, and then tried to cell phone coordinate a night at the movies, with some help from the gals in 402. We got in a cab and met C and A and roommates and saw Nanjing. Afterwards, we all took the 206 night bus back. I'm sure that means something.

Remind me to post about the animal sightings I've had.

The heart attack I just had

2007-08-18T08:50:00.001-07:00

I just got into my room and checked my flight info. It says 3:50 pm, Sunday, August 19th.

BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL, TODAY IS SUNDAY, AUGUST 19TH.

My flight left this afternoon? What the hell am I going to do? Show up tomorrow and act stupid?

And then I checked the date, and today is August 18th; the 19th is tomorrow. I'm gonna be ok.

More in a sec.

Traveling with the Committee.

2007-08-17T06:18:00.001-07:00

So today, B, C, E, and I took a cab down to the downtown shopping district. When it became clear that we weren't going to buy anything there, we decided to get something to eat. There was some committee paralysis (what do you want to eat? I don't care, I'll eat what everyone else wants to eat) and somehow we managed to make our way into a restaurant.

As soon as we sat down, I started to feel my blood sugar crashing. My friends looked at the menu and said, eeh, maybe we don't like it here, so I said, ok, let's go! I knew I needed to eat right away, so I wanted to speed the process along. But then they pointed out that they had to pay for the tea, so I said, ok, and they kept looking at the menu, not finding anything they wanted.

So I said, look, I have to eat now, and they said, well, we can all wait. I tried to suggest to them to just let me order for everyone (see: food dictator) but they said, we're not stupid. Whoops, that went over wrong. Americans don't care about illegal wiretapping or lying about going to war, but don't ask them to give up democracy at a Chinese restaurant; everybody gets to choose one dish, and that's just how it is. Finally, the truth came out: we don't want to eat this food.

Ok, fine, I said, and I ordered three dishes for myself and ate them in front of them. Singapore fried noodles, bbq chicken, and chinese broccoli. Later, when I paid the bill, C and E both had a bite of broccoli.

Yes, it was weird that I ate and they watched me, ... but diabetes. I'm an old man, and I'm not going to be paralyzed by the committee.

Then we got in a cab and went down to the silk market and tried in vein to buy gifts for teachers and male friends. Four dudes on a mission to buy gifts is a mission doomed to failure. We managed to buy nothing for the teachers, and nothing for male friends. Luckily, I'm not in any gift-giving relationships with other dudes. Haggling was fun, and we had ice cream at Dairy Queen.

Cabbed back to the dorm, sat along the river to chat; got cleaned up and went to dinner. This time I was the dictator; I just got the waitress to stand next to me and ordered, while the committee entertained each other. When the committee caught on to what I was doing, they threw in their suggestions, which is totally ok. The waitresses were extremely hesitant about giving us three plates of beef, and I had to assure them that it wasn't a language question, we ACTUALLY wanted that much beef.

The committee wandered a bit on the street, and we watched a dude have a tantrum and kick his bike as his girlfriend stood there, eyes to the ground.

They're still out wandering. It's E's birthday, so we're going out tonight, but I told E and C before hand that I might be bugging out early because a) I'm old and crotchety and b) because I want to make sure to spend some time with X before we all leave.

I expect the committee will not knock on my door with a plan for another hour.

考完了!

2007-08-16T19:39:00.001-07:00

Oh, thank you Jesus, I made it! I finished my final exam, finished the oral exam... this semester is OVER.

How did I do? Who gives a rip? I'm not a student! These grades don't count! Woooooohooooo!

I'm not sure what to do with myself. Later, I'll go with E and C to a teahouse, we'll drink expensive tea and eat a free buffet. But for now, what do I do? It's too early to pack...

Totally satisfied

2007-08-16T07:20:00.001-07:00

a letter I sent today:

Dear M,

I'm writing evaluations for the program, and I have some feedback for you.

When (x-program) did not grant me a scholarship this Spring, I had to juggle my finances to make the program fee come in on time. I had grants coming in that would not be paid to me until after the deadline, I had bills to pay, I had all kinds of expenses to get ready for the trip.

Sent an email to you, asking if I could set up a payment plan, paying a chunk of money before the deadline, and then a chunk of money a few days after the deadline, when my paycheck came in. When I did not get a response from you within a week I sent another email, asking for a yes or no answer. When I didn't get a response to that, I sent an email to A. When I didn't hear from either of you, I sent a message to both of you, asking for a simple yes or no.

I got no response to my question after a month of emails, and I because I wanted to attend this program, I was forced to assume that the answer was "no." So I made the full payment by the deadline; I had to scramble to take out a loan and make arrangements for other bills to be paid later.

Here's my feedback: When somebody asks you "can I make payment arrangements, yes or no" it is a professional courtesy to answer. If the answer is "no," you answer "no, we cannot make payment arrangements, it is against our policy." I thought it was very rude that I did not get an answer. Had I gotten an answer sooner, I would not have had to scramble to make the payment. If you had just answered "no, that's not our policy" in a timely manner, my life would have been a little easier; I could have taken a credit union loan instead of a payday loan, I could have arranged to have other bills delayed, etc.

I cannot imagine why anyone would decide to ignore such a simple question when dealing with other people's money; but here's a hint: Don't do that to people. Don't treat people like that. I worked hard to save money to afford this expensive program, and I did not deserve to be ignored. 万吉平
_________

the response:

Mr.万吉平，

This is actually my last day working at (x-program) and A finished last week. As she, my superior, is unable to respond your concern, I shall do so.

I agree that the way in which communication with you was handled was disgraceful, and I offer my personal apologies; email from all applicants/accepted students should be a high priority for any study abroad organization and it is unprofessional when things start to slip. Although it is true that (x-program) was understaffed at the time your emails were received, this is no excuse, particularly concerning their content.

Your candid criticism is appreciated and I will make a point of sharing it with the other Asia Programs Coordinators. There is little that can be done for your particular case now, I fear, but at the least we can strive to keep such incidents from recurring.

Again, I am sorry for the way in which your case was handled. I am ccing B, the man who will replace me starting tomorrow, on my response. He has worked for (x-program) in China for two years and is very familiar with our policies. If you have any further concerns that need to be addressed, please contact him at b@x-program.com

In all sincerity, M

______
my reply:

M,

I'm happy to accept your apology. Good luck in the future --万吉平

Won't Be Long

2007-08-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

I should be studying. I should have started a long time ago. Big final exam tomorrow, big oral exam after the written final. I'm not a crammer, but I should prepare a little.

Of course I haven't been studying. I've been blogging, writing emails, writing a letter of complaint to the DC headquarters of this program, complaining about the way they selectively ignored my emails when I had important questions about payment. I wrote so much that I forgot to go to Chinese Table. Whatever.

Anyway, so I will study after I post this. But just now, I was doing my sunka... ok, sunka is the Filipino shell game you play on a carved wooden board with little pits in it (see picture above); and when you play you grab a handfull of shells and you deposit one in each pit.... ok, so sunka is Filipino slang for filling your daily pill dispenser, and the experience of dropping a pill in each little box is similar to dropping a shell in each....

Never mind. I was filling my pill dispenser when I realized the majority of the pills I was measuring out will be taken in America, not in China. I have tomorrow, Saturday, and on Sunday I leave.

I'll be happy to see my sister, and to catch up with my friends. I'll be happy to drive my car and sit on my couch and watch tv. And sleep on my big, soft, American bed.

What will I miss about Hangzhou? I will miss X, E, C, and all the other A班人。 I will miss the teachers. I will miss speaking Chinese all the time. I will miss not cooking, but having food readily available (and dirt cheap) when it's time to eat.

Well, it won't be long now.

A link to the past

2007-08-16T03:22:00.001-07:00

If you want to read my mama's account of her father's death, click here. If you're in China, click here.

I actually heard this story from Auntie M one night in Lubbock, Texas just a couple years ago; the young cowsins went out to sample Lubbock's magnificent night life; I stayed in and asked for a story, a link to the past.

Auntie M's version of this particular story includes my mama, 4 years old, sitting on a table as she heard the news of Tatang's death. She said, "But now he'll never get to see me grow up." At this point in the story, Auntie M started to cry a little; when mama came in later, she started to cry too.

My cowsins in California and my sister and I, we never met Tatang M, but we know we love him. I wonder what he would think of his grandkids, the federal agents, the small business owner, the nurse, the programmer, the non-profit worker, the language teacher.... and all of my other cowsins I haven't met, children of my older uncles. I think we're a decent group; I hope he would be proud.

Who understands diabetes?

2007-08-16T00:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday I went to lunch with my friends, had a bacon cheese burger, potato salad, and an I iced tea (no sugar). I had an iced tea again later, and then the monstrosity of shaved ice that you see above. I knew I was going to get in trouble, and I was right. My blood sugar was 232; when I woke up the next morning, it was 160. Yikes.

Today for lunch I had a bowl of noodles at the Muslim restuarant, and because it was hot out I got myself a Magnum (which is an ice cream bar, not a condom). I took a short nap. All of this is bad for diabetes. My random blood sugar right now? 113. That's right.

Who understands this?

Keep or Sell?

2007-08-15T23:42:00.001-07:00

Here are some reasons I should sell my house:
1) I would make a lot of money off the sale, and could afford to buy a new computer and a plane ticket to Shanghai; I could start investing.
2) I would make a clean break in terms of paperwork and taxes

Here's why I should keep my house:
1) It's an awesome place in an awesome location, I might want to come back and have a place to live; the market will be tough to reenter later on.
2) It's price is likely to skyrocket once the light rail starts running in a few years

If I don't sell, I'm not sure now I could afford to buy a new computer, move to Shanghai, attend my cowsin's wedding in San Francisco.

What do you think? Keep or sell?

So I'm an ass. So what?

2007-08-15T23:37:00.001-07:00

So today I wrote the evaluation for the academic component of this program that I'm on. No, I wasn't brutal, I was constructive, but I'm sure they will look at it and say, "what an ass, what is his problem?"

My problem is that crap that stuck to the bottom of my shoe has better pedagogy than the textbook we're using. I paid good money to come to China and all I learned were adverbs and conjunctions.

Afterward E and I went to lunch at a place that I've been to twice; the waiter was soooo so happy to see us (he hated us the first time!) and was surprised that we ordered without first laboriously studying the menu. Beef lo mein! says I, though there was some discussion about whether I said "lo mian," "la mian" or "liang mian." For some reason, I finally realized that the place is Muslim; I should have known from the headwear people had. I told E that there was no pork in the whole restaurant, he was less than thrilled. Keeping kosher in China is too hard.

I feel bad for him. Faith and tradition are a gift. As a Catholic, I'm fortunate that even while in China I can continue our tradition of discriminating against women.

Speaking of religion, C got a pamphlet from some evangelicals. It has cartoons of short cartoony people worshiping Jesus and the cross, a cartoon devil, and slogans in English and Chinese about heaven and hell. And of course, it's long-haired white Jesus wearing robes. There wasn't much "love one another as I have loved you" or "love your enemies, or "blessed are the poor..."

Anyway, after lunch I went to buy my sister a phone.

Easy Homework Night

2007-08-15T08:19:00.001-07:00

If the homework is easy, it can only mean one thing.... evaluations are coming up!

I will give the teachers and student life program a good recommendation over all, but there's no way I'm recommending the academic program. Don't worry, I will be constructive. I will say that the philosophy is performance oriented, rather than competence oriented; I'll say the homework was inappropriate to a) immersion learners and b) novice/intermediate learners; I'll say that the orientation of the program is academic to the point that it's a detriment to language learning. I'll say that text lacks any evidence of the present-day pedagogical theory.

They will ignore me.

I will also complain about the ignorasaurases in the DC office, who are all over me about paperwork but can't give me the courtesy of a yes or no when I ask if I can make a payment arrangement.

So the homework was easy in that they assigned relatively little, and what they did assign did not depend heavily on reading comprehension. After I was done, I wandered down to the third floor and hung out with C, whose name should really either be J or K, depending on what language you're speaking. I played his little travel guitar, and we talked about our roommates; how they love Chairman Mao, how they regard the Cultural Revolution as unfortunate (and not a crime against humanity); they talked about how they're Stalin fans, who change the subject when we start to talk about atrocities.

Just then A comes in and ask us to come to his room to see if it smells like caca. We oblige, and it doesn't. Afterwards, C and I go into the neighborhood to get a boredom snack. I had a crepe, he got some chow mein and some potatoes.

These guys should blog. C could tell you about a stupid cab driver; E could tell you about their adventures in Nanjing. We all have crazy adventure stories; mine are probably the least exotic, as I've spent most of the summer studying and most of my weekends in Shanghai.

So the Chinese roommates are starting to go a little crazy with gift giving. I've already received two gifts, and I haven't given any. In China, everything is inexpensive and plentiful, so you have to be a really thoughtful person to impress a Chinese roommate with a gift. I'm not a thoughtful person. Tomorrow is E's birthday, and my roommate asked me what he should get him. I'm planning to give him pat on the back, and that's about it.

Tomorrow after class I'm going cell phone shopping.

All About Me

2007-08-15T03:08:00.000-07:00

E told me today that my blog is only interesting when he's in it. So (my life) - E = not interesting. Ok, I see how it is. Therefore I plan to quadruple the time I spend with him in our last three days together as classmates.

Ok, "quadruple" may be overstating it.

Today he asked if he could chuck the peach on my desk at the building across the way. See, that's why we're friends, because he *asks* to throw my food at other buildings. Anyway, he went to throw it, and then noticed a shirtless dude giving another shirtless dude a back massage in the target building, so he lost his nerve.

He just wanted to throw my peach, he didn't want to commit a hate crime.

Today in my one-on-one class I talked to the teacher about our textbook's obsession with conjunctions. Everyday we learn a different way to say "however," yet none of us correctly use 了，把， or 被 in our every day speech.

Honestly, I don't need 20 different ways to say "however" at this point in my language proficiency level. I can say 可是 in every situation and get by. However, it's a shame that my grammar is wrong every time I have to speak in the past tense, talk about definite direct objects, or use the passive construction. Why can't we learn that stuff, level-appropriate stuff, instead of fracking "However"-A-Day?

Of course, 了，把， and 被 were presented to us over the course of the summer, but usually as one of fifteen grammar points per day.

My teacher is not ready to throw out the text book. Me, I'm ready. I been ready.

Tomorrow is review day; Friday is test and party day; Saturday is graduation and party day, Sunday is goodbye day. Ohhh, Sunday. 星期天， Sunday has become the answer to all of our little annoying problems.

Six Weeks Later

2007-08-15T03:04:00.000-07:00

One thing's for sure: I need a haircut.

Homework as a form of Resistance

2007-08-14T05:14:00.001-07:00

Most of our homework consist of closed exercises; multiple choice, unscramble, fill in the blank, match.

There is one set of questions which are open ended; i.e., make original sentences with the following vocab. Here are my sentences:

1) When it comes to learning Chinese, writing homework does not have the importance of talking to other people.
2) Since you don't want it, give it to me.
3) Although we have cannot use "了" properly, we do know five ways to say "however."
4) Perhaps saying "however" is more important than narrating events occurring in the past.
5) When I went to China to study abroad, I did not have time to talk to Chinese people because writing homework takes a very long time.

Forget the war!

2007-08-14T02:20:00.001-07:00

Yah yah, so we're at war.

Never mind that: here's some NEWS about squirrels intimidating rattlesnakes!

Sorry, I know that's not actual news, as it doesn't involve Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, or Brittney Spears....

Little dude pushing a drying rack off a table

2007-08-14T01:43:00.000-07:00

M is new in China, but N's been here for a year. They had been planning to meet at a certain restaurant, and M wasn't sure he was going the right way, so he called N's cell phone. N whipped out his guidebook.

These are two highly educated and well respected men, and they are nothing if not resourceful. Well, it turns out that the street sign that M was looking at was only in Chinese, so they had no recourse but to try to describe the characters to each other.

So M says, ok, the third character in is a little dude pushing a drying rack off a table. N looks at his guidebook, and yes, sees the little dude pushing a drying rack off a table. Genius. M is going the right way. They meet up soon enough at the restaurant, and congratulate each other on their ingenuity.

We often repeat this story, because we all find it hillarious. Before I leave, I just have to see it for myself, so I ask N to get his guidebook, which he does and he finds the address of the restaurant. To my delight, the third character in is, indeed, a little dude pushing a drying rack off a table. Have a look for yourself:

So then I go to look up the character, to see exactly what it was, but I realize I already know the character; it's 路 lù.

路, my friends, is the word for "road." It's the one character that appears in almost every single address in China. In other words, 路 was really no help at all.

It's a good thing M was going the right way to begin with.

Nobody's Sweaty Monkey

2007-08-14T01:39:00.001-07:00

It's a cool 88 degrees (31C), which means I'm not sweating like somebody's sweaty monkey I have homework to do, and I'm doing it later. There's an A-Ban dinner planned on the second floor; supposedly it's Mexican food, but besides beans and rice the menu remains to be seen. If it's not good food, I'll grab some dumplings afterwards.

I am sitting on my bed, listening to American classical music; Barber, Copeland, Bernstein, Adams... though I skipped over Gershwin. Appalachian Spring is so brilliant; I've listened to it hundreds of times in my life, but I noticed something new while listening to it today. When the teachers asked me what American composers were like, I had a hard time describing them, but I bet they would know the Shaker Song (Simple Gifts) if they heard it. For the record, I don't listen to that movement; I find it a bit overwrought.

I have half a jar of peanut butter left; I texted E to come up and have a sandwich, since we're all out of here on Sunday, I don't want my peanut butter to go to waste.

The path outside our dorm is finally getting paved. It will be finished just as we are ready to leave.

Adventure Saturday

2007-08-13T22:46:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a great time in Shanghai. N, E and I met M/J/J at the Starbucks. We got in two cabs to the fabric market; one cab was slower to arrive because the driver was more careful with little J in the car.

M and E picked up the dress shirts and pants that they had made, E ordered a jacket and was a champ at kanjia; she totally got her price. Afterwards, we all cabbed to Xintiandi for some exquisite and expensive Taiwanese style dumplings. Later, N, E and I went to Ikea, which was the same as the Renton Ikea only less people speaking Russian. E was embarassed to drag me along to Ikea, and N just dreads the place, but I thought going there was going to be important for me in the very near future. I learned how to say "Ikea" in Chinese, and I also learned which subway line it's on. Veery important. We bought some basket racks, cabbed them over to the school, and then set them up. It was two dudes doing the same job, so of course it was a race, although neither of us said so.

Once the basket racks were built, N and I went to Carrefour to prepare a salad for a new faculty potluck. We helped a colleague get some wine; I used my pidgin Mandarin to find some plastic cups and napkins. I also managed to get the wine lady to remind me the word for "Portugal," although I know it made her really uncomfortable to talk to me, a foreigner. She tried to get out off it by saying she didn't understand English. I was, of course, totally speaking Mandarin and I did not let her off the hook until she repeated the word "Portugal."

N and I chilled a little at his place, and then we made a salad for the potluck. They don't have a big salad bowl, so we put the salad in a pot. Instead of mixing the salad, we piled the tomatoes, carrots, cheese cubes, and grapes into quadrants. There's a picture.

We ended up walking in the rain, late to the potluck. As my umbrella is basically only for cocktails, we each had one shoulder that was totally drenched when we arrived. When I whipped out the umbrella, of course there was a woman standing there trying to look cool.

After the faculty potluck, we went to someone's house for a delightful evening of beautiful Central Asian carpets and wine. I talked with S and G about the Church, the anti-war movement, the sixties, Rome...

Now I'm in Starbucks, waiting for M to come pick me up. We are going to mass. Ask me later about a secret cardinal. More later...

______

"Love is a pilgrimage; it keeps moving." That's a line from the sermon I heard this morning. I was surprisingly moved at mass today, not because the service was in anyway distinct, but moreso because everyone was there. One thing I noticed, the music was super Filipino. All in English of course, but the composition style of sweet melodies, no fear of high notes, and a coy little jazz decision here and there was unmistakable.

I said goodbye to M/J and little J; little J didn't want to give me a hug, so I just patted him on the back and said I'd see him in October. Before I could make it onto the street, little J and M came chasing after me; little J apparently had a change of heart and was ready to give me a hug. But then nope, changed his mind again. That's ok, kid, you don't have to hug me today!

I said goodbye and met N back in his classroom, and helped him agonize over decorating his classroom. I tried to be helpful, but it's not a topic I have a lot of energy for.

For lunch we walked over to a new bbq restaurant that just opened up. I went straight back to the table, but N had to do a double take at the bar. Apparently there was an African American man with a drink at the bar, and behind him on the wall hung the Stars and Bars. N was visibly irritated by the flag. We all three were irritated by the prices and the slow service. The potato salad, however, was totally enjoyable.

I think N regretted that we didn't walk out after we saw the flag. Now that I think about it, we should have. I will send an email.

After that, it was taxi to the subway, to the train station. The next train is a little before six; it's 3:30 now, and I'm sitting in a cafe overlooking the train station plaza, drinking a beer-looking iced tea from a glass that's shaped like a boot.

Saturday Morning Notes

2007-08-13T22:24:00.001-07:00

It's Saturday morning, FBS is 106.

So my train ride was uneventful, but when I got off of the train my phone wasn't reaching N's cell or home number, so I figured I'd have to just show up on their doorstep. It was a few 20 minutes on the subway, and then a cab ride from the subway station to N's place. There was a long line for taxis that weren't coming, so I walked out to the sundial and caught a cab before it made it to the taxi line.

On the way, a mom caught her daughter from dashing into the street in front of the cab. The driver stomped on the break and said "wo kao!" which is the first time I've heard that word in the wild.

I made it to N's place, E was there, of course, and M. We caught up over a glass of wine. English was a little slow to come back to me, and I found myself swearing more than I like to.

I dreamt that N let me stay in a guest apartment, with green silk sheets arranged on the floor. I dreamt that we got up and went shopping, and I helped them bargain

Notes from the Train

2007-08-13T22:23:00.001-07:00

So I'm sitting here on the bullet train to Shanghai again.

I have not yet blogged about A-ban Hua or our fascination with pandas. Our teachers are catching on to our games, and I for one have made the academic decision to coast into the station. I'll do my homework and everything, but I am not going to stress about the big final they are trying to scare us with.

After the test today, I went back to my room to hang out. X is having cell phone drama, and by drama, I mean that his cell phone died on him. Upsetting for anyone. I told him when he went to get a new one, that I wanted to go with him, so I can buy a new phone for my sister.

He looked at me like I was crazy and then told me that he couldn't afford to buy a new one, so (Americans, brace yourselves) he is going to try to fix it; if he cannot fix it, he will try to get it fixed.

Maybe some of you are not shocked, but in my adult life, when my cell phone flickers a little I drop it right where I'm standing and then go buy a new one.

Why this homework is stupid

2007-08-13T08:35:00.001-07:00

Every day all over the world, millions of children learn language. They go from zero to fluent in five years, all while learning how to use their brand new bodies. They don't do "unscrambling" exercises, they don't do multiple-choice find-the-ungrammatical-element. They talk a lot, they listen a lot, and they become native speakers. In five years, they have complex grammar; by the time they hit puberty, they have been learning an average of 10 new words a day.

Why in the hell do I have to do this crappy homework for this program?

It's because they want us to work hard. Because in their mind, hard work = language learning. This is a fallacy. Learning your first language was so easy, most of us don't even remember the process. Language learning is an instinct.

Our teachers act disappointed when the grammar seems "too easy" for us. They want us to work hard, regardless. Listen, chuck, just because it's easy doesn't mean we're not learning. Easy or not, the shit happens to be NEW TO ME.

Oh, by the way, I still can't narrate a story in the past, describe a room, make a list of characteristics, any of the stuff described on the ACTFL chart for Novice speakers. Why not? Oh, because they have been busy looking for HARD stuff for us to chew on.

I've been a teacher for 10 years; so add up all my teachers' years of experience and I bet you don't get much more than ten. I have a Master's Degree in Foreign Language Methodology.

I assign homework, I totally do. And sometimes it's hard, and sometimes it takes a long time. But it's always to practice a skill that my students will need when speaking. Always. Always always.

Unscrambling a complex sentence is NOT a skill anybody needs when speaking. Neither is identifying the ungrammatical sentence. Neither is matching. This book's grammar puzzles are a mess; they are reading and grammar at the same time. It is sloppy ass technique and it upsets me, because these people made money from this piece of crap book.

Time for bed, finally.

I HATE THIS TEXTBOOK

2007-08-13T07:05:00.001-07:00

i HATE THIS TEXTBOOK SO MUCH RIGHT NOW i WANT TO THROW IT AT THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE IT AND THEN JUMP UP AND KNEE THEM IN THE FACE.

I want to just not do this homework and then complain about it tomorrow, but due to the Asian policy of not listening (YES, I SAID IT) I know they will not listen to me, and just presume I think it's too hard, and I'm lazy.

The truth is this homework is USELESS and I know it, and oh yes, I am an expert in foreign language teaching methodology, and I have a certificate from the Regents of the goddamn University of Michigan to prove it.

the "NEW PRACTICAL CHINESE READER" and workbook, my friends, is a giant pile of crap, and I paid money for people to pressure me to waste my summer with my face in this book.

New Posts Are Coming

2007-08-13T03:38:00.001-07:00

I have a bunch of new posts from this weekend in Shanghai with N/E and M/J/little J, but I just don't have time to post them now. Tomorrow I have regular homework a 150 word essay, and a quick oral presentation. Sheesh.

I just want to say that it's 86 degrees and sunny. And compared to the blistering heat we've had this summer, 86 degrees is a welcome relief.

One more thing: E, thank you for fixing my internet. When I saw that you were eating the password, my immediate instinct was to reach into your mouth with my fingers and pull it out, but then I remembered that I'm no longer a teacher, you're not my student, and I'm not responsible for your safety. That is a nice feeling. However, as your friend, I would like you to not eat my garbage anymore. Thanks chief.

Hello from N's Classroom

2007-08-11T04:46:00.001-07:00

I'm hanging out in N's classroom with M/J/J. It's freezing in here, because N keeps it cold to keep the kids awake. The kids donated some blankets, that are kept in the cabinet.

That's right! His classroom has *CABINETS.* Where have I been working?

Today, breakfast at Starbucks, cab to fabric market, cab to Xintiandi for dumplings, then cab to Ikea. There was a Harry Potter purchase and a salad to make for a new faculty potluck.

I'm going to like being an ex-pat.

Just a quick note, more later.

75%

2007-08-09T08:00:00.001-07:00

This morning there was no water, so I went to class in the three-digit weather after sponging myself off with a wet rag. It was gross, and I was uncomfortable all day. After class, I went straight to the dorm to take a shower, and afterwards I went into the neighborhood to have lunch, since it was probably too late for the cantina. I went to the same place I had gone to the day before with E; there were lots of dudes, eating their noodles alone. It was quiet.

I watched them order and get their noodles, but due to the Chinese custom of ordering food as soon as your ass hits the seat, I wasn't able to benefit from that knowledge. Tomorrow, maybe. So instead, I had the exact same plate of food I had last night; beef with peppers. And a bowl of rice. I think they thought it was extravagant to order a dish like that, instead of the usual plate of noodles for the dude with no friends, and maybe it was extravagant. It was double or triple the price of loneliness noodles, and by that I mean 12 kuai, so less than two dollars.

After lunch I bought a bottle of water and wondered what to do next. The skies were blue and bright.

I walked a few blocks to the train ticket office and bought my ticket to Shanghai for tomorrow. It was a nice walk in the sunshine. I saw some people taking siestas under the viaduct, and a sichuan restaurant drying shrimp in the sunlight. I would have taken pictures, but I had forgotten my camera. Dammit, there's a USD $100 prize for the best photo of the summer, which I know I'm not going to win.

Anyway, once my ticket was bought, I wandered back to the dorm. On the way, a well dressed man in a scooter asked me for directions. Really? My answer to him was incoherent and I kept walking, but I thought, yah, he thinks I'm a local! What a joke.

I was almost back at the dorm when I heard my cell phone alarm go off. Why do I set a cell phone alarm? Oh, it's so if I decide to take a nap, I can wake up in time for my TWO O'CLOCK ONE-ON-ONE CLASS! How could I have forgotten? I picked up the pace a little, walked five floors up to my room, got my bag, and hustled across the bridge to the classroom building, up to the 12th floor. By the time I got there, my shirt was drenched in sweat. I went to my classroom and saw... another student. Eh? I went next door and asked another teacher where I was supposed to be for my one-on-one, and she said, your class is back at the dorm, you better hurry!

So all the way back to the dorm, and up six floors to show up late to my one-on-one. I told her the whole sob story, starting where there was no water for a shower. I will probably use that story for my oral exam tomorrow.

Afterwards, I chilled out in my room a little, and then met everyone else for Chinese Table, a program where we go out to dinner with teachers. I've never been, because it's always the day before the test, and I've always wanted to study. I decided this time, screw it, I can take a test in America. So I went with them to the sichuan restaurant that had been drying shrimp earlier in the day. There was a lot of discussion about how much spicy hot we could handle, but I just said whatever and let everyone else order. The food was all good; it included some ampalaya and a spicy soup with blood jello cubes. But none of it seemed spicy to me. At one point, my lips were burning, but the inside of my mouth never felt hot. It's a very different spicy hot experience than from what I'm used to in the ol' USA.

It's time to go to bed now; tomorrow is test day. And then I'm going to Shanghai again.

This will be the third weekend in Shanghai, for anyone who's counting. After coming back from Shanghai with E last week, I got pretty toxic pretty fast (in terms of attitude, not blood sugar, mama) so I'll be glad to take another short vacation from CET. When I get back, it will be finals week.

So I've been talking to some of the teachers about teacher stuff. I told one about how she held her hand in front of her mouth when she talked, and so for the first week I couldn't see her mouth, so I didn't know what she was saying. She got a kick out of that.

Another teacher today saw me trying to unscramble a ridiculous sentence with a structure that we NEVER STUDIED; I told her I didn't think the activity was communicative, and started telling her about the ACTFL proficiency pyramid when the academic director walked in. Oh, I said, she totally knows about this! And she totally did, she started filling in some of the info hadn't yet drawn into the ACTFL chart.

When they both understood it, I said, ok this is my level, down here... and I pointed to novice, at the bottom of the inverted pyramid. The AD wanted to place me a bit higher (apparently she thinks I can narrate a story in the past, describe people and objects, and list characteristics...) but whatever. The point is that the difficulty level of the unscrambling sentences was way up in the superior range, which was why some of the teachers themselves had a hard time unscrambling some of the damn sentences.

I was pretty happy about myself after that exchange; I got to talk about teaching and express some of the limitations of the textbook and homework we've been facing, and show the teachers that I'm no slouch when it comes to second language pedagogy.

Of course, I didn't have time to prepare for tomorrow's test after I finished my homework, so I'm predicting a 75%. The teachers are saying the test is easy, so I may revise my prediction after having taken it. I predicted 85% for my last two tests, and scored 89% on the first one and 85% on the second one.

It was a lucky guess of course, but I told my teacher it was intuition, and she was impressed. If I really had that kind of intuition, I would use it to grade papers. Wouldn't that be awesome, grading papers by intuition instead of marking corrections that no one will look at? Ha, that would probably get me into trouble.

What am I saying? I'm not a high school teacher anymore....

It's Starting To Get Ugly

2007-08-07T22:01:00.001-07:00

So my posts are getting progressively whiney as this routine grinds on. I've asked E to write a guest post, maybe that will lighten the mood around here, if he gets around to it.

Today in class, we were complaining about our homework load, as usual. I should mention now that most of us are losing steam. It's not that we're not turning our homework in on time; it's just that we're not forcing ourselves to memorize the damn vocab every night like we did at the beginning of the program. So anyway, we're in class, and C says something brilliant, he says, "We can write homework in America."

Fifty points and a high five.

We can totally learn to read and write in America. I can go home and sit on my American couch and do Mandarin homework (i.e., word and grammar games) until I'm blue in the face. What I can't do in America is talk to and listen to Mandarin speakers all day long. That's what we should be doing here. We shouldn't be having to miss out on opportunities to talk to Chinese people because of our homework load.

All you people that are telling me, "oh but JP, I think reading and writing is important." All of you, shut you rotten mouths. Just shut it. I don't give a crap about what you think. I'm in China surrounded by a billion Chinese people, but I don't have time to talk to them because I'm doing stupid multiple choice homework. The best is "choose the sentence that is grammatically incorrect." What kind of idiot would want an L2 student to focus on grammatically incorrect sentences? Just because we study some correct structures does NOT mean we have a sense of whether a NEW sentence is grammatically correct or not. What bullshit. (If you want to argue this with me, save yourself the effort and just punch yourself in your cavity-ridden death-smelling mouth.).

So our fourth class of the day (four in a row!) is our newspaper elective, and most of us have just made the decision to not prepare for it. We oughtta, but we don't, we're to busy trying to identify grammatically incorrect sentences. So today, the teacher tells us that next Wednesday, we have to make an oral presentation. Here's the schedule: Wednesday, oral presentation. Thursday, review. Friday, giant final exam, written and oral. Oh yes, they expect us to go to dinner with them on Thursday night.

The class is visibly shaken by this, and one classmate says, why can't we do it on Tuesday or Monday? When the hell are we supposed to prepare for the exams? The teacher tells us some bullshit about how then it wouldn't make sense to continue having class once the oral is done, and then we all pouted through the vocabulary. Later she offered to talk to the academic director. The guy next to me just said, I don't care, I'm not preparing.

We finished the class and went to lunch. On the walk back, the teacher reminded us that water is shut off starting at 9 pm tonight, and won't come on again until 8 am. Teachers will not shower, but Chinese people shower at night anyway. Americans shower in the morning. Aw who cares. I wonder if teachers flush toilets in the morning. One classmate suggested they should delay class for an hour, so we can get clean (he runs every morning). Fat chance.

Oh, and when I got back to the dorm, there's a sign on the door that says "tonight's meeting is still on at 9pm in 113." First of all, what meeting? Second, 9 pm is serious homework time.

When it comes time to write an evaluation, no one is safe.

The deal about tones

2007-08-07T02:29:00.001-07:00

So the biggest obstacles for any American learning Mandarin are a) the writing, and b) the tones. The writing is pretty straight forward; if you read a lot and write a lot, your reading and writing will get better, and eventually you can know all these characters.

The tones, for a lot of us are a bigger problem.

Here's what they tell you: Mandarin syllables have five tones; high, rising, low, falling, and neutral. Google 'mandarin tones' if you want a good explanation; for now, it's enough for me to tell you that mā má mǎ mà ma are all totally different words, (mother, hemp, horse, grasshopper, question particle) and they don't necessarily sound alike to Chinese people. Every single word in Mandarin has an assigned tone, and when you learn a word you have to learn the tone.

Here's what they don't tell you: American English totally uses tones also. The only differences is that American English intonation is not assigned syllable by syllable like in Chinese. Instead, it's a sentence long intonation contour that affects the meaning of a sentence.

Don't believe me? Check out how I the following sentences have different intonation:

I'm hungry for peanuts.
I'm hungry for peanuts?
I'm HUNGRY for peanuts. (i.e., not HORNY, but HUNGRY).
I'M hungry for peanuts. (i.e., not "him," but me!)
I'm hungry FOR peanuts. ( i.e., not "because of," silly)
I'm hungry for PEANUTS. (i.e., not popcorn, silly)

There are a thousand other intonation contours I can use to give these sentences different flavors ( e.g., sarcastic, pathetic, insistent, etc.) that depend on your reading of this sentence; I cannot represent all of these different intonation contours with capital letters and punctuation, so you'll just have to believe me.

Ok, here's what Americans usually get stuck on: you shouldn't use American intonation contours in other languages. If you try to use them in Spanish, French, or Italian, your words will probably be understood, but the intonation you so skillfully chose to spin that sentence does not translate. It just makes you sound like an over-emphatic American. Those languages have their own set of contours, and if you want to sound good, you have to learn them.

Now Chinese is a lot to remember; tones, word order, syllables that all sound the same, crazy consonants that all sound the same... but here's the deal: When you try to put American intonation contours on Mandarin sentences, you end up wiping out all those Mandarin tones that belong to the syllables. You end up being incomprehensible to pretty much everyone but other American students of Mandarin language.

I can hear Americans struggling with meaning, trying desperately to put words together, hoping that with some extra emphasis on the American intonation contours, they will get their meaning across. I happen to understand them perfectly. Chinese people, on the other hand, do not.

And that's the deal with tones.

Chi and Signs of the End

2007-08-06T08:32:00.001-07:00

Although we have talked about the end of this program since the beginning of the program, there are signs that the end is fast approaching. Yesterday, we got an email from the director, saying he's kicking us off the google group so he can make a new list of the fall students. Well then! Today at lunch, the academic director mentioned there are only ten days of class left. My sister said something about only two weeks to go. We're even talking about our end-of-the-term events; certainly we will give a demonstration of our tai chi class. We're so close to knowing all 24 forms, I can taste it.

Finally, the most telling sign that the program is about to end is that I'm starting to see my speaking improve. My reading and listening got a big jumpstart at the beginning of the program, but now, when I'm comfortable, I can communicate without much trouble with X and E. Maybe it's because they have both learned to listen to me.

______

Speaking of "chi" (Chinese people like to spell it "qi"), I know what it is now. The feng shui people like to say that it's a mysterious energy that no one understands, but really it's the flow that every Chinese person can see and understand.

When I stand in a line, Chinese people can see the chi flowing right past me, and they catch the chi and move through it in a way that makes it look like I was never in line at all, meaning they can step in front of me. Chi is when you're at the intersection, and everyone from every direction goes in all at once, and nobody gets killed. It's not a mysterious energy, it's the way they think about movement and space.

Americans have the mentality that their bodies are cars, and like their traffic laws, they obey certain conventions so that a) no one ever touches, and b) communication about movement is minimum. When we get on an elevator, we follow the convention of waiting for everyone to get off first, and then when we get on, we try as best as we can to preserve personal space bubbles without actually talking about it. If we approach a counter, we follow the convention of standing in line, and if it's not clear who is in line, we tend to implicitly assume that the people are, indeed, standing in line, only asking if the people in the line do not seem to be moving.

Chinese people do not have these conventions. Their philosophy of movement, i.e., their "chi" is more like salmon. They either swim down the river with the current, or swim up the river, driven by desire. There are no conventions about standing in line or preserving your personal space or touching other people. They have to be the first ones in, first ones out; if they can't be first, they strive to at least not be the dreaded last. If they are not moving, they are dying. If you want to see a Chinese person panic, block the elevator buttons so that they can't press the 'close door' button. Waiting for the doors to close automatically is dying a little inside.

I do not have this chi. I'm trying to learn to see it, and I often fantasize about disrupting their chi. In Shanghai last weekend I wanted to knock people down when they wouldn't let me off the train as they wiggled and pushed their way in like salmon spawning in a river, driving by fish lust.

I think I can learn to see and direct this chi, with some observation and practice. What's hard is helping other Americans see the chi, just getting them on the same page. When we're competing for a cab, we all have to wiggle up to the car, get in and sit down; we can't let the lady step in front of us and then call her friends over quick and take the cab from us. When we walk into KFC, we can't look for the end of the line so we can go stand there, we have to make our way to the counter, stepping in front of everyone else. When they want to order, they will step forward.

The only time that this fish lust chi mentality is replaced with an American-style convention is when there's a uniform and whistle, directing traffic, forming a line, etc. I'm thinking about carrying a whistle around my neck. Chinese people seem to obey the whistles.

Ordering Food

2007-08-06T00:35:00.000-07:00

There are many strategies that someone can use to order food if they don't read or speak Chinese. Here are my favorites:

Point at it. Whether it's on a picture menu, on a steam table, swimming around in live tanks, or on somebody else's plate at a table across the restaurant, pointing is an awesome way to get around the language barrier. I've seen people go into the kitchen of a restaurant so they can really know what their options are. There's also pointing at items on a non-picture menu, which is a strategy I cannot recommend.

Key words. Learn words like "beef" and "vegetables" and "stir-fry", etc. Say the words, and then cross your fingers. I've found that waitresses often don't believe you don't know what's on the menu, they just think you're being an ass. So don't rely on them to tell you what they like to eat. Here's the dialog:

服务员： What do you want?

me: What kind of beef is there?
服务员： There's miao miao miao beef, miao miao miao beef, and miao miao miao beef with miao miao.
me: what was the first one?
服务员： Miao miao miao beef.
me: I want that. What kind of green vegetables are there?
服务员： Miao miao or miao miao. Which do you want?
me: I don't know, which one do you like?
服务员： (awkward pause as she calls me an ass under her breath) I
don't know.
me: Just give me the first one. And a bottle of water.
服务员： You have tea. Also, you ordered soup.
me: Yes. Also, bring me a bottle of water. Soup, tea,
water. Yes. I want it, bring it.
The 服务员 then walks away thinking you're insane. (/scene)

The final strategy is the most difficult: learn to read Chinese. This is, of course, ridiculous, and you won't get any points for trying. At one restaurant, E said we needed to look at the menu, but the waitress told us to hurry. I told her, we read slowly, just come back. E said five minutes.

The waitress was completely baffled. She asked the owner to come to the table (her dad? an uncle?) and asked him what the hell we were trying to tell her. I think she actually asked him if we were even allowed to sit at the table if we hadn't ordered yet. He looked at her and said, they need five minutes to read the menu! She threw up her hands and walk away, totally baffled. We called her over when we were ready.

At the end of the meal, you ask for your bill, and she brings it. I wrote in a short essay that one of the differences between American and Chinese culture is that Americans don't ask for the bill unless a) we want to leave right away, or b) we want to make sure their friends don't pay. Otherwise, we don't have to ask for the check. The server brings it when s/he sees that we're done eating. I'm sure the teachers found that concept totally ridiculous and unlikely.

______

What in the hell was watermelon wearing today? 噢我的天呢！

Shanghai Sunday

2007-08-05T05:05:00.001-07:00

So I'm on the bullet train from Shanghai to Hangzhou right now. E and I had agreed to interview people on the train for our practicum, but he looks tired and I'm reluctant to bother anyone on the train, so either we'll do it later in the trip or just wait to do it when we return to Hangzhou. We should be arriving in a little more than an hour.

Yesterday was a big day. E and I met up with his friend H, who put us in a cab bound for a crowded shopping complex called Yuyuan, I think. The buildings were tall, built to look like old Chinese temples with carved roofs, and the lower floors were stores and shops. Some of the buildings held tourist markets, and we ended up shopping for some pasalubong. H did most of the bargaining for us; her patience got the prices down. I was a little annoyed when we walked away from a stand, and they would come out and follow her, touching her arm and asking her to name a price. If it was me, and I'm walking away, I don't want anyone touching me. But oh well, part of the game I guess.

There were a lot of people coming up to us, telling us about watches, insisting that we follow them. Some old people were walking around collecting recycling, asking for my bottle before I was finished with my water. It was crowded and hot.

Here's a video of some people stuffing dumplings in a famous dumpling place in the Yuyuan. The line streched out the door and around the building.

The three of us ate in a Noodles Plus restaurant that had individual dishes that seemed very Korean, although it definitely was not a Korean restaurant. After lunch we went to the cab circus and watched a lot of cabs either drive past us or get snatched up by other people who I didn't have the presence of mind to shove out of my way.

Finally, we got a cab and went to the Shanghai Museum of Urban Planning, right in the People's Square. It was 30 kuai to get in, and after taking our stub, we noticed our ticket was a postage paid postcard. Anyone want me to send them a postcard?

So we checked out the museum exhibits, including the old vs. new shanghai photo display, the huge miniature of the whole city of Shanghai, the 360 degree computer animation flying through Shanghai's engineering marvels, urban planning, development and transit displays.... Afterwards we went up to the cafe on the top floor and sat. I ordered a 30 kuai Perrier and we just hung out.

Soggy Wet

Later we decided it was time to cross the river to the see the Pearl Tower, so we got on the subway. H wasn't sure where to get off, and when we got to the surface, we realized we had gone one stop too far. No problem, we'll just walk to the tower.

We stopped to take a picture of a very tall building under construction. A crane that was on top of the building was lifting some materials to the top. At that moment, we started feeling raindrops, and soon the sky opened and we were caught in a rainstorm on the wide streets of the Pudong.

I suggested we duck under the awning of an old building, which looked historically significant, but I don't remember what it was. We stood against the wall, but when the rains started coming down hard, my shoes were getting soaked from the upsplash of the hard, hard rain. I made a dash for the better shelter of the doorway, where other people had gathered to smoke their cigarettes and escape the rain. By the time I got to the doorway, I was soaked.

E and H sprinted to the doorway a little while afterwards, looking like a couple of drowned rats. The lightning was very close to us; the time between the flash and the sharp thunder was only about a second. The Chinese people took a step backwards with every thunder clap.

There were no cabs coming our way; the ones we did see were on the other side of a barrier. After a good half hour, we saw an empty cab coming down the street. E ran out to get it, and when it stopped for us, H and I ran out and hopped in. We were soggy wet.

The cab dropped E and I at the closest subway station, which was all of two blocks away. We never knew we were so close. H took the cab to an appointment, and we went underground and headed back to the hotel.

What's that sound?

Once back at the hotel, I got changed. After using the bathroom, I lit a courtesy match, because I wasn't born in a barn. By this time, it looked like the rain had stopped, and E and I left the room in search of a bottle of water. E's shoes were wet, so he put on the disposable slippers provided by the hotelToo small, way ugly.

We had noticed that there was a Dolar Shop on the 20th floor, so we took the elevator to the 19th and walked up the steps to 20, only to find that Dolar Shop was not a store, but a kind of fancy restaurant. We went back to the room.

Once back, we noticed our curtains were closed, and there were little laminated cards asking us not to smoke in bed. Eh? We went from the 11th floor to the 19th, and back down... had somebody come into our room in that short of a time?

E later figured out that my courtesy match had set off the smoke alarm, which we had heard faintly beeping, in no way sounding like a smoke alarm. I also had to explain to him about courtesy matches, because he had never heard of him. You'd think a student at a fancy east coast college would have heard of a courtesy match....

Sewing Drama

At that point, I went to the front desk to ask for a sewing kit, as my Jesus Christ shorts had a big hole in the pocket. The receptionist directed me to the fuwuyan on the 12th floor, they would fix it for me. I didn't want to do that, because I didn't know how much they would charge me.

So instead I went up to the fifth floor little hotel store, and asked for a mini sewing kit. She promptly got on the phone and asked the fuwuyan to meet me at my room and mend my pocket. So I went back up to the room, and on the way, I was intercepted in the hallway by the curious fuwuyan. She said she'd fix my pocket, so I went into my room and took my shorts off to give to her.

When I went to find her, she was waiting in the hallway for me. I showed her the hole, and her and her friend said the hole was too big, I would cerrtainly need a patch. To confirm the word for patch, I showed them the Jesus Christ patch on the side of my shorts where my mama had concealed another rip. I went back to my room to get a bandana to use as a patch.

Back in the hallway, the ladies decided that the best course of action was not to patch it, but to sew the hole shut, so I went back to the room to wait.

Ten minutes later she was at my door, the pocket mended. She exhorted me not to put heavy things into that pocket, a sentence which I later repeated for E's entertainment.

At this point, I noticed E hadn't changed out of his wet clothes, so I asked him if he was going to change, and he asked me why I was worried about it. I guess it's none of my business. He took a shower and changed, and then we went to go meet H for dinner at Nanjing Dong Lu.

Shanghai Nights

We walked on the strip for a while, and I kept cutting off the aggressive "buy my watch" "eat at my restaurant" people with a quick "Bu yao," which E said was mean sounding. Probably was. Later he told H about the courtesy match incident; she had never heard of the courtesy match either. Odd folk.

Anyway, we narrowed it down to two restaurants: cantonese and hunan. I decided cantonese it is! And we sat and ordered beef with wasabi and vegetables, shredded chicken, singapore fried noodles, chilled vegetables, and some dumpling soup. We talked and told stories, and I talked way too much about work. I told them about the boys who pretend to not have paper.

Later we walked down Nanjing Dong Lu all the way to Waitan, otherwise known as "the Bund." Took pictures, shook of vendors, watched all the lights of the Pudong skyline. Biggest big-screens I've ever seen in my life, three or four of them. Later we found our way to an expensive cafe and asked H our assigned homework questions. Afterwards, we cabbed back to the hotel and said goodbye to H.

Once we got upstairs, we decided to go back out again so E could hit a cash machine. I retraced my walk from the morning and was able to get cash from an international bank with my ATM card. While getting cash, a man walking fast down the sidewalk asked, "hashish?" I ignored him, but my mind raced at the many kinds of trouble we could get dragged into if something "went down." E didn't seem too concerned.

We walked back to the hotel, and on the way, in front of the Jian Temple, I saw the hashish man again, chatting casually with a cop. E said that they might be friends, and I thought about all the bad stuff that could happen if the drug dealer and (bad?) cop wanted to mess with us.

Part of being a dude is sometimes imagining yourself getting into physical altercations with other dudes you see on the street. Besides that, in my family we have a tradition of imagining the worst possible outcome of any given situation. I think it makes conversation more interesting.

E and I stayed up late talking Chinese. I didn't really want to go to sleep, but knew I had to in order to catch the train the next morning, so I got into my bed and turned off the lights. We kept talking, and somewhere there I must have said goodnight and fallen asleep, because the next thing I remember it was 6:30 am and I was getting up to go to the bathroom.

Sunday Morning.

Breakfast at the hotel, and then we packed up and walked down to the subway.

We rode down to the correct train station (for once) and quickly found our way to the waiting room. We even found seats!

Once on the train, we talked about interviewing people for our assignment, but it didn't happen. E tried to sleep against the window of the train, but his head kept slipping. I took the time to write this entry.

Back in Hangzhou

We got off in Hangzhou, and I had pretty much resigned to the fact that we would be cabbing it back to Gong Da. But as some map sellers were shoving their maps in my face, and I was "bu yao"ing them, E had the presence of mind to ask where to catch the bus. The lady told us where we could catch a 3, and we found it waiting for us. No a/c, but plenty of open windows and seats.

We got off near campus and stopped at a bank. Then we walked back to the dorm, I checked my email, changed my sweaty shirt, and got my book bag ready. We found C in the hallway, who had a copy of "War and Peace" in his hand. The three of us went to the corner restaurant and ordered egg-fried beef strips, mala tofu, the first greens that the waitress suggested, and some kind of salty chicken. It was the same waitress that was so embarrassed by our lack of chinese before, and I know she recognized us this time, but this time we ordered with some authority, and got everything we wanted.

Here comes the rain again

Afterwards, the three of us went to Starbucks and got three separate tables; E and I preparing the text, C and his "War and Peace." As we've been sitting here, the skies have opened up and started dumping rain again. Judging from the speed of thunder, the lightning was right above us, but now there's a few seconds between the lightning and the thunder. So now we're at Starbucks.

Just now, C decided to take off; E gave him his umbrella so that a) C wouldn't get wet, and b) so that E and I would be forced to stay here and study. And excellent idea, except for the fact that I'm blogging and not studying. Oh well, I will learn this language regardless of my final grade in this program.

So far I've had a large iced tea and a tiramisu, which in Chinese is called "tilamisu." I had been falling asleep over my textbook, I think I even dreamt a little dream, but now I'm up, and I think the espresso and sugar in the tiramisu has kicked in.

I've read the text, it's a little long, but the font is big and the words are pretty easy. I could try to memorize the new words, but I just might not. When E is done, we'll find someone to interview.

Right now, I just noticed three people in rain ponchos on the plaza in front of us. It is driving rain, and one of them has a broom, one a dust mop, and the third person just walked in with a mop. They are cleaning the plaza in the driving rain. There's two centimeters of standing water.

They just went inside after a nearby lightning flash. The sky is starting to get lighter, so I think this rain is about to stop.

Saturday in Shanghai

2007-08-05T04:52:00.001-07:00

First things first: Dinner.

l went to E's room to find him for dinner, and it ended up being a little A-ban conference, at first in the hallway, and then in E's room as he packed. I think the language pledge has the effect of exaggerating our personalities. We become caricatures of ourselves.

So after some checking in, we finally got it into gear and went to get dinner. Our classmates recommended a restaurant, but didn't have time to eat with us, so E and I got a table against the wall. The waitress wanted to take our order right away, and it took some convincing to let us have five minutes to look at the menu. Look, lady, we are not strong readers.

We ordered baby celery, five spice beef, some greens with chicken, a dark beef stew with carrots and green onions, and a big plate of shoe string potatoes.

As we were eating, E noticed that it was already six o'clock, and our train leaves at seven. Sheesh! So we gave ourselves ten minutes to finish, and then E asks if I remembered my passport.

Dang it. Need the passport for the hotel.

Traffic

Since he forgot his as well, he volunteered to sprint back to the dorm in the rain while I took care of the restaurant. He knows that I'm big and slow. So I gave him my room key, paid the bill, and then waited for him under the viaduct.

We got a cab immediately, but after ten minutes in the cab, I noticed we were still at the university. Traffic. I told the driver that our train was at seven, and he said, it's 6:38, we will certainly not arrive on time. We already bought our tickets, what will we do?

The driver said something I didn't understand, and E acted relieved, which I assume meant we could exchange our tickets. We got to the train station around five minutes after seven.

Train Station Drama

Our train was no longer listed on the big board, so we went to the counter to exchange tickets. We noticed ticketed passengers giving the people behind the counter five kuai and getting a different kind of ticket in return. Is that what we're supposed to do? Also, there was a younger woman crying desperately; I think she was with other people, but the only comfort came from the uniformed lady behind the desk, who told her "no crying." As usual, people were pushing in front of us, but when we finally got to the front, the guy looked at our tickets, realized our situation, and told us we had to go "out there" to exchange our tickets.

So fine, we went "out there" and E found a line to wait in, and then was told by one of the (many) people trying to talk us out of the train and into their bus that we would have to go to the ticket window. This isn't the ticket window?

So we went to the ticket window, window number 12, actually, and waited and waited, and when we got to the front, the lady realized our situation and shouted to us "WINDOW NUMBER FIVE!" which we finally understood the fifth time she said it.

We got to window number five, where there was a long line that wasn't moving. So E said, it's just seven bucks, let's just buy new tickets for the next train.

Fine with me! So we went to window number 10 to buy new tickets. Window 11 lady noticed we were back and said something to 10 lady, probably about how pathetic and ignorant we are.

Window 10 lady told us there were no seats left on the next train, but that she could put us on the 9:30 train, leaving from Hangzhou East. We discussed it and finally decided, yes, we'll take the 9:30. So then the lady closed window 10, walked us over to window 5, and got us new tickets in front of all the people waiting in line. She even gave us change because the later train was cheaper.

So now we had over an hour to kill. I noticed that there was a China Mobile office in the lobby, so I went and added a bunch of money to my cell phone. That gave us the right to sit in the China Mobile VIP lounge, sweet. So we sat down and wondered how we were going to kill over an hour.

Killing Time.

So E taught me a word game which he really enjoys, but I found very slightly tedious. I would have liked it more if I didn't keep screwing it up. We continued our custom of speaking Mandarin, and writing notes to each other when it got beyond the basics.

After about forty five minutes we were bored of that place, so we got up to go explore the train station, find a place to pee, etc. As we were leaving, the lady asked to see our tickets so she could tell us which waiting room and platform. She took one look at our tickets and said, Hey, you need to get in a cab right now and go to Hangzhou East!

What?

So we got in a cab, and asked for Hangzhou East Train Station, and we were on our way. E asked the driver, who really liked to lean on his horn, so how many train stations does Hangzhou have?

Oh, just the two, he answers, leaning on his horn.

More Train Station Drama

We got to the other train station, which had the vibe of a sad carnival, where lots of people showed up and they all hated it. The bathroom stunk, and as we made our way to the waiting area, we noticed a lady who had been taken into the security area yelling at a security guard. A crowd had gathered, and she was yelling at the guard and telling the crowd how he was responsible for the blood streaming down her face. She tried to go into the crowd, but the guards stayed on her. Everyone stood and watched.

Later, I saw two guards dragging the lady by the upper arm to an office. Don't know what happened to her after that.

We got to our train, and sat next to a couple playing cards. E and I played the word game again, and noticed that the AC had gone out. It was hot and humid, and everything seemed to be wet. The paper we were writing on seemed soggy. Later the AC came back on, and the paper went back to being crinkly.

By the time we got to Shanghai, the subway was closed, so we took a cab to our hotel. It's a three star hotel, lots of space. Nothing is free but the towels. We're on Nanjing Road, but it's West Nanjing, not to the glittering East Nanjing shopping district.

I went out and took a walk by myself after breakfast. I think this place is pretty hopping. The Jian Temple is across the street, there's a subway station on the corner, and plenty of restaurants, including western restaurants, including Burger King and McDonalds. Mmm. More later.

Hangzhou Rain Storm

2007-08-03T01:29:00.001-07:00

Failure to Get Off... Again

2007-08-03T00:40:00.001-07:00

So today we had our weekly ritual: review session, followed by a written exam, followed by an oral exam. The review session covered 23 grammatical topics, although our teacher has a habit of leaving a the number off off the last topic so it seems like there's only 22. The written exam was fine; I was mostly concerned with finishing so I could get out of the room.

The oral exam was... sigh. I've been saying to my roommate how much I hate our oral exam topics. Today's topics were 1) are men and women equal in your country? 2) what is your opinion on jobs? and 3) compare Chinese New Year to the most important festival in your country. Both topics 1 and 2 are irritatingly broad, and both NOT learner-centered. Topic number 3 involves a lot of special vocabulary you would only use during those times of the year.

So the teachers laid out three strips of paper, each with a topic. I went for the biggest one, which is topic number one, the status of women; a topic that will either make me mad or make me totally bored. I regaled them about how women earn less money for the same job, how there are few powerful women in the government, and that many women who learn to succeed in a man's world do it by "thinking like a man," that is. Please forgive me, feminists, I was doing my best to earn an oral exam grade.

I talked about how girls are treated in grade school, but once they come to high school, they don't want to appear too smart. And that I wouldn't send a daughter of my own to such a school. The teachers asked if I wanted a smart wife or a pretty wife, and I said I wanted a wife who is smart, pretty, and earns a lot of money, and it's a fallacy to ask me which one I prefer, one or the other. And that being a smart person was a choice.

Afterward, the teacher said, ok, I see that you believe men should be superior to women.

WHAT? THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID!

I think she said she was just kidding, but that kind of humor is very not Chinese.

Later, I went to lunch with X and E, we made fish faces at the teacher we were sitting with. X had some corn wrapped in a plastic baggie, and E bit through the baggie and ate some corn, swallowing some plastic... at least so it seemed to me. I told him I wanted him to eat food.

Later, we walked in the heat to the ticket office. It was closed for lunch, so we walked to the bus stop and took the 43 until we were completely lost. We got off and got in a taxi for the train station... and realized we were at the same place we started, we had gone in a big circle.

By some miracle we got two tickets to Shanghai, leaving at tonight at seven and returning Sunday morning. We taxied back to the dorm.

I tried to make a hotel reservation online, but I lost the lady for a second. When I finally heard her again, she was speaking Chinese, mispronouncing my name horribly. She couldn't hear me, so I heard her say "screw it" and hang up.

I like Moon Cakes

2007-08-01T22:45:00.001-07:00

So the full moon was a few days ago, and X bought a bunch of moon cakes. I managed to not eat a moon cake during the full moon, but a day or two afterward, I decided to try one. X gave me "spiced salt" flavor, because it's not as sweet as the sweet ones apparently, and he worries about my diabetes. Whatever. Anyway, I ate it, and it was a little sweet and a lot delicious, and I opened the curtain to admire the moon, and X recited a moon poem. JUST LIKE IN THE TEXTBOOK. I should have studied more vocab.

The next day, I had another one, it tasted the same to me, but apparently it was a different flavor. Sesame. I just ate the last one just now (X put it on my desk for me to find when I came back after lunch). Not sure what flavor it was because I refuse to read, but I know it was delicious.

Awkward Moment.

So I had to do a dialog with another dude in class, and the dialog was a dude asking a woman out to dinner. So I took the role of the dude, and asked him out to dinner. Whatever, I'm secure in my sexuality, and it's just a Chinese class dialog. The other guy is kind of a funny guy, so he didn't want to go out with me, even though, I complimented his eyes and said that he was the prettiest among all our classmates. So I asked him why don't you want to go out with me? And then after finding the right word in his Plecodict, he said he doesn't want to go out with me because he knew I had AIDS.

How do you convince someone to have dinner with you once they say they know you have AIDS? I didn't want to go into the finer details of HIV status, so I just said, don't worry, we can use latex.

At that point, the classmates didn't like where the dialog was going, so they ended the dialog for us before the teacher could ask what latex was.

Operation Hi-jack the Class

So today we tried to be charming and chat our way out of having to discuss the newspaper article about a polluted lake. The teacher asked us if we knew how to cook and what kind of cuisines we knew how to cook. I told her we should take her out and introduce her to American food, which she's never had before. Someone mentioned going to T.G.I.Friday's which was funny because we called it TGI星期五。 It took a minute for everyone around the room to understand what TGI星期五 restaurant was, and we had a good laugh. The teacher insisted she couldn't go with students to bars, discos, or American restaurants. We all understood bars and discos, but why can't we go to an American restaurant? We can go to a Chinese restaurant, a Korean restaurant.... Then she brought up the fact that TGI星期五 in Hangzhou is a gay spot. Her gay friends go there. This fact shocked some of the dudes in the class (why would gay people like TGI星期五?), but I wanted to keep the distraction going.

So I said "we just want to eat food. Do your gay friends not eat food?"

At this point in the conversation, B chimes in with 'they eat stuff, but it's not food.'

And that was the end. We all laughed for about five minutes and then for about three minutes more, the teacher tried to get us back on track, which made us laugh more. After that we talked about the polluted lake.

So the lake is polluted with cyanobacteria, a word that our teacher is surprised that none of us know in English.

I Don't Care.

First, I have to do the homework that corresponds to today's classes, it should take 2 hours to complete. Tomorrow there's a written exam, gotta study for that. Followed by an oral exam, in which we prepare three topics, and at the time of the exam, we draw one of the three topics from a hat and then talk until we're done. Then we have to go interview 3 to 4 Chinese people about their thoughts on the status of women in society, and then write a page-long summary, turn it in by Monday. Oh, don't forget we have to preview the text for Monday, so we aren't totally lost during 8 am grammar.

I may just do my homework really fast and then go to Chengdu with some others to see some pandas. We'll see.

No vlog today

2007-08-01T00:19:00.001-07:00

Here are the things that are keeping me from posting more vlogs:

Time. I don't have much time to vlog. My schedule has enough time for sleeping, eating, studying, going to class, and a little bit of blogging, but not much time for vlogging.
The language pledge. I can only do it when my roommate is out of the room, so he won't have to hear me speaking English. He is often in our room. It's his room too, after all.
My own lack of technical skill. To be specific, my baffling inability to turn the microphone on and off at the appropriate times. The first time I vlogged, I forgot to turn it off, and it was on for weeks, draining the battery. Another problem that I have is that every once in a while, when I do find an appropriate occasion to vlog, I manage to record without turning on the mic. So of course, not that fun to listen to.

Not that I have anything special to vlog about. There was a brief period where I forgot in English how to say the opposite of "chunky peanut butter." The answer, of course, is "creamy," but for a good five minutes, I was saying to myself "smooth? smooth peanut butter?"

Last night I was on my own for studying; it turns out I had been mis-invited to a study session that was really more of a date. I ended up finishing my homework in record time, and then going to the nearby Starbucks to prepare the text for the next day. Once I got there, I ran into four other A-ban students, and when we got hungry we all went to a KFC a few doors down. I ordered the number three, which is the saddest fried chicken strip burrito you've ever seen in your life (cucumbers, mayonnaise and Old Beijing sauce), a little cup of corn salad, and a medium orange pop, which I gave to another student. Chinese people like loud, and KFC was ear-splitting. There was one point where there were three little boys climbing over the wall behind me, and I considered scaring them, but then I realized that would only lead to more screaming (if that is possible).

One of my classmates has come up with a strategy for distracting our newspaper class teacher. Tomorrow we'll see if it works. We'll let her get through the vocabulary, and then before we can discuss the article (tomorrow's is about a polluted lake--yawn) we'll hi-jack the conversation.

I have actually been chat/distracting the teachers in my one-on-one classes; usually they have me read aloud for an hour, torturing me every time I get a tone wrong. But ever since the midterm, I haven't had to do much reading aloud. I wonder if the teachers are really distracted, or if they made a decision to cut back on the tone-torture after the midterm. Today I talked about degrees of sunburn and native medicine.

I have to go buy some shaving cream. Remind me to go do it after Tai Chi.

Everybody Tai Chi

2007-07-31T07:37:00.001-07:00

So even though I could be studying, I go to Tai Chi class every Monday and Friday at 4:20 in the International Meeting Building. We just do it in the lobby because it's usually empty, and it's less hot than outdoors, which feels like the exhaust port of the planet it's so hot.

That is not to say that the lobby is not hot. When I'm sitting still, it's ok, but when I'm practicing one of the Tai Chi moves, I am drenched in sweat. Yes, I know you shouldn't really break a sweat in Tai Chi, but it's not the exertion, it's the heat. And a little bit the exertion.

We are very close to the end of the first twenty four moves, and everybody is excited. Last class we did the hardest moves of the set, which are not hard to do, but are hard to learn and kind of strenuous if you keep repeating them. Also, my legs were sore from all the stairs last weekend, so I wasn't as stable as I probably should have been.

So we learn three or four moves per session from our teacher, Si Laoshi. He is awesome, and he speaks in dialect. At first I pretended to understand, but now I just let the others pretend to understand. Sometimes one of the Chinese roommates shows up and interprets for us, that is to say, interprets into Mandarin for us. And I pretend to understand.

I'm sure he doesn't know it, but Si Laoshi has a definite Yoda vibe about him. It's the big eyes, and the wisdom, and the baffling grammar, and the whole jedi energy thing going for him.

I hope to continue with Tai Chi after I'm done here in Hangzhou. It would be easy to do in Seattle, maybe a little awkward in Shanghai. It's all old people, and it's all at 7 in the morning. I hope to get an apartment in the same neighborhood as the office, so I can go to the park and Tai Chi by the lake with the old people. I will need better shoes.

Roses by Any Other Names

2007-07-31T07:20:00.001-07:00

So my Chinese name is 万吉平 (wàn jí píng) which was given to me at a Chinese Meetup group in Seattle. The family name is really as close as they could get to a "v" sound (although I had urged them to pick a name that started with "b") and the given name 吉平 sounds a lot like JP. Taken all together, it's a very auspicious name, apparently. Chinese people are surprised and delighted when they hear it, to the point of congratulating me. I really have no sense of how lucky or unlucky it is.

I like it a lot, but I'm sure that at my new job I'll be going by "JP," or maybe "John Patrick." We'll see. I hope at least the Chinese people in the office call me 吉平.

So my name is pretty sticky; for some reason, everyone seems to remember it, at least to my face. There are just a few other Americans whose Chinese names are really sticky. The thing about these Chinese names is that to Americans they are very not sticky; they don't sound like names, they just sound like thousands of other Chinese words I don't understand, and so they are impossible to remember. People have told me their names three or four times, and I still can't recall their names. I used to have this problem in English; but now I find it much easier to call the Americans by their English names (at least in my head).

Everybody else has secret nicknames. Including the teachers, since they are all either named Li or Liu or Lin and it's crazy confusing. We have 8 o'clock teacher, who teaches our 8 am class; 非常好 teacher who is famous for saying 非常好 very enthusiastically (whom I refer to in previous posts as the Freight Train), there's Watermelon teacher, who eats watermelon for dinner because she thinks she's getting fat. These are secret nicknames; they don't know they have them yet.

As for students, we have Columbia girl (originally from Columbia), Running guy, Dance girl... If I've been given a secret name, I don't know about it yet.

Back to the grind

2007-07-31T00:40:00.001-07:00

So the midterm excursion is over, and now it's back to the grind. My Chinese has been pretty good these last few days, I find myself using words I didn't know I knew. I'm not really using the grammar I'm learning in everyday speech, but I'm sure that day will come. Also, reading has been easier; I think the new textbook is throwing softballs.

I may learn to speak this language. I'm still pretty skeptical about whether I'll be able to learn to read it. I still can't look at an ad or a sign and immediately know what it says; I'm still seeing shapes rather than words. Reading is going to take a while.

I will be going to the XiHu Starbucks again tonight with E to do homework. I have to remember to wear pants (mosquitoes) and to sit upstairs (quiet). Apparently this week is supposed to be the hottest week of the summer.... at least that's what I understood.

Today at lunch we went to the family-style cafeteria, where we order a bunch of food and put it on a lazy susan. We sat with people we don't often sit with, and I was a little surprised at the conversation. It was all in Chinese, so who knows if I understood correctly, or if people said what they intended, but basically someone was asserting that addiction was a choice, and not an illness. Everyone else at the table jumped right into our pidgin Chinese discussion, but I just sat quietly and ate. I don't know the Chinese words for "The goal of medicine is not to assign blame, you blame-a-saurus" so I just kept my mouth shut. The young people like to debate.

Blood pressure is 131/83. Post-prandial glucose 154, and that's after having rice for lunch, with a small cup of orange pop.   Sheesh, do I even have diabetes? I wonder if I'm even still fat....

Last night X took me out to eat "dragon shrimp" which turns out to be crawfish. I asked for medium spicey, not too salty. I don't usually eat things that come out of fresh water, but I'm not opposed to it either. After a few minutes, I realized I had eaten double what X had eaten. If the Spanish teaching doesn't work out, I think I can give classes on how to shell seafood. Anyway, the crawfish were good, the sauce was tasty. I was disappointed there weren't more, and that they weren't a little spicier, but I don't really need to eat a high crawfish diet. I told X that I had a rule, that after eating spicy, we must go have ice cream. He likes that rule.

In the restaurant, X had said he thought the sauce was hot, I told him I didn't think it was that hot. It's not that I necessarily enjoy spicy-hot... I mean, I do enjoy it, but I'm not a hotter-the-better type of guy. However, I really think I've been desensitized to spicy hot. I remember as a kid I used to think Tabasco sauce was liquid fire... now I use it to clean my contacts.

But whatever. As we walked out of the restaurant, I told X that my mouth was not hot, but my lips were still feeling a little spicy. X said he felt the same. What kind of spice is it when your face is feeling it but your tongue is not?   Then X said, oh the river that those crawfish came out of is a dirty place. Now, I imagine that crawfish thrive in places where there is a lot of sediment in the water, but I really don't need to eat pollution. Do you?   So why did we eat those crawfish, I asked? X laughed and said, because the flavor is good. True enough.

Anyway, that's besides the point. We went to a bakery; I ordered what ended up to be a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of some canned fruit; X had some shaved ice with a creamy red topping and more canned fruit. The bakery had swings for seats.

When we got back, we decided to call for a new water jug. X dialed and then handed me the phone. They said, hello? and I said "Water, drank completely. Another?" I managed to tell them our building and room number. They promised to be here in a few minutes. A few minutes became 20, and X called again, just before leaving for the night. He had a karaoke party to go to, and apparently in China, karaoke lasts until dawn. Not kidding.

So I told him to hit the road, and the sweaty water guy came up and plopped a new jug onto our dispenser. And the water started pouring out onto the floor.

We caught some of the water in some empty bottles I keep for the chilling water in the fridge, and then sweaty guy took the jug off and then said he'd be back with a new dispenser. Because obviously, there's a problem with the dispenser.

He was back ten minutes later (remember, I live on the fourth floor, no elevator) with a new dispenser, and when he plopped the jug on, the water started pouring out onto the floor. Glug, glug, glug...   He didn't notice at first, I pointed it out to him.

He took the jug off again and set it down and said to me, maybe it's the jug. OH, YA THINK?

So he left with the broken jug, and I went and got a couple of mops and cleaned our tile floor with the drinking water than had spilled. Another water guy came a few minutes later, this time with a new bottle, and said, ooh, this place is so clean....

*******

So one of X's friends is a funny guy, funny because he does funny things, says what's on his mind. I like him a lot. But I think Americans are funnier than Chinese people, culturally speaking. Whenever an insect or animal comes up in conversation, I always ask, oh, is it good to eat? Sidesplitting laugher. I also tease my teachers, pretending to mishear what they say, accusing them of something, offering advice, and then not understanding when they try to explain. It's a gag, but they are suckers for it.

One teacher said she liked to eat pumpkin seeds, and I asked, what? You like to eat socks? (in Chinese, pumpkin seeds rhymes with socks). Are they good to eat? Do you eat shoes as well? Me, I like to eat food. Would you like to try some food? Do not eat my socks! Careful, she will eat your socks!

Inevitably, there's an explanation about pumpkin seeds being small, crunchy seeds, and I look at them confused and say, small crunchy socks? What?

After a while, one teacher said to me, I think you understand what I'm saying, I think you're saying those things on purpose.   Um... sorry, I say, I hear, cannot understand. Uproarious laughter.

As you all know, I'm uncomfortable being the center of attention, so I only let the gag run for about ten minutes or so.

Midterm Excursion, Part III

2007-07-29T08:56:00.001-07:00

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.

Midterm Excursion, Part II

2007-07-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

Tīng bù dǒng

So we ride along from the university to the train station in two rented buses, and right as we are about to get off at the train station, our director gives us some very important instructions about taking the train. But of course tīng bù dǒng: I hear, cannot understand. I say those three words more than I care to admit. Whatever, I'll just follow the crowd.

We wait for an hour in the train station (I already told you about this) and then gate opens and everybody crowds the gate, needing to be the first one on. My roommate, in a very non-Chinese moment, says we already have our assigned bunks, no need to crowd the gate. So we didn't crowd the gate! We didn't even get in line! We just waited until everyone else had pushed on, and then got on the train. Amazing.

Being bovine

The sleeper car train is composted of separate compartments each containing six bunks, stacked three high on the left, and three high on the right. It seemed impossibly cramped to us, but we made ourselves at home as soon as we noticed the landscape starting to glide by our windows. The attendant came by and replaced all our paper tickets with plastic chips. Don't ask me what the hell for.

On the train, my group wanted to rehearse our skit. So we all got together, and then... and then people lost focus, started chit chatting. So I left and sat on my bunk. Then we all got together again and then... and then people lost focus. So I went to sit on my bunk. Then they gathered be back and said, we're going to the dining car! So fine, I follow them, but in the next car, B is in a compartment with all the teachers and she DOESN'T WANT TO LEAVE. OH CRAP. So then the teachers all say, "Just practice here!" no no no no nonononononono....... Arrgh! I sit down with all the teachers. Bad bad stupid idea.

So then we struggle through our skit, not because we don't remember, but because we have the teachers interrupting us every three words to correct our tones. It takes an hour, and it's NOT REHEARSAL. Also it's NOT HELPFUL.

NOTE: INSTANTANEOUS INTERRUPTING PRONUNCIATION CORRECTION DOES NOT IMPROVE ANYONE'S PRONUNCIATION.

Never in my career as a language teacher have I ever interrupted someone to correct their pronunciation. Communication trumps form, always. Correct pronunciation in the context of the conversation.... I have to repeat this stuff to myself so that I don't forget it. No wonder everyone here is afraid to speak the English they all studied for 10 or more years, nobody ever listens to what they're saying! All they care about is HOW they say it....

So after the teacher torture, we all walked back to our bunks, talked about how much that sucked and was a waste of everyone's time. And then, and THEN they found me again, and said we were going to rehearse one more time. Really? I asked? Really rehearse? Yes, come on!

So we find a small space and start with scene one. I don't have any lines until scene two. People keep interrupting us, asking B for wine, whatever. Finally we get to scene two to my part, and then G puts her head on B's shoulder and says she's sleepy and doesn't want to practice anymore. I haven't practiced a single line.

So I said, ok, I'm going to bed. And they all looked at me like I was crazy, how could I do this to them? Bu yao, I said! and I spelled out S-C-R-E-W I-T, which some people in the train heard and though I was really mad. I was only half mad, but seriously, I had wasted hours already on not rehearsing.

For some reason, twenty year olds really make an effort to stay up as late as possible, even when they run out of things to talk about. Our car was loud and crazy with people getting drunk and trying to come up with reasons to stay awake, but when I started getting tired they all left my compartment. I drifted off to sleep, and the next thing I knew I was lying in bed and it was quiet. I woke up around 5 am and ate my breakfast of peanut butter on bread, watching the landscape roll by. We were following a river, in a valley with pointy hills on either side. There were small fields of rice and other crops, people in their underwear carrying buckets, groups of ducks minding their own business, an ox here and there just being bovine.

If I had had my camera out, I would have taken pictures of some quarry barges that looked like they had been designed for the set of a Road Warrior movie, looking ancient, improvised, exotic, and industrial all at once.

As we started passing villages, we noticed the old people out and about, some of them doing tai chi. We rolled into Wenzhou around 5:30 in the morning and got on buses to go to the ferry dock.

Arr!

At the ferry dock there was a lot of instructions... tīng bù dǒng... but I did understand that I could leave my gear on the bus. So I left it, and just took a little man purse. My murse. I had my camera, my PDA, my cell phone, a hat, a bottle of water, my wallet, a toothbrush and some floss, not a lot. Once we were off the bus, I noticed people around me were confirming that there would be swimming at the beach. Whoops, didn't bring my towel or my swim trunks, guess I'm not going swimming.

When we got to the dock we all got on a ferry boat, walked straight through it and, to my surprise, onto a second ferry boat, which was docked right beside it. Hmph, I don't think you would do that in America. Anyway, we all got on this speed ferry headed for Nanji Island. The director handed out sea-sick pills for anyone that wanted them. Apparently, someone projectile vomited on a past mid-term excursion, and nobody wanted that to happen again.

The ride was smoother than the train, which is to say, pretty smooth. It was an hour out to the island, and we didn't have much room to entertain ourselves. I gave E my red bandana, which was to be his prop for our skit. He put it on his head. Then I got out an orange bandana and put it on my head, and then all the Chinese people took out their cameras to take pictures of me and E with bandanas on our heads. We changed way we tied the bandanas every few minutes, trying to get creative, to the delight of our Chinese paparazzi. After a while, I realized we were just playing "accesorize" so I tied it on pirate-style and left it at that. When we took pictures, we counted in Chinese: yi, er, san.... but as pirates, of course, we only count: yi, ARRRRRR!

Sunshade Drama

Once we got to the island, it was onto vans that took us up and around the island to the beach. The roads in the hills were paved with bumpy stones, and were nothing but curves and chickens, but finally we got to the beach hotel, where we rented a conference room where we could leave our gear while at the beach. Then we were off. Some people stopped for lunch first; X and I went down to the beach. He got changed and went into the water; I parked under a sunshade with some others and sat.

The beach was at the end of a rectangular bay, and the waves broke gently, less than a foot high, all at once. There were dark green hills all around us, and blue sky above us. It was hot. I went down to the water to wade in a couple times, it was refreshing.

Meanwhile, back at the sunshades, the administrator of the sunshade department kicked us out from under the sunshades, saying we didn't pay, and we couldn't use the shades, not even if we sit on the ground. The teachers argued with him, and we ended up having to move our stuff onto the sand in front of the sunshades, shaded by the sunbrellas that all the girls carry around. I went back down to the water, and by the time I came back, we had rented two sunshades as a group, and had a total of six chairs. I parked in one of them for the afternoon.

RIGHT NOW.

Around lunchtime we tried to get people moving, but some people have an incredible instinct to do exactly the opposite of what I want them to do. Let's go to lunch! No, let's wait five minutes for this person, five minutes becomes 20 minutes, and then it's "let's see if so-and-so wants to come with us." I would ditch and eat by myself, but since Chinese food is family style, it's hard to order for one person. Finally we started moving, and they asked me, "what do you want to eat?" and I said " I want to eat NOW" and they said, no not when, but what do you want to eat. And my answer is, "I understand your question. I want to eat RIGHT NOW."

Once we got to restaurant row, three owners came to beg for our patronage, we finally picked a restaurant, and everyone sat down. Everyone but me, as I looked at all the live seafood in the tubs, maybe 30 tubs of different seafood. The waitress went to the table and explained to them that they had to get up and point, so then everyone got up to look at the seafood and be indecisive. I ordered white clams, oysters, and encouraged the others not to be shy about ordering octopus and seaweed. We also ended up ordering rice cakes and vegetables.

We were halfway through the oysters when someone realized they were raw. I was like, you didn't know? After that, the oysters were all mine. I may have eaten a dozen small oysters. Not bad, and only about $3.

I didn't go back to the beach after lunch, I just hung out at the hotel. There were some soldiers from the People's Army there, some with green shoulder tassles, some with red. I decided that the green ones were superior officers, based on the quality of their shoes, and then assigned them as boyfriends to some of the teachers, who apparently have never played "your boyfriend" before.

Homophobic Territory Cough

Finally, the vans came back to take us back to the ferry dock. The ride this time was smooth and short, and I gathered that there is only one road on the island, and it's one way, and the beach really isn't that far from the ferry dock, it's just that it's the long way around the one-way road. Once we got to the dock people bought dried fish snacks. There were all kinds of dried fish, and I wish I could have taken a picture for my family to see, but my battery light was flashing. I didn't buy any, because I don't need any more salt in my diet. I settled for a melon flavored ice cream bar and a bottle of frozen water.

Once we got on the boat, everyone fell asleep. For a while, everyone was asleep but me, and a very loud family in front of me. The first chapter of our textbook was all about how Chinese people like to be loud, and let me tell you, these people were yelling at each other across the boat the entire way. The rest of the boat was dead asleep. Their baby (not cute) would scream in delight, and then they would all scream in delight. At no point did they every become quiet.

Next to me, I could see that E was falling asleep, and having trouble keeping his head up. Oh great, I thought, he's going to end up with his head on my shoulder, and I'm going to have to do the homophobic territory cough to wake him up, poor kid.... and then I fell asleep. I think I slept for a long time. And as soon as I woke up, I realized he had just taken his head off my shoulder. Hey Chinese people, did you get a picture of a dude sleeping on my shoulder? As if I cared.

The ferry pulled into Wenzhou and took FOREVER to "dock" aside the other boat. Once again, we walked through an empty boat to get to where we were going; this time, we saw a mechanic in his underwear yelling down through the access hole in the deck. The director wanted a picture, but I didn't want to stop. Bus to the hotel, where we were given rooms with our roommates. Our room was awesome in every way, except that it was on a smoking floor. Twenty three floors in the hotel, and only the one through five are non smoking. Oh well, it wasn't that smokey. We were given an hour to have dinner in the revolving restaurant cafe and get ready for our skit presentations.

Every single person in my group came up to me to slowly explain to me in our pidgin Chinese that we were meeting at 7:45 to rehearse. The first time, E yelled through the bathroom door as I was taking a shower. I yelled back, yah, yah, and then when I got out I asked my roommate what the heck E was saying. When I got to the buffet, starving of course, B comes up and I interrupt her and say "I know, I know!" and then we're both relieved. Back to the food; finally, dinner, right? Not quite! As I get back to the table, G intercepts me and starts....

Just a second, I say. I realize the swim goggles that E had given me to hold on to and revolved around the restaurant, and were now two tables down. Whoops. (There's a story of my Nanang Paula leaving her umbrella on the window sill in the Space Needle, and it coming back around an hour later... in 1975. It was nice to remember Nanang Paula).

So back to my table, G is about to repeat the plan to me; it will be the third time I've had to hear it. "I know, I know, 7:45!" I say, before she gets too far into it, and then she goes away relieved. Talking Chinese is a chore.

to be continued...

Midterm Excursion Part I

2007-07-28T16:14:00.001-07:00

SLAM!

So Friday after my group's skit rehearsal we all planned to take the 33 to Auchan. I went up to my room and decided it has started to smell like two dudes, so for the first time, I turned off my friend the air conditioner and opened the windows and the doors to air it out. Soon after, the director came in with a care package from my awesomest sister, who had wrapped it in Christmas paper. Yay! Some of my shirts, some American beef jerky, my Japanese pens, and some sugar-free candy! Also, some sugary candy for my roommate, who likes it, by the way. Anyway, I go to put the chocolate in the fridge, because it's freaking hot in here. When I get to the kitchen, I stop to talk to someone, and I hear my door slam behind me.

The front desk won't give me a key (don't ask me why) so I intercept my friends on their way to Auchan and I ask to use their cell phone. Very confusing conversation in Chinese. I call my roommate, and he says he'll be right up, and I tell them I'm not going to Auchan.

Disarmed

Once back in my room, I'm packing the smallest bag I have, which is my carry-on luggage. Slightly big for a two-night trip. Screw it. My roommate comments, but then I tell him it's his bag, and that I'm just helping him with it. I've found that Chinese people are very easily disarmed by false accusations. He of course had an almost empty back pack. I read the itinerary and to-bring list to him, and he kept having to add things to his almost empty back pack, and by the time we were ready, it had turned into a half empty back pack.

On our way to the buses, we stopped to help our friends down the hall. I told her, such a large bag! And when she saw my bag, I said, no it's my roommate's, I'm helping him carry it. Laughter ensues.

Crotchless

Walking through the heat of the night two blocks to the bus was enough to have my shirt soaking with sweat. The bus ride to the train station was slightly giddy, and then at the waiting room it got typically American crazy. Not teenage crazy, but close. We chose to sit far from the group, who were making a scene with impromptu volleyball, dance performances, and catching food in their mouths like a seal.

I sat across from the door to the waiting room for mothers with small children. I did my best to rehearse my lines for my skit and ignore the Americans laughter and cheering across the enormous waiting room. I saw a toddler push his way out the door of the waiting room for mothers with small children... who is watching this kid? better keep an eye on him. By the way, not an especially cute baby.

Next thing I know, baby squats down. His crotchless pants split open to reveal his patutin, and he pees on the waiting room floor. When he's finished he pushes his way back into the waiting room for mothers with small children.

I'm in a room full of people, am I the only one seeing this?

Except in the cities, Chinese kids don't wear diapers. Their mamas can sense when they want to go, and then take them to an appropriate place to relieve themselves. Once the kids can walk, they get the crotchless pants that split open when they squat, and that's how they take care of it. They get real pants as soon as they're potty trained.

So now I'm watching people and babies walk in and out of this pool of not-cute baby pee, and I can't concentrate on rehearsing my lines. I'm horrified by this piss pool, but I can't take my eyes off it. What's worse is that the baby comes back later to flirt with the people sitting next to me, who just find him adoreable.

I wonder how many baby puddles I've walked through in this country? No shoes on the furniture folks.

There are no words.

2007-07-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm sitting on my bed, looking at some videos my sister sent me. My roommate X decides to show me the Chinese version of YouTube, which is youku.com. The video you see above is on the front page.

I told X they were Filipinos. He asked if they were really prisioners, and I said yes. Why are they dancing? He asked if Filipinos really like to dance.

I had to answer "yes."

Dammit.

2007-07-25T00:26:00.000-07:00

So my roommate is awesome, but I barely get to see him except at night when we're about to go to sleep. He doesn't slowtalk me, ever, even when I don't understand. Actually, he tried a kind of slowtalk but it was really frustrating. It went like this:

X: Tonight are you going to 猫貌猫猫猫？
JP: I... eh?
X: Do you not understand?
JP: Don't understand.
X: Tonight....
JP: ...
X: Tonight....
JP: Tonight....
X: Do you understand "tonight?"
JP: YES I UNDERSTAND "TONIGHT!"
X: You didn't say anything!
JP: I'm waiting for you to get to the part I didn't understand!
Tonight are you going to whatwhatwhatwhatwhat?
X: 猫貌猫猫猫
JP: Don't understand.
X: Tonight....

He's also been the pronunciation cop a couple times, correcting me on details I know that the other Americans are allowed to screw up.

During our dorm room conversations, a few words have come up that I keep on a short list, and recite to him, to show that my pronunciation is improving. These words are "Christmas," "egg-fried beef strips," and "dammit."

"Christmas" made the list when he asked what the important holidays were in the Philippines, and I tried to say "Christmas" but apparently I said "Banana Festival." I told him what we ate, and he said, what about bananas? I said, sure, why? Why are you asking if we eat bananas on Christmas? Oh, I thought you said "Banana Festival." (laughter)

"Egg-fried beef strips" is a delicious dish he ordered when we went to a restaurant nearby; when I wanted it to order it again with a friend, I tried to describe the recipe, and the waitress had to call for back up and was laughing at the absurdity of her life as she had to try to guess what I want. It's food, you mensa! It's beef strips fried in egg, bring it to me! I don't know what the hell it's called. So now every night I practice the name of that dish.

"Dammit" is his favorite. He cannot control his laughter when I say "dammit" in Chinese. I asked him what to say when I dropped something, and he told me, but then offered "dammit" as an alternative. I say it about ten times before going to bed, in two different ways: an exasperated way, and a muttering, frustrated way. He is delighted by both ways, but tells me not to say it around my teachers. It's so fun, but after about 10 times, I have to say, ok, that's good, let's go to sleep. 好了，睡觉吧。

Wednesday Afternoon

2007-07-24T23:54:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday, it's the midterm. Tomorrow morning is our big midterm exam. In the evening we will get on a bus that will take us to a train station, where we will all get on a sleeper train to Wenzhou. We'll spend Friday day at the beach on Nanji Island and then somehow preform our skits, which counts as our midterm oral exam.

If I haven't said so before, this program is 99% performance oriented, rather than competency oriented. Ask me later if you're dying to know the difference.

So the next night I think it's buses up to the mountains to go splash in a creek somewhere, and then a red-eye train back to Hangzhou early Sunday morning.

At first, it made a lot of sense for me to be in this program. I would earn academic credit, I'd be in a classroom setting.... Now, making sense? Not so much. Now that I got the new job, the credits I'm earning are worth nothing to me; all that matters is that I'm learning Chinese. Frankly, this program is a little too much for just learning Chinese. We just finished our textbook, normally a 10 week course, in 20 days. Now, I don't mind moving fast, but there is a lot of stress in this program. A lot of academic metaphor imposed on us.

As of now, I'm getting A's. But I did get that 75 on my first test, and when one teacher was concerned about it, I wanted to tell her very gently that I don't give a crap about my grades, that I'm not matriculated anywhere, that I'm not worried about transcripts or transfer credits or getting into some competitive program afterwards. But if I told them that, what would they do? They'd lose all hope. Their academic construct would fall around them like tears in a rainstorm.

So I'm keeping my mouth shut for now and playing along. But it does seem silly. And I guess if I have to crash through this grammar, I might as well do it now.

So tonight I will drill myself with electronic flashcards, and if I have time I will sew on a button.

One last thing: I think I'm losing diabetes. My fasting blood sugar in the morning has been right around 100 in the last couple weeks, and in the last three days, it's been in the 90s.

Meow meow meow, I'm sure I'll have a blood sugar impairment for the rest of my life, but right now, it looks and awful lot like I don't.

Leap of Faith

2007-07-23T08:58:00.001-07:00

I sent in my letter of resignation to my principal in Seattle earlier, and accepted the job in Shanghai. I am at peace with the decision.

I am starting to get tired of all the salty food; I've also eaten an ice cream cone and a couple cups of pop. Maybe my blood sugar shoots up immediately afterward (I haven't checked) but later it goes back to normal. I will not make a habit of it.

On Sunday I studied for most of the day. It started to cool off. We wrote our skit, not the way I would have written it, but it will be ok. Today was a relatively cool day, no gross sweating episodes, Tai Chi outside in the wind. When to the Starbucks on the West Lake to study.

Time to go to bed now, roommate is trying to sleep!

I Can Sew!

2007-07-22T01:20:00.000-07:00

I discovered a hole in my pocket today when I was standing there, minding my own business, and I heard the tinkle of one kuai dribble around my right food.

After a bowl of liang mian (not sure what kind of animal organ I ate, but it was delicious and only 2 kuai... fifteen cents?) I went up to my room and found that emergency sewing kit I stole from the hotel.

Yes, I did a bad job. Yes, I sewed part of the pocket to itself, so now my pocket has a divider. I never claimed to be able to sew well.

A few hours ago, I was chatting with the lovely Dr. B, who told me "a good job is easier to find than a good life," validating my desire to stay in Seattle. But then I changed my mind again, and if you asked me right this second, I would tell you I was moving to Shanghai; Seattle will be there when I get back.

Don't worry, I will change my mind for good several more times before my final decision is set in stone. I'm not really a fan of this much personal drama, but I am a fan of regret, so I know whatever I choose, I will always be wondering, ah, if only...

Much To Say

2007-07-21T00:12:00.001-07:00

I have much to say, and little desire to say it.

It's Saturday afternoon, and I might start doing Monday's homework. A lot of my classmates have gone to Shanghai for the weekend, others took the bus down to the Westlake. Me, I'm spending quality time with my best friend, Kong Tiao, also known as Air Conditioning.

There's some stories I could tell. Mostly I'm going back and forth about the job.

We went to dinner at a restaurant outside the university gate; I wanted to order the same thing I had before. Of course, I can't read the menu or remember the name of the dish, so I try describing it to the waitress. She is totally lost; another waitress comes over to rescue her, and while we're talking to the rescue waitress, our original waitress is failing to mask her laughter with her clipboard. Go away, you idiot, I wanted to say. A lot of Chinese people don't look at the language barrier as a problem they can solve, they just see it as a hideous, absurd embarrassment to themselves. Anyway, screw her. I got the dish I wanted (dan huang niu liu) along with some qing cai. E ordered mala doufu and some eggplant. It was delicious.

Last night, after E and I got done interviewing students for our practicum, we joined a majong game on the first floor. They were pretty excited that I knew how to play, but I wanted to watch the first round, because some of the customs were different. The tile distribution is different, figuring out whose turn it is is different, using the flowers is different. Not so different I couldn't play, though. It was funny because the Chinese people played it their way (as noisy as possible), the Americans used American manners (calling out the tiles they were throwing), and I tried to play it the Filipino way, as best I could, with the distracting banter, the guessing.... I couldn't use any of the Filipino vocabulary, though. First of all, in Mandarin it's "majiang, peng, chi" instead of "majong, pong, chao." When you're waiting, you say "ting le" and when you've got majong, you say "hu le." The best is when you pong skip a bunch of people, we said "ride airplane!" meaning your ass just got skipped. I understood what "ride airplane" meant immediately, and had to explain it to the grammar teacher. The worst though, was when the person across from me threw the tile I was waiting for, I grabbed it and said, majong a! But then they all said, no no no, some places you can do that, but not in "Hangzhou Majiang." So from then on, we said "Hangzhou Majiang" every time something crappy happened.

Last story: my roommate and I were walking home from lunch, and, if I haven't told you before, this campus seems to be all getting new plumbing at once. So all the walkways between buildings are either torn open or are being prepared to be torn open. This means we now have a) open sewers, and b) crazy detours we're too impatient to take in the heat. Well, it seems there was a car (don't ask me how it got here) stuck on our side of the construction, and there was a giant rubber pipe blocking the road. So instead of going around, the driver enlisted two bony young uniformed security guys to help him lay down the street barriers over the top of this huge rubber pipe, that must be a foot in diameter. I thought, wow, it looks like he's going to use those barriers as ramps to get over this rubber pipe, but no, that's too stupid... Chinese people, when they see something stupid happening, like to stop and look; me, I like to get distance between myself and stupidity. I told my roommate, I think he's crazy, and my roommate looked around, and said, yes, I think he's crazy too. We heard a big bang, and when we turned around, the car was on the other side of the pipe. It was totally absurd, even in success.

So should I take the job in Shanghai? I really really like the climate in Seattle, I really really like to be comfortable. But am I going to be a high school teacher all my life? Not sure yet. The principal gave me till Monday to inform him; I'm going back and forth.

Vlog 20 July 2007

2007-07-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

From my dorm room in Hangzhou.

I forgot to tell the story about the spam! Here we go:

My roommate is too kind to me.

Greasy Old Man

2007-07-18T03:12:00.001-07:00

I know now why greasy old guys unbutton their shirts halfway down.

During taichi class today, I had my shirt unbuttoned halfway down because I had a sweat spot the shape of a bib on my shirt. It's gross. I'm a greasy old man.

My roommate told me not to take anymore sudafed, just that I should start drinking more water. I already told him people with diabetes drink a lot of water, which he witnessed when I ordered two bottles of water for dinner, or when I ordered a bottle of water for lunch even though we were having soup. What a strange custom, to drink water with a meal. Anyway, I told him to look at our 5 gallon jug, half empty after only a couple days. I've been drinking water, baby.

Here's a cute Chinese question: he asked why Americans take showers in the morning. He said Chinese people prefer to take showers in the evening, after a long day. I told him to expect me to take a shower both in the morning and in the evening. He laughed. Not sure why, I was serious.

Today he asked what Americans can and can't talk about. Can: health, sex, family. Can't: politics, religion, salary.

Today in class, we learned the difference between "shui jiao" and "shui zhao," which to Americans sound exactly the same, egg-zactly. Of course, to them, the difference is glaring, both in tone and in consonant. They have no idea what's going through our heads.

And finally, before I go to dinner and to study, today we had a chuckle in class that Bush in Chinese is pronounced Bu-Shi, just like the words 不是 "not true." The teacher was puzzled, and finally when we explained it to her, she said, what? Bush is 4th tone, 2nd tone! 不是 is 2nd tone, 4th tone! Nothing could be more different!

Comments

2007-07-17T21:44:00.001-07:00

So, I can't access my comments from China, thanks to a government block on blogger. I can, however, post through email, and I do have a tricky way of seeing my own blog. When readers post comments, I see them in my email, but I can't access them.

So here I will address some of your comments:

1) Three eggs is way too much in a day. I eat two now, at breakfast, and between classes, I eat some beef jerky that I found at the student store. Today was my first day of my protein counter-attack, and it worked! I didn't doze off even once today!

2) The only rice I've found in China so far is white rice and fried white rice. I know other kinds are available, but not in the student cantina where I have three meals a day. By the way, for lunch today, I had roast beef, tofu, and greens. And an ear of corn, which they thought was weird since it was a) not breakfast, b) not cold, and c) not rice. They can think I'm strange; I'm not Chinese. I sat with the Columbian woman who put soy sauce on her rice.

3) Irrigating your sinuses with saltwater is awesome. Just mix up some warm salt water, pour some into your hand, and snort it. It will go up your nose and wash around in your sinuses, it doesn't hurt (if the water is salty enough), it cleans out your snot, and it only costs the price of salt. No special equipment. At first I was afraid I would drown (seriously), and then the first time I did it, my nose ran all day from junk finding its way out after 32 years of safety up my noses. But after that I knew what it was like to breath through both nostrils and have air hit the back of my sinuses. See if you can get Zhejiang Province salt.

So the mosquitoes found our room last night. I couldn't sleep because of a cold I'm shaking, so I got up to check email, and my roommate woke up then too. At first I apologized for waking him up, but he said he was glad, and he turned on the lights and killed a blood-filled mosquito. I killed another one this morning. There's another one in here, I saw it, and I'm going to smash it to hell when I see it again.

Three bites on my right arm. They're going away, thanks to the anti-persperant. I also started to get an itchy hive on my chest.... I didn't know what to do about that, so I washed it and put anti-persperant on that as well. It's gone now.

I'm starting to consider that the cold I have might be an allergic reaction to mosquito bites. I have some benadryl with me, that I will take around bed time. In the mean time, I've been taking Airborne, and E gave me some sudafed.

Speaking of mosquitoes, they're not letting my sister send me some skin-so-soft lotion/bug repellent in the mail. Liquids! Dang! I will have to use a Chinese product after all.

Later this afternoon: one-on-one tone torture, and then taijichuan.

Afternoon Perspective

2007-07-17T01:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, classes are over for the day. Nothing to do but a) today's homework, b) eat dinner, c) read tomorrow's text and try to get a head start on the homework. I'm in a good place. I'm forcing myself to have perspective.

I haven't heard from the company I interviewed with yet, and I've been actually dreading hearing from them. But today I thought, if they offer me the job I'd have to choose between (a) living in the beautiful city I've always wanted to live in, close to my family with a meat & potatoes job I'm pretty good at; and (b) moving to an exciting, exotic city where my money goes farther, working at the cutting edge of my field. All in all, that's two good options; it's a pretty good place to be in. If they don't offer me the position, I'll be relieved and excited to go back to Seattle and teach. If they do offer me the position, I won't take it unless they really make it worth my while. No need to tear my hair out over it. We'll see what they offer me.

Today the teacher that knocked on my door last week to invite me to Chinese table asked me why I didn't go. I thought you said you wanted to spend time with Chinese people, she asked. I had to study for the exam the next day, I replied. And then I added, why is the activity scheduled the day before an exam? Very strange. She said she didn't know.

She did comment though, that it seems I've already lost weight, she could see it in my face. I'm sure I have. Also, my hair has grown out and I didn't shave today, so maybe it's shading and proportions that she's seeing. Either way, I'm sure I've lost weight.

This morning was hot at sunny, and with the humidity, I thought, wow, this must be what it's like to live inside a lens. I felt the light was gathering around me to burn something. About 2 pm the clouds rolled down from the north. It was still hot, but it started getting darker, and I told the teacher I thought it was going to rain. She agreed with me and I noticed she had her umbrella out on the table. I hope some freezing air blows in, and it rains all night.

Delicious Salt

2007-07-16T23:30:00.001-07:00

I should be going over the text for my one-on-one tone humiliation session, but I have to blog about the salt I just bought .

I went to the store to buy some more emergency protein, found a bunch of beef snacks. We'll see how that goes. I also found a bunch of peanuts, which are better than in the States, by the way, snappier, fresher tasting, even from a package.

Well, today, I bought the last bag of salt in the store, which seemed fancier than the iodized stuff back home, but I really, really needed to irrigate my sinuses, i.e., snort warm salt water to empty my head of mucus. Sorry TMI. So I bought this salt, after checking that it wasn't MSG, and brought it back and tasted it. YUM. It's one of the reasons my peanuts taste so good. The package says it's famous salt from this province, but I bet all salt packages say that.

So I mixed this delicious salt with warm water and snorted it, and it was delicious that way as well, much much less painful than snorting plain water. Now my sinuses are clean for the moment.

I think I got this cold from studying with E.

Ok, off to one-on-one tone humiliation!

Adventures in Blood Sugar

2007-07-16T22:28:00.001-07:00

Every day, since the beginning of this program, I've been getting up at around 6 am, and then struggling to stay awake in my 8 am class and 10 am classes. Eyes crossing, closing, head jerking up to keep from falling. For some reason 9 am and 11 am classes seemed ok.

Well, I ate more protein for breakfast today to see what would happen. I had two hard-boiled eggs and a few pot stickers.

The result? I wasn't sleepy at all until my 11 am class.

I love Chinese breakfast, but it seems like the hum baos and the rice porridge make my blood surgar crash at around 8:30. My liver probably steps in to save my brain right around 9, but then I crash again at 10, followed by another liver rescue.

So from now on, I'm having two boiled eggs for breakfast, plus something with carbs. I will have a blood sugar snack at the 10 am break in order to get me through till noon. It will probably be beef jerky candy or peanuts... A third egg is probably too much cholesterol, right?

60 Second Sanity Break.

2007-07-16T05:05:00.000-07:00

Studying is grueling.

There's a rainstorm right now, which means cooler outdoor temps, but insect party later. It's been thundering/lightninging for an hour now, and I think it's too far away to hit anything near me. I would usually hope for a power outage, but I don't want my internet or, more importantly, my a/c, to be affected.

Ok, break time is over.

Insects

2007-07-16T03:24:00.001-07:00

There are no insects in my room. There's no reason for them to be here. We have zero food garbage.

There are a few in my bathroom, but none of them are the bitey kind.

I saw a big cockroach, as big as my thumb to the 2nd knuckle, in the kitchen area across from my room.

Today as I walked home from the cantina, I walked on a path through the green belt beside the river, the green belt with the gazebo, the bell, and the footbridge... and crossing the path all around me were hundreds of dragon flies the size and color of my pinky finger, flying around on their cellophane wings.

Finally, the guy down the hall caught a huge cicada, fatter than the fat cockroach; it looked ancient. He had a clipping of the branch it was on, and cupped it between his hand and a glass tumbler.

When he showed it too me, I couldn't help thinking, why the hell does he have a glass tumbler?

Was French Ever This Hard?

2007-07-16T00:27:00.001-07:00

I just have a few minutes to blog and rest. Then it's off to Tai Chi class, straight to dinner afterwards, and then try to get a head start on Wednesday's homework. I'm just going to do homework a day in advance, because if I wait until the day it's assigned, I'm behind. This is due to their policy going too fast to take notes in class.

Was French ever this hard? I remember being in France, feeling hopeless, thinking I'd never learn, I'd always sound like a jackass, and that I'd go home immediately if I hadn't prepaid everything. Prepayment is how they keep you on these programs.

The answer, of course, is no, French was never this hard. We were much more relaxed, had less homework, spoke English all the time; we weren't constantly slammed. Of course, I'm probably the only one in that group that still speaks French, but to be honest, I still sounded like a jackass a year or so after I got back from France. It wasn't until way after that I started sounding really good in French, and who knows why that happened. I was sure I would never go back to France, but since then I've been back to France four times now? And they're always stunned that my pronunciation isn't gross.

My Chinese pronunciation isn't gross, but I could go weeks without speaking a well-formed sentence. Just now, in my one-on-one class, I fantasized about going back to Seattle early, spending the rest of the summer in my comfortable, clean, American townhouse, with nothing to do but be comfortable.

Right now, I'm feeling like I'm never going to get this language. Actually, I feel like I'm not even learning the language. I fell like I'm just doing what I have to to get by. Which is a lot, but still, I seem to have no desire to do things like, oh, remember words that someone just told me, read my teachers' notes, read the English directions on my test....

I would do it immediately if I hadn't prepaid. Prepayment is how they keep you.

To anyone who is thinking "Well, JP, this is how YOUR students must feel!" Ha ha. I wish you a painful death.

Learning the Hard Way

2007-07-15T21:45:00.001-07:00

I got my first test back; it was a 72. A few stray mistakes here and there, but in one section I was supposed to answer two of three questions. For some reason I only answered one. Read the directions!

I should be more bummed out, but the grade is not going to affect my life in any way.

I am eating too many cheap carbs in the morning. During my first class, my blood sugar crashes, and I can hardly stay awake. Tomorrow, I'm going to eat two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, see what that does to my ability to stay awake in class.

Later today, my one-on-one class (pronunciation torture) and my Tai Chi class.

Yesterday, I bought a bamboo flute! The shop owner was impressed with my tone, wanted to give me lessons, gave me a 10 kuai discount on the flute. I have no time for flute lessons!

Nap time!

Sunday

2007-07-14T17:05:00.001-07:00

So yesterday after the interview (which went well, by the way) I walked up to the subway station. I was going to get on the subway to the Shanghai South Train Station, where the I would catch the bus back to Hangzhou.

It was already 4pm, so I thought I better eat now, because once I get to the bus station, I'll catch the next bus and won't get a chance.

So I ate at the Bruce Lee restaurant I had found earlier. Wasn't as good as the street food, and way more expensive.

Bought my ticket and got on the 1 train to the train station. I didn't notice the time, so it got to the station quicker than I expected, and it was the end of the line, so I got off. Ah, the wonders of modern efficient mass transit.

So here I am at the train station, and I know the bus station is right next to it. So I walk around..... walk around... where is the bus station? I look for the giant neon phalluses I had seen on the plaza from the night before; they must be around here somewhere. I ask a guy on the plaza, he says "I don't know, you should ask someone." So I go back underground, where there are maps, and I can't find the bus station on the map! I go to the north plaza, wind up in the eyeglass market, dragging my carry-on behind me, lugging it up stairs... I ask three people, and they all tell me I should go ask someone.

After what seems like an hour of walking around, I finally said Screw It! It's a train station, I'll take a train. Who cares how long it takes. I'm here at the train station, I'll take a train back to Hangzhou. The train station is big hall, huge reader board, dozens of windows, dozens of people at each window.... except for one window, which has no one waiting. The English-speaking window. Sweet.

So I ask for a ticket to Hangzhou for tonight, and BAM she prints one out, it's 60 kuai. I ask where to go, and she says go out and to the left, and that's all I understand. She's speaking English, but she's not looking at me, she's speaking into a mic that faces away from me. All I see is her hand flying up and to the left. I look at the ticket, and it says Shanghai South.

So I go out onto the plaza and look next door for the entrance to the Shanghai South trains. Looking, looking... I ask someone, she says I should go ask someone. I ask a bony security guard, he points me down into the metro station, and gestures the number one. So I go underground and look for platform 1. Where the hell is platform 1? I see platforms 3 and 4, exits 1-6, and subway line 1. Obviously it's not the subway.

I'm lost, holding my ticket out in front of me and reading it so that I look lost. One guy looks over my shoulder and says, "This is not Shanghai South!" and I don't understand the rest. I get it, I should go to Shanghai South. Where the hell is it?

So I think, I'll just go to the trains back up top. So back up top I go, and try to enter the train entrance, and the ticket checker says I can't go in, that I need to go to Shanghai South, go over there and take number one. I try to follow where she points, and a guy who wants to help me with my luggage (no thanks) tells me I have to go to Shanghai South! Shanghai South! There's still time! How annoying, I try to shake him, but he follows me for a while.

Finally I go back to the English speaking ticket window to ask her where in the heck I was supposed to go, which was what I should have done in the first place.

In line now behind some confused French tourists, who are being assisted in English by a Scandinavian back-packer. I wait and wait and wait, and finally Scandinavian back-packer is done at the window and the French tourists seem happy, so as the Scandinavian back-packer goes to leave, I show him my ticket and ask him in English where the hell I am supposed to go.

You need to get on the subway and take the one train down to Shanghai South Railway Station, it's about 20 minute ride.

Oh.

All this time, I've been at the wrong train station. And many Chinese people have been trying to tell me this. But stupid me, I don't get it until a blond dude tells me. What's wrong with me?

I go down to the subway and buy my ticket with coins, which is an ordeal, get on the train, which is a breeze, and stumble out at Shanghai South Train Station. It's dark now, and I finally see the giant neon phalluses I had seen the night before. I go up to the train station entrance, and everything is right. The waiting room I walk into happens to be the one for my train, so I finally text my roommate that I'm on my way back.

The train was bright and spacious. An English speaking couple sat facing me, he was German, she was Chinese, and unfortunately I had to hear their whole conversation. The train got up to 170 kph, which is pretty fast.... not as fast as in France... but fast. When I got to steamy Hangzhou, I was turned down by a couple cabbies as I spoke to them through the window; they were on their break, they didn't understand me.... what ever. It occurred to me that that I was trying to get a cab the Mexican way; negotiate first through the window. So finally I hailed a cab, GOT IN THE BACK and told him Zhejiang Gongye Daxue, Hou Men. And we were on our way. I don't know if I got the tones right, but since my junk was sitting in the back seat, he made the effort to understand.

I stopped on stir-fry street for three pot-stickers before returning to my dorm room.

Craft Street

2007-07-14T16:35:00.000-07:00

On my way back to the hotel, I turned and walked down this street. The vendors sold majong sets, pens, fans, turn of the century robes... very quaint. this is in the old neighborhood. You can see the high rises rising around this neighborhood on the horizon.

The Neighborhood Lake

2007-07-14T16:32:00.000-07:00

This park became a point of reference for me. It stretches for maybe 3 or 4 blocks. In the morning people gather to walk it backwards and forwards.

Shangahi, near the Metro stop.

2007-07-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

The requisite McDonald's picture. Check out the double video screens on the curb. Who is supposed to look at those? Bus passengers?

Some anti-jay walking propaganda. Yah, right. The only thing that keeps people from jaywalking is uniformed men and women with whistles in their mouths. Chinese people do not like to be whistled at. They don't particularly mind taxis or buses bearing down on them...

This is the fast food restaurant I ate in. It was so-so, but I like the Bruce Lee images. My roommate was stunned when I told him Bruce Lee is a Seattlelite like me. Oh yes. YES! He is from Seattle!

More Shanghai Street Scenes

2007-07-14T16:24:00.000-07:00

This is the crispy puff machine.

This was my lunch! My roommate said it made him hungry.

A display in a plaza.

Shanghai--Street Market Scenes

2007-07-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

Street market scenes.

I think this is the fish and bird market, apparent from all the chirping.

The street sign of the road I was walking down. Across you see the neighborhood has an old gate.

My roommate asked me if Americans thought Tibet should be it's own country. Ah, politics. I said, yes, many Americans who follow the Lama think that Tibet is it's own country. I don't really have the conversational skills (or the desire) to say more than that.

Some Shanghai Photos

2007-07-14T16:18:00.000-07:00

Here's the view from my hotel room window. In the lower right hand quaddrant you see the rooftops of what seems to be an old residential neighborhood, two story buildings, narrow streets, winding alleys, etc.

When I looked to the left out the same window, all I saw were high rise apartments and construction.

Here are some pictures I took while walking down the street. Sorry about the blurriness.

Cell Phone Pictures from Shanghai

2007-07-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

Wow, these pictures came out smaller than I expected. This one is of the subway station sign. I wanted to remember it for when I left, as I would be using the same station.

Here's a picture of the chopstick/napkin/wetnap/toothpick set from Red Pepper Restaurant in Shanghai.
Crispy fried beef with peanuts and peppers. There wasn't any vegetables, so I went and ordered:
...this spinach-like vegetable, poached in red vinegar.
This was my lunch at the kung fu Bruce Lee fast food restaurant. Minced pork steak, steamed lettuce, beef bone soup, and rice.

There is one more picture that I'm not posting; it's of the couple that sat across from me on the bullet train back to Hangzhou. He was German, she was Chinese, they spoke in English so of course I heard their entire conversation. At first I was annoyed that I'd have to listen and look directly at them for an hour, but then I think the woman realized I wasn't Chinese, so they toned it down. What was really over the top, though, was that the woman had a half liter carton of milk, which she was sipping from. Odd odd odd. She explained to Germany that she wanted to strengthen her nails. Great, she'll strengthen her lactose intolerance, too...

breaking news

2007-07-13T21:04:00.001-07:00

Breaking news: my computer's power cord does not seem to be working. It charged up this morning, but now I'm running on battery power. This development may effect my blogging ability. I hope I haven't blown out the power pack..... Nope, false alarm, I forgot to flip the switch. No worries. Carry on.

I'm about to check out and leave for my interview. Please think good thoughts for me!

Lunch in Shanghai

2007-07-13T20:44:00.001-07:00

I went downstairs to ask what time check out was. The guy told me 12pm. I asked if 1 was ok, and he said, sure, he'll tell his manager. I got halfway out the door and came back to the front desk. Where is there a Bank of China?

There are three banks on every block Shanghai, but only one accepts my debit card, and that is Bank of China. The receptionist was a little uncertain about how to tell me to get there, so she called over the bell hop. The bell hop told me to turn left on Huai Hai Lou and then walk for 10 minutes until I see the Bank of China. I asked him to write it for me. So then it was off to Huai Hai Lou!

Last night, on the streets looking for dinner, I thought this was a sleepy little neighborhood. During the day it's so not sleepy. Every door is a storefront with a sidewalk stand of all kinds of things. I passed a bird and goldfish market, and several craft stands. When I saw a woman on a corner standing at a buffet, I looked inside, there was a woman eating by herself.

I like places where you can go and not feel conscious about eating by yourself.

So she took out a tray, and I asked for sliced sausage with green peppers, diced tofu in that sauce, and cucumbers. Hey is that scrambled egg with tomatoes? Yes! 5 kuai. Less than a dollar. I went to go sit down, and the lady said, hey don't forget your rice! The lady next to me put a large portion of rice that she had measured out in a Styrofoam to-go box.

I asked a lady that was eating if I could sit at her table, she said, yes, and looked at me like I was weird for asking. Later she got up and left, and two older ladies came up to the table, and wondered if my eating partner had gone for water or something. No, she's not here, I said. Please be seated. They shared about 6 tall, pork filled pot-stickers, and later the lady brought them both bowls of soup with cubes of liver and clear broth.

When I was done, I got up and left to find a bottle of water. There are all kinds of places to get a bottle of water, but I I chose a kiosk on the street, and the lady sold me a big, cold bottle for 3 kuai. As I walked away, I opened it, and it was delicious, but it wasn't water. It was one of those fizzy lemon drinks that is also salty. It was delicious, but I had to throw it out. Diabetes! I looked at the nutritional information, and it had zero protein, a bunch of sodium, and then a bunch of "energy." I am guessing that "energy" is Chinese for "sugar."

Finally, I found the Bank of China, and it was right next to my subway station, where I had been hailing a cab last night. Had I known I was so close, I might not have taken the cab. I can find my way around big cities on my own, but it's a lot harder when it's night, it's raining, and I'm dragging a small suitcase. I won't be taking a cab again.

Hangzhou is a different story; it's much more crowded, disorienting. For some reason, Hangzhou seems more Chinese than Shanghai, which is ridiculous, because both are Chinese, it's just that Shanghai is Shanghai.

I'm going to mellow out a bit and chill in my room until checkout an hour from now.

Against My Better Judgement

2007-07-13T17:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a short vlog from my hotel in Shanghai. It's a pretty sweet room, and I have it for a few more hours. I haven't taken a shower yet, so I look pretty scruffy.

This morning I got up at 6:30 and took a walk around the neighborhood. I found where the company was, found where the subway was, both short short walks, so no more cabs in Shanghai.

For breakfast I had two hum bao with pork that were the best I've ever had in my life. So delicious. Not sweet, like the cantonese ones. I've often told people someone oughtta open a ham bao stand in the UDistrict so people can have their hum bao for breakfast... mostly people thought that was a gross idea. Americans are very closed minded when it comes to breakfast.

Anyway, this neighborhood is pretty interesting. There will be pictures when I get back to Hangzhou tonight. I don't want to say it's an "old" neighborhood, but it does have that old-chinese feel to it. When I look to the right, I see two story houses, old people in their pajamas walking, bony security guards asleep in their chairs, young women cooking at their street food stands, the cardboard recycling tricycle guy ringing slowly past a man with a coffee cup, squatting over the gutter to brush his teeth. There was a lovely looking park filled with people walking backwards and forwards, exercising around a winding artificial lake.

Contrast that with the high rises and construction that you see when you look to the left.

On my way back to the hotel, I bought a power strip, so I can charge my computer in the hotel. Four bucks. I saw a pharmacy on the way, so I stopped in, used my PDA to look up the word "bandage" and asked for one. Both the pharmacist and the lady she was talking to were so nice. She pulled out a roll of gauze and asked me if I need tape. I gestured a small cut on my finger, and she brought out some band-aids; her friend said, "that's different!"

Then, as she was about to ring me up, I remembered that in France they have these miracle foot blister strips that make blisters go away in a day. So I pointed to the blister on my toe, and the friend said, "that's another different thing!" So to my delight, she pulled out the magic blister strips and asked me for si kuai wu.

After over a week in China, I still have a hard time figuring out the difference between 4 and 10. In Shanghai and in Hangzhou, they sound the same to me except for tone. The lady wanted 4.50 kuai. She pointed to a five in my wallet.

If I go back to my teaching job in Seattle (probably will!) and decide to come back to China next summer, I've been thinking about going to the north. For one thing, they have the accent I expect, the accent all of my teachers have. That's nice, right? But then I remember, I'm a big fat liberal linguist, to hell with standard language! I can learn a regional variation just as well as a standard, right?

Actually, the main reason I would want to go north next year would be because it's way too hot down here. Way way too hot. Chinese a/c is going to give me bronchitis.

I must be crazy

2007-07-13T08:38:00.001-07:00

So it's not really a secret that I am interviewing for a job tomorrow. Don't get excited, the pay is a little light, and if I'm going to move away from my sister for any length of time, I'm not going to take any job that isn't worth my while. I shared this with the company, and they still wanted to see me, so I'm going.

I wanted to come to China to learn Mandarin, to earn some credits and possibly set myself up to be a Mandarin teacher someday. I have a nice life in Seattle, but I was getting bored with it, living paycheck to paycheck, craving adventure.

Maybe I don't need so much adventure.

Today's adventure started in Hangzhou; I left the lovely air-conditioned dorm room to walk to the bus stop. On my way to the bus stop, I realized I forgot to change into my shoes. Oh well, I'm not going back up four flights to my dorm to put on shoes. I will just interview in my sandals. Who cares.

I got to the bus stop and waited 20 minutes in the heat under the viaduct before I realized I wanted the other direction. So I crossed the street and checked the bus stop sign, and realized my bus wasn't stopping there.

Screw it! I thought, I'll take a cab! So I flagged down a cab and pointed on my handy dandy Hangzhou for Gringos map where the train ticket office was. The dude started taking me in the wrong direction, but insisted he was taking me to where I wanted to go. I checked on my handy dandy Hangzhou for Gringos map and saw that there was indeed a second ticket office. Ok. So I paid the guy my 20 kuai and got out and looked for the ticket office.

I didn't know how to say "ticket office." I do now.

I asked a bony security guard looking dude where I go to buy a train ticket; he said I could buy them there, but the trains were done for the day, I would have to take a bus. He recommended I take the Number 3 bus to the downtown station, which is what my roommate also recommended.

I looked around for where the 3 stopped, and after a few minutes in the sun, I thought, Screw that! I will take a cab! So I got into a cab and asked him to take me to the East Station, not the downtown station as two other people had recommended.

It was around 4:30, and I remember hearing that cabbies all take their break at 4:30, but I have didn't understand, half didn't want to understand. I asked if there was a problem with the busses, and he said no, there's no problem, and I apologized for not speaking Chinese.

Ok, I got to the East Station and gave the cabbie my 20 kuai, and the bus station is CRAZY. Imagine walking into a huge semi-spherical hall There is a row of about thirty ticket windows, and above them is a giant red digital reader board, the size of two basketball courts. I can read none of it. There were hundreds of people waiting in line, about a dozen or so at each window.

My strategy is to get in line, and hope that the person behind me can help me. The person behind me has a vested interest in helping, because if he doesn't, I'll hold up the line. The person in front of me could give a rip. So I asked the dude behind me if this was the right way to go to Shanghai, and he looked at the giant sea of characters above me and said, yes, there's a bus to Shanghai, just go to the window.

The lady behind the bullet-proof glass was a ticket selling machine. She asked me where I wanted to go, and she actually looked up at me to make sure... Shanghai? Today? Yes, Shanghai, today. Downtown Station or South Station? I don't know. 52 kuai! So she printed out a ticket and passed it through the security hole.

I can't read my ticket. I asked a bony uniformed security guard what I was supposed to do, he pointed at the number 26 on my ticket and pointed out the door and around the corner.

So out the door and around the corner was a huge round waiting room full of people; there were 28 gates where people were lined up to get on their buses. I went to gate 26 and waited in line, when I got to the lady, she said, your bus is for 5:03! So I went and sat down.

At this time I thought it might be a good idea to call the number the company gave me to help me with a hotel. The lovely Carol offered to make the reservation for me, and was kind enough to text me the address in Chinese and in English. I texted her back: I wish you a Happy Weekend! I bought a hot dog on a stick and ate it as I boarded the bus.

On the bus, I sat in an empty seat, later a lady told me I was in her seat, I went to ask where the seat was printed and she quick looked at my assigned seat number and said sh'd go sit there. Ok! My seat was set all the way back, and it was nice to sleep a little on the bus. There was a movie playing about a young boy who hates his mom, gets himself thrown out of the house for being a jackass, and then steals an old man's magic growth potion, which gets into his blood when he falls down and cuts his hand on the shards.

SPOILER! He ends up being drawn back to his family as he ages quickly from a young man to and old man, befriending his own father. His little brother recognizes him and calls after hime Older Brother! Older Brother! In the end he gets really old and finally reconciles with his mother. And stays old. And presumably dies old, because that's the end of the movie. I guess it's the reconciliation that counts. No do-overs in China.

I got to Shanghai two hours later, and it was raining. Which is good! No oppressive heat, but also water is falling on me. I couldn't figure out where to get a cab, and I was getting rained on so I went down into the underground and pulled an extra shirt out of my bag and put it on. Then I went back up to the street and tried to find a cab, which was no easy feat, as the street is fenced of so that you cannot get a cab.

Finally, I got a cab, and showed the driver the address on my cell phone. I don't understand his southern Chinese accent, but he pulls out a 100 kuai bill and tells me to get inside. I ask him if it's far, and he says fine, I'll run the meter. Apparently I had agreed to 100 kuai for the ride. I asked him if it was far, and at a red light he pulled out a map. It was on the other side of the map. I sat for a minute and said, should I just take the subway? He said YES, so I said, ok, take me back to the station, I'll take the subway.

So back to the bus station, which is connected to the South Shanghai station and the subway by a huge underground complex. I pay the guy 25 kuai on the meter (it costs 20 kuai in Shanghai to just go around the block, seriously), and back I go, underground to find the subway.

It takes a while to wind around, but finally I find the subway entrance and the ticket machines. There were five machines with a couple dozen people each waiting in line, but it went by FAST. I got the lady behind me to help, even though I really didn't need it, but just as a back up. When I got up to the machine, I quick switched it to English, which hurt the eyes of the people who were all looking over my foreign shoulder to help me. Bam bam bam 4 kuai and I'm done. She told me to get off at the 7th station. I thanked her, and repeated it, and quickly forgot.

The subways, like the bus passes in Hangzhou, use magnetic cards. I laid my card down on the plate, the light turned green, and I took my card and went through the turnstile. No swiping of cards, no inserting of tickets. I noticed some people were just laying their wallets or purses on the plate, and the reader was reading their card from inside their purses or wallets. Why can't we have that technology in America? Why can't we have a subway in Seattle?

Once I'm on my train, I feel better. I love taking the subway. It was a smooth, quiet, cool ride. Seven stations later, I got off and luckily I still had my ticket, because the exit turnstiles wanted to read it again. I put my ticket card on the plate, it said "please insert" so I found the insert and it kept it and let me through. If I had had more money on the ticket, I would have just used the plate and taken my card back, but the card was done, since I only paid for a one one-way trip.

I went up the street and tried to get a cab. It took 20 minutes just to get a cab. First of all, there weren't a lot of cabs. Second, whoever gets to the cab firsts gets the cab, and I wasn't that assertive. Finally, when I had had enough, I sailed into the street with my hand in the air and got the cab that everybody else was going to walk in front of me to get.

The cab driver was a woman, and she took me to my hotel. 20 kuai. My hotel room is awesome. I went down the street to get fried beef with peppers and peanuts (not that spicy!) and some spinach poached in red vinegar. Now it's time to go to bed.

I just answered the phone, somebody wanted to give me a massage. No thanks.

Friday the Thirteenth

2007-07-12T20:00:00.000-07:00

Someday I'll know what this picture says. Check out the little dude on the far left.

Here's the view from the 12th floor of our classroom building. There are several river crossings on the university's campus; here we see a foot bridge, a little glorieta, and an ancient bell. I'll get a close up of the ancient bell some other time.

My tantrum is over, not because I "cooled off" or "got some perspective," only because I have bigger fish to fry right now. I'll have a homework tantrum again later, when it's relevant.

Today was review day. There were 14 grammar points to review. We learn all the vocab on our own. After a half hour of review, we chilled out for a half hour, and then our tests came out. Some grammar games, a reading section, a writing section. I did ok, I don't know how well I played the grammar games. I'm really bad at unscrambling characters to form a sentence, mainly because I use my own sentence order. The teachers actually teach us sentence order, but don't really let us write it down.

After the written was done, we chilled out some more, and then were called in for the oral section. The topic I drew was how old people's lesiure activities are different from young people's. I gave a couple of examples, but when they didn't stop me, I went on to say a couple things that old and young people had in common. When they didn't stop me, I said, "is that it?" and the answer was "ke yi..."

In other words, it's over if you want it to be over. Hao le. Now I'm back in my room; me and another dude will interview three chinese people of different ages about their leisure activities. I'm a Spanish teacher, so I know how to get this done: I'll make a survey form and ask them yes/no questions... "do you do tai chi, yes or no? Do you see movies often, yes or no?" That way we can have control over the interview, and it doesn't turn into a long session of listening to someone we don't understand. Don't worry, we'll ask for comments at the end.

Today, I asked another student if she was Korean. She's not, she's Taiwanese, but she said someone else thought she was Korean. Is my Asian American radar in doubt? To save face, I said her hair seemed Korean, and she lit up and said that she goes to a Korean place to get her hair cut. Of course, then I pretended I had this specific superpower, of identifying the ethnicities of people's hair dressers. She was surprised.

I myself am Filipino American, but my hair happens to be cut by Vietnamese people.... That's how I should introduce myself from now on...

Blowing off steam.

2007-07-12T02:42:00.001-07:00

1. We go from 8am to 12pm without a real break. The teachers go long, and then we only have time to get to the next class. Today, I went straight from one class to the next, and the teacher looked at the damn clock on the wall when I came in. If you make me choose between respecting your class time and respecting my bladder, your ass will lose every time. Do not get me started.

2. I do my homework, it takes me hours. I leave myself an hour to read the text for the next day. I don't have time to look at the grammar and think about it, by then it's late and I go to bed. Then the next day, in class, there's grammar on the board when we get there, and they go too fast for us to write it down. They actually tell us not to write it, they tell us to be heads up. Fine. Later that afternoon, when I'm doing my homework, I look at it and I CAN'T REMEMBER THE DAMN GRAMMAR THEY DIDN'T ALLOW US TO WRITE DOWN.

3. Today the teacher scheduled a "Chinese Table." I don't know what it is, but they must be crazy. My regular homework takes me all night to finish, TO FINISH, it's not like I'm sitting at my desk calmly practicing the characters, and trying to memorize them, I'm JUST TRYING TO FINISH in time to go to bed. Oh, and there's a big test tomorrow. And then at 5pm they have the nerve to come to my room and ask me if I'm going to "Chinese Table" with them? Uh, I don't know what Chinese Table is, but unless it's a magic table that finishes my damn homework I'm not going. You give me five hours of homework, no time to try to memorize characters, and a big test, and you want me to go to dinner with you now? Oh HELL no.

You know what? Don't give me advice. I don't want any damn advice. I want to be angry, and then I want to finish my homework and go to bed.

Not Studying

2007-07-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

Hey, I was looking at photos on my computer and not studying, and I found this one of me and my mama. I think it was at Grandma R's funeral.

Ok, time to study!

Notes before collapsing

2007-07-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

I got my first DaShan comparison today!

Also, a too-young-for-me woman asked me to teach her English! I asked her to repeat, and my roommate ran her out of town with his "he's not supposed to speak English."

I'm excited about my new phone. I will have to wrestle it away from my roommate. I'm not interested in it yet; all I want to do is get ready for class, and then sleep... with eating breaks in between. That's about all I have time to do nowadays.

I bought a cushion for my chair yesterday, but I've been sitting on it for hours now and my but hurts. This is one hard chair!

I'll Tell You About It Tomorrow

2007-07-11T05:30:00.001-07:00

I just bought a new cell phone. It's much sexier than the one I had before, and cheaper I think. Way more powerful than I need it to be, and I don't have any time to get to know it right now. Right now it's 8:30 and I haven't even STARTED studying for tomorrow. Grrr!

New Cell Phone

2007-07-11T03:25:00.001-07:00

I'm meeting my roommate in 10 minutes, he's going to help me go get a new cell phone. If I find the old one, I'll give the new one to my sister. If not, I'll buy her another new one at the end of the term. I hope I find one!

I had taijiquan class today: that's Tai Chi to the rest of you. It was fun. We learned three forms. I can feel my blood pressure lowering already. I really wanted to take the bamboo flute class as well, but I can't take both. Maybe I'll just buy a bamboo flute...

I take my camera to class

2007-07-10T21:31:00.001-07:00

I wanted to take a picture of this stray puppy I saw, frolicking in the grass, but then when it notcied me, it came right over and smelled my toes. Very friendly, probably too small to eat just yet.

These people are digging a ditch. Or digging out a tree. Not quite sure.

This was my lunch at the student cantina. At 3 o'clock there is chicken with garlic shoots, at 6 o'clock is cucumbers, at 9 o'clock is the pickly briny greens I'm growing to like a lot. In the bowl there's an almost sweet dessert with lychee and other Chinese fruits I'm not really familiar with, served as a cool soup.

Have you all figured out yet that in order to make a title, you have to click on the actual word "Title:"? I took me a while. It also took me a while to figure out the even-floors only and odd-floors only elevators. Basically, you get on any elevator, but if the elevator doesn't want to take you there, you press the button for your floor plus one; and then when you get off you walk down one flight of stairs. Haven't figured out how this system helps anyone.

Still no cell phone. Taijiquan class starts today after my one-on-one. Bush teeth! Go study!

Fighter Jets

2007-07-10T21:29:00.001-07:00

Every day I seen and hear fighter jet streaking over the university campus. Today I saw four, flying in a tight staggered formation. No time for pictures.

Yesterday, All My Cell Phone Were So Far Away...

2007-07-10T15:29:00.001-07:00

It's quarter to 6 am and I'm sitting out on my balcony so as not to disturb my roommate, who is still sleeping. This may be the only time in my routine I have for blogging. The pictures above are from my balcony. I'll take more pictures today.

Yesterday at this time, it was raining a warm summer rain. I went to class with my funky plaid rain hat and tsinelas (flip-flops). In the entire country, no one wears thinner, cheaper looking tsinelas that I do. Anyway, buy the time I got to class my shoulders and bag were wet, so I decided later it would be time to crack open the ol' umbrella. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So class was better yesterday, I was more prepared, and it was less of a shock. However, in my second hour class, I noticed the sky was turning black. Black as night. I interrupted the Freight Train of Grammar to say, "Excuse me, the weather is very strange." We all took a second to look at the dark sky, and then the Freight Train of Grammar resumed. Then the sky turned to white, white fog, and visibility became zero. We literally could not see anything out the window. Pretty soon after that, we heard fat rain drops against the window, and the other students asked how to say "hail." I offered "ice rain," but it wasn't. It was just fat drops of rain smacking against the glass.

Our newspaper reading class later on was all about Starbucks. For some reason, my last year's summer class and this year's share the same themes: Chinese food verses Western food (whatever that is), and Starbucks. When Freight Train of Reading Comprehension asked me my opinion of Starbucks next to the Imperial Palace inside the Forbidden City, I said, why did the Palace people invite Starbucks to be there? Starbucks is just doing what it does; some Palace person decided it was a good idea. It's the Palace person's fault that Starbucks is there.

Whatever, after that I went to the school cantina and had another delicious lunch with chicken, garlic scallions, and cucumbers. I rehearsed my reading, made pronunciation notes int he text, and went to my one-on-one. I would be annoyed if one of my students made pronunciation notes, but Chinese is different. If you don't know a character, there is no sounding it out, you know it or you don't. So I went to the one-on-one with my text all marked up, and flew through the reading, so much so that the teacher was about to let me out when we were finished, but then realized we still had 10 minutes left. She asked me if I had any advice for their teaching, and I lied and said that I didn't. That question is a trap! I told her my teaching is different, but that teaching method is cultural, and you can't teach Chinese with American teaching methods. She thought that was a good answer.

Of course you can teach Chinese with American methodology... I'm just not sure if you should. I have to think about the literacy issue. For one thing, teaching reading (and writing) is not necessarily part of the language instinct. Another thing; I don't really know if I'm teaching Spanish language literacy or if I'm just trying to get my students to apply their English reading skills to Spanish. I do know one thing: I'm learning how to read Chinese here, I'm probably at a 2nd grade level.

Anyway, after the one-on-one, I went to find two other students and we all went to Starbucks on the West Lake. It wasn't as quiet as we had discussed in class, but God Bless America it was just as expensive as in Seattle, if not more. I ordered a San Pelligrino and studied until my stomach started eating itself. I told the other students I'd be back, and went to go find something to eat.

Here's the thing: I can't read. I can't hold a menu in my hand and make an intelligent choice, or stand at a counter and pick out something I want from a menu on the wall. I have to either be a pain in the neck and negotiate the menu with my server, or I have to have a picture menu to point at. And when diabetes says eat, I eat. So yes, my friends, I ended up at McDonalds. Diabetes heaven. I pointed to an overpriced fried chicken sandwich, which was spicy and delicious, and ate medium fries and a real Coke. I walked out of there thinking, dammit, I should have just allowed my liver to panic and flood me with emergency blood sugar, because I just gave myself a blood sugar fiesta and tomorrow my stomach will hurt.

So I tried to walk off the extra blood sugar by going to Carrefour for the third time. I ran into some other students, and managed to ask for and buy myself a chair cushion, so I can study in my room with out my butt falling off. Went back to Starbucks, studied some more, and then when we couldn't find where the 12 Bus stops to take us back, we got into a cab. I have finally memorized what to tell the cab driver about how to get back to campus.

Came back to the dorm, studied some more. As I was about to go to sleep, I realized my cell phone was missing. Where is it? At Starbucks? Did it fall out of my pocket in the cab? Did A get a receipt from the cab driver? My roommate was much more concerned than I was, I had to hint to him several times that it was not worth losing sleep about. I will either find it today or have to buy a new one. I'm not worried, because it was my phone with a pre-paid sim card; I can just replace it. It's a bummer, though.

So yesterday, the rain cooled off the town.... or did the cooling off bring rain? Anyway, it wasn't deathly hot yesterday, and today it's blue skies and comfortable temperatures.

This weekend I'm going into Shanghai to meet the people at Praxis Language. I don't know how to buy a train ticket or find a hotel room, so that should be an adventure.

____

Oh! the umbrella story! I have a tiny travel umbrella, that I used once last summer, but haven't used it since. When I opened it yesterday, the handle was shorter than I remember, less than a foot. Lame! I asked some other Americans if they wanted my crazy short handle umbrella, and then suddenly my umbrella telescoped out to normal size. So I took off my hat and started walking, which made the others laugh. I don't know how to work my own umbrella.

Note to Self

2007-07-09T04:51:00.000-07:00

Do not forget to bring home some beef candy for my most excellent sister. Get the sample pack, so she can try all three flavors: spicey-hot, salted, and 5-spice.

Did I already ask her to send my brown tsinelas? Don't remember.

Back to work!

First Day of Class

2007-07-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

Discouraging? Demoralizing? Punishing?

8 am was grammar presentation. It was presented to us! You know, so we wouldn't fell awkward around it in a social situation. Teacher-centered

9 am was a small group drill session. The teacher talks fast and LOUD, and besides putting us on the spot a few times, the train doesn't stop. Extremely teacher centered.

10 am we repeated a couple dialogs until they were memorized. The teacher talked less loud, and gave us a chance to think... Once. Extreme topic-centered, teacher driven.

11 am was newspaper class, which was miserable because I didn't prepare. The teacher is the same one as the 9am session. Same train as before.

I went to lunch at noon and comforted myself with a plate of noodles and veggies (she didn't hear me ask for meat, or maybe it was a hint). I came up to my room to study, but my roommate was asleep, so then I took a nap as well. I tired to go down to the study room on the 2nd floor but there was a one-on-one class going on.

Finally my 3 pm one-on-one started. I beat the even/odd elevators by going up to 8th floor and walking down to 7th. Bastard elevators! There was a little one-on-one conversation, but it quickly turned into uncomfortable extreme learner centered- read the text out loud party. So yes, basically it was tone torture. My eyes hurt from it. I asked if tomorrow would be the same, the answer was yes.

After class, my teacher and I walked back to the dorm. This was the conversation:

What do you want to do?

I don't know.

What do you want to do?

I don't know.

You don't understand? Or you don't know what you want to do?

I understand! I don't know what I want to do.

What do you mean you don't know what you want to do? What do you like to do?

I would like to go someplace cool.

Ah! A cool place! And do what?

I don't know.

What, you don't know? You don't understand, or you don't know what you want to do?

I understand! I don't know what I want to do.

What do you like to do? I like to read, hang out, watch tv.

I don't want to do any of those things.

What do you want to do?

I don't know!

Why do you not know what you want to do?

What?

WHY do you not know what you want to do? You must have a plan. Think a little.

I don't know! I am a dude. We often don't have ideas.

Fine.

That was actually an abbreviated version. The unabridged version includes such hits as, "do you want to eat noodles with meat this time?"

I don't know what I want to do. I know I have to get my passport back, buy a ticket to Shanghai this weekend and arrange a hotel, cram for tomorrow's punishment. I mean, "classes."

Grrr!

2007-07-08T04:57:00.001-07:00

Dear Chinese people,

You are so kind to talk to me and teach me your language. I enjoy hearing your different regional accents and your colorful expressions.

Hey listen, when you teach me a new word just let me run with it. Don't teach me five more freaking synomyms. When you teach me six different options, I am sure to forget every single one.

Do you hear me?

One word, and let me run with it. Teach me the synonyms some other time.

The same with grammar; once you teach me a construction, DO NOT immediately drill me on a different way to phrase it. Do you hear me? DON'T.

Thanks for your time.

Love, 万吉平

Silk Museum

2007-07-08T04:37:00.000-07:00

Here's about a minute of footage from the Silk Museum. E and I agreed that we absoulutely had no understanding of the techology of weaving, much less weaving silk. There was some embroidery that was ridiculous. Enjoy the video.

Classes Start Tomorrow

2007-07-08T04:18:00.001-07:00

Today we had our last orientation, which means no more English until mid August. I wonder how long I'll last. We students have a system of spelling English words to get around the language pledge. Spelling is irritating enough to not become a habit, but it gets us through a conversation. Many of our Chinese roommates know a lot of English vocab.

They brought us Subway for lunch, which was nice, but it was Chinese Subway, which is not American Subway. Then E and I struck out without Chinese people this time and took the 12 Bus. First we went to the wrong bus station, then E figured it out and we walked to the right one. It was freakishly hot.

Getting Lost, At Last!

We got on the 12 South to find 文三楼口 because E needs a new camera charger. As usual, we didn't know where to get off, so we totally missed our stop. We eventually got off at the West Lake, right at the teahouse that I had tea in with the three others a day earlier. It wasn't our objective, but since we were there, I showed E where the Carrefour (all the French megastores are here), and bought myself some emergency blood sugar peanuts that are GOOD.

E and I had a plan to take the 12 a little farther south, walk east to the central highway, and catch another bus back. Didn't happen, missed the stop. We ended up at the Silk Museum, way south... Got off the bus and started walking across the street for the return bus, but then decided what the hell... We went into the Silk Museum and it turned out to be both free and air-conditioned. NICE.

At around 3:30 we took the 12 all the way back campus. I looked out for 文三楼口 but didn't see it.

Getting lost on the 12 with E was exactly the thing I needed to do today. I needed to get lost and find my way back, and rely on our own smarts, and not our Chinese roommates or the GroupThink that happens when more than three Americans strike out to see the town. I like the 12 a lot now!

Laundry

I did my laundry today. Did I already write about this? It's lame to wear something different every day and then wash it on the weekend. I have decided I'm going to have a three day rotation; wash my outfit every night, and then hang it out on the line to dry. There is no reason in the world to use a dryer here, and there is just not enough space on my clothesline to hang out a week's worth of clothes. Maybe if I was skinnier....

By the way, I wish I had more polyester guayaveras. I only brought one. Cotton absorbs my sweat and then holds the moisture against my skin. Not comfortable. I have a whole stack of shirts I don't really want to wear now. Oh well.

So to avoid wrinkles, I'm hanging out my clothes without wringing out the water. I just rinse it out and hang it up. The weight of the water weighs down the shirt as it drys, so there are less wrinkles. Came up with that one myself.

Sunday Morning Notes

2007-07-07T18:35:00.000-07:00

9:36 am. It sounds like there are fireworks going off. I've noticed a lot of fighter jets streaking over head.

My laundry is hanging out to dry now. I need to buy a balaybayan for socks. Only God knows how to say balaybayan in English. I'm sure there's a good Chinese word for it.

I think I'll be washing t-shirts, underwear, and socks in the sink every night. No need to save them for a laundry day; I can reuse them faster and then save space on the clothes line. Short clothes lines discriminate against fat people.

My mosquito bites are in the double digits, but they are not itchy. The only times I notice is a) when I'm looking for them, or b) when I wake up in the morning and my nose is filled with histimine induced snot. I need to buy a little shaker of table salt so I can irrigate my sinuses... it will be fun trying to explain to that to anyone in Chinese... I snort salt water in order to flush out mucus... the only thing about that sentence I can express is the word "I." I can probably say "nose" too.

Yesterday, a guy trying to sell me stuff called out "handsome man!" I assumed he was talking about my roommate, but roommate insists it was directed toward me. Oh great, a street hawker things I'm handsome, I'll take that isht right to the bank...

For breakfast I had leftover beef and vegetables. And yogurt, of course. Subway subs are scheduled for lunch, for some reason. I may still go out and have a second breakfast. Right now.

Foot Massage Day

2007-07-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

This is the place we went to get food massages. If you ever go to China, GET A FOOT MASSAGE. Our massages included soaking feet in hot tea, arm rubs, hand rubs, back rubs, bag of hot rocks rub, cup of cold refreshing tea. WORTH IT.

I forgot the name of this street, but it's the upscale shopping drag with local items.

Around the corner and down the street from the shopping drag, we found a Muslim restaurant. Fried mutton, lamb bbq, beef with ampalaya, some beef and fried bread, some sesame bread, and some broccoli with a bunch of garlic. Oh, and a nice clear tomato egg drop soup. Yum! Go Muslims!

Too Damn Hot to Hike

2007-07-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

It is too hot to hike! The rest of the group went to hike up a mountain to see stuff, I asked to be excused from the activity so I could go into town again and get lost. Well, I didn't get lost, because Xiao Xin was with me, so I'll have to go another day... by myself... to get lost. We'll see.

We bused down to 西湖，a beautiful lake that makes Hangzhou famous. It was beautiful, more beautiful than, say, Capital Lake... Not as big as Lake Washington... the vibe is kind of like Green Lake in Seattle, except bigger and more Chinese.

Xiao Xin pointed out where I could buy pearls and silk, and I said, ooh, great... before I leave in August (wink). Then we caught a cab back to campus, and ate great food at the most obvious restaurant outside the North Gate. Clams in a light soy sauce, zucchini with bamboo shoots, tender beef strips fried and somehow coated with a beaten egg, and a mushroom soup that was the bomb (but that Xiao Xin wasn't crazy about). I insisted we take the leftovers home, he explained to me that when you're with a guest you should order at least four. I told him about taking food home, even if you don't want it, you give it to homeless people... he said, ah, beggars? (He uses English sometimes to clarify, but sometimes I don't need it). I had to explain to him that in America there are people without a place to live... There are beggars in China, but they have a place to go home to.

Anyway, the food was the bomb, better I think than the expensive and beautiful banquet we had last night (see the previous post for the picture). If you'd like to see the (few) pictures from our day in town, check them out here.

Here's some notes I was writing earlier in the day.....

My IP address is down now, for some reason. It happened while I was online. Odd. There’s always gotta be some kind of drama. I think it’s the network that’s down.

I wish I had brought:

my own razor (I had to buy a new one, the exact same kind; cut my finger on the plastic packaging)
more guayaberas (polyester is the way to go in this heat)
bandaids
skin-so-soft for mosquitos
my japanese brush pens

So my roommate, 小新 Xiao Xin, he’s awesome. I really lucked out. He’s from Shandong province, here studying M.E. He just finished his courses for the year, so now he’s working in a lab doing research. The lab is top secret enough to not allow foreigners, but apparently undergrads can work there!

So he’s really patient with me and extremely helpful, almost to a fault. He enjoys writing down new words for me (I really need to rewrite them), and when there’s a question about pronunciation, he uses IPA! Apparently they all know the IPA! What a country!

I told him I did want to go hiking with the group today, mostly because I want to get to know the buses better. The ride-around-on-the-bus activity we did the other day wasn’t... I am still not familiar with any bus lines or landmarks. I encouraged him to go on the hike without me, since his friends are all going, but he is insisting on coming with me, so hey, if that’s what he wants to do! I will pay for lunch today.

The group returns at 4pm for showers, and then it’s off to get foot massages. I am quite exited about that!

______

The charger for my PDA has blown, I need a new one with the proper voltage.

My class schedule looks monstrous. Lot’s of cramming, every night.

0800 Grammar and Content
0900 Pattern Drills.
1000 Situational Drill and Activity
1100 Newspaper Reading
NOON lunch hour
1300 One-on-one Conversation
1400 One-on-one Conversation
1500 One-on-one Conversation

50 minute classes.

Fridays are a little different:

0800 General Review
0900 Test
1000 Oral Test
1100 off
1200 off
1300 Language Practicum
1400 Language Practicum.

I’ve been eating carbs, but eating less. Lots of walking. Blood sugar levels have been just fine.

Haircut is ridiculous. I look great when I put in a little pomade, but like a clown when I don’t. I’m thinking of just getting a military hairdo. The downside is, I don’t really want to go to the barber every freaking week, just to maintain it.
_______

Lookup:

Add value (to a sim card, to my internet account, etc)
power cord
Vancouver

Some backlogged posts...

2007-07-06T17:08:00.001-07:00

Hello, from Hangzhou, China!

It's 4:30 in the morning, and I can't sleep anymore. My roommate is sleeping, and the room is an echo chamber, so I've brought a chair and my laptop out to the balcony, and I'm typing into word. I will past it into the blogs later.

So I landed at Hangzhou International Airport around 2:30. Breezed through immigration, and by the time I got to baggage claim, my bags were halfway down the belt. I was relieved to see them, since back in Seoul, the lady at the counter who had given me my boarding pass and checked in my bags said, "Please wait five minutes for your bags to be inspected" as my bags rolled down the belt into an inspection room.

"Wait where? here?" I had never heard of this before.

"Over there," she said, vaguely gesturing to the right. It just looked like more ticketing to me.

So I went over to the right and waited, and then went over to a seating area and waited, and then looked at the clock and decided five minutes was up, so I waited a little bit longer.... and then I went through security. Was somebody supposed to tell me my bags were ok?

Anyway, so I was glad to see my bags once I got to Hangzhou.

It's funny to me that Hangzhou is a city of six million, which is the population of the entire state of Washington, and that such a big city is considered a medium-sized city here. The airport is relatively small.

So anyway, I found myself alone at the airport around 3pm, and the airport rendez-vous wasn't until 5:30. Here I was stuck at this smallish airport with not much to do. I pulled my gear over to a window ledge—there is very little seating on the concourse—and waited.

And then I thought, I'm an adult, I shouldn't sit here and wait dutifully for two and a half hours. What am I afraid of?

So I stood up and went to the taxi line.

Before I left my hotel in Seoul, I went to the internet and scribbled down the hanzi of where our school was. I was in a hurry, so I just copied the hanzi, not the pinyin pronunciation. And what I scribbled down was not the actual address; roughly, it said 'Zhejian University of Technology, back entrance on some street street, Building 11.'

So I went up to a Mercedes taxi driver and pointed to my scribbles (since I don't remember how to pronounce them). and he shook his head and pointed me to a green taxis, which were lined up behind him. Just then a whole flock of people came out of the terminal, walked in front of me to claim the next seven cabs. This is a good thing; I need to see how it's done before I make an idiot of myself.

So when I decided it was my "turn" I showed my scribbled note to the cab driver, who looked puzzled, but helped me put my gear in the trunk. When we were on our way, he asked me an important question, which I responded "I don't understand." He told me he was going to make a phone call, and asked for my note again, and then yelled angrily at whoever was on the phone. I didn't understand it, but it sounded like, "SOME FREAK HANDED ME A PIECE OF PAPER AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE HELL HE'S GOING, WHERE THE HELL IS THE BACK GATE OF ZUT? AM I JUST SUPPOSED TO GO THERE AND ASK PEOPLE WHERE THE BACK GATE IS? SHIT!"

When he got off the phone, I managed to ask if he know where we were going. He said, yah. So then I said, "Sorry, I don't speak Chinese well." And that started our conversation. He asked if I was meeting a friend there? (no.) He asked why I was going there (to study Mandarin). He asked where I was from (USA, Seattle). I was fine doing all the small talk. I asked him a few other questions; has he been to the US, does he take a lot of foreigners in his cab, etc. It was pleasant enough.

Now's the part in the story where I say, "Chinese people don't know how to drive!" and talk about all the crazy stuff that was happening on the road during our pleasant Day One in China conversation.

I am not going to say that Chinese people don't know how to drive; I'm going to say that they have a different driving culture, with different rules and expectations than Americans do. Chinese drivers are totally in control of their cars, and know exactly what the car can and can't do. They are also hyper-aware of everything that is going on around them, what other cars are doing and what they want to do, what bikes and pedestrians are doing and how not to hit them.

So I'm saying that Chinese drivers are a) more aware of their vehicles' capabilities and limitations, and b) more aware of other vehicles are doing. And I honestly don't notice a lot of dents in the cars all around me.

So now that I've said all that, it's hard to explain all the stuff my driver was doing. Darting and out of lanes, making a lane where there is no lane, driving right up to the back corner of a semi and matching its acceleration, turning into a bike lane and going against most of the traffic, turning against the light and crossing a bike lane, where the bikes just keep coming. Driving up onto sidewalks, backing around a corner on a sidewalk so to avoid the 'do not enter' restriction on a one way road. All of these situations would have been illegal in the US and in all probability deadly, due to Americans' love affair with their traffic conventions, and how we use conventions as a substitution for creativity and awareness.

I'm trying to sound tolerant of Chinese drivers, and I really did not worry about all the danger I was perceiving... but I will say that I will never drive in this country, and I hope I don't have to take another cab ride.

Anyway, we got to the back gate, and I gave the driver my 300Y. He said the price was 550Y and he pointed me to a cash machine. When that didn't work, he marched in and asked how I could get money; they directed us to a Bank of China. So back in the cab, I apologized and he got me as close as he could to the cash machine; I crossed the street, took out 1000Y and got back in the cab. He found my building, stopping every block or so and asking "Friend! Back entrance, how do I find it!" So we got to the building, I gave him 300Y more, and I took my bags inside Building 11.

I helped a lady find my name on a list; it said I was in 404. However, she couldn't find my key, so she sent me up to meet the RD in 109. We didn't speak English until I got to his office, at which point he told me that the cab driver totally ripped me off, that it should have been 110Y, and did I ask for a receipt. Ha. Whatever, I was just glad to be here, and honestly, I don't know how much 600Y is yet, because I haven't done the math.

So he helped me walk my bags up to 404, told me I didn't have much luggage (eh?!) and asked me, in Chinese, how my French was. I find it really hard to understand people in echo-ey staircases, so I'm sure my answer was not intelligent.

Found my way to my room, unpacked, found a note from my Chinese roommate. He showed up later with a friend, introduced himself, and asked me if I was hungry. I thought, aw that's nice! changed my shoes, and followed him to the cantina. There were six or seven stations of food; I chose a turo-turo; one meat, two vegetables, help yourself to rice. I chose chicken katzu, salty cucumber salad, and some chinese greens. My roommate (I'll introduce him later) gave me a small scoop of rice and I stopped him before he could give me more. He put his meal card on top of the squat cash register and jiggled it until he could see that 550Y had been deducted from his account. I went to find a seat, and he went to get me a drink.

He wasn't eating, because he said he had just eaten, but I finished my plate and told him next time I was buying, which he insisted wasn't necessary. Asians!

Then we went back up to the room, I showed him some of my stuff, including the Inconvenient Truth book I had brought for him, and he was writing down new vocab words for me, both in hanzi and in pinyin pronunciation. I told him George W Bush was 250, which is the strongest insult I could come up with. Finally, our water was delivered (which we had been waiting for) and then we went to the store. I bought a universal power strip, a coffee mug, some toothpaste (am I not supposed to use toothpaste from China?) a billiard-ball key chain (I chose the number 12; my lucky number 4 rhymes with 'death' and is considered very buwisit), a big tabu (which I don't know how to say in English), a notebook..... all of it from the on-campus grocery store . 80Y.

My roommate met his friends outside the store; I said goodbye and found my way back to the dorm. I went to bed before 9pm.

Woke up at 4pm, lay there for half an hour until I got bored, then I came to the balcony and blogged. It's now 5:30 and daylight. I will introduce my roommate in my next post; hopefully with photos!

Here's a list of stuff I want to buy:

light bulbs
ash tray for coins
emergency snack (peanuts)
laundry detergent/container
dry erase board
pocket notebook
clothes pins
razor

Today I think we do that activity where the program leader gives us a rendez-vous in the city, and we have to get there and back using the bus. It's an all day activity. I will meet the other Americans... and not speak English to them. Not sure if my roommate is coming; he has a big exam today.

_______

Orientation meeting. The orientation was held in English, it lasted from 8 to noon. Slide show, language pledge, pressing questions (eh?), how to use the buses.... After all that English, I feel like I've forgotten my Chinese already.

We met our Chinese roommates back at the ranch, and then it was lunch in the same cantina. This time I had some fried noodles. Next time I will get steamed noodles.

I'm thinking about not going on the hike tomorrow.
Three roommates had to go take an exam, so now I'm waiting for two other Americans to go get to know the bus system. We'll see how that goes.
______

Today went in a group of four to Carrefour. If I'm going to succeed here, I need to learn to read and speak Chinese. Sheesh. We had a bus activity, but we got off at the wrong spot, and up walking in the heat to our destination. Which is not bad, but it's not learning the bus system either. I told the director I wanted to skip the hike on Friday and do the bus thing again instead. By myself this time.

It is hot here. We had a lecture about the AC being bad for you, and needing "fresh" air. Whatever. Once we found our original bus stop, we sat in McDonalds as J ate his ice cream cone. We sat and sat until we had cooled off, despite hearing some Chinese hip hop in the speakers booming directly above me. We went down to Carrefour, and I bought a bunch of stuff; floor mats, clothespins, hangers, more shampoo, another tabu, a dry erase board, pens and pencils..

Before coming home, we sat in a famous tea shop and did nothing but relax and drink tea for maybe three hours. On the way out, we looked at Xi Hu, and then I said we should go back. Xi Hu is nice... it will be there tomorrow.

medicine: missed another day. didn't miss today; fbg was 112. two days ago when i showed roommate my testing gear and did a demonstration 154. not bad! I will definitely lose weight in China.

If you can read this post...

2007-07-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm in China and I can't seem see my own blog. So this is a test: if you can see this post, and you can see a picture of a table with a ridiculous number of different dishes on it, please let me know either by email or in the comments.

I'm here, I'm here, I'm ok.

2007-07-06T06:51:00.001-07:00

So I just this minute (an hour ago) got my internet hooked up, thanks to my roommate, who I will introduce to you properly in a future post.

So I'm checking email, posting this blogs, seeing which sites are blocked and which are not. A bigger post is yet to come.

Time To Check Out

2007-07-03T18:40:00.001-07:00

I'm about to go check out of my hotel room and take the free shuttle to the airport. After breakfast I took another walk in the neighborhood, but it started to rain so I went back. My camera battery is dying, anyway.

Hung out in my hotel room, checked out some k-pop, watched a documentary of South Koreans who go to a river on the China-North Korean border and wave at their relatives. Watched some ESL programs in Korean.

I finished the last of my beef jerky, which was my emergency blood sugar snack for the trip.

There is no tipping in Korea or in China. It's like Spain. Ahh, Spain...

I'm out of here in 20 minutes. My next post will be from my dorm room in Hangzhou.