One thing you may be curious is the food sanitation situation in China, which I haven't really mentioned. Well in my little corner of the country, it doesn't seem to be particularly strict. And so there follows a long line of possible gastrointestinal issues: giardia, shigella, amoebiasis, random and indeterminate food poisoning, hookworm, tapeworm, ringworm, and naturally the occasional mystery disease, to name a few. Almost everyone gets something at some point. Just among the Guizhou volunteers I can rattle off a list of food poisonings, giardia infections, a gallbladder removal, and some other non-food-related health issues that would make you a bit more concerned about my safety.

But, all of you who know me are aware that I have a cast iron stomach. For 11 months I shoveled down some of the more questionable fare our city has had to offer with few side effects. Okay, so I may have had giardia a couple of times. And the food poisoning I got from eating those dumplings that had thawed and refrozen was severe enough to make me contemplate life a little bit. But by and large those are small beans, and I have yet to find myself taken to a hospital against my will (which, for me, in China, would be the only way I would be admitted to a hospital).

But in the past month I've been having some... issues. At first I thought it was giardia, but the giardia meds didn't stop it. I won't go into all the symptoms, but it started out with the (now fairly common) explosive diarrhea, lack of interest in food, fatigue, etc. Then other symptoms showed up, yadda yadda yadda, it wasn't going away. The hard thing about having diarrhea - I mean real diarrhea, which I can safely say I pretty much never genuinely experienced in my pre-China life - is that you lose a lot of fluid, and a lot of electrolytes. This is what actually makes diseases like cholera so deadly. Thankfully PCVs have things like oral rehydration salts - the very same kind that the UN might give to malnourished Africans, for example - which replenish vital nutrients. When I used them, I was more or less fine. When I forgot to, I slept a lot, maybe a couple naps in a day, with some resting in between. Once, I almost passed out, but some orange juice got me back on my feet. But unfortunately, I could not easily replenish my oral rehyrdation salts because China - for the Olympics - has placed a ban on things like powders, because apparently powders could be bombs or viruses sent by certain ne'er-do-well spiritual leaders.

So because of that, and just because I was sick of being sick, I persisted in calling our awesome med staff, who gave me good advice, but not advice that cured me. This continued for a month, during which I dropped ten pounds. At one point they wanted a stool sample, but apparently China believes my feces could also be detrimental to the Olympics and national security (on that count they might have something), so that too is banned by the postal service. So we were forced to rely on a description of the symptoms for diagnosis. After a very detailed poop-description by yours truly, the docs told me I might have amoebic dysentery, which I will let you look up online at your leisure.

So I went to Chengdu, which is where I am now. We did some tests: blood work, stool samples, urinalysis, and an ultrasound. All signs pointed to "no dysentery." And you know, sometimes you really just can't find the something that is causing the problem. And sometimes the reason you can't find it is because the problem is not actually being caused by a something, but rather by a lack of something.

Dr. Jo sat me down and explained. You see, the gut is a very interesting thing. It doesn't do all the work itself, but rather relies on colonies of friendly little critters to break down food and allow digestion to happen. Okay, well my friendly little critters are all dead. In my case, it is very possible that these bacteria have been eliminated - I prefer the word "massacred" - through bouts of violent diarrhea. My prescription is to take pills that actually contain millions of live bacteria in an attempt to recolonize my gut and restore digestive functionality. With luck, they will take a new foothold and begin multiplying until my guts are once again lush and fertile. So, assuming this diagnosis is correct, I can still say that my stomach is impervious. Only my intestinal flora and fauna don't seem to be.

Incidentally, this seems to answer the age-old question of: "What will happen to you if you eat Chinese food for a year?" Or at least in my case...

Just so you know, I'm happy and healthy, and missing everyone back home. Although the quality of my internet connection has slowly degraded to the point where I can no longer use my computer for skype (along with other minor annoyances, like having to spend 10 minutes buffering for every 1 minute of streaming video). During the very rare moments when I actually stop to think about the big picture, I realize that my time here has been, and will keep being pretty transformative. But the big stuff is difficult to explain to someone who hasn't lived through similar events. (You know how when you were a kid and everyone told you how lucky you were to have the opportunities, the freedoms, and the wealth that you had? Well, like everyone else, I took that for granted. Even though I knew it on an intellectual level to be true, it took going to China for me to see it intuitively and take it to heart. I'm talking about big stuff like that.) Anyway, here's an entry on smaller things, which are easier to write about, and probably much more entertaining.

Written last weekend, 4/4

Okay... so.

I'm writing this on paper on a five-hour bus ride to Tongren. Tongren is (from what little I've heard of it) a town with a population of only two or three hundred thousand. For China, that's very small. Why am I going to Tongren? Well, it's somewhere I haven't been yet. It's close by, we have a three-day weekend for the Chinese Holiday Qing Ming Jie (Tomb-Sweeping Day), we've got a couple PCVs out there to visit, and I've got Todd and Jess to keep me company. So why not?

There's so much to say sometimes that the sheer weight of it becomes a burden. So I don't write anything. It's only in situations like this, where I'm forced to write when I can even try to make a dent in it. (Unless I want to watch the anti-Japanese war film showing on the bus, which seems like one big montage of Japs getting shot, stabbed, squished, blown up, and lit on fire. It looks to be a comedy.)

So many little things. Like the gym I've started going back to again, after a three-month hiatus. The gym always makes me feel better. Not just for the workout, which is an incredible way to get rid of stress, but also for the atmosphere. There's the usual cast of characters, from the shirtless 20-something guys flexing and not-so-subtly checking themselves out in the mirror to the middle-aged women wearing multi-colored spandex and headbands. The latter are usually in the spin class, which takes place in a room with glass walls, flashing lights, and a spinning disco ball. They blast an eclectic mix of pop, techno, and rap, depending on the instructor. And there they all go, bobbing up and down on their cycles in unison, disco lights ablaze, to Gwen Stefani's cheering, "This shit is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!" And of courses there's always at least a couple folks on the treadmills wearing collared shirts. It's a messy gym, with barbells strewn all over the floor, machines whose knobs break off when you try to adjust them, and treadmills whose speed fluctuates wildly enough to make you worry about dislocating a knee - but it's my gym, and I'm always happy when I go.

Makes you wonder what other things you're forgetting to mention. Little, day-to-day things.

Like haircuts. Since arriving in Guiyang, I've gotten my hair cut at the same place every time. Just a little hole-in-the-wall by the overpass. Less than a buck. The first time I went, the guys who worked there had me take photos with them. And each time I've gotten what is actually a pretty damn good-looking haircut. But I won't go there again, because last time they cut my ear. Bad. The barber tried not to let me see him soaking up the blood in the mirror. One, two, three tissues full. He went to the boss, a middle-aged woman who put some kind of chemical powder on it. The kind you might use on a boxer after going nine rounds. I don't know what this powder did exactly, but it stung like hell, and when I looked at the wound later, it appeared to have been cauterized. With only half a haircut, I had little choice but to let the guy finish. I offered money, but he refused and I wasn't going to argue. I wasn't so much angry as I was worried - nothing was sterilized, and I hadn't exactly planned on getting HIV that day. And the fact that they actually kept cut powder on hand got me to thinking that this ear-slicing business wasn't an especially rare occurrence. I probably should have alerted our medical officer, but I didn't. Still have the scar.

Anyway, I haven't gotten a haircut in about two months, but that isn't because I'm scared of haircuts. It's because I lost a hand of mah jongg to Jordan, and the bet was for me to go four months without getting it cut. "Hey, you're in the Peace Corps. When are you going to have another chance to do it?" He had a good point.

The war comedy is off now, and we've got an old, cheesy Hong Kong action flick on. We've been crossing through fields the whole way - Terraced Guizhou croplands blanketed over karst mountain peaks. The most spectacular countryside you'll see, but devoid of landmarks and utterly uniform in its irregularity. Every so often we pass a cemetery alight with fireworks, plumes of gray smoke twisting skyward to appease the spirits of the dead.

We're almost there. I'll write more later.

I've just now been struck with a bad case of homesick loneliness. :-( All of my family and non-Peace-Corps friends are on the other side of the planet. This is the first time since I was five years old that I have been away from my dog for more than a month or two. The only living being in my apartment is a small potted plant, and at the moment it is dying a slow, agonizing death.

For some reason I had a sudden longing for a pen pal to pour my heart out to. But then I realized that in this postmodern world of ours, pen pals have been replaced by abstract digital "spaces", which reside in California and are generally indifferent to human suffering.

So I'm updating my blog.

The beginning of this semester has been bittersweet. After the train wreck that was my first semester - my wounded ego wishes to remind you, that's par for the course - it's natural that I'm a little uneasy about starting another one. Especially when, instead of 250-ish students, I'm up to around 350 now. I teach four culture classes: one to a class of 25, two to classes of 40-50, and one to a class of 78, who also have lower-level English than the rest. This makes lesson planning for Culture a bit tricky. I also have a class of 75 students to whom I am supposed to teach speaking. Think for a moment of what that entails. How does one even go about evaluating the speaking of that many students? Well the short answer is, you don't. They will be graded solely on the extent to which they entertain me (and the sad part is that's partially true). I also have a big group of postgraduates. Yeah, I'm teaching postgraduates now. Along with the class where I can teach pretty much whatever I want to a handful of doctors and nurses who have no practical reason to learn English - a class that was, I might add, created mainly to get Peace Corps off my school's back for not giving me enough teaching hours. I walked into my first class of 70+ acupuncture majors on Monday and asked how many might get a job that involves using their English. Three raised their hands. I asked how many planned to work into medicine. About 25 raised their hands. There's good reason for... concern here.

But on the other hand, I was starting to feel like a tourist. Going back to work reminds me why I'm here in the first place. After seeing my favorite students again (and yes, I unapologetically play favorites) I realized I actually missed them. And, some of them even appeared to miss me. I know, a lot of people are missing me. But it's rare that I get to see or hear about it... In a lot of ways I'm way better prepared mentally for the teaching thing now. Much more relaxed. At our pre-semester teacher's meeting, I found myself cracking jokes with some of the other teachers and openly confessing how lucky the school was that I didn't quit to go live in Yunnan. It's hard to relax when you are the only foreigner at a school of five thousand or so in an unknown system that is wildly different from any (half-respectable) American school.

And, good for my blog, the number of vignettes in my life exponentially increases during the semester, compared with relatively vignette-free vacations that are very enjoyable, but easily paraphrased. My day-to-day life is very difficult to paraphrase, which is why I devote pages and pages to explaining it. Case in point:

Why You Should Always Talk to Creepy Old Men on Park Benches

On Thursday after teaching I bolted out of my afternoon class, went down eight flights of stairs, and was off to my apartment to unwind. My apartment is within sight of the teaching building, but this time I was intercepted en route by an old man on a bench yelling, "Nice to meet you! What's your name?" in English. You know and I know that if you are a strange old man, this is not the best way to successfully initiate a conversation. But this is China, and so such things are common. I half-ignored him once, but he yelled it again, so I was obliged to go over to his bench. He asked my name again, so I gave him my English name. Then he handed me a pad of paper. I didn't know what to do with it, so I just looked at him confusedly and hoped he wouldn't do anything creepy like whip out his dick. There was another guy sitting with him on the bench, but he didn't speak.

Students started walking past us, and the old man called one over. He was initially as weirded out as me, and the old man asked his name too, and gave him the notepad. But, unlike me, the student knew what to do with it and wrote his name. I had given an English name, so it hadn't really occurred to me that this notepad thing is common in China, where two names that sound identical might be written completely differently. But after the student gave back the notepad, the old man whipped out... an old black pen, and started writing. But even I could tell that he wasn't writing anything that looked Chinese characters. They looked more like artful sqiggles. And the Chinese guy was as confused as me. But then the old man ripped out the slip of paper from the notepad, turned it around and threw his hand up into the air so that the paper caught the sunlight. The student's jaw dropped and he let out a "whoa" of surprise. I was still very confused.

By this point, the student's reaction had caught the attention of others, and the old man started calling them over as well. They came in ones and twos until a small crowd had formed. And the old man repeated everything the same way, having students write their names, then again with the squiggles, and turning the paper to the sun. Again, the same reaction, with students eyes bugging out in awe. I still didn't get it. The old man finally turned back to me, surrounded by bowled-over students, and asked my name. This time I gave him my Chinese name and wrote it down in Chinese. The man drew some squiggles, ripped out the paper, turned it around, and held it up. And then it dawned on me that I was looking at my Chinese name written in beautiful, fluid calligraphy, done in a single stroke with no breaks. Yes, the man was writing Chinese calligraphy BACKWARDS, without pausing or even lifting his pen, and doing it as naturally as I scrawl on my notepad. He said something to the man sitting beside him, and the other man produced an artist's stamp and red ink. The old man set one of the students to work stamping all the loose sheets of calligraphy now sitting on the bench. He stamped mine last and handed it back. Frankly, I wouldn't have known what to say in English, much less Chinese. So I mumbled a lot of "thank yous" and left him, still surrounded by awestruck students. This happened 50 paces from my apartment, and I still have the slip of paper.

I actually have more, a lot more, to write, but I think I'm gonna take my time. I know this journal comes off as being episodic and disjointed, but hey, that's postmodernism for you.

1. I am alive.

2. This journal has two purposes: for me to make some weak attempt at letting y'all know what I'm doing ten thousand miles away, and for me to set down events as they happen, possibly with an eye to doing something (read: lucrative book deal) with all this text later.

3. So far, I've been doing neither. I haven't been letting you know what's going on with me because I've felt like I had to stay chronological (if you remember, my record of events is still stuck around Dec 1... three months ago), and I haven't taken the time to get caught up to now because I've been concerned with staying current, which I've done for some of you on facebook, IM, etc.

4. Whatever.

5. Anyway, I'm going to skip the past 3 months, backdate as needed when I have the time, and start afresh. I'll post an update about what I'm doing nowadays real soon.

6. As of March 1, I am officially 1/3 of the way through my estimated time in China. So far, not imprisoned, and without any severe bodily injuries or diseases that I'm aware of. Sokoly must owe someone five bucks.

Peace.

One of these days I'll actually get caught up to present day. But for now...

Back to that day in November...

Julia and I left the police station and went back to campus. The cause of my visa debacle was of course the most inane of bureaucratic technicalities: they needed two copies of all the documents and forms, since they were going to renew my visa once for 3 weeks, and then once for a year. What forms did I need to submit?

-Official Letter from my school

-Passport and visa AND a copy of the same

-Registration form from local police AND a copy of the same

- Foreign Expert Card AND a copy of the same

-Two 2-inch headshots

-Copy of diploma

-Application form

Note that ALL of this would be exactly identical (except for the date on the application form perhaps) regardless of how long my visa renewal would last. But it would seem that the police station required two sets of identical information, and, when they didn't get it, they waited a month before saying anything about it.

"This was a very serious situation, and I needed to take responsibility."

Whatever. I was able to shrug off this incomprehensibly dumb situation. Because this is a public blog, I won't say how I responded to the direct order to cease and desist my volunteer work. But I will say that our departmental secretary was briefed; in the event someone called about me, he was to answer that, in fact, I was at home resting, as I had nothing to do (I wish). And Julia was happy.

***

Julia and I went back to campus to gather the required documents... again. While Julia was searching for the papers, I hung out in the office. Grace was there too. "Hey you should go talk to them," she said, pointing to a group of people I'd never seen before who were standing in the hall. "They're your students."

I looked again. "Uh, no they're not. I don't recognize any of them."

"Oh... Julia didn't tell you?"

This day just kept getting better.

"Tell me what?"

"Oh... about the teacher training that you're starting next week?"

"Um... no?"

"Yeah, in a minute they're going to take a test to get into your class. They're feeling really nervous, you should go talk to them."

"I... I don't think so." I left the doorway, took a seat and rubbed my eyes. Nope, I was awake.

I talked to Julia a few minutes later. "So... do - do I have a new class starting next week?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. They're doctors and nurses from the hospital."

"Huh... so... what am I teaching them?"

"They just want to improve their English."

This would be all of the guidance I would receive for the class. And yes, exactly one week later, the class started meeting. I had protested initially about the lack of notice, but was reminded that the possibility of teacher training had been mentioned... during my site visit in August. What I recalled from site visit was the dean saying, "Oh, and maybe you'll do some teacher training. But I don't know about this semester, since we have the evaluation."

With how little free time I had already, you can imagine that I wasn't exactly thrilled with picking up an extra couple hours of class and an extra prep - with one week's notice. Keep in mind that, as with the rest of my classes, I was given no curriculum, no set of standards, and no goal - beyond "improve their English."

With the visa and the teacher training hitting on the same day, right about then was when I started looking for walls to smack my head up against. It would get worse.

***

Back when I was putting together my culture course, I wanted to have some way for students to chime in on the issues we were going to discuss. So I decided to have them do journals on the material and turn them in as homework. My syllabus gives the following directions:

You will be required to write a total of five journal entries. Each journal entry should be at least one page long, double-spaced if it is typed (I prefer typed entries, but if you must write, please be legible). You may turn in journal entries anytime, but three must be turned in by the end of November. Each journal entry should be about something you found interesting from class or the reading. Don't just rephrase the same things we cover in class discussion, or write what you think I want to hear - I want to hear what you think! Your journal entries are for you to express your own opinions and interests, so have fun with it!

Okay, the last part is cheesy, but this is China. Is - is that all pretty clear? If I asked you to complete this assignment, would you have a pretty good idea of where to start? Does this strike you as up to par with the work you may have done in your higher-level education? Or does it seem a little more like... middle school? If the latter is true, well that's what I was shooting for, because, frankly, college students here on average strike me as having about the same degree of academic and emotional maturity. Overall, I considered this assignment to be, if nothing else, safe.

Knowing my writing style, you have probably already guessed that the journals were an abysmal failure. And you would be right.

I got journals about people's hometowns that read like a lame tourist guide. I got journals talking about the writer's boyfriend or girlfriend, and how in love the writer is with him or her. I got journals about topics we never covered, and I got journals about topics that had nothing to do with culture. I got journals that repeated our readings or my explanations word-for-word. I got journal entries in 16-point font with two-inch margins, and I got journal entries that would have fit on a post-it note (and some that were, in fact, written on paper of that size). Now, I could have been an asshole and given everyone an F. But, as I would tell myself over and over, it's not my fault that these kids (er, 20-year-olds) were academically unprepared for the assignment. It's kind of like kicking the poor kid who sits at the back of the class because he can't read. So I changed my grading standards. Now I looked for four things:

-a piece of paper, with English writing on it that looks more or less equivalent to one page of double-spaced text

-something... anything, that was not explicitly mentioned in class

-something... anything that is at least remotely cultural in content

-nothing plagiarized

The journals were worth four points each, and you might be very surprised at the high percentage of papers that did not receive full credit.

But, by far and away, the most common type of paper was the plagiarized kind. Plagiarizing took many forms: some students recycled a line from an internet essay (there are many English essays on the internet to help students "prepare" for their school assignments), while others copied entire articles from China Daily on foreign investment, GDP, or inflation, and put their name at the top... in a different font. At first, this was a minor annoyance, but soon I found the percentage of plagiarized papers rocketing upwards. I began to get paranoid, eventually resorting to the sad work of tirelessly googling every well-formed English sentence I came across. The most difficult papers were from students who themselves had such atrocious English that even the papers they had elected to plagiarize were full of Chinglish and grammatical errors. It did not help that, in general, my students tend to think the same way about most things; even when they aren't plagiarizing, they tend to say the same things using the same words.

I did a quick mental calculation in my head. All told, I have around 110 students in my three culture classes, so...

110 students X 5 journals per student = I am going to jab this red pen into my carotid artery, stumble into the campus garden, and write on that big rock we got for the evaluation, in my own blood, the failings of the Chinese education system.

Thankfully, I checked my math, and realized that 550 journals did not really equal a gory public suicide. But it did make me very, very angry.

I gave my classes a lecture. A lecture on cheating. I told them that cheating was wrong, because it was lying to your teacher, and because you learned nothing from the assignment. I explained that, at my college, if I had been found cheating, I would have been kicked out. I taught them a new vocabulary word: plagiarism. I figured this was necessary, because on some of the papers I handed back, it was the only word I wrote, followed by many exclamation marks. I wrote a multiple-choice question on the board:

If one-forth of a paper is plagiarized, I will give ___:

A) Full credit

B) A small penalty

C) Half credit

D) Zero credit, and I will cut you with the very same broken beer bottle that made bearable the process of googling your paper line by line.

[Okay, that was partially a joke, but this next part isn't.]

I was also sure to mention, since after all this was a culture class, that cheating is a very large faux pas in Western culture (and indeed, at that moment I was willingly, for once, speaking on behalf of every teacher in every English-speaking or European country in the world). I told them that, in the West, cheating was like walking up to your teacher and spitting in their face. You would lose their trust, and never, until the day you died, would you be able to earn it back.

It was a slight exaggeration, but at the moment I felt like it was about right.

***

In case you can't tell by now, cheating is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. And in fact, it's hard to fully classify my anger. Part of it was simply blind rage at someone (indeed, many someones) lying to me. Part of it was the fact that it was done so blatantly, often with little or no attempt at concealment. Seeing as how I studied at a school that prides itself, above all else, on it's code of honor, part of it was disgust for the lack of academic honesty, and the fact that a whole generation of students (as far as I could see at my little school in my little city) were being educated to have no respect for professional integrity. Part of it was the knowledge that these students - every one of them in their last semester of classwork - had certainly been getting away with this behavior unpunished for years and years through each successive level of schooling. Part of it was the fact that the cheating defied any kind of pattern. Good students, bad students, talkative students, quiet students, students who called me their friend, students who never said one word to me outside of class: it was across the board, and some of the students who cheated had even received full credit on the journals they wrote themselves. Part of it was the fact that inevitably - due to sheer numbers and statistical probability - a small number of cheaters would get away with it. Damn, that one still makes me mad.

Anyway, my lecture didn't do anything. The papers kept coming. And I kept getting angry. I talked to other teachers at my school. I talked to other volunteers. I talked... er, vented, on my folks back home. "Don't be angry, it's nothing personal they said." I'm not sure they understood. One big reason I was angry was because it was so impersonal. I think I reached my low point when I resolved to give a second lecture to my classes about how disappointed I was with their continued cheating. I already had most of it planned out in my head. I would look at them dead seriously and speak slowly enough that even the screw-offs would understand my English:

"For those of you who are still plagiarizing - cheating - you have shown me that you have no honesty and no integrity. I want you to know that you have disgraced not only yourselves, but you have disgraced your school, and you have disgraced your parents."

This lecture would have very little effect in an American classroom, but in China this is, by far, the worst thing a teacher could ever say to his students. By cultural comparison, it would be like your parents saying you are dead to them.

Thankfully, I had a change of heart the following morning, and aborted the whole thing. I can only imagine the fallout I would have brought on myself had I gone through with it. Would have gotten seriously ugly.

***

I ate Western food. I tried to make it to the gym. I watched DVDs. I tried to take it easy, pamper myself, all those things you're supposed to do to relax when you feel yourself coming up on some kind of breakdown. But, with not much free time, and no outlet for my festering rage, I found myself losing my grip a wee bit. There were incidents of, uh, throwing things. But also attempts at making sense of my unfortunate situation. Finally, it hit me. Of course, it all made sense. The evaluation and the visa mess and the cheating, and even the way people drove and the way they worked and the way they lived their daily lives. I had finally gotten a handle on the whole thing, and was actually pretty surprised that it had taken me so long to figure out this one very obvious fact:

"This entire culture is completely corrupt and amoral down to the core."

For the record, I would like to take this opportunity to repeat that the contents of this web site and the opinions expressed herein are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps. In fact, I feel reasonably safe in making the assumption that this, for many, many reasons, is precisely the sort of thing that they would be very unhappy to see in my blog. (Hold on, don't mail out my free plane ticket yet, guys... please?)

So I'm ashamed to admit that yes, at one point, this was the garbage floating around in my head. In one week I had metamorphosed from an ignorant, though tolerant and well-meaning volunteer, into an angry, bitter racist. Not my proudest moment. And ironic, when you think about it, given the great pains that Chinese go to in order to make a good impression on foreigners. (More on this later perhaps, and why I think that, except in the case of two-week tourists, these attempts at image-management almost always work to the detriment of all parties concerned.)

You can imagine that this attitude didn't actually make my situation any more bearable. I thought I had a good explanation for the way things worked around here, but now, according to this logic, I was in a difficult situation philosophically. What is an ethical and morally-constrained agent to do, living in a sea of 1.3 billion amoral, purely self-interested automatons? Or, more to the point, why the hell wasn't I on a plane headed back to where people still acted like... well, people?

Thankfully, these thoughts didn't have long to sink in, because a) I was up to my nuts in lesson planning, my new teacher training class and, yes, the journals; and b) I was about to be rescued and (almost) completely restored to sanity. Of course, as with most events that have befallen me in China, it would all be completely unexpected.

********

WHAT ON EARTH CAN SAVE OUR HERO NOW? HAS HE TURNED RACIST ON THE CHINESE FOR GOOD? IS HE ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING VERY, VERY STUPID? PROBABLY! BUT FIND OUT IN THE NEXT UPDATE!

********

Okay, well I'm back on lj at the ego-expanding request of a couple friends. Actually, I never intended to leave, I just became so busy that in lieu of writing entries I was reduced to writing lines of 2-3 words at a time in a notepad file. Just so you know, I fully intend to turn this file of about 60 words into 20-30 pages of text or so when it's all said and done. But I'll try to do it in chunks. Let me drop a few paragraphs here, just so I can make a down payment. My last entry appears to trail off in late November, so let me pick it up about a month and a half ago...

***

Now, it was about this time that I had a rather humbling epiphany. And that epiphany was that any person, no matter how well-grounded, no matter how flexible, no matter their religion or their beliefs about the universe, no matter their intelligence or their physiology or their family history -- every person has at least one set of conditions under which he or she will suffer the onset of mental instability. I like to picture each person on earth having a little keyhole in the back of their head. Generally, this is of no consequence, but with the just the right key, suddenly all the tumblers fall right into place and there you are with nervous breakdown juices oozing out your ears.

Anyway, as you might have guessed, China was picking my lock. Why? Several reasons. There was the usual level of stress and culture shock inherent in being a PCV. Then there was also the particularly frantic pace of life that comes with being a China PCV. As it was I had very little time, and often found myself gasping for air at the end of the day, and making fun little discoveries like the fact that I'd literally scheduled myself out of eating dinner until 9:00 at night. But as November wore on, I found that further demands were being made of my time.

Have I discussed class monitors? They are essentially elected by the students of the class to act as a leader, which mainly means they are responsible for disseminating marching orders from higher up. Their part is generally to act on behalf of the administration, rather than actually representing their classmates in any tangible way. Anyway, my Tuesday culture class monitor made the very astute observation that virtually no one in the class was participating, which is problematic when the whole point of your class is to foster discussion. Seeing as how I'd been alternating between combativeness and apathy over this very issue for, oh the past two months, I was quick to agree with her, and said I was more than willing to hear any solutions she had to offer. "Maybe they are shy around you," she said, "I think they just need to get to know you better." "Well, no one has come to my office hours, which I specifically reserve for this purpose," I replied. Maybe they're shy of your other students, she suggested. Jesus, we're living in a country with 1.3 billion people, they'd better get over it! Oh, I just thought that last one. What came out of my mouth was something fairly agreeable. Anyway, the monitor's solution was for me to eat dinner with a small group of students once a week, and I agreed. Yeah, it was kind of a hassle, but I figured it was worth a shot. And at least this way I couldn't be faulted for not trying. Later that same day the monitor called me up and informed me that seeing as how we had only about four weeks of class left, and seeing as how we had over 40 students in our class, we'd better make it TWO dinners every week. I reluctantly agreed, but I told myself that from now on, whenever a student offered to pay for me, I would readily accept with a clean conscience. I deserved those free dinners.

***

I think I alluded to some minor visa problems some time ago, back in October. Well, the problem was that I needed to get it renewed. Generally, that kind of thing is handled by a school's waiban (foreign affairs office), which in my case consists of one person, Ms. Sheng. Ms. Sheng is nearing retirement age. And doesn't speak a word of English. And broke her back before I arrived at site, resulting in a prolonged leave of absence. So, what to do... well apparently the job of getting my visa renewed fell to Julia. Several trips to multiple police stations were made by her and me, with forms filled, photos taken, etc etc. Only all of this was done late in the game, and it takes time in China to process a visa renewal. So the convoluted situation was to get a three-week visa extension, which would then give me enough of a cushion for the full renewal process. I really didn't understand how this whole thing worked, but I trusted things would work out. They held on to my passport, but I had no plans for travel, so this didn't really bother me. What's the worst that could happen?

Okay, now back to late November where I get a call from Julia that communicates two things to me: 1) we need to go to the police station, and 2) it's not going to be pretty. I walked out the door feeling pretty defiant and cocksure, completely confident in the fact that ignorance is a perfect defense.

I would find out later that the mere act of my appearing in person at the police station was an implicit admission of guilt.

Julia's assessment of the situation was about right. Apparently, my visa had expired eight days earlier. So at this point I was in the country with no visa, no residence permit, no foreign expert card - nothing. I had no earthly idea what happened, but the police officer dealing with us - whose English was excellent, carrying a strong British accent - made it very clear that regardless of my complete ignorance of the situation, this had been my responsibility, and I had failed. I politely quibbled with him for awhile, nodded at his accusations, and we more or less wound up agreeing to disagree. He also asked for me to give a written statement, expecting some sort of apology, no doubt, but getting something that was... well, not an apology. What a tool. He would have pressed me harder, I'm sure, if I hadn't told him that I was a volunteer... an agent of the U.S. Federal Government, and an invitee of the Chinese National Government, no less! Anyway, I'd racked up about 4,000 yuan worth in fines, which comes out to roughly three times the value of my monthly living allowance. If anyone paid anything, it was my school, since this whole situation was after all, utterly their fault. But in the meantime, I was the one getting chewed out.

"This is very serious," the cop told me for the umpteenth time, "you need to take responsibility." I think my response was something along the lines of "Uhn," or "Ah," or some other monosyllabic grunt. He continued, "You have overstayed your visa eight days, you didn't return to collect your passport, and you have no residence permit, work permit -- nothing. This means that you are not allowed to teach until your visa is renewed."

I rubbed my chin. "Huuuh."

"I know you're a volunteer, so you aren't being paid anyway, but you don't have the paperwork to work in China. This is very serious."

I smacked my lips, scratched my head, and said "I see."

The cop went back to the paperwork, and Julia pulled me aside. "Please tell me you're not going to give up teaching this week, I don't know how we could cover all your classes," she said. I nodded and gestured charades style that we'd talk about this later, as we were standing only about 20 feet from the police officer's desk. When arrangements had been made for me to get a new visa, we were free to go.

On the way out, Julia commented, as she had several times during the ordeal, on how calmly I seemed to be handling everything. I shrugged, and tried to explain. "What's the worst thing they can do to me? Take the money that I'm given to buy food with? Kick me out of the country and send me back to my loving family, awesome friends, and good beer, where I would badmouth the PRC until my dying day? Seriously, the worst thing they could do to me was waste a couple hours of my time, and they were going to do that anyway." Okay, I didn't say that exactly. But I was damn well thinking it.

********

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THIS CRAZY PCV? IS HE REALLY THIS BLASE ABOUT THE CHINESE POPO? WILL PREDICTIONS ABOUT HIM MEETING HIS END NAKED IN A DANK, WINDOWLESS JAIL CELL COME TRUE? FIND OUT IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT!

********

P.S. That covered 5 words from my outline. Just getting warmed up, folks.

[Quick note: For the record, if you thought my entries were long before, you have no idea. At this point I really don't expect anyone to read all the way through, I'm just trying to put this down for future reference, which has so far taken many hours and caused me to stay up until 3:00am one night. Maybe I'll write a book one day if I suddenly grow a little more self-discipline. But if you do happen to read all this, you should tell me (and give suggestions!) I'll be flattered!]

Wow. This is why I never update: At all times I am either way too busy or way too unmotivated. Same reason for not writing the postcards I bought four months ago in Chengdu. But for all you guys who are my friends, you should know that I think about you a lot, even though we never talk and have little to no idea how the other is doing. Seriously, not just saying that.

Okay well sorry again, but it's probably gonna be a long entry. I know it's not easily digestible, and a lot of folks probably don't read it (I needed to get a beer when I sat down to write this). But frankly, I can only go so long without all the stuff I'm trying to remember to write down piling up and giving me a headache.

I haven't mentioned this too much, but my students are pretty nice to me. Sometimes they give me presents. They offer to pay for my lunch. Etc. Sometimes it's difficult for me to figure out why. Are they grateful for me volunteering to come teach them? Do they want to be nice to the foreign teacher? Are they doing it out of duty? Are they somehow getting something out of it? Or for the girls in particular, are they crushing on the only white dude at their school, the guy who is kind of like an authority figure, but also the same age as his students, unpaid and therefore unfireable, American and therefore presumably rich? I have no idea, so generally I try to play it cool and discourage too many favors.

That said, I've had two groups of girls cook me dinner. In other words, I have lost all shame. One group also helped me buy a majiang set without getting completely ripped off. I think the male students I've befriended are sometimes surprised that whenever they come over, there's an even chance that I am entertaining 2-5 girls at any given time. I have offered to hook them up. Also let me say that there's no way I could ever get seriously involved with any of my students. I'm just happy to have them feed me.

My male students are pretty awesome to me too though. They're my gym buddies, for one thing. I have another student, Young, who is getting ready to graduate, and once we got on the subject of traditional Chinese medicine (中医, or TCM for those of you ethnocentric imperialists who don't have Asian fonts enabled). I casually expressed interest, and then before I knew it, there we were having office hours in my apartment with him putting acupuncture needles into the braver of my female students. For what it's worth, I've had numerous offers to teach me acupuncture, but all I can think of is slipping up and poking someone's eye out. I think learning massage would be much safer. Hearing this, Young went to work. He told his friends and roommates he wanted to learn massage himself, and asked who he should study under. It just so happens that one of his friends is a graduate assistant to Xiang Kaiwei, who is an accomplished doctor and medicine teacher at our school. I am told he is the foremost massage expert in the city of Guiyang. Young met with Xiang Laoshi and revealed that it was not he who was interested in training, but the 外交 (foreign teacher). Xiang Kaiwei agreed to meet, which is exactly what we did last weekend.

Young and I showed up at the coffee and tea bar not really sure of what to expect. Actually I had to calm Young down because he was so nervous that something in his plan would go wrong that would result in one of these big important teachers being stood up. It was a nice place, nice enough to warrant my asking if there was a hotel upstairs (there wasn't). The coffee was genuine, in China an occurrence about as rare as finding genuine tea back in the U.S. Xiang Kaiwei was soft-spoken, but there was something about him that was very... cool. I've seen it before in some Chinese guys, this very detached and self-assured attitude. And yet they still manage to be deferential and pay the bill without you being able to intervene. This was basically an informational meeting for us to feel each other out. Xiang Laoshi knew some English, but he was more comfortable with Young translating. Young had counted on this translation in his calculations; he badly wanted the practice, and had made me promise not to bring any other students along who might take it away from him. We made some small talk, and I asked how long Xiang Laoshi had been a doctor. He replied with a laugh, "probably longer than you've been alive." As it turns out, this was almost true, which was hard to believe; I had thought he was in his late 30's. Soon we got down to business. Xiang Laoshi said that my first priority should be to take up tai chi, or maybe kung fu, in order to increase my stamina. It takes a great deal of endurance to give a long and thorough massage, so first I need to be properly conditioned. He asked about how long I wanted to spend learning massage, and then told me that after taking weekly lessons for one and a half years I would qualify to become a fully licensed masseuse. He recommended I take the certification exam soon after returning to the United States, where it would be in English. I would soon begin giving massages to volunteers such as Young (who may have figured this into his calculations too), and as I progressed in my training, Xiang Laoshi would bring me into the hospital across the street where he works, to practice on willing patients. In the meantime, he would order copies of a textbook in both Chinese and English. This was all way more than I expected. And Xiang Kaiwei did not impress me as a man who jokes. His last foreign student, an Italian, returned home after his training and opened his own clinic. I was very, very happy that night. I never aspired to be a professional masseuse, but I couldn't help thinking of how ridiculously cool this would make me.

[Here I stopped writing for several days. Too busy.]

I don't think that words can really express how important the evaluation is to my school. "A matter of life and death" comes close, but I think it's too cliche. I try to imagine the stress levels of prisoners in concentration camps. Take the pressure to succeed in modern America, and now pretend that the competition was increased by a factor of six. Maybe that's a better conception. I'll elaborate.

In the two weeks or so leading up to the one-week assessment, it was common to find changes on campus, large and small. One day there were crews sweeping the sidewalks. Another day there were several large rocks ranging from three to six feet across inscribed with characters, positioned around campus. Another day there was a crew with a firehose blasting the campus streets. Another day, every single classroom in the 14-storey academic building was outfitted with two framed pieces: one portrait of a legendary Chinese physician, and one calligraphy scroll. Another day there was an opening ceremony for the library: the second, fourth, and sixth floors were opened, and the rest remained frantically under construction, including the ground floor. Another day there was an austere 12-foot-tall statue installed in the courtyard. There was another ceremony with some kind of reverential bowing involved. Another day there was a crew rapelling down the 20-storey girls' dormitory, putting a shine on the large gold characters that run down the side. In the days before the big arrival, hundreds of potted plants were arranged, from flowers to trees, all around campus. I'm told that some of them were rentals that would be returned after the experts from Beijing left. There were balloons and banners. The newer 14-storey teaching building was cleaned up and outfitted with a red carpet. The older, shorter teaching building was partially covered with a 50-foot picture of... the newer, taller building. Which, I might add, is next door.

As I've mentioned before, students were woken up by campus-wide music at 6:00 or 6:30am each morning for weeks in advance. They were required to attend mandatory study sessions until 10:00 or 10:30pm. Predictably, they weren't exactly getting eight hours of sleep. As part of the assessment, students would at one point be asked what they thought of their school. Accordingly, the administration handed out typed scripts, with questions to be expected, and answers to be memorized. And since dorms are without the benefit of hired custodians, students were under strict orders to keep their living areas clean, or they wouldn't be allowed to graduate. Sometimes I'm asked if there are any differences between American and Chinese universities. Mostly I stutter.

As for the teachers, it was probably the hardest on them. There was the paperwork... endless, untold thousands of pages of paperwork in an institution where if you want copies for students, you need to collect money from them in advance, per page. In my case, I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 21-22 pages of paperwork per class. I teach six classes, so that's around 130 pages, partly in Chinese, partly in English. This wasn't as much work as it sounds. Half the paperwork I copied directly from another teacher. Some copies even have white-out over her Chinese name, with my English name written on top. Of the 65 or so remaining pages, two-thirds I took care of with an hour of cutting and pasting on my laptop. And of the last 20-ish pages, 19 were, like the rest, bold-faced lies. Of course for this last batch I actually had to write all those fake lesson plans, and that's especially unpleasant when you know those lesson plans will never, ever see the light of day. As for the rest of the teachers, they had not one semester, but six semesters of bureaucratic uh, waters to wade through. And unlike in my case, their papers were all in Chinese, which means there was actually a very real 1% chance of them being read. It has been common for teachers to work six or seven days a week, and to keep late nights. One teacher went two nights without sleep. Teachers were told to look sharp, and so they wore the best clothes they owned. One guy I know dropped some ￥2000 on a new suit (to put it in perspective, this is almost twice my monthly living allowance). And, of course, there were meetings, the most important of which took place last Tuesday. There isn't much I can say about this meeting, given that it was entirely in Chinese. But, I can say that it was in the auditorium, and every teacher at the school was in attendance. Every dean was allotted speaking time, and it concluded with a speech from the president of the college. Outside of these very basic facts, I've got to admit, I am at a complete loss. There were oaths taken, chanting, screaming into microphones. Our college's president at times reminded me of old newsreels of a certain famous German autocrat wildly shouting and gesticulating. I wondered what would happen if he had a sudden heart attack. The meeting, again all in Chinese, and largely in Guiyang dialect that I couldn't understand, lasted around 90 minutes. Afterwards one teacher said half-jokingly that it reminded her of the Cultural Revolution. Black humor doesn't seem to have a place in Chinese culture, but sometimes the situation is just begging for a laugh from some ignorant foreigner like me.

And of course, there had to be another show. Three, actually. There were some adjustments made, acts changed, acts dropped or added. But the biggest change was a matter of looks. Dozens of new costumes that looked expensive - in all they must have cost many thousands of yuan. New scenery. New, and very large stage lights, that can track, blink, and change color. Students who were part of the show (you should know, this is the same show I graced with my presence earlier this semester) were again pulled out of classes for three, four, five weeks to rehearse. I wasn't the only teacher who was angry about this... how on Earth will we be able to give a fair grade to these guys? It won't be an issue, I've heard. The students will be given free passes on their exams. Remind me to stay away from them when I need a doctor. And of course, I was called back in to play my 30-second part. I was busy, but I was willing to do my part. What I hadn't signed on for was the time thing. What is "the time thing?" "The time thing" is when you are told the show starts around 7:00. You arrive on time, and find out that in fact the show has been postponed until 8:00. You return to your apartment. Then you get a text message at 7:50 - It's starting, get over here now! You go back, and no it hasn't started. In fact, it doesn't start until almost 8:30. It was thanks to this that my 30-second part probably cost me two hours over the course of three performances. I am a pretty laid-back guy, I can tolerate a lot, but "the time thing" made me want to kill someone. I've tried to figure out "the time thing" many times since coming to China: Do Chinese arrive early? Do they plan late? Do they plan at all? I like to leave some wiggle room, but I play with minutes, not hours. At last, I think I've come up with a good answer: Events start when the most important person involved is ready. Sometimes that means it starts an hour late, sometimes it starts ten minutes early, and it has nothing to do with what people have been told. But maybe I'm being unfair, we'll see if I change my mind about this later.

On a sidenote, I never mentioned the actual act that I'm part of. Fully describing it would take another page, but suffice it to say that it involves bicycles on-stage, a hip-hop beat played with a snare drum, bass drum, and a woodblock; overalls, dudes spinning basketballs on their fingers, pretty laughable breakdancing, and uh let's call it choreographed cardio kickboxing. I'm trying to get a video, because a little voice in my head is telling me that it would be a big hit after a night of heavy drinking. I swear, the rest of the show is pretty cool, including the part about the Communist Youth League.

So, after all that spewing, you get an idea of what this evaluation means to my school. Technically, the experts don't leave until Friday, but from the point of the English teachers, our small part is over now. How did it go? Well at first I wasn't quite sure. Frankly, I'm still not sure what exactly they were evaluating. As far as actual classtime, we had one expert go to one class run by one English language teacher. I hear it went well. We also had a meeting. At first we were told to plan for Tuesday morning. That didn't happen, and so the meeting was rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon. That appointment wasn't kept either, so we moved it to Wednesday. My second class was moved to the 11th floor, near the office. I didn't ask why, but it later became apparent. After my first class, I went upstairs, where I saw every foreign language teacher standing in a row, facing the elevators. I was hurried to throw my bag somewhere, and ushered into line. If you want to know my status as far as making the English Department look good, our order in line went: Administrator, Dean, me, and then all the other teachers. Everyone was wearing their very best clothing, and I think I was the only guy without a coat and tie on (I have these things, but didn't want to get chalk all over them, and was frankly feeling rebellious in a passive-aggressive kind of way). But I don't think this was an issue, because the most important thing was the fact that I was a foreigner. I swear, China is turning me into a white supremecist. When the expert arrived at our floor, he had an entourage. Grace was there, and several others too, acting as some kind of human lubricant to keep things smooth. We greeted the expert with applause, and I was quickly introduced as the **foreign teacher**. The expert shook the administrator's hand, the dean's hand, and my hand, and then skipped the rest. He didn't speak any English; I wondered what exactly he was an "expert" in. The entourage grew larger and moved into a room. I grabbed my bag and tried to figure out what room my students were in.

Around 12:30 at lunchtime I text messaged Grace to ask if we had a meeting that afternoon. Her response: "2 o'clock. Thank u." I couldn't tell if the thank you was for going to the meeting, or for being proactive enough to ask. It was a good thing that I arrived ten minutes early, because as soon as I got off the elevator I saw everyone filing into the meeting room, past a table conspicuously aimed at the doorway, recently arranged full of brightly-colored awards. Everyone was there, including one teacher whose pregnant wife was currently going into labor at the hospital across the street. The meeting started at 1:53 by my watch. I proceeded to see some of the fastest-talking, slick showsmanship I have ever seen from our dean, all in Chinese. There was a powerpoint presentation full of images and text, appearing, disappearing, leaping into view from offscreen, and piling into predetermined layers. There were videos that played, websites launched. Our dean didn't slow down, she kept right on talking over the video clips, undeterred. It ended with a clip of one of our teachers in the nationally famous CCTV English-speaking contest. This was played just long enough for the expert to identify the teacher. Then the expert spoke for awhile, occasionally asking questions. I was mentioned twice by name, at which times I smiled and nodded dutifully, having no idea what was being said. The whole thing lasted 30 minutes, tops. And then it was over. The expert was ushered out with a new entourage, and the rest of us settled in for some kind of debriefing from our dean. People offered different impressions of how things had gone. Someone asked me how I felt about it. I was honest. "I have no idea, I didn't understand a word." There were some chuckles. And then one of the teachers burst into a fit of sobbing. The tension had been too much. It was an awkward breach in the day's formality, and no one in the room felt comfortable giving her a pat on the back. Our fast-thinking dean decided to comfort the woman with a rousing round of applause, and everyone else followed her lead, while the teacher continued to cry. Another teacher awkwardly handed her some tissues. I looked around the room confusedly, and Julia tried to lighten the mood by cracking a joke about her new boots.

Face. That's what it's all about. If the school performs well, the leaders are vindicated. If not, their qualifications to lead are called into question. Say what you will about the absurdity and the overformality and the window dressing. The leaders of the school know what must be done to ensure a favorable impression, and they can't be faulted for doing what is necessary to succeed. If there is anyone to blame... well, you can use your imagination.

So how'd we do? Well the experts left us on Friday morning, so there was a big gathering Friday afternoon around the new statue. There were flags, cheerleaders, and parade music. Teaching departments took turns having group photos taken in front of a large podium. Then the president and three other men came out and spoke for a time. I didn't understand any of the Chinese, but the message was loud and clear: we did good. Really good. Grand marching music erupted from the sound system, students scattered around the area shot off tubes of confetti and glitter, and girls wearing matching clothing began dancing in a large circle. This, like everything else that happened during the evaluation, appeared to be put on for show. I talked to Grace later about the specific results. Final conclusions would be announced in March, but in the meantime, the experts had said that they were very impressed. Out of 19 different graded areas, our school had received 18 A's and one B. The one B we received was because our central garden was a little too small. I didn't ask about the other 18. A student told me afterwards that he knew we would get high marks from the very beginning. "The leader of the evaluation was the head of a traditional Chinese medicine college in another province. There's no way he would insult his own field." Like so many times this week, I shook my head and said nothing.

On the plus side, our dean took us out to celebrate on Saturday. We got a private bus to Yu Wen Quan, which is a nice spa on the outskirts of Guiyang. The feature attraction there is a whole series of man-made "hot springs." The pools come in all shapes, sizes, and temperatures. Some are big enough to swim or play around in, and some are hot enough that you won't want to stay there for more than ten or fifteen minutes. It was very, very relaxing, although the men's locker room had some odd features. The strangest was that there were guys getting naked massages from other guys... um, I won't go into detail, but it was pretty graphic. No towel to cover up with, either. I kept my distance.

In my real journal this leads into a conversation about racism that I'm going to self-censor here because who knows what kind of people keep tabs on this blog. Just so you know, I self-censor this site a lot. Whole pages of text get cut out, but don't worry, just because you can't see them doesn't mean they were never written. :-) Mike Levy, a China 11 and my group's Volunteer Facilitator during PST, wrote this very-intriguing article for The Forward about views in China towards Jewish people. It's a worthwhile read. Mike taught at Guizhou University, which is located in my city of Guiyang. It's also worth noting that Guizhou University is the best overall college in the province, and I would expect my students to feel about the same way as Mike's, or perhaps even less well-informed. Talk about cultural differences. Mike is working on a book about his experiences, and I can't wait to get a copy (perhaps, ironically, a Chinese bootleg copy).

Chinese courtship is a strange, alien creature. An alien creature that likes to hold hands. I talked to Lulu for a long time about romance in the Middle Kingdom, and she had some interesting points. For one things, Chinese girls tend to give guys the benefit of the doubt, admitting that they can't really get to know a guy from just one short, superficial conversation. In America, many girl's make up their minds very quickly about potential boyfriends, and if there's no interest, usually she shuts him down and it stops there. Lulu has had a "suitor" persuing her for the past month, and though she doesn't have any feelings for him, she sometimes does respond to his daily calls and text messages, and has let him come along once when she was hanging out with us Americans. She's giving him a chance to win her over, but she's not optimistic about his chances. At KTV he once declared his love for her over the microphone, which would have made a younger girl swoon, but made Lulu bury her face in her hands. "He's either very brave, or very immature," I told her. "Yeah, he's too young," she said. Lulu is 25, and the guy, a policeman, is 21. For the record, I would consider Lulu to be a pretty liberated woman, for China anyway.

I was going to write something about my current obsession with reading the news, but I've decided to save that for a separate entry. I have a window in firefox saved with 50 open tabs. That's going to be a long entry too. I shudder just thinking about it.

In other news:

Mom, Dad, and Amanda are all coming to visit me! Yay! After January in-service training (IST) in Chengdu, I'll be flying to meet them in Beijing. We'll do all the hot stuff in Beijing, then fly to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors. From there, we're flying over to Yichang to take a riverboat down the Yangtze, with various sites along the way that will probably be underwater sometime in 2009 (more on this later). At Chongqing (getting into Peace Corps territory now) we'll disembark and see the Three Gorges Dam, which constitutes one of the most ambitious plans by man to control nature in the history of civilization... again, a lot more on this next time. We'll go either by plane or train to Chengdu, where hopefully I'll be able to introduce the folks to my host family and show some off some of the sites that I'm familiar with. Then we'll plane or train to Guiyang, where I can introduce friends, co-workers, and my home. We'll be in Guiyang for the first two days of Spring Festival, or the lunar New Year, which I hear is a pretty spectacular sight. In all, it will be a two-week trip after almost seven months of not seeing them. It will be another 16 months or so before I see them again, unless there is some kind of emergency back home. And if I want to see Amanda again before the year 2010, it will probably mean having to go to Africa. It's even more depressing when I see that in text. I'm trying very hard not to think about it.

Language learning is moving along, but too slowly. I need to study some more, and crack open my textbook on characters. Very very slowly, I am starting to realize my current dream of being able to read a menu in Chinese. I can tell the difference between noodles and rice, and several different types of meat (I really need to recognize the character for 'dog' though, as the Guizhou traditional dog-eating festival is close at hand, and I'd rather not unknowingly take a big bite out of Lassie). Frankly, sometimes I feel like it's a mistake having Lulu, a good friend, as my teacher. It's too easy for us to get off topic, and I need someone who will hold me accountable.

***

[I've cut out the following section, which, though interesting, could get me a one-way plane ticket home. This section runs about two and a half pages. I'm doing really well and would not like to be sent home just for some stupid blog entry (or worse, screw up the whole program!) So that's all I got, hope it's not too disjointed.]

I'm trying to concentrate on writing, but they're playing pop music over the loud speaker again, and it's filtering into my living room. It's not so much their choice of music I object to, it's that I have to listen to it, whatever it happens to be. I was drowning it out with Jimi Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner, but that's not something you can put on loop, you know what I'm saying?

If I was feeling down a couple weeks ago, there were probably a lot of reasons. First among these was that I had gone a month without eating bread. Do you have any idea what that does to the American stomach/mind? Have you ever gone a week without it? It would be like taking rice away from a Chinese guy for a month. Frankly, I don't know if he'd make it. Man cannot survive on lamian alone.

So, to escape the confines of my apartment and finally get my gluten fix, I went out to meet Kim at Wal-Mart. I hadn't previously made the trip directly from campus to Renmin "People's" Square, where Wal-Mart sits, but I'd been studying some halfway decent maps and decided to take something close to a straight route. I found that if I walked down along the river I could make it in 20 minutes, door to door. Kim took the bus, and traffic was bad, so I waited around, which gave me an uncommon chance to reflect on my surroundings.

It's hard not to be hit by the blunt phenomenological force of Renmin Square in Guiyang. The first peculiarity in this mountain city is that the square is largely flat, which gives you a surreal view of the surrounding skyscrapers. A cursory look around showed a dozen cranes within eyesight, all diligently assembling new skyscrapers. To one side is the fairytale castle tower of the Sheraton Hotel, and on the other side is a structure that looks like some artist's improbable idea of a spaceship, the side covered in Hanzi. I can read just enough Chinese to get confused: shenme shenme shenme zhong shenme dian shenme da shenme. In the distance I could see kites floating in the wind, and I wondered about the old men with nothing better to do who were no doubt on the other end of the strings.

But these are just the surroundings. Renmin Square itself is a large grassy area fringed by neatly-trimmed hedges tended by old groundskeepers. Places like this are rare in downtown Guiyang, but the layout discourages walking or playing on the grass. Across the street stands a statue of Mao Zedong in the usual posture, hand extended out to the masses. Except, there aren't any masses in front of the Chairman, only this strange little square. And underneath the square, there's a Wal-Mart.

The funny thing is that you would never know there was a Wal-Mart there. Well maybe if I knew more Hanzi; there was a whole row of huge red balloons with characters on them. Blah blah blah seventeen big blah blah. But even with the big balloons, the delivery is more understated. It's not the same ugly, oppressive monolith that you would expect in the States. The only clue that there even is something underground is that there are entrances encased in glass pyramids, one at either side of the square. They could have been lifted straight from the Louvre. I thought about the massive department store that sat underneath like it like some kind of consumeristic rhinoceros, with only its horns poking up through the turf. Like an iceberg with 90% of it's bulk below the surface, an unknown quality that made itself felt rather than seen. And if you walk around either of the pyramids to the side that Mao can't see from his pedestal, you'll find a Wal-Mart sign much more modest than the big field of flat blue that you're used to seeing. For all practical purposes, today's China is a free-market society, but Maoist socialism is still technically the law of the land. And yet even here in poor Guizhou Province, where Mao was first elected as head of the Communist Party, a Wal-Mart has been secretly constructed underground right under the Chairman's nose...

(It's worth mentioning that the government does not see a contradiction here. Mao was the great Communist founder of the Chinese Nation, and today the nation is flourishing as people buy more private property and work in private enterprise. Maybe this is similar to how George Washington was the first and perhaps greatest president, who called for an America free of foreign attachments and political parties; we talk about upholding the ideals of Washington, but the city named after him doesn't exactly embody these values. I think most nations would somewhat disappoint their founders.)

If you walk on the broad path between the towers, you'll approach a huge clock set into a flattened slope that serves as a face. The second hand is maybe 15 feet long and looks like it could take your leg off at the knee. It's strange for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that it isn't really facing you. The clock is facing up and away, towards Mao, as if he was waiting for some predetermined time. Waiting... for Wal-Mart to come out in the open? For some kind of distinctly un-Chinese direct confrontation? I wondered about how the statue looked when it was first made. I'm sure it was more imposing then, but that was before the skyscrapers. Walking up to the foot of the clock and looking back towards the statue, I realized that Mao's face was completely blocked by a Chinese flag blowing in the breeze. Even he couldn't see what time it was.

That's when I gave up trying to find any kind of significance or meaning behind the design of the square. A thousand years from now, archaeologists will be scratching their heads. An old, and very slow beggar woman came up to me asking for change. After a few "I'm sorrys" out of courtesy, I left her to meet up with Kim.

Anyway, I bought three loaves of bread, two packages of something resembling pound cake, peanut butter, blueberry jam, and a block of real butter imported from New Zealand. I've made grilled cheese (with my block of second-hand mozzarella) and countless PB&Js. I also found that my disinfector machine gets hot enough to make toast (made 3 pieces), which I ate along with eggs (3) and bacon (the whole package).

Happy days are here again.

And just in time, too. I expected to lose weight, but nine (ish) pounds in something like five weeks is a bit much. Todd and Dave both said they could see it in my face (although Dave "saw it in my face" before I dropped a pound, so I'm not exactly worried). But don't worry, I'm certainly not wasting away. And more importantly, I'm going to the gym now in an attempt to make up for the ridiculous loss of muscle mass I've had since leaving home. It's scary how little I can bench now. But as they say, easy go, easy get the hell back here...

Otherwise, I'm ridiculously healthy. Knock on wood. I'm pretty careful about preparing my own food anyway. It's probably just a matter of time before I get something, since most people do. Here's hoping it's just regular ol' food poisoning or girardia and not something I need hospitalization for. I had my first glimpse of a Chinese hospital yesterday, and though I have high confidence in the medical staff, that is not a place I want to go back to anytime soon. I'll spare you the details.

The hospital tour was part of a little visit I had from Dr. Jo, our (American) PCMO. She had a brilliant idea to solve the problem of my unlit, creepy, and somewhat treacherous stairwell: buy a bunch of light bulbs and change them all myself. Huh, why hadn't I thought of that before? Anyway, I think I've changed them all now. I wonder if anyone knows that this is the doing of the cagey laowai who lives upstairs...

Teaching is good. Students are good. Some classes are easier than others, and some bring out the natural asshole in me. You might be surprised. I have one class where the first thing I do EVERY single week is refuse to begin class until the first two rows of seats are filled. At least pretend you want to be active in class, people. But on the other hand, I tolerate some things pretty regularly, like falling asleep in class, especially if it's early. Shit, what else do you expect with mandatory night study until 9 and campus-wide wake-up music at 6 or 6:30? Not that I don't occasionally call someone out... I've gotten a little tighter with some of the students too. I have them over for office hours, or I help them out with some English work they have, or we go to the gym to work out, or we just chat. This helps smooth over the latest insult from The Man. The higher-ups figured that teachers ought to be in class ten minutes early to get ready. Okay, fine, I don't always need ten whole minutes, but I agree with the idea. But some genius in admin figured that there ought to be a little *ahem* help *ahem* from the school for teachers who have difficulty arriving on time. Their solution? Ten minutes before the first class of the day, guards block off the elevators and refuse to let anyone use them. This is presumably all thanks to the ping gu (evaluation). Let me call your attention to the fact that this term is two letters away from being pi gu (ass). I think there's a common root in there or something. I am mostly trying to suspend my judgments about my first semester on this campus.

Language learning has been going well enough. My progress in Hanzi is kind of like watching grass grow, but that's just because I'm not investing enough time. As far as oral language goes, well what can I say. Chinese is unique in that every word sounds like at least three others, and more often it sounds like ten or twenty others. Some common mistakes (I'm censoring this myself for the sake of small children who may be reading... you never know):

+ Instead of saying "Nice to meet you" it is very easy to say "I'm happy to poop on you."

+ Instead of saying "Please say that again" it's easy to say "Please [um... please yourself] some more."

+ Uh, don't ask for meatballs unless you really know what you're doing, or you might be asking to eat part of your waitress's anatomy.

+ Depending on context, you may be talking about a chicken, or you may be talking about a prostitute.

For the record, I have the best Chinese teacher ever.

Usually there's some kind of crisis every day waiting to try to kick my ass. Mostly they fail. Forgetting something, having some event sprung on you, being late or hungry or not having it entirely together. Many of my crises have to do with getting my visa renewed before I get fined half my monthly allowance per day of overstay. I've gotten used to this daily rhythm, and mostly handle these things well enough. And so I was growing wary when I went a couple days without any significant foul-ups. Today made up for it. First, I found out at lunch time that there was an English speaking competition at 2:00 that I needed to judge. And it was, uh, pretty rought. For so. Many. Reasons. If I gave you details you might lose IQ points. The other crisis was when I decided to be cleaner than usual and do some laundry. I really cranked up the tap, manually filling up the machine like I always do, when the hose popped off from the spicket and around a gallon of water dumped onto my floor. I have a mop, but mainly it moves the water around rather than soaking it up. The minor flooding was a minor annoyance though, and mostly I've taken today in stride and managed to still have a reasonably decent day. And now... time for bed. Peace folks, sorry for the length. Took me awhile to write it too.

Edit: One minor detail I forgot to mention: I'm told that I wound up in news footage of the speech competition a couple weeks ago. It figures, the cameraman was aimed at me half the time he was there. But more strangely, this makes me 2/2 for getting myself on tv when I've left North America. And the first time I was 12. AND I've never been on tv in the United States (to my knowledge). Strange, no?

Okay well as for how I spent my holiday... I went to Qianling Park with two of my students, one of whom was assaulted by one of the monkeys (don't worry, she's okay). I went to Wal-Mart and picked up some much needed stuff. I discovered that my couch actually turns into a bed, sort of, and is probably the most comfortable couch of any Guiyang volunteer. I discovered that my little oven is, in fact, not an oven but some kind of disinfecting machine. I have no idea what it does, but maybe I'll put some chopsticks in there, turn it on, and see what happens. I also had a really good time one day hanging out with Grace and some students making shaokao (Chinese barbeque) and fishing (unsuccessful but fun). This weekend we had lots of visitors... all the other 13s from Guizhou province! It was good seeing that they were well and hearing all their stories. I made myself do some cooking... still very simple and not very good, but at least I can do something with eggplant now. And of course I saw some clubs... ah, and I also got to check out the legendary dive bar called South Park, which occasionally features Guiyang amateur metal bands. Next month I think they have an American band lined up, so that'll be a must-see. Had some good conversations with small children, and one with an old dude up on the overpass. Lot's of fun times at Todd and Jess's place too. And I did some cleaning. Okay, I think that wraps up the rest of my break. Man, I can't believe it's back to teaching tomorrow.

Hope everyone else is doing well!

Okay, so I've been busy. Really busy. It's gotten to the point where it doesn't make much sense to give a blow-by-blow account of the past three weeks, but here are some of the more important bits.

Classes:

Classes are going well. My students vary a lot in ability, but I'm working on them. And I'm trying to keep classes as fun as I can for the kids. Oh, and when I say "kids" I mean people my age. Actually some of my students are 23, making them a year older than me. I have been repeatedly asked my age, and have so far managed to conceal this fact. That said, sometimes I feel like I'm teaching to kids. Not because they're stupid... no, actually they're pretty bright. But since coming to China, I have yet to witness one single display of cynicism, sarcasm, jadedness, or black humor - which we all know to be hallmarks of American college students today. It's kind of scary sometimes...

School Evaluation:

My school's being assessed by the Education Ministry. This means a HUGE amount of paperwork. Some of the other English teachers were up until after midnight doing paperwork one time. There's all kinds of protocol, every t has to be crossed, i's dotted. They even have to be careful about how they sign the forms. Oy, I'm glad that I'm mostly getting off without too much added work, but I do feel bad that I can't help everyone out.

Camping Trip:

Last weekend I went on an unbelievable camping trip to the countryside, about two hours by bus followed by a two-hour hike. Chinese countryside isn't as woodsy as in the U.S. because pretty much every square inch that can be used for farmland is. But I can't help but think that the farmland here is much more beautiful than in the States. You can see for yourself, if you haven't already. The place we went is called Guijiaqiao. Some highlights:

-the fact that you could pretty much point a camera in any direction and take an awesome picture

-the crazy looking exotic bugs

-the cool rickety wooden trough lashed together to transport water through the countryside

-some farmers letting Valerie (try to) use a foot-operated thresher

-the rural family that caught us a chicken, which they'd later kill, make into a soup, and bring to our campsite

-eating random berries and... stuff

-the waterfall, and the fact our campsite was within earshot

-me thankfully having brought some first-aid supplies, which came in handy when Kim sprained her ankle

-underarmor. i love that stuff.

-the fact that lulu brought hotdogs to cook over the fire, knowing we'd appreciate the familiarity.

-chatting in Chinese and playing do di jiu late at night with Lulu's (cute) friends

-double-timing it back into town with our group leader to make a commitment i had that day - we did it in about 1:15

Actually, about that commitment I had to come back for...

The Show:

The show went alright. Actually, there's an encore presentation tonight for experts from Beijing. I declined to attend the rehearsal last night. Fun fact: none of the students in the show are doing it by choice. Representatives from the school scout out students at the end of military training before they start their freshman year. Apparently the training ends with some kind of "evening" put on by the students. The ones who particularly stand out are selected to do the show, which is programmed each year by... someone important. These students are selected to put on the show every year for their whole time in college. Generally, their other classes are canceled for them so that they have plenty of time to rehearse. I'll let you guys decide for yourselves what to think of that.

Mid-Autumn Festival:

Mid-Autumn Festival was on Tuesday, and is one of the more important traditional Chinese holidays. It's a family-oriented harvest festival, which makes it a little like Thanksgiving. The popular holiday food is called yuebing or mooncakes, which are... strange. Usually a kind of non-crispy cake-ish pastry-thing with a sweet filling, and usually egg or meat inside. It's kind of weird, and frankly most of them I don't like. Actually there are quite a few Chinese who don't care for them either, but they're more popular for what they symbolize. It's traditional to give (sometimes very expensive box-sets of) mooncakes to friends, co-workers, and others as a sign of goodwill. And some of them do actually taste pretty decent. Anyway, Mid-Autumn Festival isn't an official holiday (China prefers to skip one-day holidays and then give folks like three days off all at once), so after teaching I spent my holiday with Julia's family. I think I mentioned already that Julia is the head of the English teachers (as opposed to the dean of all foreign language teachers), and also really really nice. Got to meet her husband, who also has perfect English and is clearly a bright guy. Got to meet Julia's cute little baby, who is usually spoken to half in Chinese and half in English and will have a HUGE edge when he's older. Got to meet and play majiang with some more of their family and was thrilled with their standard Mandarin pronunciation. Oh yeah, and the swanky restaurant and banquet food rocked too. Given the fact that I was celebrating a holiday I didn't know existed two months ago, it was a good time. :-)

As for what I'm up to now, I've got a week of freedom coming up thanks to National Day, which is one of those three-day official holidays I was talking about. And actually, most schools including my own give a full five days off by holding Thursday and Friday classes on Saturday and Sunday. Which means I have class tomorrow, but then it's about eight days to decorate/organize, explore, cook, visit, get a gym membership, blog - pretty much whatever I want. So, consider me caught up.

P.S. If anyone wants to help out Peace Corps China BIG TIME, help out Matt Scranton, a China-12 volunteer. China is holding a contest for foreigners living and working in China. The top eight with the most votes will be named Olympic torchbearers. This would be awesome publicity for Peace Corps and it's been Matt's dream to carry an Olympic torch. So if you want to give Matt your vote, go HERE. Actually, I think you can vote once per day, if you're especially inclined...

Okay, well the good news is that from my little setup here at the hotel I have no problems whatsoever computerwise. The bad news is that I have a pretty bad cold. Oh well, I still think it's a net positive. Get ready for a whole heap of backlogged entries.

8/27/2007

Hah

Keeping this short because I don't feel like going over everything on site visit again. Why do I say again? Well my keychain - including my Guiyang apartment key, department office key, and USB flash drive that usually holds all my blog entries until I can upload somewhere - has been misplaced. Really misplaced. By me. I'm not even sure if it's lost for good or if it's just sitting somewhere back in my apartment in Guiyang. If it comes back into my possession (and I really hope it does) I'll backdate the entries I typed up during site visit. There's a lot on that little drive, and I'd like to think that some of it is at least a little interesting. If it really did just fall out of my pocket at some point on the 18-hour return train ride, then oh well. I commend it to the people of China. Thankfully I believe I brought along some CD-RWs, so I should still be able to post this either at the cafe or from Han Han's computer (assuming I can get through the Great Firewall... I tried to tonight and found that every proxy site I know was down. Don't worry, once I'm set up at site it'll be a whole 'nother bowl of noodles.)

But let's just say that it all went well and I made it back safe. I'm pleased with where I'll be living, excited about what I'm teaching, and really happy to know some of the people who will be my friends at site for all or part of the next two years. I'm back home now hanging out with the host family, actually going to bed soon so I can wake up rested for another week of training. This week is going to be very important for a few reasons: I'll have my language proficiency interview, basically a 20-minute conversation in Chinese to see if I'm good enough with it. It's the last week I have with my host family, which is the end of what has been an (overwhelmingly) positive experience that I think I'll cherish for a long time. It's the last normal week of training... next week it's back to a hotel and back to a fairly unpredictable schedule of events.

Other thoughts:

-Hey, I know Ma Jiang (or "Mahjong" or however it's normally spelled in English). And if you're halfway decent at Ma Jiang, you can impress the crap out of Chinese of all provinces, ages, sexes, and ethnicities. Everyone plays Ma Jiang.

-Hey, I will NEVER know Chinese Chess. I could practice for ten years, and I bet those old men I see playing it on the street would still kick my ass.

-I used to think it was easier to stay clean-shaven, then I thought it was easier to just grow a beard. The truth is that it's neither. I've settled into a nice routine of shaving twice a week, and I think that's something I can live with for two years.

-Students have returned to campus. Lots more crowded, lots less peaceful. But it's still good to have some activity going on around here besides PC training.

-Some of my model school kids are keeping in touch by sending me picutures they took on vacation. I got some pretty sweet pics from T!bet. :-)

-I was in the really smoky internet cafe talking to my (real) family when suddenly I was interrupted by a couple college girls sitting in the booth across from mine. "Excuse me" they said in English, and I stopped talking for a second and removed my headset, expecting them to bitch at me for talking too loudly or something (which shows that I've learned virtually nothing about China, by the way). Well no, actually what they wanted was my phone number AND they didn't believe me when I said I didn't have one... which is true, by the way. Actually I wouldn't read too much into this, I've had guys do the same thing. If you're white and want to be a rockstar, come to western China my friends.

Okay guys, that's all I got time for. Peace.

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8/29/2007

Points of Departure

Tomorrow host-Dad is leaving for Shanghai, where he'll keep working on his doctorate in (I believe) education. That makes tonight the last night I'll get to hang out with the host family together (Edit: Scratch that, Han Han is at his girlfriend's for the night.) They've been great, maybe even given me the best homestay experience of anyone in my training group. Yesterday host-Dad took me to get a massage. I got an hour-long, full-body massage for what comes out to about $2.50. Not that the host parents would let me pay for it. And then later they had a long conversation about what to get me as a parting gift. After much deliberation, I finally told them that I would like a panda, but I think that's a reach. I think a gift-shopping trip downtown is in the works. I'll definitely stay in touch with these guys, and hopefully have some chance to at least partly return the hospitality, though it would take a hell of a lot to pay back even a fraction.

In other news, I had my LPI today, which is half an hour of talking in Chinese with a Peace-Corps-certified interviewer, while being recorded. It doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things... if I score "intermediate-low" or higher I pass, and if I fail I have to get a language tutor, which I will be doing anyway. But it is an indicator of whether I've actually learned anything in PST, or whether I just spent two months screwing around. I was expecting to come in at about middle of the road, but I had one of those days today where I just kept pulling answers out of my butt like freaking magic handkerchiefs. From what I understand, I wasn't in one of the rooms that was being tested for the more advanced levels (I'm definitely not a language learning superstar), which means that I wasn't given the more particularly challenging questions. But I think I kind of managed to work over my interviewer into scaling up parts of the interview. For instance, I wasn't asked to write my name in Hanzi like some of the other guys, but when I mentioned I was an English major, and did a little writing, I found an opportunity to drop that I could write a little Hanzi. Thankfully, she asked for me to write what happens to be the ONLY Hanzi I know, which is my Chinese name. Major show-off points. Later on we did a roleplay, and she picked out a card with a scenario on it. I read it over and muttered "hmmm, bu tai nan" ("not too hard") in passing, which actually caused her to grab the card back from me and give me another one! I really didn't see that one coming, but apparently she gave me a scenario that was a little harder... I don't think we actually got to the unit that covered it, but I didn't see as how I needed that much extra vocab, so I got by okay. The trick to roleplays is just to ham it up anyway, which I can do when necessary. So I got to show off, and I think it made a difference. Our training director dropped by later today (I'll get to that later) and mentioned that my Peace-Corps-certified interviewer, a friend of hers who I'd never met before, was apparently impressed enough to mention me by name. So at this point I'll be satisfied with intermediate-low, but now I'm thinking that I ought to come in at the intermediate-mid level, which would pretty much prove that I haven't spent the last two months screwing around.

Okay, so the reason for the training director coming by this evening was so I could help her have a talk with Kristen's host family. See, Kristen decided over site visit that she was going to go back to the States and hang it up in China. In fact, I believe today she got on the plane for home. I was the first trainee person that she told about it. We had a good conversation, and I think she felt good about her decision, because she really wasn't very happy over here. So because we're friends, and because she lives in my building, and because I've met her host family, our training director asked me to go with her to Kristen's host family to have a chat, and to present a little certificate. Kristen's the first one from our training group to go home, so I guess that took a lot of folks by surprise when they heard the news. I wish her luck.

What else... oh, well a few nights ago I had the rare privilege of seeing my dinner killed. Dinner thankfully happened to be a rooster... I say "thankfully" because they also had fluffy white bunnies available for killin' and grillin'. The "waiter" (it feels strange calling him that, maybe "cooking assistant" makes more sense) reached down into a cage and pulled out a rooster by the wings, with all kinds of kicking and crowing involved. Han Han thought he looked good, so we gave the go-ahead. I told Han Han that no, I don't believe I'd ever seen a chicken killed before, so he took me back to the kitchen. And then the friendly chefs invited me into the kitchen so I could get a real good look. Well let me tell you, if you're an American visiting China, you should probably just not look at the areas where your food is prepared. We're talking blood splattered on the walls, bowls of blood collected on the counter, buckets of various liquids sitting on the floor, not exactly identical to American standards of cleanliness. My standards for food safety here are pretty elastic (read: almost nonexistent), so I wasn't bothered too much by what I saw. Anyway, I watched the chef break the chicken's neck pretty quickly and humanely, then saw off the head. The writhing decapitated chicken-body he threw under the table, where it convulsed for a few minutes before being prepared to eat. Actually, before it had stopped thrashing, the chef had already offed another rooster, and threw the second one down with the first. I imagine this was all probably about as humane as the mechanized chicken-processing houses you find in the States. You know, I think everyone should see their meat killed once in awhile. It reminds you of where your food comes from, something most Americans don't have a clue about anymore. Oh, and the chicken was delicious, though quite spicy. I know I must be almost equal to Sichuan people now, because even Han Han said it was too spicy. I doubt I'll even be able to feel spicy American food now.

Okay, well as always there's more, but it'll have to wait. There's interesting stuff that happens on a daily basis here, just not enough time to tell it. Why, the other day I see a college girl wearing makeup and a cute frilly dress get on the bus. She has a red purse in one hand, and a hacksaw in the other one. She walks back to take a seat, and everyone pretty much accepts her behavior as normal. If I saw crazy shit like that back in the States, it would be the highlight of my day, and I'd be telling everyone I know. Here it's pretty much commonplace on the weirdness scale and not worth mentioning. Go figure.

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9/1/2007

Okay, well I guess now I ought to offer up some reason for all the silence on my end these past few weeks. You already know about the thing with my keys and USB flash drive. I have a CD-RW, but I put some picutres on it to give out and haven't gotten it back yet. Also, the PRC has finally gotten around to blocking the free online web proxies that I'd been using to post blog entries from public computers. So even if I did have a way to transport all this to Han Han's computer or to an internet cafe, I'd still be stuck. So it'll all have to wait until my internet connection is up and running in Guiyang. Back in the States I thought all the ahem, precautions I was taking were too elaborate and excessive, but looks like they'll come in handy after all, assuming they work. Of course I might just get fed up with it all and move the blog somewhere else, who knows.

I've been getting all kinds of gifts from the host family. Han Han gave me a really cool travel majiang set full of tiny tiles about the size of your fingernail. I'm still nowhere near a good enough player to think about playing for money, but at the very least I can hold my own against average Chinese folks if I'm focusing closely on the game, and they're not really paying attention. But it's totally worth my time to become passable, because everyone in China plays majiang. I get major cool points if I can play majiang with someone, even if I don't understand a word of what they're saying. Anyway, Han Han also gave me another gift, which I think is really from the whole family. It's a really nice box with a couple of beautiful vases inside. It all comes from Xinjiang Province (I believe formerly Eastern Turkmenistan), which has a completely different culture from the mainstream Han Chinese. It's almost completely Muslim, and the people have much more in common with Pakistanis, or even Turks, than with ethnic Chinese. The Xinjiang folks get kind of a rough deal... from what I hear, most of them are very poor, and they don't have a whole lot of things like water or medicine readily available. But Xinjiang food is delicious, and a welcome change from the normal Sichuan food I eat day in, day out. They make delicious things like naan and some killer lamb dishes. I could go on... but getting back to my presents, that's why you might not realize that they're technically "Chinese" at first glance. I get the feeling they're pretty hard to find, but in any case they'll probably be just about the nicest things in my Guiyang apartment. I had a gift for Han Han and his family too, but I don't think mine was half as cool. Oh yeah, and I also got some three books, two written by a group that host-Dad belongs to, one written by host-Mom. It's all in Hanzi so I can't really do much with them, but it's cool just to have something to show off. Oh, in case you were wondering, host-Mom wrote a book on calligraphy, and host-Dad helped write a book on calligraphy (with a couple pictures of Han Han when he was a little kid modeling how to hold the brush) and another one on art.

As far as China goes, I realized the other day that I don't ask too many questions, which frankly has helped keep me sane. Questions about small things usually get answered in due time, and the ones that don't are probably too small to worry about anyway. I get more wrapped up in the big questions about the Chinese outlook on life and how differences in language can influence and reflect differences in behavior and trying to figure out where China is headed one year, ten years, fifty years down the road and how that exactly fits together with the past decade, century, millenium of Chinese (and world) history. Not that I really have any idea of how to answer all those things, but they're still more interesting to think about than beating my head up against a wall puzzling over where host-Mom is today or the physiological implications of Han Han saying that some Chinese medicine just doesn't work right on foreigners. But ignoring most of the small questions also makes fairly oblivious. Apparently oblivious enough to be completely unaware that the room next to mine was occupied by two college students sometime over the last few days. That's pretty bad even for me, but now that I've discovered their existence, they seem nice. The girl has supernatural majiang skills.

My achievement for this week was drawing up a syllabus for the three American Culture classes I'll be teaching. I still have to prep for the first couple weeks of lessons, but the syllabus is a big step. I'm particularly proud of fitting a full course calendar, classroom rules, grading, and specific assignment requirements all onto one side of one piece of paper. This is important because in China students generally pay for all their own photocopies - one of MANY differences from the U.S. system. I'm getting all geared up to start teaching Monday of next week, but I'm trying to temper my enthusiasm. The first semester is almost always the hardest. I'll be "starting" the semester two weeks into classes... other teachers are picking up my classes for me last week and this coming week. Plus I have a really strong gut feeling that my culture book -- though excellent, worlds away from the horror stories I've heard from some China-11s and 12s -- will be almost impossibly hard for the level of my students. That's always discouraging. Also, I only get to see these guys in class for two hours a week. In total, that's only marginally more than I saw of my model school students. As for the other course I'm teaching, Speaking and Listening, I have absolutely no clue how it works. I haven't seen the textbook, I don't know any specific goals beyond the name of the course, and I haven't done a minute of targeted preparation. I should mention though, this is the norm for volunteers. Actually I'm ahead of the game because I know the courses I'll be teaching, whereas it's common for folks to find out what courses they're teaching 24 hours before their classes are scheduled to meet. Still, that doesn't mean I'm exactly chill about it.

Hah, it's funny, I just thought back to when I was a college freshman one of the first times I came home for one of the breaks. It was so weird coming home for a visit, because I'd never really seen home from that perspective before. Bringing a backpack up to my bedroom and feeling like it was someone else's room that first night. I kept commenting on how low the ceiling felt. It even smelled different. Actually the whole house smelled different, like when you come back from a week-long vacation. But you never smell the house you live in, so of course my parents didn't notice, only I did. There was something a little alienating about that. And something a little alienating about plugging in my laptop instead of having my PC there, always on and always exactly how I wanted it. But it wasn't just alienating, I think it was also a little liberating. I dunno, it was a lot of feelings, and I can't really pick them out or distinguish them from one another. I don't think it's a particular logical reaction. It's more of an aesthetic thing, returning home after you've had time to think of somewhere else as home - it affects you psychologically I think, because the whole context has changed while your back was turned. I don't know why I thought of that just now, because I'm just about as far from home as I can get without NASA training. Frankly, despite the unbelieveable hospitality, I don't even feel like China is my home yet. I wonder when that'll happen...

Oh yeah, and there I go forgetting the most important part of the whole freaking week. We had a family appreciation night on Friday at a banquet hall nearby. Unfortunately only Han Han could make it, since host-Dad was making the 38-hour trip to Shanghai and host-Mom was at work. But we certainly tried to eat our share of too many awesome dishes. There were a lot of speeches (as is the custom at Chinese banquests, and Sarah did a bang-up job with her speech in Chinese on behalf of us trainees), a slideshow of host family photos with music thanks to Todd, a Chinese song that we all sang (with a dance choreographed by Terrie, who also did a great job), and certificates for all the host families. It was a really good time, and it was touching how attached some of the families had become to their trainees. Later on we presented some gifts we'd picked up for our language teachers and training site manager. Then we made plans for afterwards, which turned out to be KTV nearby. The KTV place was only so-so, but really the company is all that matters for that kind of thing. I "sang" YMCA and Take On Me (I nailed the falsetto by the way and don't let anyone tell you otherwise), and of course we had some people who could actually sing do a good job too. Han Han came too. This was a big night because (despite a lot of rule-quibbling) it was the first night we could have a drink with our language teachers. What can I say about the alcohol tolerance of xiao Zhongguo nuzi without offering up any specific details? Adorable? Yeah, I think adorable is the word. It was a blast.

And earlier that day we all finally got a tour of Peace Corps China headquarters. The library they have at the IRC there is pretty good. I picked up a couple books for learning Hanzi (Chinese characters) because I am TIRED OF BEING ILLITERATE AND READY TO ORDER FOOD OFF A MENU LIKE A NORMAL PERSON.

As for today, I've been inside all day. Slowly packing up for the Tuesday morning move-out. Then it's a hotel for four days, another 18-hour train ride -- this time with over 100 lbs of luggage -- arrival in Guiyang, and teaching class Monday. I'm enjoying downtime while I have it. Spent a few hours listening to music and writing this. Finished reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Haven't been mentioning my reading these past couple months. I also read Fahrenheit 451 and The Catcher in the Rye. I could probably read "classic literature that every educated American ought to know" for the rest of my life, and still miss something that would embarass me if it came up in discussion. What kind of English major am I anyway? But anyway, it's all good reading.

Okay, well I'm getting back to packing. Looking forward to calling home tonight. I think about that weekly call home just about everyday. Once I'm in Guiyang, I'm making it twice weekly, at least. Shit, I called home more in college, and there I had a support network.

Okay, well I haven't been able to post for lots of reasons... more on that later... but it looks like the firewall is NOT one of those reasons, interestingly enough. Anyway, that doesn't mean I'm not writing, so expect a ton of updating either when I move out of my host family's place (Tuesday) or when I finally get set up in Guiyang (next week). Pain in the ass LJ... *grumble*

Oh yeah, and I'm in good health and having a great time. And apparently learning a lot of Chinese. Peace!

8/15/2007

Some things I forgot to mention yesterday...

I can see LJ comments in my email, but replying is usually too difficult and time-consuming. This will (hopefully) change at site, but in the meantime, email me if you want a response back. I'll probably be available almost 24/7 in some way via skype and AIM for part of next week during my site visit. Then one or two more weeks off the grid before I permanently move into my Guiyang apartment.

(Same thing with photos... expect a ton to be uploaded next week, followed by silence, followed by some kind of regularity. I also have some movie files to upload somewhere, maybe youtube.)

Okay, well I finally broke down and bought some DVDs yesterday. I'd been too busy, but I figured I'd celebrate the day of site announcements with a little splurging. For a total of 18 Yuan (around $2.30) I bought:

-The Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie

-Apollo 13

-Hot Fuzz

-Season 1 of Heroes (on 2 discs)

I tried them out, and it was mostly a success... they all look pretty good. The only bummer was (surprisingly!) Apollo 13, which turned out to have only one audio track, which was Ron Howard's director commentary. That was a very annoying discovery. Nonetheless, I feel like I got a pretty good bargain. I never bought movies back home, but at around 60 cents a disc it's kind of hard to have buyer's remorse. Let me know if you want anything.

Speaking of Chinese law, we had a good training session on the topic earlier this week. I think it's always important to know at least the basic legal system of any country your visiting or living in. Some interesting conclusions were reached. I think the thing I'm most thankful for is that nowadays you are legally innocent until proven guilty. Specifically the change was brought about by calling the prisoner on trial a "suspect" rather than "the criminal." This minor change in semantics came about all of eight years ago, and I'm glad that it's firmly in place now.

OH yeah, don't do drugs, kids. If you are found with more than 50 grams of cocaine in your possession, you are subject to the death penalty. This is regardless of your product's purity... if you have (for instance) 5 grams of cocaine and cut it with 45 grams of talcum powder, that'll do.

The other interesting piece of information involved restricted areas, places that are off limits to foreigners. The biggest and most obvious restricted area is T!bet (which you can visit, but involves miles of red tape to do so legally), but there are some other smaller ones. Apparently PC has tried to get a list of sites from the government, but uh, that information is restricted too. I imagine the biggest clue to know if you've been to a restricted site is if you have been detained and are being transported to a police station.

Oh, and don't take pictures of anything that looks like something you shouldn't be taking pictures of. There was an... incident sometime ago. It involved reassignment halfway across the country.

Another good thing: Confessions and testimony extracted through force (Dick Cheney would say "enhanced interrogation techniques") are not valid in court. However, material evidence found because of information extracted through force is fair game. The important thing to remember though is that there is a system in place, and it is adhered to. And it's a given that foreigners are treated really well in police detentions, because no one wants them to go to the foreign press later with an axe to grind.

Not mentioning any of that to scare anyone, by the way, I just found it interesting.

New topic: Feminism in China is an interesting concept, and not at all like the idea of feminism back home. All the following is based on my observations, but even more on what I've heard from other volunteers/trainees. Just keep in mind that ALL of it is a gross generalization... remember I've seen very little of China. Chinese women got their biggest leap of independence during the Cultural Revolution, where the sexes truly were treated without distinctions. Since then, there has been what some would call "backsliding", but also a lot of progress. On the one hand, from what I've seen Chinese dudes are totally whipped. I've seen lots of guys carrying purses and shopping bags. I saw one guy helping his girlfriend pick out tampons. And I know at least one instance of a Chinese woman telling her boyfriend to propose marriage or else she was breaking up with him. That's all pretty liberated given that 100 years ago you still had footbinding going on. I've heard that when a Sichuan couple is having a spat, the girl (Sichuan women, like Sichuan food, have a reputation for being spicy) may or may not go into hysterics because it causes her boyfriend to lose face. Specifically, I remember hearing one fellow trainee describe a girl bashing her head against a pole until it drew blood while her boyfriend stood nearby, pretty much bewildered. Not sure what to make of that. Girls in America can be crazy too.

But on the other hand... notions of beauty are rather restrictive. Many girls seem quiet in class, perhaps more concerned with being pretty than smart. It's quite common here for young women to put their body measurements on resumes; depending on the job, they'll be asked for them anyway, and it will affect the hiring process. Also, for many women in Western China, I've heard that girls make career plans - but generally preface them with "Unless I get married..." The desire to marry is pretty much universal from what I hear. You don't see many women who are happy being single. Interesting comparing gender equality in China to that in the U.S., quite a bit of common ground in some respects. Anyway, all this stuff is hearsay anyhow, so I'll just see for myself. BTW, I wouldn't even mention this, except that since I'm expecting 80-95% of my students to be women (the usual ratio for English majors in China), it could be important to notice.

Oh, we've been getting periodic thunderstorms too. For instance, as I write this it happens to be pouring, and it can keep up pretty strong for longer than you'd expect. Sometimes there are high winds or mild flash-flooding, but nothing serious. Way better than a heat wave. Still, Guiyang hasn't gone over 85 this summer, so I'm more than happy to trade up.

We're into Week 7 of training, and FINALLY language lessons are getting juicy. In the past two days we've learned how to say:

-"fart"

-"buttface"

-"beer belly"

-"who farted?" (also: "pull my finger")

-"smelly"

-"pig-headed" (stupid)

-"constipated"

-"When I get drunk I..."

-"diarrhea"

-"vomit"

-"he/she is a sexual harasser"

There are also several dozen other words, but I find these to be the most useful. So we're all pretty much ten-year-olds again. And actually, this applies outside of language class too. Today for health training we played air pollution/STDs/diarrhea/avian influenza jeopardy. And I swear it almost came to blows when we got candy for prizes. Speaking of medical, we had the best info session today on parasites. Easily my favorite.

Outside of training, I'm still being killed with kindness back at home. This morning I told host-dad I'd be coming home a little late for dinner. But when I came home an hour past my normal time the house was empty. I'd barely been home 20 minutes when host-grandfather and host-cousin found me and told me to get ready to go eat hotpot. No warning, as per usual. I threw some stuff together and ran out, where host-uncle took me to the restaurant, over on Chen Tai Lu, if I heard him right. Turns out a lot of the family was getting together for dinner at the best hotpot restaurant in Sichuan, and quite possibly in all China (or the world?). Also the most expensive I think. Turns out everyone had been waiting for me to show for two hours. I said I was sorry, but how can you feel guilty over a committment you were never told about? But anyway the hotpot did indeed live up to its reputation. I'd say hands down the best Sichuan food I've had, and I've tried A LOT. There were also shots from the best baijiu that money can buy. Thank God for college preparing my system for Chinese alcohol culture. I should write a thank-you letter to Aristocrat for training me to handle half-shots of baijiu with no chaser. Anyway, I get treated like royalty here, but it's still kind of stressful for everything to be so unpredictable and over-the-top (this was the third time I had hotpot in a week, and it's pretty taxing on your digestive system, if you know what I mean). I also got to see Han Han, who amazingly returned home to sleep. But yeah, he brought his girlfriend. Haha.

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8/18/2007

Okay, so you can probably imagine that coffee, though it exists in China, is not very widely available (there is a Starbucks in Chengdu, but it's downtown in the upscale shopping district, next to KFC and Pizza Hut). Not a big deal for me, I'm not much of a coffee-drinker. But I've come to swear by the bing kafei (iced coffee) made by the little place across the street from campus. It tastes pretty good (as Han Han would say, only a little delicious), but more importantly a medium-sized cup will keep you WIRED for three hours. I don't just mean alert, I mean like heart-pounding, hand-quivering, eyeballs darting all over the room wired. And I'm not even that sensitive to caffeine. I've heard a theory that in the back room they grind up caffeine pills into the coffee mixture. I could believe it. But it's a lifesaver for hot, tired afternoon training and language sessions.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm leaving for my site visit to Guiyang. I'll be there from Monday morning until sometime on Thursday, with an 18-hour train ride through Chinese countryside each way. Thankfully I have my eight other citymates on the train with me, so it won't suck too much. Well except for getting a full night of sleep, that might be tough. I have a top bunk.

Really looking forward to seeing my apartment (who would've known that my own first real apartment would be in the PRC?), which should have lots of goodies left by the last volunteer who was there. I also get to meet my waiban, department dean, and counterpart. It's a pretty exciting time. Hopefully the internet will be up, in which case I'll be on Skype. I'll be hella busy during the day, but maybe I can talk at night. Remember to swap am and pm when you're figuring the time difference.

In other news, there was some last minute... frustration... this week. It started with me mentioning site visits to host-Mom in passing. Turns out my host-parents didn't know I'd be away this coming week. Also turns out they'd been planning to pull me out of training a couple hours early on Friday (which is not allowed) and take me to their hometown for three days! Well..... clearly that didn't jive. To be honest, I really did want to see their hometown, but on Thursday night I didn't even know when I'd be leaving for Guiyang, so the last thing I wanted was to come back on one train or bus just to jump back on another one the same day. There were a lot of other complications too: a high-school reunion, calls to Jia Yanmei, our training site manager, Han Han actually coming to my training to discuss the matter, and me stepping away from training long enough to see off the host-parents and turn down a seat in the car (okay so I guess they were driving down? Or maybe they'd been waiting for me so long that they missed the train? I have absolutely no clue). Anyway, they shortened their trip to one full day, but I really didn't think that was enough time to do their hometown justice, and I also didn't want to stress out anymore about leaving for site visit, so I still didn't go. Apparently there were tears from host-Mom, but what can I do? But in spite of all this, I think I was the only one in this crazy situation who was actually freaked out. The most surprising thing was that my site director didn't have the least problem with Han Han showing up at training unannounced and pulling her off to the side for a while to talk.

I think I'm pretty laid back, but in some ways I'm wound up way too tight. I worry about knowing things in advance to prepare adequately, and I worry about getting off schedule, and I worry about having some sort of plan. And Chinese worry about all that stuff too, they just do it differently somehow. For instance, I can already predict that there will be no official plan for my site visit. So I'll have to call up the different people I need to speak with to arrange for a meeting (or more likely, I'll have to get my counterpart to do it). But I also know that there will be some events that will either happen spontaneously or will have been planned without my knowledge that will require my participation somehow. And I worry about being prepared for all that stuff and about scheduling conflicts and about how everyone will let me know what's going on. I get the feeling that everyone else is just rolling with it. I think what I need to do is stop trying to plan everything. Instead of a schedule, I just need to make a list of what I want, and then start checking things off the list. Everything else will fall into place... I guess.

I'll have time to plan on the train.

So Han Han decided to stay behind with me while his parents went off to their hometown. He brought up going to the pool, and I figured it would be a good way of unwinding (I keep trying to get a crew together to go get a massage, but for various reasons it hasn't worked, and I'm not quite sure where the massage place is anyway). I think he mentioned it to Jia Laoshi too, because she wanted to come along with her daughter. Two of Han Han's cousins came too. They'd both lived some time in Guangdong... I can't even figure out Sichuan dialect, so you can imagine the time I had trying to understand Sichuan/Cantonese Mandarin. But they are both a lot of fun, so we all had a good time. After the pool Jia Laoshi and her daughter went home, and we went out for pijiu and shaokao - beer and barbeque: a perfect combination in any country. Unfortunately something I ate gave me some issues later on, but that's kind of a given. Coming back, we all had bottles of water, and at some point we started splashing the water at each other. This sort of escalated all the way back until we got home, where Han Han made a dash for the showerhead and hit his cousins big timeas they came through the front door. His one cousin grabbed for host-Mom's calligraphy brush, filled with black ink... and I think that was where the line was crossed. Unfortunately, my poor cargo shorts were once again counted as collateral damage, as well as one of the two t-shirts I brought along. Still it was a lot of fun. I really do need to just loosen up a little, and I think I'll be okay. This is probably common for folks living in a different culture for the first time.

Okay, signing off from Chengdu. Next update coming from Guizhou province.

8/10/2007

Perks

I realize I've said this before, but I just want to emphasize that I could name one important cultural distinction between the US and China every day from now until the end of my service and still not cover them all. So here are just a few that I've missed.

Chinese love to sing, and generally singing in China is about a million times more fun than in the States. I've heard that due to the tonal nature of the Chinese language, native Chinese speakers all have inherently perfect pitch. I can't really back that up with proof, but let me say I have yet to hear a bad singer here. And man, do these guys love to sing. It's not uncommon to see a guy or a girl just belting out some song as they're walking around on the street or on campus. KTV (Karaoke) is really popular here. Did I mention I went to KTV with Han Han and friends for his girlfriend's birthday a week or so ago? Rocked out to some Linkin Park and The Eagles' "Hotel California" (or "California Hotel" as it also seems to be known here). I hear that when it comes to KTV showmanship counts way more than actual talent. I'll be sure to really ham it up next time. We've also learned some Chinese songs in training, and I've got a couple hilarious short video clips of our teachers putting on quite a show.

To my knowlege there are no open container laws in China, or at least in Chengdu. Which means that it's totally legit (if in bad taste, but when has that ever stopped me?) to walk around on the street taking swigs from a 600 mL bottle of beer. Or better yet, hop in a taxi or city bus. Saving face seems to be a strong enough force to make public drunkeness almost unheard of. Which also means there's no enforced drinking age either. However all the rules go out the window at banquets. At banquets one can expect one toast after another, drinking not beer, but Baijiu, which typically runs about 100 proof. And if you're a foreign guest, you can count on being offered obscene quantities of booze, amounts that most Chinese would pass up. Basically, the whole thing turns into a frat party if you let it. And yet, feeling so hungover that you are unable to work the following day is a concept that doesn't exist. Interesting. As for me, I'm saving a nice little bottle of (only 70 proof) baijiu to celebrate site announcements on Tuesday. And there will definitely be cause to celebrate. I don't think I was this excited when I got my college acceptance letter.

Today was the last day of our three-week model school. I'm not that easily attached, but I admit that I'll miss my students. My team-teacher (sort of) came back a couple days ago after missing a week with the Chinese mumps or something, so while she was gone it was basically just me running the show. These kids really are a joy to teach. I went out to lunch with a two of my best students last Friday for some Korean food. I mentioned that I liked the corn tea there, and sure enough this week one of the two brought me a whole bag of corn tea. And then today we asked for any suggestions they had for our teaching. The one suggestion we got: "Can we all eat lunch with you?" We actually had to make it dinner, and immediately we had kids calling their parents, coordinating with each other, and making restaurant reservations. These kids are 15 and 16 years old, and I swear they are latently telepathic. So tonight we had to make quite a trip to meet up at Tianfu Square. Two students met us there and led us to another bus (after some wandering) which took us to the restaurant where more of them were waiting. It was delicious, delicious all-you-can-eat hotpot. We had to fight to pay our fair share too, which meant a lot because it turned out to be very expensive. I've decided that I like students and teachers hanging out after school hours being so common. It'll be even nicer when my students are around my age, I think. We all exchanged emails, so hopefully we'll stay somewhat in touch. Also there was icing on the cake: on the way back, I told our cab driver where to take us, and he totally understood on my first try. This is progress.

Why is this progress? Well, did I mention that the Sichuan dialect is not the same as standard Mandarin? Well it isn't, even though it is possibly the largest, or second largest, dialect group in the country. At first I thought that all the compliments I got on my accent were just out of courtesy, but I'm beginning to think that maybe my Putonghua accent really is better than most of the native Chinese speakers here. How ironic. But I'm pretty capable of getting a limited number of points across. I can buy a train ticket, ask directions, or ask some kind passerby to use their phone because a pickpocket took all my money. Getting there.

Okay, well there's more, but it's almost midnight and I'm getting really tired. G'night.

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8/12/2007-8/13/2007

Limits

Okay, well this weekend finally bumped my limits of cultural adaptation. I feel like most of what I've written so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Don't get me wrong, I have my moments of frustration, loneliness, and confusion too. Just want to paint the whole picture.

So I've made it pretty widely known that I'm willing to try just about anything foodwise over here, which has predictably delighted my host family. So Saturday I finally put my foot (among other things) in my mouth. Went with host-Mom to San Sheng Hua Xiang, which is pretty much a huge area set aside for traditional-style village housing, flowers, and more flowers. It was pretty, but the sign out front had a bunch of rules, and one of them was no photos without some manner of license or permit. Some of the other rules involved living a wholesome life, avoiding pornography, and moderation in drinking, so I didn't take it very seriously, but host-Mom did, so I was respectful. Oh, and there was one of those swinging benches around that I sat on to take a rest from being (pretty badly) sunburned. I expected host-Mom to take a seat next to me, but instead she started pushing me. Like, on the swinging bench. It took me a minute, but then I realized I was five years old again, and just went with the moment. Anyway, we had a sit-down after walking some more, and I was kind of hoping we had tea or something coming out. But instead, we had lunch... at 11am or so, and this is after a decent breakfast.

So the thing about rabbit head is that you never see it coming. One minute you're minding your own business walking down a crowded street, and the next minute you realize you're staring into a store window at a pile of roasted rabbit heads. It's a bit of a shock if you haven't had time to brace yourself. So you can imagine my reaction when a nice pair of very identifiable bunny skulls found their way to my table. I felt momentarily horrified, but I steadied myself. Thankfully, I had anticipated there being rabbit head in my future eventually. I knew it was only a question of when, and not if. "When" just turned out to be quite a bit sooner than I expected. So I did what I had to do and muddled my way through my first rabbit-head lunch. And to be honest, it tasted great. I just couldn't deal with the visceral disgust I had in the back of my head. I mean, I was eating Thumper, man. There's a certain technique to this whole business. It involves separating the jaw, crunching the skull, and various pulling and peeling and such. As I approached the end, I was proud, feeling I had broadened my cultural horizons, and was that much closer to integrating in China. And hey, like I said, it was delicious. No worries.

Right about then was when they brought out two more heads. And then two more. Lather, rinse, repeat. Cultural sensitivity my ass, please just make it stop. I think I just moved three or four notches towards the Dark Side.

Okay, I'm starting to get a little nauseous now, so new topic. We hadn't seen Han Han in a few days. He left one night when his girlfriend called him to say she was sick. He was with her for one day, then he got sick too so he stayed like two more days. So on Sunday we went downtown to see the two of them (now fully recovered) plus one of Yao's (the given name of Han Han's girlfriends) friends. We got hotpot - my second time in as many days. Now, I've always considered myself a decent eater (though diminished from my heyday of late elementary school), but let me say right here that I'm no match for the Sichuanese. I didn't think it was possible for anyone to like food more than me, but here I find a whole city of them. In Chengdu at least, people seem to divide life into two parts: eating, and working up an appetite (which may be achieved by eating vigorously). This I somewhat admire, particularly given the fact that the average Chinese is way skinnier than the average American. But what I don't really appreciate is having stuff dumped into my bowl. Good lord, what overeating. It really drives me nuts. And yeah, it was all-you-can-eat.

Anyway, so afterwards, we rolled ourselves over to KTV (which is Karaoke). At one point I decided that most if not all Chinese do have perfect pitch, or are close to it. I, on the other hand, can barely carry a tune, and even then it has to be something easy that requires no talent to sing (e.g. anything country). So honestly, it was kind of rough going to KTV as the only tone-deaf American among five Chinese. Results were mixed... personally, I thought my best performance was Eric Burden's "House of the Rising Sun." Once I tried a Maroon 5 song, but that brilliant idea had to be aborted after about the first verse. Bu hao ting! Oh yeah, and at some point, someone brought a roast duck. Yeah, like a whole freaking roast duck in a plastic bag. I was totally being handed duck meat in between songs, and remember this was right after hotpot lunch.

We also did some shopping, or window shopping, downtown. Way too many people. By this time I was kind of out of sorts anyway, so having beggers touching me and dodging traffic while crossing in a crosswalk with a green light, and being bumped into once every thirty seconds didn't do much to pick up my mood. I'm just used to a couple feet of personal space is all, and when that gets cut down to a couple inches for hours at a time, I can get edgy. And plus, I don't like shopping.

Although on a sidenote, I also found the most ironic article of clothing I think I will ever see in my life. I found it in a store that specialized in torn-up vintage jeans, the kind that look like they haven't just been slashed with a knife, but also thrown into a den full of Tasmanian devils and stitched back up by baboons. But these jeans weren't like that. They were in pristine condition with iron-on red patches all over the backside. The biggest one read in bold letters "GOD SAVE CHAIRMAN MAO." This was even more ironic than seeing "Revolution" by the Beatles on the song list at KTV. I really, really wanted to buy those jeans, but then I saw they cost an arm and a leg. I mean really, a human arm and leg might actually go for the price of these things. And really, isn't that just as ironic as the slogan on the back? I wonder what the Chairman would say...

Sadly, I didn't take a picture.

But anyway, there was just too much of everything, too much food, too many people, too much overpriced stuff, too much noise, too many cars. Too much stress. Or rather, I shouldn't say too much, just too much for me, and at that particular time. Finally we went home, and I think our bus driver was laying on his horn for about half of our return trip. Got back around 7:30 and quickly ran out to the internet cafe, where I was intermitently hit with some bad stomach pains and GI... uh, turmoil. Good times were not had.

Came home again around 10pm, hoping the host parents would be settled down in their room. No such luck, and after a(nother) trip to the bathroom, I found they had been anxiously awaiting my return to HAVE DINNER. A bowl of noodles with my name on it. I confess, I almost lost it right there. But then I made the mistake of saying my stomach had been bothering me. No, I didn't need to see a doctor. Host-Mom looked at me like I'd just been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. No, no doctor and no noodles. Just sleep. I'll be fine in the morning.

Honestly, I wasn't all that fine in the morning. But I was looking forward to my week of training as a break from my weekend (and yeah, I got some pitiful looks when I said that to some of the other trainees). I also found out this morning that it was Yeye's (host grandfather's) birthday today. I asked, and found out he was turning 73. So I agreed to come home for lunch for the celebration. Which I did. Party was over at Yeye's place in the next building. Lot of people in a pretty small space. First thing, I was asked if I wanted baijiu. Frankly, I was still rattled from the whole weekend, so I needed something to steady the nerves. "A little," I said in Chinese. Well "a little" looked like quite a bit to me, three shots or so by my reckoning. Baijiu runs about 100 proof. No chaser, it was my only drink. And damn if I wasn't wishing for another swig of the snake/seahorse stuff (which reminds me, I got to pick my way around some boiled seahorse in one of the dishes). I had a beer and then a cup of water after, and I was still getting baijiu burps that made me want to puke at the taste. At least the baijiu on Qing Cheng Shan tasted like cheap tequilla; this was like a mixture of pine sol and lighter fluid. So after lunch at Yeye's party I went back to training, slightly tipsy, but no less strung out. We had a little field trip to a teahouse for the afternoon language session and I got back home at 6:30, about an hour late. No one at home, until 8:00 or so when the parents came back, said they'd waited until 6:00, then went to dinner themselves. I felt bad, but I didn't know what the plan was, so what could I do? Anway, I got some food, we went for a walk, talked some, and I learned a song that comes from Tibetan monks. That and the teahouse really calmed me way down.

And we saw some fireworks, which have been fired nearby a few times over the last six weeks. I asked what the occasion was. Apparently it was a new grocery store opening that wanted to have good luck in its first year of operation. I'm told that during Spring Festival, you get fireworks filling the whole sky that last all night. Given that the grocery store was able to stage a 15 or 20-minute display by itself on a Monday night, they might not be exaggerating.

Anyway, I'm a lot more chill at the moment. And just to put all the above in context, I can totally laugh at it now, even if I couldn't at the time it was happening. None of it would be any big deal if I was Chinese; the only reason why it's funny or terrifying or infuriating is because I'm an American, and it's all Alice in Wonderland. I still wouldn't trade my host family for anything, it's just that I've been treated more or less like an adult for the past six years, so I'm not very good with having people wait up for me or wipe my face when it gets dirty or push me on a swing. I'll deal. Either way, it's just this week, and then one more week with my host family in Chengdu. I don't always feel it, but I know I'll miss them.

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8/14/2007

Okay, so this is my situation. We had site assignments today, and I am officially going to Guiyang to teach at the Guiyang College of Traditional Chinese Medicine!

Guiyang is the capital of Guizhou province, so it's a good-sized city, though definitely not as big as Chengdu by any means. But big enough to have a few Western restaurants (pizza! or at least something like it), bars, shops, major long-distance train/bus stations, etc. There's even a Wal*Mart... but don't think that it's all Westernized, I'm told the Wal*Mart has dog carcasses hanging from the ceiling during the tradtional dog-eating festival. I'm the only volunteer at my school, but I'll have something like 8-10 friends in the city (plus any China 12's who may be around). Actually, I will even have a couple people living just a ten minute walk away! And I'll be a 20-minute walk from the middle of the city. There's a gym nearby that I can join, as well as a post office, hospital, and pretty much anything else you can think of. It also sounds like my apartment (recently vacated by a China 11) will have lots of goodies waiting for me.

As far as the work goes, the biggest complaint seems to be about the non-English majors, who at best have not-so-good English, and at worst don't know anything beyond "Hello." Classes with non-majors were sometimes as large as 120+! Thankfully, the PC manager for all Guizhou province negotiated that I'm only to teach English majors, who are supposed to be quite good. I think at least some of them have studied English for two years in Beijing, an opportunity that not everyone has. I'll have 14-16 hours of teaching, plus English corner (normally a student-run group for speaking English outside of class), plus any secondary project(s) which I decide to initiate. We've had all kinds of training on needs assessment and what it takes to get a secondary project off the ground, so I have high hopes.

As for any downsides, there's my waiban (foreign affairs officer), who basically controls my living conditions, approves secondary projects, and has other kinds of unspecified power... it's hard to explain, many an intelligent China-11 confessed that after two years at site they still had no idea what the chain of command or hierarchy was at their school, assuming that there even was one. Anyway, as for my waiban it sounds like she is an old-school Revolutionary ideologue who speaks no English and rules with an iron fist. I'm sure we'll get along just fine... I'll bake her cookies or something. Cookies aren't too... bourgeois, are they? Anyway, my counterparts (other English teachers) sound amazing, so I'm sure they'll help grease the wheels for me.

Oh yeah, and thankfully there is some nature nearby. At some point I'll have to check out Qingling Park, which is supposed to have a mountain hike, a Buddhist temple, and freakin' monkeys EVERYWHERE. So it's good to know I'll have some exciting activities to treat my visitors to!

That's all for now... hope everyone's doing okay, and most of all LOOKING FORWARD TO SKYPING WITH YOU ALL SOON.

8/1/2007

I'm feeling pretty out of it from my vaccine today, but I'll try to type a little something up. As of today I am:

-100% immune to Tetanus

-100% immune to Diphtheria

-60% immune to Rabies (if something bites me I'll get my last two shots)

-100% immune to Hepatitis A

-100% immune to Hepatitis B

-100% immune to Japanese Encephalitis

(there are probably some vaccines I'm leaving out that I got before college)

And in another week or two I'll get a flu shot. Then I believe the poking will stop for a little while. But you never know.

Model school is about halfway done. So far, so good. The kids have been awesome. Some students regularly show up about half an hour before the start of class. Whenever I call on someone to speak, they stand up when addressing me. By and large the students bend over backwards in order to keep me happy. For anyone who visits me early in a semester, I can show you first hand. We'll see what the classrooms in Guizhou are like.

Oh, by the way. Happy Army Day everyone.

Today while I was checking out the 30 cent bootleg DVDs, some little kids on the street were fascinated by me. Particularly my arm hair. At one point the little buggers actually came up close enough to blow on my arm. It was kind of weird, but I didn't care much, so long as they weren't trying to do anything too weird.

My Chinese is getting better. It's something I don't notice until I have a conversation outside of language class, but it's getting there.

As are my ping-pong skills! Today I was ON my game, and could give pretty much anyone a run for their money, Chinese or otherwise. Man, when I finally do come back to the States I will be a freaking grand master.

Last night we went out to celebrate Bethany's birthday... we both teach the same class for model school. A bunch of us went out to a T!betan restaurant. The yak meat was delicious (we chose to order the cooked rather than the uncooked). Also there was a room full of T!betan monks which was pretty cool. When we left, things got a little frantic, and long story short Kristen and I found ourselves on our own. The bus we took to get out there had stopped running (at 8:00!), and we didn't feel like getting a taxi all the way back. So we tried to take another bus that would get us closer to home, so the taxi ride would be less. Well, we apparently got on going the wrong way. Then we had a hard time explaining to our taxi driver where we wanted to go. Eventually I just had him call my host family, and they explained the situation. We made it back, but it was pretty expensive. Ah well, it's a good story.

An even better story was the party going on when I got back. My host father had an old friend over for dinner that night, who just so happened to be one of the best calligraphers in Sichuan province. Let me just say, there's really no Western equivalent to Chinese calligraphy. It's just one of those things you have to see to appreciate, the way you have to hold the brush, and the techniques for creating different strokes, and making them look good. Also, obviously you can't make a single mistake. What this guy did was pretty beautiful, even if I have no taste or aesthetic judgments when it comes to calligraphy. So my host parents more or less badger this guy into writing something for me. So he bangs out a poem right there on the spot, and writes my name on it. I think it's about what good friends say to each other as they are preparing to depart. I found out afterwards that with an official red stamp from the calligrapher, this piece of paper would sell for 2000 yuan. That's around $300, also known as half of a volunteer's monthly living allowance. And we get paid well for volunteers. I'll take a picture.

Okay, time for bed!

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8/6/2007

Wow, almost a week and no word from China boy?

New foods include duck hearts, mouse kidneys (although Han Han tells me sometimes they cheat and use cat instead), and... well I'm probably forgetting something. I may or may not have correctly understood Han Han's assertion that at some point I've eaten (and throughly enjoyed) some manner of testicles. Who knows, I can't even keep track anymore.

This past weekend we had a Peace Corps field trip to Qing Cheng Shan (Qing Cheng Mountain). The whole gang came, including all the 13's, training staff, and country director Jon Darrah. The mountain: Very beautiful, but also very treacherous. There were stairs all the way up, but rarely anything to hold with your hands. Steps were often of varying heights and widths, sometimes too narrow for your foot to fit. Also it was all slick from the rain. And especially at the lower areas, there were too many people. But on the rare occasion that you did look up, you were usually greeted with some kind of awesome view. If you've seen many Chinese watercolors, you'll probably remember those mountain landscapes, usually with what look like impossibly steep, even Seussian, slopes. I thought it was artistic license, but after this weekend I know that's actually China I've been looking at. I took pictures. There were several Daoist temples/giftshops on the way up, which we mostly ignored. The few folks I was with (actually only three of us hung together the whole way up) made good time. We were in the top ten to reach the top (the first group actually ran part of the thing... no thank you, sir!), so we checked out the temple at the top dedicated to Laozi (with a statue of him riding a bull that probably reached around 40 feet in height - sorry no photos of that, it's kind of sacred and stuff). The temple itself was great for photos though. Then we ate lunch, at which time some of us made an interesting discovery. We found some big jars of baijiu (made from fermenting soy, extremely high alcohol content) that had been aging a year or so. One jar contained a snake and some seahorses floating in the baijiu. Clearly we had to get a glass, 30 kuai or not. We split it four ways, and to be honest, it reminded me of affordably-priced tequilla. But it was definitely worth it; my level of badassitude rose a couple notches that day. I found out later that the old snake-seahorse baijiu is supposed to do some good things for male virility, so I guess that can't hurt either.

The day after Qing Cheng Shan I went with Han Han to see pandas at the Sichuan Panda Breeding and Research Base. Saw some pandas, had a good time. If you're a rich Western tourist, you can even afford to be photographed holding a panda for 1000 kuai, or about $130 -- a small fortune in China, and I'm not joking. Something to keep in mind for anyone interested in paying me a visit. Unfortunately I'm just a volunteer (actually just a volunteer-in-training), so no panda-holding for me.

Last night I was able to log onto skype from home, an exciting new development. Family and host family met, everyone got to smile and nod at everyone else. Good times.

Tonight I finally got my host father to show me some Chinese cooking. I knew Chinese cooking was different from Western, but I don't think I really appreciated the magnitude of the situation until now. For instance, step one was to remove the hair from the slab of pig we were preparing. That said, I used a large butcher knife without chopping off my fingers, and mostly prepared the meal on my own with some help. It turned out... delicious actually. :-) Hao chi! I'm still a bit nervous about cooking though. If you screw up in the U.S. the food tastes bad. If you screw up in China, everyone gets food poisoning... even (especially) from the vegetables. But I think it would be too cool to prepare REAL Chinese food at site and at home when I finally get back Stateside (in the far distant future of two years from now). Tomorrow morning I'm gonna wake up early and make my family some good old fashioned Xican (Western food) for breakfast. Omlettes! With pork, onion, peppers, tomato, and *drumroll*... real cheese! It took a lot of work to hunt down all the ingrediants. Cheese is basically unknown in China, and on the rare occasion you do find it (in the most high-class supermarkets downtown) it is orders of magnitude more expensive than all the other food. But I got myself a little bit of chedder, and I'm gonna treat that stuff like gold. Right now my only worry is the whole part where I'm cooking omlettes in a wok at about a million degrees centigrade. We'll see how it goes.

Last week was big for assessments... self-assessments, training assessments, assessments of assessments... this was largely in preparation for the mid-training assessment interviews this week. Mine was today, and it sounds like I'm doing well, particularly in the area of cross-cultural adaptation. Language training is also going better. I still have a long way to go obviously, but it actually sounds like I'm a little bit ahead of expectations right now. I also had a site placement interview. Right now site placement is THE BIG DEAL in Peace Corps China. All we know at this stage is that all of us will be going to Sichuan or Guizhou provinces, which is kind of like saying you're going somewhere in California. Some sites are very rural, and... well one is in Chengdu, a city of around 11 million people or so, for instance. Some are in the mountains, some in the lowlands. Sites vary dramatically in levels of pollution from 2006's most polluted city in the world (by some measures), to others that are probably only a little worse than U.S. cities. Interestingly there is very little correlation between air pollution and the beauty of the site... some of the places with the worst air quality are also the most green and beautiful. The air pollution is only seriously dangerous when you have pre-existing conditions (like asthma) or are exposed over a period of many years. So me, I want a pretty site. But to be honest, we're all pretty much in the dark. We don't know the final list of sites, the precise selection process, or anything else to give us a hint about where we'll finally be. I have some vibes, but that's all they are, so I won't bother mentioning what they are specifically. I may have shot myself in the foot today by saying something along the lines of "I know this probably isn't good for me getting what I want, but honestly I'd take pretty much any site you gave me." My flexibility and cross-cultural integration are appreciated, which I believe translates to me being given a site that a less flexible (read: more discerning) volunteer would object to. But that's just a hunch. We find out next Tuesday.

A couple other things:

-It's official: on a good ping-pong day I can even give native Chinese a run for their money. And I don't use their crazy inverted paddle-grip either.

-Bethany, my team-teacher, is still recovering from an illness. I worked my butt off last week. We're supposed to have five hours of teaching in a week. I had seven last week, and kicked off this week with two more today. That's a lot of lesson planning given the fact I'm still learning Chinese and climbing mountains and playing with pandas and cooking and what not. Thankfully I'm getting Mary and Kristen to cover me tomorrow... so I can attend an extra hour of language review in the morning, haha. It never ends, but I'm glad to be so busy. Way better than boredom.

-If you read some books on Chinese culture, you may see Chinese people described as aloof and standoffish around foreigners. This is a bold-faced lie. Chinese people are some of the warmest people I've seen. If Chinese people are standoffish, then Americans are made of stone.

-If you read any first-hand accounts of Peace Corps Volunteers in China, or any other country, you will read that they all have one thing in common: if the normal range of psychological ups and downs in the United States range from 1 to 10, in the Peace Corps you get hit with your fair share of -5's and 15's. This is the gospel truth. When you're up you feel like the luckiest guy on Earth, and when you're down you feel like the entire country's population is sitting on your chest. The important thing is to keep from overreacting. That and refusing to take anything too seriously.

Okay, enough for one night. I'm exhausted from this weekend, so I'm gonna hit the sack early tonight. I'm penciling in a 20 kuai ($2.50) hour-long massage for myself next weekend. Welcome to life in the Posh Corps.

7/27/2007

Okay, well at the moment I'm writing this now mainly because I'm having trouble sleeping. Let me tell you a little story.

This story begins last night with Han Han motioning me to look in the kitchen. As the two of us slowly looked around the corner, frankly I had no idea what to expect, but little would have surprised me... the past month has more or less been one "WTF?" after another. But what awaited me was the first moment of genuine fear that I've run into since coming to China. This particular moment of genuine fear had eight legs and large fangs. Probably the largest spider I have seen live, outside of captivity. It was about the size of my palm, perhaps three inches across. It looked hungry, and I can't imagine that flies would have been enough to feed this creature. I imagine that its preferred prey included rodents and possibly babies. I really was at a loss for words, and quite nearly at a loss of clean underpants. Han Han tried to provoke the thing with a broom handle, and it scurried into the shadows. I was freaked out, but to be honest, I have a short memory and slept just fine.

Today I told my fellow trainees about the arachnid situation. I also got to see pictures from when one of them was bitten (on a couple different occasions) by spiders back in the U.S. It was not a pretty sight. Massive grapefruit-level swelling and discoloration, and what she described as intense burning from toxins. Given my knowledge of giant spiders in the vicinity and her knowledge of what spider bites do to the human body, we fairly terrified each other. But you know what? Again, I let it go. After all, I've never been bitten before. Maybe spiders don't like me.

Tonight I came back home from the internet cafe (talked to Amanda!) and got ready for bed. All was well until I glanced up at my door. Lo, Shelob herself was perched above the door frame, waiting for me to go to sleep so she could... I don't know, burrow into my stomach and lay eggs or something. I had host-Mom come into the room and found small satisfaction in the realization that some Chinese people are every bit as freaked out by spiders as folks are in the U.S. And you know, spiders in the States don't bother me. They are tiny and can be easiy stepped on, squashed, or smooshed. This thing... I wouldn't hit it with anything less than a Louisville slugger. If I had arachnophobia, I can only imagine the injuries received from losing consciousness unexpectedly. Han Han eventually snared it in a plastic bag and got rid of the thing. He said he figured it was the same one we saw in the kitchen, but now all manner of images are running through my head. Mostly images of nests.

Oh yeah, and besides the spider thing, today has also been a down day for gastrointestinal distress. I won't go into detail, but let's just say I had to take a break from writing this. A fast break. Some might say this is all thanks to those pig brains I ate last night. But you know, they were actually quite tasty. Creamy. Well-seasoned. Let's just say it's... oh, the water or something. Yes, the water.

Okay, well I'm going to try my luck with the whole sleep thing again.

7/24/2007

So, it's been a few days since I last wrote something down. Well not counting lesson plans. It's good to be able to take breaks, but at the same time I feel like if I stop writing for just a few days I begin losing something... important. Something akin to your brain getting constipated. I need to digest this stuff, and this is pretty much the only way I know how. Of course it's nice to let you all know how I'm doing too. At the moment I'm torn between putting down a laundry list of what I've done since last week and skipping all that and getting straight to what I'm feeling at the moment. I think I'll start with the latter, and I'll throw a list at the end maybe, if I feel like it.

I'm slowly coming around to understanding the "Chinese" way of doing things. Or at least, that's what I feel like at the moment... ask me again next week. The Chinese way is different from the American way, but frankly, I'm beginning to think that the American way wouldn't work very well here. For one thing, take Chinese agriculture. To put it bluntly, everything in China is grown from human shit. So if you want to eat a peach, for instance, you'd better peel it first. Or soak it in a bleach solution for 15 minutes. Your choice. Disgusting? Well maybe for Americans used to fruit with no prep time. But "night soil" (shit) isn't some backwards or antiquated agriculture that needs to be dealt with. Actually, it's probably the only way that the Chinese could have sustained their nation for 4000+ years. It's definitely the only way they can feed their population now. And you know, for all the organic agriculture and new age farming methods we have out West, 4000-year-old Chinese soil is still healthier than 200-year-old American soil. Of course, Americans get all the fresh salad they want, but that hardly seems a good reason to throw the whole system out the window.

Another point that has been made: Squatty potties (er, squat toilets) are really more hygenic than Western-style toilets. Putting your ass down where everyone else just put their asses down is kind of gross when you think about it. The squatter is really just a more systematic form of "hovering". But frankly, I still want to have a good ol' sit-down (and I want to flush my paper too, just for old time's sake).

To get away from the toilet talk, I've also reconsidered Chinese government. Mike (a China-11 helping to train my group, getting ready for his own close of service) did a session on Marxism and Chinese Government today that I can only describe as invaluable. I'm already concerned about who will lead this session for our other two training groups and for next year's crew. Mike only did it because we requested something along these lines, but it should be a mandatory thing. Basically when you cut right down to the heart of it, the Chinese government has strengths and weaknesses just like any other system. On the plus side, more people have been pulled out of poverty on Beijing's watch than ever before, for any nation in the history of the world. In 30 or 40 years the country transformed from a population of 98% peasants, near-zero industrial capacity, and crippled world status into a global superpower (or something close to it). And that happened despite widespread social upheaval, massive famine, sending a million men to fight (die) in Korea, and the aftermath of a civil war. I mean, in terms of sheer numbers, they're doing a damn good job over here. And from what I've seen, everyone seems more or less happy with their lot. And as for the negative side of events... well, any American probably knows that part, to be quite honest. Chinese culture is such that I don't think the average person misses those things we call "civil liberties"... they never existed in the old imperial system, either.

I think the point that I'm getting at is you have to take everything within a cultural context. To demonstrate: Take two chunks of land about the same size. For the first chunk, populate it immediately to maximum carrying capacity such that all arable land is occupied. Give them a beautiful yet complex writing system that requires many, many long hours of drill instruction simply to become literate, much less well-educated. Give them numerous invaders who are always threatening to conquer them (and who occasionally succeed). Virtually no immigrants. Take that second chunk of land. Add a tiny number of people to the east side, who, when they feel that the man is keeping them down, can always move towards the west side. Give them a less-attractive, though easily learned written language, and see what they do with it. Give them virtually no real enemies, except for a tiny number of indiginous peoples who they quickly massacre. Now to that tiny number of people slowly add lots and lots of immigrants who often have little in common except for the fact that they have all independently chosen to leave their home countries because they're sick of being hungry, oppressed, or poor. It doesn't take a genius to see how these two groups of people will INVARIABLY differ dramatically in social/economic/political structure, education, centralization of authority, and attitude toward outsiders. We are scared of things we don't understand, and I truly believe that Americans have historically feared Communism because they fail to understand it within the cultural contexts of where it took hold. Well, that and the stated Communist goal of destroying capitalism. Given the fancy cars and bicycle rickshaws, the massive downtown shopping district and the beggers asking for spare change, I'm not sure what Chairman Mao would say on the status of that last one.

Having said all that with as much cultural sensitivity as I can stomach, let me say that I'm not exactly applying for Party membership. I'm still an American after all, and it's fascinating that I even identify as such. Back home if I were to list words to describe myself, "American" would make the Top 50 I think, but it'd be in the back, maybe between "wears boxers" and "right-handed". Now "American" is like top 5. And I don't even have one of those stupid magnets you put on the back of your car.

Okay, I guess I'll make a list of random thoughts and happenings now.

-Model school started this week. After two days of teaching Chinese students, I don't think I can ever sub in the States again. I'm doing a unit on fairy tales this week, and let me say with certainty that there exists no mainstream college or high school classroom in the U.S. where I could describe Rapunzel's hair, and then hear a male student breathlessly exclaim "How beautiful!" Also I have another male student whose English name is Sunshine.

-On Saturday I went to Chen Xi Lu, ground-zero for shopping in Chengdu, because I wanted to buy U.S. and Chinese maps with English names on them. Things happened, my group got a little lost, and I was very late for a birthday party that Han Han was going to take me to. My host parents joined me for the entire one-hour bus ride across the city to make sure I found Han Han okay. I felt bad, but my host family's awesomeness knows no bounds.

-Also, karma was at work that night. For dinner I had the dubious honor of sampling delicacies such as roasted butterfly cocoons (pupae? larvae?) and something with tentacles, perhaps octopus. On the plus side, I found out later that I had apparently eaten bull tongue without knowing it, and I am told I found it quite tasty.

-On Sunday the host-family took me to a bamboo park. Big bamboo, small bamboo, bamboo hedges, bamboo I couldn't fit both hands around, bamboo everywhere! Also a Kung Fu pagoda with kids practicing their forms, and one dude with a sword. There are pictures... an incredibly photogenic place.

-Every day I teach, get lunch, do some cross-cultural or technical training, then language. Then I get dinner, where host-Dad unfailingly serves me at least one or two bottles of beer. Oh, the bottles here come in a few different sizes. Mainly the ones I see are 500 mL and 600+ mL, so I'll let one of you math whizzes do the conversion to fl oz. It's definitely more than 12... by a lot.

-I am on my way to becoming a ping-pong master. I can almost (but not quite) hold my own with host-Dad, Han Han, and some others.

-Virtually all of the male China-11s and 12s who I've met have been some degree of thin. Losing weight, sometimes to an unhealthy degree, seems to be a problem occasionally. That said, I've gained 5 lbs in the past three weeks, and that's with a good amount of physical exertion.

-I don't know how I forgot to mention this, but because I now have two hours of model school each day, my language class is down to two hours from four. Way less pressure, and I'm doing well.

-One other shameful moment of the week came when I discovered that our washing machine can only handle about two days' worth of laundry to a load. I found this out the hard way.

-For the millionth time, my host family rocks. Host-Dad and I ate dinner tonight and over a few beers we chatted about food, Sichuan dialect (as opposed to Standard Mandarin... with occasional input from 75-year-old host-Grandmother, who speaks Sichuanhua), and differences between Chinese and American styles of teaching. Host-Dad's findings were: American methods are better because they teach students to think instead of memorizing raw data, and I am amazingly clever with languages. I flat out deny his last point, and I agree with his first point (with the caveat that Chinese students are WAY easier to teach).

-Yes, I had to peel my peaches today. On the plus side, they were picked right off the tree less than twelve hours ago at a location 10 km away. Also apparently Hu Jintao has gone there?

-Tomorrow is vaccination day, aka "Poke-me Wednesdays". Again. And I still have this lovely green bruise from where I got stuck last Wednesday.

-Chinese really seem to like President Clinton. He's right up there with Kobe Bryant.

-I am told that we are incredibly lucky with the good weather we've been having lately... it's hot, but it was much, MUCH hotter last summer. And with no AC in the classrooms, this is a very good thing... last year they had a model school student drop dead from heat exhaustion.

Okay, I hope that was worth it. I sacrificed my language study and about an hour of sleep to write this.

Sooo... LJ is a pain to access from internet cafes... So here's a full week's worth of entries. Lots to read!

7/13/2007

Okay, as far as training goes. I kicked ass in Week 1. I had listened to some Chinese before training, I have a good ear for hearing phonemic distinctions, and I've studied enough linguistics to make generalizations about Mandarin that weren't mentioned explicitly in language class. Now it's the end of Week 2. As of Sunday, I'll have been in China for two weeks.

To be quite honest, Week 2 (of 10) was tough as hell. Why? Lots of reasons. For one, we've moved on from speech sounds to... well everything else, which I don't have a particular knack for. Week 2 was the first full week I had with my host family. I met my host father two days ago, and since then I can tell he's been trying to bond. Unfortunately this leaves me little or no time to prepare for class... I get pounced on as soon as I'm home, and it's often not until 10:00 or 11:00 at night when I'm able to get away to study. It's awesome that my host family is so much fun, but it's been too much. Also, there's the sheer load of it. If a normal college student at a normal university filled their schedule with Chinese courses, they'd have about 15 hours of classroom instruction. I have 20 hours, not counting all the time I am speaking or being spoken to in Chinese outside of class. Add another 20 hours of technical, cultural, health, and safety training. I'm expected to spend my free time bonding with my host family, practicing and reviewing Chinese, preparing for the next day of language class, writing up lesson plans, staying in touch with home (which has been frustratingly difficult), hanging out with friends, keeping in touch with friends at other training sites, and maintaing some semblance of mental sanity. Also it's sweltering outside, and we have to wear business casual for some reason. There's the frequent gastrointestinal distress and the vaccinations and the weird food everyday. Actually, I think I'd be able to handle it all if I only had time to chill and prepare. But I've also been bothered at the thought that for me (and virtually every other trainee) it is futile to shoot for 100% retention, which is usually what I set my sights on. This has left me freaked out, and a bit behind the curve in my lessons.

Of course on the plus side, I probably have a vocabularly of several hundred Chinese words. I can order food in a restaurant (and have expectations about what will be brought to me). I know that training for PC-China is probably some of the most (if not the most) intensive you'll find, and that these weeks are probably the most strenuous I'll have for the next two years.

Plans for this weekend: In five minutes, I'm leaving to meet some friends and have happy fun American time. I want to study for about six hours, either all at once or spread out. I want to sneak off to the internet cafe to try to skype my parents. I want to post this entry, and some more pictures. I want to spend some time sprawled out on my bed with the door locked, possibly with my ipod on, and thinking of absolutely nothing. These are all possible I think. We shall see.

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7/15/2007

Friday night was pretty awesome. A crazy number of us mobbed downtown Chengdu, causing much staring and puzzlement, I'm sure. We converged on Dave's Oasis, a tiny hole-in-the-wall place the size of two modest bedrooms put together. It's not much to look at. BUT it serves calzones and pizza, both of which feature real cheese. AND it's owned by a Canadian. AND the entire place is covered in English graffiti. AND I can read the menus because they're in English, and only English. And it was featured on the travel channel for some reason. If only you knew how much I appreciated these things right now. Had some good discussions with China-11s, who are now going through close of service and heading back home. It's good to see folks who have been through the whole shebang and come out more or less intact.

Food has been a daily adventure. Some things are very safe and commonplace, like white rice for instance. Other foods range from new and delicious to vaguely familiar to something reminiscent of licking the inside of a barn. Some foods differ dramatically in appearance and taste, causing many surprises (both pleasant and unpleasant). Some foods are spicy, but others make your whole mouth suddenly go numb. And one food in particular, though quite tasty, consists of densely packed, dry, powdery fibers that render the eater unable to speak for 10-30 seconds without white powder shooting from his (my) mouth. Let me suggest not being the first in your group to try one, as your friends will quickly ask you to render a verdict, and if you try to hard to speak you will probably wind up sucking some of the powder down into your lungs by mistake. As far as meat goes, I've decided to consciously avoid feet from henceforth, especially from pigs. Stomachs I will try only occasionally, and with skepticism. I have't encountered heads yet (rabbit heads, fish lips, and sundry tongues and brains are delicacies), so for now I must reserve judgment. Some foods appear to be of non-animal origin, but otherwise defy all categories. Some are pretty decent, others scare the living crap out of me. Oh yeah, and by the time I'm back home, I think I'll be a hardcore spice-addict. I'm a fan of the Sichuan red peppers, and some of my favorite stuff has been literally drowned in the stuff. All in all, the food experience has been pretty eye-opening, exciting, and generally positive. That said, I want a bacon cheeseburger, and I want it NOW.

And on a different note, my new gastrointestinal goal is to limit explosive diarrhea to once a day. I think that's reasonable. On the plus side, my friends at training are an excellent potty support group. Now that's what you call making friends fast.

Yesterday I visited a Buddhist monastery with the host fam. According to the ticket, "The Wenshu Monastery is a famous Buddhist temple in China, and is one of the four major temples of Zen Buddhism. Lots of things intrigued me about the temple. There was the Buddhist philosophy, which I've tried to study a little previously. Then there was the elaborate architecture, and several dozen gold statues, many of which reached ten feet or more in height. There were flocks of tourists, incense, sacred words and lions to touch and rub against yourself for good luck, monks chanting, and lots of things for sale. Lots of photo-opportunites, but it was a little awkward trying to take pictures while bumping into random people praying. I mean, who do they think they are to be praying in my good photo spot? But seriously, it did sort of make me feel uncomfortable. I wouldn't walk into the middle of a Catholic mass and start taking snapshots. However, the monastery not only welcomes tourists, it depends on them. After all, it is self-supported by its own business enterprises. Selling beads, selling books on Buddhism, selling food, selling souveneirs... there's even a hotel on-site. In the U.S. this would be seen as "selling out", but I think it's somehow appropriate for China. How compatible it is with Buddhist teachings is another matter I think, and one that I'm probably not qualified to answer. So I just took lots of pictures. My host fam bought me a shiny Buddhist thing (technically it's bestowed by Heaven upon those who donate X amount, but this strikes me as being pretty close to what I'd call a "sale") to wear around my neck. Something to go with my awesome old-school sandals. Now all I need is one of those incredibly cool Zen robes, and I will be stylin'.

Gonna try to post this tonight along with my attempt to call home on skype.

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7/16/2007

Well I finally got to call home! I think I'm going to make it a weekly thing, and even that isn't enough for me to be honest. For all you guys who want to talk on Skype, the best time to get me is probably Friday, Saturday or Sunday morning, around 8-10am. That's EST. And don't feel bad if I reject your incoming calls and reply with text... I'm probably talking to my parents. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to post to LJ because of technical problems, so I'm gonna sit on all this text until at least Wednesday, maybe later. You should probably take a break and go eat or walk the dog or something if you've been reading this entry straight through.

This week is off to a good start. Highlights:

I studied around six hours this past weekend, and it paid off quite a bit. More than that, I have been trying to stay focused all day. The last two hours are always tough. But if I can stay alert for all the language material, I don't think I'll have a problem.

Next week we start model school, which for lack of a better word, is practice teaching. I'll be team teaching a class of 20 or so. I'm starting to feel more comfortable with the idea of basically making up a curriculum from scratch (not counting all the lesson plans I'm going to steal)... it helps that I can pretty much dictate whatever content I want. The whole point of oral English is to get the students talking, so I just need to come up with some material that's engaging, and any kind of greater cohesion in the course will be icing. It's still a question as to how well model school will prepare me for a real Chinese class... we're talking 40-80ish students of drastically different levels in a classroom featuring chairs and desks that are bolted to the floor. And it should be fun times figuring out classroom management in such a different culture (and yes, it makes a HUGE difference).

I've gotten plenty of "hellos!" and stares from Chinese folks who are curious about Westerners, but it's officially reached Level 2 of that very special game I like to call LaowaiLand. Today during language class we had a guy stick his head into the back window from outside and chill on the window sill for a solid ten minutes. Yesterday I went with Claire and the host family to the pool. We had a good time swimming around, and actually ran into another PC friend of ours. We went up to the kiddie pool, and started throwing around a beach ball. Soon we were surrounded by little Chinese children who wanted to play with us. They were lots of fun.

Today I also received my first poke from a Zhongguoren. I was going to play some ping-pong with Kristen and her host brother Jiu at these sweet outdoor tables on campus. And then suddenly I received a poke from the 7 o'clock position, and whirled around just in time to see a Chinese (teenage or 20ish?) girl run off giggling. I know it's been a few months since I was in an American classroom, but I'm pretty sure that poking strangers is not a social custom of ours. Anyway, later she was sitting on a nearby table watching us play, and I asked her if she wanted to play too... in English. That didn't work so well, but eventually I did make some small talk in Chinese, saying that I was an American who was here in China to teach English (hell yes, I can say that now). I think she couldn't believe we were just there to teach English, so she kept asking if one of our parents were Chinese. We said, nope, we're all-American laowai. But Kristen kept calling her host brother didi (younger brother), so by this point the poor girl was starting to freak. In fact, she freaked just enough for me to beat her in a five-point game, marking my first ping-pong victory against a Chinese person. Given the status of ping-pong in this country, I would put this on par with China defeating the U.S. in basketball (which might happen some day given the sport's popularity here). I didn't rub it in. :-)

I suspect things will get more interesting in this arena when I am no longer living in a large city, where it is relatively common to see laowai on the street.

Hmm, I guess I'm also a minority now. You know, I don't think that'll sink for a while. But I do definitely take notice when I see other white folks. My first thought is "Hey, they might be my friends!" because, you know, all us whiteys look the same and sometimes I can't tell the difference. But then I realize they're just other foreigners, and I give them the universal Western greeting of pretending they don't exist as I pass them on the street. But I do take notice. For instance, I know that most foreigners congregate downtown for the hotpot and tourist traps, and I know that there are a few English teachers around here who are paid well, but probably don't know any Chinese and don't have the backing of the U.S. government. And they lack a certain cultural respect that Chinese have for volunteerism. As far as other Westerners go, I've seen on campus that there's a group of Spaniards... now there's a language you speak if you want to keep a secret in this country. Buenas noches, amigos.

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I had 15 minutes, so I thought I'd learn how to write my name in Hanzi. Much like in the Western alphabet, my handwriting looks like that of an 8-year-old. Maybe I can figure out how to get the right characters to display on one of the cafe comps.

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7/18/2007

This week so far is going by much faster than last week. I'm starting to hit my stride I think, although I've been warned repeatedly that this place has a way of tearing your assumptions to shreads just as soon as you think you have it all figured out. I've been told to try not to rationalize that which is China, which for me is fundamentally impossible. Frankly, I'm still failing to retain much of what we're being fed in language training. Imagine having 20 new vocab words thrown at you each day, with fairly little review. Just more new words and more new words. There are also new grammatical structures all over the place... let's say two or three new constructions each day. When you are on your game in class you know all the new vocab and answer everything quickly. But you also realize that looking good in class means fairly little in the long run... you may well just forget it all by next week. Thankfully, most folks seem to feel the same way I do. The other good news is that today and tomorrow look like they're set aside for review... the first we've had. Also, even remembering half of what's taught, I'm making progress. Yesterday I even made a little small talk with my host mom (which mainly revolved around my favorite foods).

Looking forward to model school. It's gonna be a blast. My lesson plans for week one involve having my students write and perform a "Chinese 'fairy tale' in English." There will be pictures.

My host family is still awesome by the way. I really don't think I'll be able to repay their kindness, but I at least hope to try somehow. Yesterday I saw Han Han (and a female friend of his) while I was practicing a Chinese dialogue with someone in my Chinese class. We chatted for a minute and then they left. Okay cool. Five or ten minutes later, I was practicing with another friend in class, and I was abruptly surprised by Han-Han walking through the classroom door... accompanied by my host parents! They more or less stood there watching my partner and I read through our dialogue. A wee bit disconcerting. There was also some giggling on their part. I was at once both horrified and amused by the awkwardness.

After class yesterday I played some basketball with a mix of trainees, LCFs (language and culture facilitators aka language teachers), current volunteers, and host family members. My host dad captured most of the action on camcorder, including one brief moment of awesomeness where I made a good move to the basket, and one fairly extended moment while everyone was warming up, where I was off to the side eating cookies.

In other news, Han Han has offered to teach me some Kung Fu. Sweeet. I may be two years older than him, and I may be teaching Chinese students just like him, but in some ways Han Han is the older brother I never had. Haha, and in other ways he's the younger brother I never had too.

Today was Terrie's birthday (she's a really nice girl in my language class), so a bunch of us went out for dinner to celebrate. The place we went has good fanqie chaodan (tomatos and eggs), dofu qiezi (tofu eggplant), and one of my personal favorites tang cu pai gu (a pork dish that quite frankly comes out differently every place where I order it, but always delicious). Yesterday I grabbed some baozi and jiaozi for lunch... tasty, as far as I know, cardboard-free.

Gastrointestinal systems are stable. No current problems to report.

At the top of the list of things I miss, please find blue sky. We get something resembling blue sky here maybe once a week. The rest of the time the sky is all a washed-out monochrome-white. I'm glad that the storefronts and decore are so much more colorful here, because otherwise the sky would be pretty depressing. I'm told that Chengdu has the fewest days of sunlight of any city in China. I can believe it. On the plus side, I love it when it rains here. It cools everything off, and feels good when you're walking outside. Although there is that urban legend that if you let the rain hit your head, your hair will fall out... I don't buy it, but in the early stages of a rain storm I try to keep my head dry anyway.

It's kind of an inside joke here that we refer to PC-China as the "Posh Corps." China is pretty widely regarded as the Cadillac of assignments. We're learning one of the most in-demand and relevant languages around, we live with running water, electricity, heat for cooking, and - in most cases - high-speed internet. The political situation is as stable as you'll find anywhere. Very little violent crime. Disease happens, but is generally treatable and non-life-threatening... no malaria (though granted, if avian influenza ever mutates into something dangerous, we're at ground zero). Our assignment is extremely well-defined and structured. We know exactly what we are here to do, and we begin doing it immediately upon being sworn-in as volunteers. But there are unique challenges too. We have our fair share of difficulties adjusting to culture and trying to "integrate" into Chinese society. Structure gives security, but it also ties us to our posts. Taking off is not an option on days when classes meet. Perhaps most importantly, our work load is qualitatively and quantitatively from most other assignments. As our country director said early in PST, he has directed in eight different countries, and China is the only location he has worked where volunteers complain of too much work rather than too little. As far as I know, most other programs don't have such intensive PST... like, with homework. China appears to be a special breed in the PC world. Should be interesting.

I want to post some photos, but there are way too many. Unfortunately, I think I'll have to hold off until September, unless I am pleasantly surprised during my site visit in August. Peace, I'd better get some shuteye.

Ugh, LJ isn't letting me log in... or more accurately, the proxy I'm using to tunnel the firewall hasn't been letting me log in... ALL WEEK. So I'm passing on this responsibility to a kind family member (I.E. AMANDA MY WONDERFUL SISTER) who will maybe post it for me. I'll be fine once training is over, but until then it will be a GRIND. Good thing I'm so hard-headed.

I've been with my host family, so I don't have my own private internet access. In the meantime, I wrote this. Enjoy!

7/6/2007

I sit down and look across the table at Yeye. Yeye is my host grandfather. I do not know his given name, but his family name must be Chen, the same as my host father and brother. My host brother, Chen Wen Han or "Han Han" as I call him, is in the other room. I think he may be breaking up with his girlfriend. In the meantime it is only me, Yeye, and the meal that Yeye has prepared. I have heard and read about Chinese filial piety. I believe that Yeye is to be regarded as the patriarch of the family, and if there is anyone to whom I should pay respect, it is him.

Yeye does not know English. I have been learning Mandarin for perhaps one week.

I see that Yeye is an old man, perhaps in his late sixties, or even seventies. He puts rice in my bowl, smiles and nods. I also smile and nod, and try to look gracious. I take some beef and vegetables. They are delicious, slightly sweet and very well flavored. "Mmmm," I say softly, and then try to be more clear. "Hen hao, hen hao" (Very good, very good.) Yeye smiles and nods. A minute passes.

We eat in silence, so I have time to think. Time to think of all that the man who cooked me dinner has seen and done. Does he remember Mao's early leadership? How old was he at the time of the Cultural Revolution? Did he cringe inside as intellectuals were publicly persecuted? Or perhaps he was one of the movement's most ardent supporters. I do not know. I notice that there are one or two other dishes on the table, and I have been eating only the beef with vegetables. I try another vegetable dish. This one has a little bite to it. I look down at my piece of paper filled with pinyin. "Cai hen hao chi," (The food is delicious) I tell him. Yeye smiles and nods.

What does Yeye think of things now? Does he want to live to 120? Does he think that China is on the right track? Does he think that his grandson's future is bright? I try to stop asking questions that I will never answer, and distract myself by biting off a small piece of red pepper. My tongue starts burning. "Whew, hao la!" (Good spice!) I cough. Yeye smiles and nods.

We continue to eat in silence. Once Yeye gestures for me to take more rice. I take a little. The late Chengdu sun is shooting over rooftops and into the dining room. yeye closes the curtains and I mutter a "Xiexie" (Thank you). At last we finish our meal. I look down at my paper for some time. "Ni zuo... Ni zuo... um..." Yeye is watching, but I have forgotten what to say. I check my sheet again, before saying carefully, "Ni zuo de fan hen hao chi" (The food you made is delicious.) Yeye smiles, nods, and begins clearing the table.

You may be surprised (as I was) to hear that when I talked to Han Han later, he reported that Yeye was surprised and delighted by my command of the Chinese language. It would seem he had been quite nervous about how we would commmunicate.

7/7/2007

A few points on what I've seen of China so far:

1. Chinese girls are cute.

2. Chinese seem to think Western girls are cute, given the advertising I've seen.

3. My host mother thinks I am cute. As a sign of respect, and because my Chinese is not good enough, I won't argue with her.

4. Whatever we might say about Chinese government, there is more of America in China than there is China in America, I think. Basketball is very popular here, my host brother worships Kobe Bryant, and Paris Hilton still gets the occasional headline in Chinese news. Unfortunately American cultural exports are not necessarily a good thing.

5. If you ever want to be treated well, come to China. Seriously. If you walk into a restaurant that isn't too busy, you will witness the pampering as not one but four servers rush to prepare your table. If you stay with a Chinese family, expect to be overwhelmed with hospitality. For instance, I do not remember the last time I was even slightly hungry, as I am kept comfortably full (at a minimum) at all times.

6. The three most useful phrases you should know in Chinese are:

Wo yang / Wo bu yang (I want... / I don't want...)

Bu la! (No spice!)

Wo bao le. (I'm full.)

The last is particularly important. I learned quickly after mistakenly saying "hao chi" and being brought a second bowl of xi fan (a very tasty but very filling sweet black rice porridge).

7. The Chinese language is difficult for many reasons, but I think one of the most difficult is because most words are monosyllabic, you either get them right or you don't. In English if you screw up one syllable, you may still be intelligible. A new student of Mandarin lacks the ability to give all-important context to the language, and so everything rests on your pronounciation... or lack thereof.

8. My host brother Han Han is such a player. After having a serious talk with his girlfriend (I think breaking up with her) we ran into another ex of his on campus. "They're everywhere!" I told him. I'll remember his straight-faced response as long as I live. "I am not a playboy!"

9. Some things are very cheap in China. If you are feeling thrifty you can get lunch for maybe 30 or 40 cents.

10. Some things are very expensive. Fast food runs runs around $3 (figure 8 times more expensive than the cheap lunch). Blue jeans can set you back $100. And if you go to a department store looking for anything in particular, expect a salesperson to offer you an item for $25-30 before you can ask for the one going for $5.

11. Traffic laws are more like suggestions here. Running red lights is commonplace. Crosswalks are ignored, and cars jockey with pedestrians. In practice, the pedestrian right-of-way does not exist. It is appropriate to avoid pedestrians, bikes, and other vehicles by swerving inches away, driving on the wrong side of the road, or using the shoulder. Everytime I get into a car (usually a taxi), I feel the urge to pray to whatever powers there might be in the universe. How ironic that China is turning me religious.

12. Women in China are pretty strong-willed. You have no idea how many guys I've seen carrying their girlfriends' purses and shopping bags. They're totally even for foot-binding. Also, this is unrelated but I have already seen puppies and kittens all over the place. And no, they were pets. The kittens were mangy but tiny and nursing, and the puppy could have easily laid down in the palm of my hand. Peace Corps wants me to stay away from animals because of rabies, but I pretty much ignore all advice for animals that are sufficiently wee.

13. I walked with Han Han, host mom, and sister in a historically-inspired part of town... very, very cool. Pagodas everywhere, and way more cool stuff than I can describe.

14. We also walked in the T!betan district of Chengdu. T!bet has a very distinctive culture, and it was interesting hearing Han Han's perspective on the T!betan people.

15. That is probably the only reference to T!bet you'll be hearing from me. If you want to hear any more detail than that (or any of the other "Three T's" which I'm sure you can figure out), you'll have to wait until I get on Skype. I'd rather not get myself put on a watch list. :-)

16. Okay okay, I finally used a squat toilet. It wasn't that bad.

17. Wow, Chinese like a firm mattress. Some of my friends discovered to their displeasure that they were sleeping on a plank.

18. I am learning Majong. I've also taught my host family Blackjack and Texas Hold 'Em.

19. Last night my host mom brought grapes for us to eat. After popping one in my mouth, I noticed Han Han was sucking the insides out of each grape and discarding the skin. I hope I didn't just get E. coli or something.

20. New photos to come! I'm going to update Shutterfly, but there are a lot of other pics too that are on Han Han's camera... I have been forgetting to take mine because the strap on my camera case is busted and it won't stay on my belt.

How is everyone? I want news! Leave a comment or email me!

Ah, last night was fun. Met up with some folks who I'll be going through training with to get drinks and some late night food. Had a great time at this bar I'd been eying for some time (Shanghai Kelly's), and got to know folks somewhat. Up until 2:30 or 3... west coast time...

Today I woke up, reorganized my luggage (everything inside the bags had been strewn around), checked email, got a shower, and then went out for breakfast. Found a cool little diner nearby that served killer french toast. Called home. Then it was time for staging. There was paperwork. I met a whole slew of fellow trainees (I'm officially a trainee now, and will be until sometime around September 8) whose names I have quite likely forgotten. Day 1 of staging was decent overall... some things more useful than others. Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially sleeping, eating, traveling, and drinking on the government's dime. And Uncle Sam takes pretty good care of his nephew, let me tell you.

At the very end of today's meetings, there were a couple announcements made. They went something like: yadda yadda here's a debit card, withdraw $140 yadda yadda pin number yadda yadda our Chinese staff would like all males to arrive clean-shaven. Thanks guys, have a good night!

I immediately felt my heartbeat spike and noticed a slight wave of nausea. I have become very attached to my beard. In fact, just today we celebrated our 1-year-anniversary together. Today... today is supposed to be a happy day. Actually I haven't firmly decided what I'm going to do yet. My first reaction in these sorts of situations is usually "tough, deal with the hair on my face," but at the same time I would rather not freak out my host family or TEFL counterpart any more than necessary. To be honest, I probably would have been okay with it (after a great deal of angst) if only I had been told earlier, and not abruptly all of 36 hours before leaving the country for China. Now, of course it's only a temporary change, and I will probably be able to grow it back once I've been accepted into my community somewhat (figure about six months in-country), but my beard has become part of my identity. For girls, the closest thing I can compare it to is if you had to get your hair cut to boy-length. In a small way, it is pretty traumatic. I've also noticed that I tend to be treated differently since growing the beard. At least in the case of first impressions, I seem to be treated like I'm older, and so with more respect. I am NOT pleased at being pressured to shave, and I think I pretty clearly expressed my displeasure to the Peace Corps staff. Right now I'm balancing the negative impression of a beard in Chinese culture as being shifty with the huge amount of resentment I would have towards the Peace Corps, China, EVERYONE for making me shave. Confucius did have a beard, you know... Believe it or not, I think I'll eventually get over myself, bite the bullet, and shave it off. But I'm not there yet. In any case, I took some photos to remember my beard by. May you be as thick as ever by this time next year.

Tried to conceal my anger and impending sense of loss, and went out to dinner with more Peace Corps folks. Got Mexican food for the last time in a looong time. I will miss you, sweet sweet mole sauce. We also checked out the Red Devil Lounge, which turned out to be pretty jumpin'. Velvet rope, live band, no cover. Made breakfast plans. Tomorrow will be interesting... eight full hours of more staging meetings. We'll see how it goes. I am looking forward to training, because Peace Corps training is world renowned as some of the most useful training you will ever get in language, health and safety, and teaching English. Should be intense, but then again I kind of miss being academic. Not to sound cocky, but as far as Mandarin goes, I think I'll have it made. Again, we shall see!

Oh, and in case anyone wants to send me anything while I'm in training, leave me a comment, and I'll email you my address. Remember though, training only lasts until early September.

Hopefully this won't be the last entry I have from the U.S., but in case it is... it's been real, America. I'll see you when I get my absentee ballot. Peace out.

Yesterday was the last day I had to spend with the parents (who in case I didn't mention, flew down to San Francisco with me to spend a few days without the madness of packing and preparing). It was a great day, but then early this morning they had to leave for the airport. It was tough saying goodbye because I'm so tight with Mom and Dad and because we all knew that it would be awhile. For a moment after they left I felt a lot like I did back in the Newfoundland woods looking up at the sky for some kind of justification for what I was doing and why I was putting people I cared about through so much stress. But then I thought of all the work to be done, and the experiences to be had, and the people to befriend; and I thought up most of this first paragraph. Then I felt much better.

Today I checked out of the hotel where we were staying and grabbed a taxi to the hotel where Peace Corps staging would be. Unfortunately I found that I was about three hours ahead of check-in, so I had some time to kill. I am a pretty simple guy, and what follows is a pretty good example of how my brain works when left completely to its own devices. I had given all my bags to the hotel to hold onto and didn't feel like dragging out my laptop or a book first, so instead I went for a walk to check out my surroundings. And then I got a good view of the bay, so I thought, "Hey, I'm gonna walk to the bay." Well, the bay was a lot further than it looked. But I finally got there. Then I was tired of walking, so I laid down on some grass and chilled for awhile. After ten minutes or so of that I was getting kind of wet from the grass so I got up and decided to walk to Pier 39... also further than I thought. Pier 39 was fun though, because I got myself a smoothie and watched small children dancing and singing. I hung out there for awhile more and called the parents, who had got into the airport back at home by then. Then I realized that it was peak UV hours, and my poor sunburned head was not covered with sunscreen. So I fled to the shade. Then I found my way back to the hotel, trying to stay on the shaded sidewalks so not as to fry my face off. This pretty much took up three hours. So for those of you who have heard me voicing my inner monologue with such deep thoughts as "Hmm, I'm hungry," and "That tree looks cool"... this truly is how I operate. My walk covered several miles of crazy San Franciscan hills, so by the time I got back I was tired and have spent most of the time up to now just chillin' out in my hotel room. I'll get dinner in a little bit, and then later tonight there will be a drink with some fellow-trainees. Tomorrow is the day when staging actually starts, and from there until about September, it's going to be tough to update or keep in touch much, since my computer access will be either through my host family or through an internet cafe. I'm also going to be hellaciously busy. But I'll do my best to keep up.

Oh, one thing about pictures. I like shutterfly now because it's easier to upload pics than it is with flickr, so that's what I'm using. All my pics are going to be shared, but I can't embed them in LJ with image tags. So just look for me to drop a link (like this one) saying that my pics have been updated, and then see for yourself! I'll post something if any of this changes.

That's all for now, hope everyone's doing well!

About six weeks until I leave for San Francisco, and seven until I get into Beijing!