Marco In China

Visa Trip to Hong Kong

2011-09-11T06:19:00.000-07:00

Bob the Frink and JJ always used to joke that I have the gift of being able to charm anyone into doing what I want using my Chinese. I used that this last week, I discovered that the Chinese visa officer was Chinese and not Hong Kong (meaning she speaks non accented fluent Chinese) and used it to my advatnage. When I went to Hong Kong to get my visa the lady had an exchange that went something like this:

(English / Chinese)
[China] "You're missing a form"
[Wildling King] "Oh really? What is it?"
[China] "It's a blue form. Do you have a blue form?"
[Wildling King] "I don't have anything blue, what is the name of it?"
[China] "It's the Workers Expert Approval Permission of Foreign Working Permissory Certification for Foreign Workers Permission Form."
[Wildling King] "I don't know that, do you mean the (switch to Chinese) working permit"
[China] "Yes, the working permit"
[Wildling King] "No, I don't have one of those. I was told I don't need it."
[China]"You don't need it? Are you sure?"
[Wildling King] "Yes, it's strange really. I got my Z visa and worker's permit with no problem the last 2 years, but this year they said I was too young. Isn't that silly? Will in any case, they said with my new company I just need an F visa, so I don't even NEED the worker's permit."
[China]"Is that right?"
[Wildling King]"Yes, I don't need it."
[China] "Are you sure?"
[Wildling King] "Yes."
[China] "Well okay then" *stamps documents and proceeds to approve my passport* "Come back tomorrow to pick it up! Thank you."

I walked away thinking, "Did that really work? Did I just tell the visa officer what the rules were for getting a visa and tell her what she could accept?". It was unreal hilarious in retrospect. I checked the rules, and I was right about not needing it for an F Visa, but that doesn't change how hilarious it was when she looked at me full of self-doubt and said "Oh is that right? Oh okay *stamp stamp*, come back tomorrow!"

Now in Ningbo

2011-07-26T03:52:00.000-07:00

I have changed cities. No longer am I in scenic Hangzhou, and with a change of residence I feel it is appropriate to start to try and update this again.

I am now in Ningbo, a city to the east of Hangzhou and the south of Shanghai. It makes a triangle of distance the likes of San Antonio, Austin and Houston.

Our new apartment is much bigger than our old, an increase from ~45 square meters to almost 80 square meters. We were trying to find a one bedroom, one living room, one kitchen, one bathroom place like our previous apartment, but those types of apartment are uncommon in the area of Ningbo we are living in. We ultimately settled on a 2 bedroom apartment with fantastic renovations rather than a duplex, and the new place is fantastic. Here is the video we took when we were still moving in, hopefully I'll remember to film a new updated one in the next few days.

House Tour

Ningbo itself is a city zoned for economic development, and the district we are in is the newly developed Yinzhou District. As a result, everything is very big and westernized rather than the traditional cramped style you see in most Chinese cities. Downtown Ningbo is still cramped, but the district we live in is much more spacious. We have a big western style mall right near us, and I can't wait until Harry Potter comes to China so I can go see it on the huge IMAX theater in the mall. One difference Ningbo has that Hangzhou doesn't are the giant tricycle taxis. Old men on giant three wheeled bikes (tricycles) ride around looking for customers to taxi about; it's pretty fantastic. We've got some videos of our first trips around the neighborhood on these tricycles. We have our motorbikes here now, so we sadly don't ride on these anymore.

Neighborhood Tour 1
Neighborhood Tour 2
Neighborhood Tour 3

The new job is very rewarding, though the office is far too professional for me to feel comfortable doing anything foolish yet. I'd like to stand up and reenact the Will Ferrell "I am a strong man! I dare any of you to take a run at me!", but I strongly doubt that any of my coworkers would run in to fight me with a trident.

Our office is located in a giant building known as the 广播贸易中心 (Guangbo Maoyi Zhongxin - English name to come later). On our first day in Ningbo we came to see the building, and on our surprise there was an office space on the first floor that was in the process of being renovated. Since we went on a Saturday there was no one there, just the half finished work and power tools laying out. As we gazed in the windows at the work in progress, we noticed something odd. Amidst the power tools strewn about ran a gaggle of geese. There must have been 8 or 9 geese just running loose and unsupervised around the office space. I haven't seen the geese since that day, which only raises more questions.

I'm sorry this first update isn't entertaining. Now that I have all the informational crap out of the way I can start detailing entertaining aspects of life in China again.

Anyone wanting to text me can add me on What's App (+86 18852837725). I have super unending internet on my phone, so I'll be happy to text and send you picture texts over What's App all day long if you add me and talk to me.

Finally, as you can see we have an extra bedroom with a full size bed, so anyone wanting to come visit is welcome. When we signed up for our new phone contracts we got a 12 pack of Sprite/Coke/Beer with every 100 RMB spent. That room currently houses our collection of Sprite and Coke, but we are willing to let you share a bed with it as long as you don't spoon it. No spooning the Sprite! Hopefully by the time you come I'll have completed my collection of lightsaber chopsticks, and between that and my lightsaber umbrella we'll never need to leave the house. We can just stay inside battling like Jedi and drinking free soda all day. Exciting? Any takers? Tricycle rides? Late night roast lamb on a stick? My gym has foosball and ping pong tables. There's spicy roast duck across the street.

Open House Week . . .

2010-04-23T12:15:00.001-07:00

So it is open house week, and I was (key word) planned to give 2 open house classes. This means that parents get to come watch my class. This isn't really too big a deal since I've already given many of these classes at a part time job. I obviously put more planning into this class since it is my primary job, but instead of being nervous like the other teachers I was full of confidence.

The day before the most important of the 2 classes I was told that instead of getting half of the oldest kids (11 kids) I would be getting the entire group put together. The principal told me that those kids didn't have open class with a foreign teacher last year, and that since this is the last year before graduating to elementary school I would do all the oldest kids together in one class. I took it in stride, and didn't even complain when she decided to the same thing with the other age groups (meaning the 2 classes I WAS planned turned into 3 classes). My attitude really caught her off guard, she expected I would try to get out of doing it or complain about the extra work. I think I bought myself some points without even realizing it.

I approached this class pretty seriously, I felt like if I did a good job of winning the parents over it could mean not only immediate bonuses but a good impression that can pay off later down the road. The admittance of kids into my kindergarten is, after all, based on the parents' notoriety in Hangzhou and ability to improve the reputation of our kindergarten. I suspect there is also a lot of behind the scenes money to make sure a child is admitted, but I didn't say that. In any case, knowing this means I am always looking for ways to build relationships with the parents.

The class was this morning, and I must say it went perfectly. It must have been the best class or one of the best I have ever given. Absolutely nailed it, and when I heard that the parents thought I was amazing I wasn't surprised. I even thought I was amazing, I never thought it would go so well. I feel so great right now, I only fear that this confidence will lead me to be too overconfident when I give the younger children's open house classes tomorrow and friday.

In other news, I think I'm part of some odd practical joke. Two weeks ago the cover a part of my motorbike went missing. It is a small 6 inch by 6 inch plastic covering that covers what I'm told by several repair places is an unimportant engine component. This particular cover is different from average models. I went to 5 different places that told me that the stock pieces they had wouldn't fit, and that I would need to order one. I ordered it, waited 3 days, then got it installed. It was fairly inexpensive, only about 2.50 American. Today the cover is missing again (after it being in place for 7 days). I am very confused as to why there seems to be a thief of inexpensive unimportant motorbike engine piece covers in our neighborhood.

Traveling with a chicken

2010-04-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

I realized the other day I hadn't posted anything here in awhile. In
fact, I hadn't really let anyone know I as alive for a short time. I
got a bit busy.

Everything is still going smoothly. I go to work and I love it. I know
I need to eventually find another job, but I enjoy this so much I will
be sad when I have to leave.

I went to visit Zoey's family last weekend. I took a number of pictures
from our excursions there, and I have about 100 new stories from the
trip alone. The best involves me somehow ending up with a chicken that
I had to take with me back to Hangzhou for Zoey's brother. Chris Marco begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Chicken Delivery, that is what I was playing.

The chicken actually came in handy several times on the way home. And
by came in handy, I mean entertained me. At one point in the bus
station there was a Chinese Christian evangelical woman going from aisle
to aisle giving a rehearsed speech on Christianity and damning everyone
to hell if they didn't convert. She noticed me and got all excited. I
was teaching Zoey how to do the Rubik's Cube in Chinese, and she pointed
at me and said I was an example of how Jesus can help people, and that I
had been able to learn Chinese because of my faith. I was a bit
offended in general by being used as some type of prop to condemn
everyone around me, so I decided to have some fun. I spoke up that it
was indeed because of my faith that I was able to learn Chinese, but
that the chicken I had just bought was Buddhist. Despite my best
efforts, I was unable to convert my chicken and was very sad. I asked
her for her help in converting my chicken, but she instead got very
upset and stormed off.

After we arrived in Hangzhou, I had to take my chicken and my suitcase
to line up for a taxi cab. There were several beggars walking through
the line hassling people to give them money. Every time one approached
I told them in a very concerned voice to, "Please leave. My chicken is
very easily upset and having a stranger so close really makes him
nervous." The response from the 3 beggars that came up to me in the 10
minute waiting span was all the same: marvel at my Chinese, look at my
chicken, then realize they had met someone entirely insane and walk away.

To top it off, in line in front of us were 3 very American looking
tourists. Seeing a Chinese person with a chicken would be novelty, but
seeing a white guy with a chicken was something they weren't quite
prepared for. They kept staring at me, and obviously wanted to say
something, but I guess they couldn't quite figure out what.

All in all, I pretty much enjoyed the attention me and my chicken got.
I have to admit I was a bit sad to turn him over to Zoey's brother. He
in turn was not exactly happy to receive the chicken, I'm 99% certain he
has no idea how to kill and prepare it.

Push ups in the Park

2010-03-27T10:43:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we had an outing to a park near the West Lake with my part
time kindergarten. The park itself was absolutely beautiful, it seemed
like everything had just started blossoming that day. While we were
there I spent a lot of time playing with kids, and near the end of our
day I saw one kid doing situps with his moms help. I noticed that his
form was a bit strange, so I started trying to help him correct it.
Afterwards, I started teaching him how to do pushups. He thought
pushups were great fun, and wanted to sit on my back while I did them.
This lead to kids lining up to sit on my back while I did pushups, and
ultimately ended up with them sitting 2 at a time then 3 and then 4. By
the time I got to 4 a large crowd had gathered to watch. We eventually
got up to 6 5 year olds sitting on my from ankle to shoulder. I
personally wasn't sure if I was able to lift the weight, but when I
noticed that there were literally over a hundred Chinese people with
cameras ready I found the adrenaline needed to get up off the ground. I
did three pushups while cameras clicked and onlookers gasped, then
collapsed and said I was done. It was a pretty intense feeling, and
also hilarious in retrospect.

Keeping with the workout theme of this blog post, my gym has started
playing Iron Maiden nonstop. One of the trainers discovered them and
replaced all of the computers music with Iron Maiden, so no one at the
front desk has any alternative but to play the Iron Maiden collection
nonstop. It is pretty much a dream come true as far as gym music goes.
I'm certain Dan would be shocked and proud, and maybe even JJ would,
too. I'm not sure about JJ though... I mean after all he didn't even go
to their live concert with us.

In unrelated news, JJ will probably be mailing me a pipe bomb as a
result of bringing that back up. Mom, please don't give him my
address. Also, speaking of mail, I bought gifts and brought back/sent
back things for JJ, Glorias, Kate, Anitas. If you haven't received
anything in the mail from my mom leave a comment here. May have
forgotten to mail them out.

Job Fair

2010-03-19T18:12:00.000-07:00

The high for today was predicted at 22, but when the sun came up it got
all the way to 31.4. That's a pretty big miss on the forecasting
front. It felt like an oven today in jeans and a t-shirt, but at least
the wind is still blowing cool air. The weather will soon devolve into
warm winds with hot weather, and then in the dead of summer become hot
weather with no wind at all. I'm not looking forward to that.

I hit the job fair on tuesday. It was a good overall experience. You
know how you sometimes when you're driving in the car singing along to a
song you get the feeling that everyone is staring at you even though you
know deep down that no one cares? Well I had that feeling at the job
fair, and it was because everyone was actually staring at me. I
wandered through a bunch of chemical companies and other companies that
were guaranteed to not have any opportunities, and out of nowhere heard
and English commercial being played. Turns out Best Buy China had
somehow been stuck in between two petroleum companies. They just
happened to be in the neighborhood for a translator, and I went ahead
and signed up. They were looking to recruit a Chinese person, so I
don't expect much feedback, but I'll be sure to follow up regardless.
You never know. The best part was that I had to decide what my salary
should be. I calculated how much I was making now, added a bit, and
then wrote that number down. The guy checking my application stopped at
the salary part, and asked me if the figure I had written was what I
wanted monthly or yearly. I said yearly, a bit shocked, and he shrugged
and kept looking. At that moment I felt very stupid - I felt definitely
should have written a bigger number down. I also got a few applications
in to other companies, though they were all applications and resumes
given to some recruiter with a promise to take it to the right
interested party. I was a 'special situation' (as each person reminded
me as I talked with them), and they would have to pass my resume along
to the right individual. All in all it was a good experience to go to
my first Chinese job fair, I'll definitely be better prepared for the
next one.

Next week: Easter preparation begins!

Spring Football

2010-03-15T07:47:00.001-07:00

The weather has gotten warmer in the last few days, and I've started wearing shorts despite the outcries from coworkers. They are paranoid of the cold, and I am yelled at constantly for not wearing more. They are in down jackets and multiple layers, I am in only shorts and a t-shirt.

I took advantage of the good weather to bring my football to the kindergarten for some fun. The kids were insanely interested, and I gave an informal class in the afternoon where I started teaching the older kids how to play. I don't know if you have ever taught six year olds about football, but the result is that you catapult from being 'that amazingly cool teacher' into 'oh wow I wish I wasn't six and new enough curse words to express how amazingly cool this teacher is' status. I also learned that the girls at this age kick ass, and are totally dominating the boys in football. Girls, at least in China at my kindergarten, are much better at working as a team and thinking together at the age of six.

I have also been having fun recently with cooking. I've reasearched a bunch of recipes online, and I have been working with Zoey and a few other friends to make a few different meals a week. I discovered last night the trick to making the legendary green beans. I can now make some awesome dishes, but my pride is definitely the green beans. I don't have the taste quite right, but the texture (the hardest part) has been perfected.

I just got done with a big marathon of work. I didn't get a weekend last week, I was busy playing tour guide and translator for our visiting foreigners. As a result, by the time this is posted I will have long been asleep, and I plan to sleep for 16 hours. I am excited.

China

February entry . . .

2010-03-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

Been really busy the last few weeks. We've had Ph. D professors come from Canada and it has been my job to keep them company the last week. I've translated so many speeches and round table discussions that my brain hurts.

The good news is today it snowed! Or rather, it is snowing heavily right now as I am going to sleep. I just played around outside in it, ate some, then immediately realized how terrible an idea eating falling snow in China was.

In any case, time for bed. I have many things I want to write, hopefully I can remember my password and start logging on here on my own to post, that way I don't have to send them all to the Kelly for posting.

Goodnight

Vacation time in China, Making Dumplings

2010-02-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

I have experienced zero jet lag since I got back, and have been using all my energy to thoroughly explore more of the city. I have found some absolutely awesome food places near me, and in my usual style have gotten a membership card at each one. They are (usually) free and give you a 12% discount whenever you eat there, why would I NOT get one. I know need a second card wallet just for the collection of membership cards I carry around with me.

Zoey brought home a bunch of dumpling fillers and wrappers, and though I didn’t document the process of wrapping I did document the cooking and eating. I put some Tabasco and some vinegar in with them to make them great, I think soup dumplings are normally a little bit boring if you don't add something.

Last night I used the seafood seasonings to do a 2 person seafood boil.
The green beans and mushrooms were just okay, but the potatoes, corn, sausage, and shrimp were all perfect. I am going to replicate this with bigger pots and more people when Weiguang and the Hangzhou Superteam returns in a few days.

Time to run, Zoey is teaching me a lot of Chinese dishes tonight. She made a list of what I liked most before she went home and had her parents teach her how to make them. Must go buy things.

Oh, I wrote this before attaching pictures. I discovered that I also have pictures that I need to share of: my motorbike, me making artichoke sauce, me cooking various American foods for my captive and helpless Chinese audience, and more! There's even movies.

Also, I've already started marking my calendar to go to some job conventions/expos this coming month. First one I know if is March 16, so I have to research some companies, there are only 600 attending.

CHINA

2010-01-18T06:21:00.000-08:00

Man, I've fallen off the face of the earth. The domino effect of business that erupted with the family arrival for Christmas has kept me so busy. And yes, dominoes erupt. Dangerous. I'm bad at the procrastinating communication thing, my mother is not thrilled either with my inability to consistently write emails. It's a multi step process. First, I think that I've written recently so I should wait a few days for something interesting to happen, then I realize a long time has passed, but say that so much interesting has passed that I need more than 10 minutes of casual email timing to get it done, so I enter step three of waiting for the mystical free time that I never have.

I am now working a lot of muches, that part time job signed that huge contract to expand and is now hiring Chinese teachers and bringing in new students at Sonic the Hedgehog pace. The hitch, however, is that foreign teachers are much harder to find, and every new class is going to me. I am currently working 11 (sometimes 12) classes a week outside of my kindergarten duties, and on Sundays I do a frenzy of errand running and then pass out.

I bought The Office and Battlestar Galactica to watch with my crew, and though we haven't started yet two of my friends cheated and watched the first two seasons of BSG by themselves. ITS IN THE FRAKKIN SHIP

So skiing is something I hope to actually do in China. I think it will be frightening beyond all reason. One of Bob's pseudo girlfriends (and by that I mean insane women who chases him while he gets uncomfortable and unable to say no) has been attempting to rape-persuade him into going skiing. The idea got me all excited and now I want to go. It is probably one of my worst ideas ever.

Speaking of terrible ideas, I totally bought a motorbike. One of those electric propelled ones, the gas ones are illegal. I still go fast enough to kill anything I hit when at terminal velocity, and there are many times that it is scary as hell. I LOVE IT. I supplemented that with a new house that I moved into last weekend. The old place was already a shit heap, and then stuff started breaking, then a new foreigner wanted to come live when we found the replacement for English man, so I decided to just get my new place since I'm rolling around in Chinese money that I can't spend. Chinese money is abundant, but it doesn't transfer well into the American moneys.

The new place is so overwhelmingly nice and awesome. Just got redone and nowhere has lived here before, so this is on level with being as good as a good apartment in America.

After a conversation with a friend I'm thinking of buying Chinese stocks with my money instead of putting thousands and thousands in the bank.
Apparently the Chinese stock market has controls, and can only gain or lose 10% value in a day. I'm gonna take a page out of my friend's book and just put money into a corporation, wait for it to go up a bit, and then sell. He says he usually just puts money in a company for a few days to a week, and that time it usually goes up a few more times than it goes down, and he can sell for a profit of like 500+ RMB. I was like WHAT SWEET FREE MONEY FOR BEING AT A COMPUTER FOLLOWING THE MARKET.
Which is what I already do in between at work minus the market part, don't ask me why I don't use that time to email. I'm not that smart.

The new Australian foreign teacher arrived, and I thought he was going to cry with being overwhelmed by everything. He had never been out of the country before, never been on an airplane before the plane to China, and definitely doesn't speak Chinese. He had this look of, "What am I doing?" on his face the entire time, and has just had a string of events that rival JJ-level of insanity. He has already gotten locked into his house with the keys, an episode that involved him calling me while he freaked out from claustrophobia and had me talking to the crazy loud Hangzhou-hua speaking neighbors outside the door who were only increasing the fear by banging on the door and yelling incoherently. He has been the victim of repairs, as the repair guys show up at noon and don't leave until 8 pm. Add that to the normal difficulties of doing anything when you don't speak the language and don't really know anyone. I kept wanting to ask why he came to China, but I didn't want to make him cry. I've tried to be helpful, but he insists he'll be fine. Nice guy, but looks to be headed for an insanity China-overload meltdown. I'll videotape that part when he gets on top of a building and fist fights a grizzly bear.

Your life. Tell me about it.

Microsoft Outlook Web Access

2009-12-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Outlook Web Access

Christmas in China : The Beginning

2009-12-13T10:06:00.000-08:00

Been busy working two jobs lately and forgot that I need to blog every
now and then so people know I'm alive. Christmas is coming soon, and I
decided to decorate for the impending visit of the family.

Just finished putting up my first Christmas tree - in China, in the real
world, or otherwise - and I have some requests for any of you that would
like to participate. First, I would like more pictures for my wall of
friends and family pictures. Second, if you would like to send an
ornament to put on my tree you can mail and/or give them to my mom or
other family headed for the China. It'd be great to have ornaments to
throw on the tree come Christmas time.

And here, for your viewing pleasure, are the first pictures from China.
There are pictures of my Christmas team (Rita, Zoey, and Weiguang)
setting up our Christmas tree, along with pictures of the last time Bob
and I went KTV-ing. I sang so well that I didn't even need a mic at
times (evidenced by the pictures), and Bob for some reason decided that
Zhang Keke and him really really really needed to wrestle as soon as
they got outside into the rain. Really.

CHRISTMAS IS COMING TO CHINAAAAAAAAAA

Translator Extraordinaire

2009-11-13T06:00:00.001-08:00

Let me start off by saying that riding a bike in the rain isn't as glorious as a Nike commercial makes it seem, especially not in 50 degree weather, but I must admit that it's still pretty fun. I slowly rode two blocks with an umbrella in my hand before the "I'M A STRONG AMERICAN MAN" side of me took over, causing me to put away my umbrella and ride at maximum danger speed. It was pretty great.

The last few days I've been playing interpreter for the visiting kindergarten teachers from Canada. They are also from a college sponsored school that does many research projects, so I've played translator at many meals and events so far.

The first event, before all the dignitaries that had met me knew I was capable, the biggest boss had brought a teacher from her branch to act as translator. I knew without being told to let her try and translate first, and fill in the gaps if there were any. It was cute watching the Chinese woman with decent English try and translate at first, and I was more than willing to let her to the greetings, but as the gloves came off and phrases like "meta cognitive development" and "sophisticated curriculum design" began to pop up I started taking over the translating. It ended with me being full time translator, and me being involved with every event so far this week. They've been cancelling classes, moving classes, doing whatever they need to in order to have me present. It's been pretty fun. I've also noted that my Chinese has gotten even better than it was before, and the fact that even the foreign professors are impressed reflects how good it must appear to be even to people who don't speak the language.

The culmination of the translator gig was today when the two professors gave lectures. I was, needless to say, a bit nervous to translate a one hour lecture given by two professors with Ph.D's into Chinese for an audience of 70 people. The whole ordeal was, unbeknownst to me, caught on tape as well as documented in pictures, so I'll be sure to get a hold of that media.

An interesting side note, there was a big flu outbreak in one of my classes overnight. There were 26 kids in class E yesterday, and today only 6 showed up. A seventh came late, then left an hour later with flu symptoms. As a result, they are doing a big disinfecting of the classroom and all the kids in the class have been given the week off, leaving me with only two classes to teach for the next week. We'll see what creative ideas they come up with for this newfound free time to keep me busy. Now that the heads of the other 5 branches now what a great translator they have on staff, they are all considering treating more and more foreign guests to come give lectures on education. What have I gotten myself into.

It Smells Like Fall

2009-11-09T06:39:00.000-08:00

It's a great day outside today. Just enough wind blowing to throw red and orange leaves around, and there is that distinct smell in the air that winter is almost here. I am really craving some chili right now.

Today we had two teachers from a school in Canada come to visit, and my job was to play tour guide and interpreter. Apparently our kindergarten has a sister school in Canada, and every February we do a teacher exchange. It gives our teachers a chance to see other methods, and it gives the Canadian kindergarten (which is also sponsored by a college) a chance to send Graduate students and PhD candidates over to do research and help out our curriculum. It's a pretty good feeling when even the white people are blown away by how good my Chinese is. They are really excited knowing now that I will be here in February, and I am too since they want to include me in helping their research projects. I get to pretend I'm a graduate student for 2 weeks when they come at the end of February/March.

In addition to that, I've started spending a lot of time previewing restaurants and locations around me. I've been getting prices on hotels, parks, and setting up daily itineraries for when the five-some comes to visit for Christmas. Pretty excited. If anyone wants to try and stow away in their suitcase they are certainly welcomed.

That's my short update for today.

Much needed update

2009-10-27T06:18:00.001-07:00

JJ has come and gone. He was here for only five days, but it was an awesome five days. Being back together with the big man was so fantastic, I got to really unwind and unleash my American culture for a good portion of time. Him being gone means that instead of asking off work I'm going to double up on it. Gotta make some money to get ready for treating other visitors! All are welcome!

Getting ready for the Halloween parties at the moment. The last two weeks of class have been really fun, giving out different types of candy and building up to the best this week. I've been put in charge of the Haunted House for our kindergarten, and I am also to be one of the MC's for the Halloween show, so I am excited for both jobs. I have to be a pirate, the costume I wore needed to match the other MC, and she wanted to be a pirate. Aside from that, Halloween should be fun. I am participating in the parties at both my kindergartens, so I've got a good amount of extra work and planning to do.

To reward myself, tonight I went and bought a special Nintendo DS card that allows for downloading and playing of games. No, it isn't quite legal, but it's the Chinese way of doing things. After looking for a long time for Pokemon in Chinese, I discovered that the only way to find any DS games in China is to do it this way. I bought the card, got a bunch of different Chinese language versions of Pokemon games, and am looking forward to practicing my reading speed as I play through them in my free time. If this works, I'm totally buying these as gifts for JJ and Patrick. I thought about getting one for Anita, but she would be so frustrated by the challenge of reading Chinese.

Beijing Trip

2009-10-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

The trip in Beijing has been epic fun. I've really enjoyed my time here with Gloria and Bob, it's been a refreshing infusion of American culture into my life. I didn't bring a computer, so I haven't been blogging regularly. I hope that after I get back I'll sit down and document some of the weirder stories.

As it is, I will try and write some stories now, though my focus is lacking. I am currently sitting in a cafe with Gloria and we are both painfully hung over. We had the option of having a quiet night at home last night or going out to exlore the Houhai bar district. We chose the bar district, and what a night we had.

We started out in a bar called "Sex In Da City", I'd seen it a few times before and always wanted to go. We took turns buying each other rounds and bar hopping. There was lots of live music and performances going on at each bar, so we made sure to walk around the lake and check all of them out. Gloria video documented our trip around the lake bar district along with many other parts of the trip, once she gets those online somewhere I'll link to them. We eventually had some other friends meet up with us, though when they got to us we were tipsy and "China Crazy".

China Crazy has been the ongoing theme of the trip, it's the word Bob and I have been using to describe the change of behavior that occurs when you get abroad and into a new culture. Gloria has been going China Crazy, and it's rubbing off on Bob and me. Much more on me, since I'm staying with her. We just do some strange, strange things with no fear of embarassment. She brought Metamucil with her, and both of us are now addicted to it. We discovered the preventative cure for unhappy stomaches and bowel movements caused by spicier than death food is Metamucil, and we are taking so much it's crazy. SO MUCH FIBER.

China Crazy is so intense. We stole the little decorative shams off our beds this morning. We aren't really sure why. It just needed to be done.

Back to the story, we ended up spending so much money in the bar district. We spent the equivalent of about 200 dollars American each, but that means we spent 4000 in Chinese money. Each. People thought we were rich, it would be like seeing someone in America spending 4000 bar hopping. It was the one-time-only type of drinking experience that can only be done with friends, and despite how terrible I feel now I definitely am happy that we did it last night.

Yesterday I went to buy a jacket at the mall. After buying the jacket at the mall, the people at the counter told me I needed to go upstairs to the customer service center. Apparently since I'd spent so much money on the nice jacket they wanted me to get a membership card, it was free so I said okay. After filling out the card, they gave me a complimentary gift. The choice was a pillow or a wine set complete with two nice bottles of wine and two wine glasses in a display case. I was like "What the HELL who chooses the pillow?" then watched in amazement as the other woman getting a card chose the pillow. That's like a 300 dollar value in wine and glasses and display case she is passing up. Also I have no idea why they give such nice gifts, but I took it.

SNAKES

2009-09-27T06:45:00.000-07:00

So busy lately. Because of the upcoming holiday we are working on
Sunday, and I forgot how important a rest on the weekend was. I've now
been working 7 straight days with a night of karaoke thrown in there on
Friday, and I'm starting to feel the pain.

I wanted to mention this but I kept forgetting. I had a moment in our
"English Meeting" last Thursday that caused me to laugh for 5 minutes
straight. No one else got it. There was an excellent typo on our
"Common Phrases to Use With Kids" handout one of the teachers had typed
up. The English teacher (Chinese girl) had typed it up, and then during
our English meeting (10 Chinese teachers trying to speak English with me
to practice their English) I was supposed to read it out loud for
pronunciation checking for mistakes as I went. The mistake I found, the
one that made me laugh, was: "Okay kids! Time for breakfast / lunch /
snakes / dinner!" I read them one by one. "Okay kids time for
breakfast!" "Time for lunch!" "Time for snakes!"

When I yelled "Okay kids, time for snakes!" I instantly lost it. I
realized it was meant to be snacks, but after yelling it I just lost
it. I'm giggling it typing it. I have a mental picture of me walking
into the classroom an hour after lunch with a basket of snakes and
yelling "TIME FOR SNAKES EVERYONE!"

I love my imagination. It's what keeps me going.

Weekly Check In

2009-09-25T06:31:00.001-07:00

This week has been a good level of busy. I spent a few hours waiting in line earlier in the week to buy train tickets to Beijing. Despite waiting pretty early they had nearly sold out when I got there, and only the expensive tickets were left. I found out afterwards that a plane ticket from Hangzhou to Beijing would have been about as expensive as my train ticket and 10 hours shorter.

In any case, I'm excited for the week holiday. Gloria will come to play with me in China, it is my first test run to see what type of host I am. Will I balance work and play well? Time will tell.

Today I did the monthly review of a selection of the children in my class. Tomorrow they give them out to parents, and I'm expecting to meet with the parents to discuss them should there be parts they don't understand. This whole week/weekend will be a battle until Thursday when we get off work. We have classes on Sunday to give the kids a four day week before the break, meaning I will have no day of rest. Let the gauntlet begin.

Burning Down the House

2009-09-19T20:52:00.000-07:00

Most entertaining story of the weekend comes first. Last night I went
to a particularly nice cafe with my friend, a pricier one that
specializes in a calm atmosphere and great ambiance music. After
sitting for about an hour, the table next to us started yelling for a
waiter. Most places in China you will call for a waiter, but at nicer
places like this cafe it is looked down upon. The waiters and patrons
looked disparagingly at the two gentlemen yelling for a waiter until
their cries of, "Waiter! Waiter!" turned into, "Waiter! Fire!". One of
the lights had burst and the ceiling was slowly catching on fire. Just
as the waitresses realized the ceiling was on fire big pieces started to
fall down and that section of the ceiling began caving in. Everyone
escaped without injury, and the waitresses were all yelling "Put it out!
Put it out!" but no one thought to grab the fire extinguisher or
actually do anything. It took a good minute for someone to come running
out of the kitchen to put the fire out. Those of us who hadn't already
fled were then given discount cards and free everythings. It was a
pretty exciting event, never been in the midst of a fire before.

This morning I went to partake in more part time teaching. The job is
nice, as the money it brings in makes me feel a lot less guilty about
spending money 'recklessly' treating friends to dinner and seeing
movies. When I went to the first class on Thursday I thought I stumbled
at a few places with the unfamiliar format of the class, the longer
time, and having to get new children to have the courage to talk to a
foreigner. I'd forgotten how hard it was to get children talking on the
first day. I didn't think I'd done well, but after the class the
children gushed to their parents about how much they liked me, the
teachers gushed about how well I did, and several parents redid their
children's learning schedules to be in class with me or be in private
sessions. Armed with that confidence, I went in for round 2 today and
just dominated my classes. I'm really starting to enjoy teaching,
especially because I feel I am finally getting really good at it.

I've been cooking lately after doing some studying of local restaurant
styles, and last night I made some of the best food I've ever made. I'm
not sure if it is cooking with gas or a fluke with lucky guessing on
cooking times, but it was so good. SO GOOD.

Time for afternoon classes, followed by a trip to the movie theater with
some friends to see the latest Chinese blockbuster.

Week in Progress

2009-09-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

I discovered today while there are no other male teachers at our school. It isn't the reasons I heard before about salaries and social perceptions about appropriate jobs for men. No, it is something much simpler. Today one of the girls was excited to see me and came running up yelling, "Chris! Chris! Good morning Chris!" She was running at top speed to give me a hug, and hearing her yelling I turned around just in time to say, "Hell- OH" as she inadvertently punched me straight in the crotch. It was match point, game over, white man down level of pain. I hadn't been racked like that since football, and by damn I think I'm going to invest in a cup. I've had lots of close calls, but I'd managed to avoid the flailing limbs that are so dangerously aimed around crotch level up until today.

Aside from that, the week has been fairly good to me. I'm getting better and better at handling the kids both in terms of keeping them happy and in keeping them in line. I do know for sure, though, that as a result of my experience I don't want kids any time soon. So intense.

My first day at the part time job is Thursday, two days from now, and I'm not yet entirely sure what to expect.

Part Time Job Interview

2009-09-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

Had an exciting weekend. The Wine Bar we went to on Friday turned out
to be great, we had a lot of fun. We will definitely be making a return
visit, after 10:00 a DJ came in to set up and the music was fantastic.
The drinks were good, and the complimentary buffet that came with the
drinks was fantastic.

I had planned to go to a scenic site on Saturday with some friends, but
I accidentally turned off my phone after setting the alarm and didn't
wake up in time. I spent the afternoon instead going to meet with a
kindergarten about part time work. I was recommended by an impressed
teacher at my current school. Their classes and facilities were
amazing, with touch screen walls for interactive teaching and highly
motivated students. The pay is 150 an hour, far above the average 100
an hour other places had offered me, and the school simply on the
recommendation alone was certain I'd be a perfect fit. It really is all
about who you know in China. In any case, I will probably start some
time this week, and I'll be able to make a good amount of money from the
work. The money will be welcome, too, as I won't receive my first
paycheck until after the first month of work here and I'd like to
bolster my Chinese bank account without making more transfers to it from
my American account. The fees pile up fast!

I am excited about the part time work, it should be fun, and I made sure
that it would be easy to ask for time off should I desire it.

Last night I spent the night at a friends house. We had a sleepover
watching American and Chinese movies that I had bought and eating
copious amounts of fruit. The amount of fruit that people eat here is
just ridiculous. So much.

I am Donkey

2009-09-08T06:43:00.002-07:00

The Chinese faculty agrees that I act like the Donkey from Shrek. What happens is, certain things just boil up inside of me and I end up breaking into song or dance at random parts of the day. For example,. today I did my 'donkey dance' and sang Billy Jean for 5 minutes in the office. The donkey dance is the dance I did when they first said I acted like Donkey, and it is really well received. They think the dance and I are hilarious. "I'm Donkey! I'm donkey! DONKEY DONKEY DONKEY!"

Internet Tomorrow

2009-09-08T06:43:00.001-07:00

The internet providers will come to my house sometime tomorrow to open the internet for me, and after that things will be much more convenient. I am excited. Once I have my own internet I can experiment with proxies and find ways to get to facebook, blogspot, and upload pictures.

To confront Phillip's difficulties the kindergarten had our contact David invite Maggie to come observe and help him prepare for his classes. Maggie has 11 years of teaching ESL experience in various countries around the world, and she certainly is good, but I don't think anyone predicted the result that would come from having her visit. She stepped on pretty much every persons toes and did everything the way we are not supposed to. The office provides us with materials on request, and she decided to circumvent this and go purchase her own supplies. This is fine, though a bit impolite to the woman in charge of finding and maintaining supplies for us.

The next issue exploded into a giant fight. Phillip had previously asked for a list of names of the children in the class. The names are posted on the walls outside the class, but he requested that one of our coworkers get the list for him. Note: coworker, not assistant. She obliged, and while Maggie was reviewing the name noticed that 8 of the children did not have English names written down. She also made the comment that "Two character names are girl names, and 3 character names are tricky because they can be boys or girls". I'm not sure where she decided on this from, but it is so hilariously untrue and unfounded that I just didn't care to help her. She was already annoying me by reinforcing every negative American stereotype I try to work against, and the confidence with which she stated her insanely stupid comment caused me to simply stare at my paper to avoid the rush of various emotions that threatened to make me yell or laugh or both.

She first confronted her saying, "This name is two characters, yes? Well then why is her name Max? Max is a boys name." My coworker was confused and simply responded that yes he was a boy. Maggie then responded with, "You know Max is a boy's name? Well then why don't you have her change her name to a girl's name, you shouldn't call her Max." My coworker was more confused, and tried to explain that the child name Max was indeed a boy. Maggie finally decided to believe that this was the one exception to her made up "two character names are girls" rule and move on to her next grievance - the missing 8 names.

Our coworker informed her that the names had recently been decided upon after changes from the parents and not entered into the computers yet, and that if she would like the names Phillip should go ask the teachers in each class for them. Maggie began to berate my coworker and speak to her like a child, insisting that she was Phillip's assistant and needed to do her job by going and asking the teachers for her. She is not Phillip's assistant. She became angry, and when our other coworker turned to ask her in Chinese what was wrong, she responded in Chinese simply explaining and stating that Maggie was telling her to do things she didn't need to. This caused Maggie to yell, "Don't talk in Chinese because you know I can't understand, don't talk behind my back, speak English." Things simply elevated from there, with Maggie storming to the headmaster's office to seek justice and our coworker following behind to not let Maggie soil her name. The biggest loser in this is Phillip, who sat there embarassed and said nothing. Daisy, the coworker that was yelled at, is his partner teacher (not assistant) and shares the upper 3 classrooms with him. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays foreigners take the younger children and the two Chinese English teachers take the older children, then on Tuesday and Thursday it switches. Phillip needs to be able to work with her and coordinate curriculum, and now not only is she not excited to work with him but most of the teachers in his class witnessed Maggie's tirading through the halls yelling at Daisy and making a scene as she made her way to the headmaster's office.

All in all, the event really annoyed me. Maggie, seemingly not knowing the situation of the school and how things work (I hope) despite my impression that Phillip had explained it to her, came in and proceeded to offend and anger as many people as possible.

Aside from that, I can't stop losing weight. I was around 215 when I came to China, and I am now down to 198 with no signs of my weight stopping. I'm not sure what I'm losing since I feel like I look the exact same, so I'm rather confused at the moment. Oh well.

A New Week Has Begun

2009-09-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

A new week has begun, and I am continuing to dominate the kindergarten. Phillip is struggling and perhaps has given up, he didn't prepare anything for his classes today and there was a pretty big meeting about it followed by him getting a stern private talking to. I couldn't hear what was being said, but I think everyone on campus could hear the tone through the walls and knew what was going on. The only thing he did was hand out whistles to his first class, which if you know anything about kindergarten and preschool aged kids is a terrible idea. He said he realized this after it backfired and didn't give any out to his next classes, but needless to say he isn't on good terms with the whistle classes teachers now.

The kids and I have been getting along well. They are baffled by my body hair and think it is amazing. All the previously shy students are all opening up to me, and they are learning so fast it is amazing. The job takes so much preparation but is so rewarding.

I went and bought Dr. Suess after the insane success of reading Hop on Pop to my classes. I prefaced it by telling them Dr. Suess was what my mom used to read to me, and they were so mystified and excited that I was sharing it with them. I also think I'm going to keep my copies instead of trying to get reimbursed and giving them to the school. The books come with Chinese translations at the bottom along with a short Chinese bio about Dr. Suess, and I think these are definitely worth collecting. The books that the local big book store didn't have I have ordered to complete my collection. I am needless to say very excited.

More exciting and heartwarming was the local vendor who stopped me on the way back. He runs a cigarette store, but he is the place right outside our gate and I always drop by to buy water from him and do a bit of talking. He was a gruff guy at first, but he is really nice and I've enjoyed making him open up and be nice to me. He saw my books when I stopped to get water, and asked me if they were for my classes. He was intrigued about the Chinese written on the page to help with learning the English. He told me his daughter was only 3 and had just started school, and that her English was bad. Then he proceeded to ask if I had any good books for alphabet learning. I pulled out Dr. Suess's ABC book, one of my favorites, and he asked me how much it was. I told him they were all 18 RMB, and he without hesitation pulled a 20 out of his pocket and gave it to me. I told him not to worry about paying me, but he was too proud and wouldn't take the money back. He flipped through the new book so happy that he had a gift to give to his daughter, and he was so involved with being happy with his new acquisition that when I asked him if he had anyone to read it to her he didn't hear me at first. He responded that he did not, and I offered to stop by during my break in the afternoon and read it with her. I thought he was going to cry, he was so overwhelmed that a foreign English teacher from the best kindergarten in Hangzhou was offering to read to his daughter, the daughter of a cigarette store owner who doesn't look to make much money. I didn't think about it that way until after, so his reaction caught me a bit off guard, but I assured him that I would come and read it to her. The whole experience was really heart warming.

Work has been going well, and tomorrow I am scheduled to go get internet hooked up and get a bus card made. I am excited, this means more convenient internet and more frequent updates.

I also bought about 50 of the best English movies from a local movie store 3 days ago. My friend has just gotten out of the hospital with appendicitis, and his request during recovery was to watch my favorite English movies with me. We have already watched countless Chinese movies, so I decided to go overboard and stock up with my favorite from every genre. I have an exciting week of movies ahead of me, along with a trip on Friday to a wine tasting and dinner party. I have to find a date. Oh dear.

Fishing For Names

2009-09-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

It seems my week will be rather uneventful from Monday to Friday with the exception of class. My friends have started school again or work, and we often only have time to eat after I get off work, then we all return to our respective residences to do what we need to do. In my case that means playing Hearts on my computer and setting a new record while listening to Chinese music, followed by reading one of the new Chinese novels I bought and falling asleep by ten. My life has become horrifyingly adult in the last few days. I find myself spending my free time cleaning the bathroom or scrubbing certain parts of the house. Things that years ago showed up on my chore list are now things I williningly do with no bribery or threat of punishment, and after I do my work I go to sleep at a reasonably early time to wake up early and plan for work. Horrifying.

Class was even more fun today. The class culminated with the students fishing for their English names, and after they fished them out we each took a picture together with their fish (name on the front). I am going to use these pictures to remember their names, and I also plan to print out copies and give them to the students. Apparently my first day made a great impact on the students but more so on the teachers, they never thought I would do so well starting out with no experience. This has been a rewarding week, I hope the kids are ready for more this afternoon.

The First Day

2009-09-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

The first day has been absolutely amazing. The children love me, and I love them, everything seems to be going so well. I am so happy that everything is going so smoothly, I think this is really going to be a fun semester. The best moment of my day so far has been the kid sitting next to me in one of the classes rubbing my arm and marvelling at my arm hair. He asked me why I had so much, then wanted to rub my face to see if I had a beard. It was the most novel thing I've had happen to me in China in months. Top notch awesome.

I sang songs, did introductions, and it looks like it will be fun. I forgot to mention in yesterday's entry that my TA taught me how to make a fishing pole out of paper. I am going to go fishing for children tomorrow to give them their English names. This fishing pole may be the coolest arts and crafts thing I've ever done, it is so strong and amazing. SO AMAZING.

Lots of Days In Summary

2009-08-31T08:03:00.000-07:00

I am going to write in short blurbs. I wrote this entry last night, then the internet in the web cafe went down. It was actually somewhat entertaining, because though I lost this entry I did get to see an amazing show when all of the World of Warcraft addicts got angry at being disconnected. I thought a riot was about to erupt, there was so much yelling and waving of fists and brandishing of empty water bottles at computer screens. I just sat there and played solitaire waiting for the internet to come back while they endlessly typed passwords and hit reconnect every 10 seconds, all the while screaming into microphones "Can you hear me now? The internet is down! I don't think I'm connected to the voice server... can you hear me NOW... how about NOW?" After half an hour I went home and resolved to write a concise version today.

First and perhaps most important was Bob's departure from Hangzhou. I felt a pit of sadness erupt when I finally saw Kate and JJ off after my going away party, and it only deepened when Anita left. When I saw my mom, dad, and brother for the last time for months I felt like the pit in my stomach couldn't get any worse. When Bob left, I realized that I was truly alone. I kept telling myself it was like the other times in China, but in reality it isn't. I had the option of readily available American culture in immediate interactions with Americans should I need it, but this time around I only have the comfort of Chinese friends. I have noticed that I miss small things that I didn't know I was so addicted to before. I miss sarcasm, inside jokes from youtube videos, talking about which football team was favored to when what, and dozens of other small pop culture points that just can't be understood by foreigners. I am happy over here, there is no doubt about that, but I am also very aware of a certain emptiness. Something is missing. I am not sure who or what it is, but something is missing.

I went to Beijing last week, but most of the trip was spent eating and sleeping. I started getting sick before getting on the train to Beijing, and it only worsened once there. I ate a lot of great food (yes, I have pictures and videos), and in between meals I basically slept. I think in retrospect that I got hit by the flu, and I hope that was the case, because then I am immune for later this year. If I am not immune, working with 60 kindergarteners will definitely give it to me.

I have been busy the last few days finalizing preparations for beginning work. I went through the health check, registering at the police station, and the preparing of lesson plans for classes this week. There are so many stories I am neglecting, but after a few days have passed they don't seem as amusing as when they first occurred. I can't wait until I get internet in my apartment so I can update frequently and truly share my experience in China.

Students arrive tomorrow, and I am very nervous. Apparently Bob crashed and burned in one of his three college classes, and instead of focusing on his success in the other two I am worried about his failure in the one. I have discovered, after much preparation, that kindergarten is going to be much harder than teaching college ever would be. Especially since I am working for the foreign branch of the most exclusive and famous Kindergarten in Hangzhou. I didn't realize how well known it was until I started telling people the name, and after many of the same responses I am starting to feel the pressure.

Thankfully, the faculty has all fallen in love with me. They are all just amazed by my Chinese, and think I am just the best thing since sliced bread. The first day I met all the teachers we were supposed to meet at the school at 8:30, but my coworker decided not to come. He had many excuses including back pain, headache, our contract not saying we start until the first, and being tired, so I just let him stay at home and sleep and rolled in by myself. After 4 hours of the Chris Marco show, I called him to wake him up and meet us for a big lunch in our honor. At the lunch (which I got LOTS of videos of) we ate at an epic Chinese version of Benihanas. I am stating now that anyone who visits me in Hangzhou must go with me to this restaurant. It is pricey in Chinese terms, but it was so nice and so amazing. All the main teachers were at the lunch, and I basically did all the talking and impressing since my cooworker does not speak Chinese. I was his translator for the meal.

The headmaster has told me that the faculty likes me, which came right after dinner and was said in a very direct way as if to criticize my coworker Phillip. In addition to what had already occurred, it turns out that the Chinese people have a lot of trouble understanding his English. He was hit by a car 15 years ago, and after a 10 year recovery when he speaks he sounds very much like Ozzy Osbourne. I must admit I have trouble understanding him at times, too. I am not sure English teaching was the best career choice for him, but I'm committed to helping him as much as I can. Our headmaster is already attempting to get him to work at the branch below us instead of our branch, so we'll see how things work out in a few weeks.

Aside from that, I've been frequenting karaoke places with friends in the last few days. I have learned many new Chinese songs since I came to China, and I've been totally dominating the karaoke scene. I'm pretty much awesome.

The Return to Crazy Fat Uncle Joe's House of Noodles and Fixin's Featuring Lil Wayne and Lil Jon

2009-08-17T06:02:00.000-07:00

We finally made our return trip to my favorite restaurant in all of Hangzhou. The name started out simply as Fat Uncle Joe's noodle house, but it has since evolved to being so much more. After ordering he yells the orders back at the kitchen, yells any modifications to the kitchen, yells at the kitchen to hurry up, and in general just yells at the kitchen. It is so entertaining, and that in conjunction to the full view of the kitchen through the big windows means dinner and a show!

This is the legendary place that serves the best green been dish in the south, along with a whole assortment of great spicy foods and noodle dishes. We introduced some of our friends to this place, and the result was eating 5 meals in the last 3 days there. They liked it just a little bit.

We also went out to karaoke and to a tea bar, but those pale in comparison to the glory of food (obviously). The karaoke itself was quite fun, but was mainly me singing Chinese songs. Every now and then the Chinese friends would sing with me, but they all seemed so uncharacteristically shy. Bob and I noted the price of imported liquor, and decided we have to go back since it's the only place you can get a bottle of American alcohol at a reasonable price without going well out of your way. That means better karaoke stories hopefully coming soon.

The tea bar was a bit of a let down, when we got there they were near closing so the selection was limited. We decided on cold iced Chinese teas, and drank them with whatever food products we could force them to bring us. The Chinese were excited about the tea, Bob and I just needed to eat something.

A small side note, as I was on my way to the webcafe to compose this I got to witness a sting on local cart vendors. They are not legal when selling fruit and other food, and when the police showed up they flying in every direction. It was pretty crazy, I'd never seen the police actually crack down on the street vendors before. This means no more salmonella pears. Damn.

Karaoke Ambush

2009-08-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

With Bob now in China, it seemed the time was right for our first big night out in China. The plan was originally dinner and a movie, but that changed to dinner and a bar after dinner took a very long (though enjoyable) amount of time.

We ended up at a seafood restaurant for dinner, though when it came time to order we discovered that none of us Chinese or American much cared for seafood or knew how to order it. Undeterred, I was elected captain of ordering food as usual and proceeded about the business of selecting my culinary desires.

This restaurant, however, was different from normal restaurants in that it had no conventional menu. Instead, Culinary Captain Chris had to go to the front of the restaurant to look at the displays of fresh ingredients and already made dishes to make selections. Luckily the waitress had suggestions, as I didn't know which of the 15 fish options displayed before me were good and didn't know how any was prepared. I have pictures to document the entire trip, and perhaps the best part was her convincing me that ordering a duck would be a great idea. The whole thing came to the table, and we got some good pictures of our Chinese friends and us trying to figure out how to eat the duck head.

After dinner, we decided to head to a bar to see a concert. One of the friends we were with had sat next to a musician on a train a month prior, and he had told her his band would be playing at a concert downtown on the very night we were out, so we decided it was worth the trip to go check his band out. Bob was conquered by time difference tiredness and didn't make it, and thus I was the only white person on this adventure. In fact, I was the only white person I saw in the entire bar despite it being very nice and seeming to cater both in higher price and decoration to western tastes. I should have immediately known that being the only white person would have implications for what would happen later in the evening.

The music was great. We arrived in time for the second set, which was mainly them singing covers of American songs. When we entered they were singing Sweet Child of Mine as their closing song for the second set, and I must admit they sang it quite well. After a short break they returned, and the third set was them taking requests written on napkins from the audience. My friends of course asked me what some of my favorite songs were, and we started writing them down to turn in. The first we requested was played, so we requested another. This one was turned down, and my friend didn't understand and really wanted them to play it. The last requested song they played was "Hotel California", the only English song that was requested. It is worth noting that Hotel California (加州旅馆) is insanely popular in China, the entire audience sang along while they played it. After Hotel California, they proceeded to take requests only on the condition that you come up and sing instead of them. The people who came up to sing were, surprisingly, quite good. Meanwhile, my friend still wanted them to play my song, so while a guest singer is singing she goes up to the lead singer (the guy she knows from the train) and asks him to play the song for me. He sees that I am a foreigner, and laughs and decides it will be the next song.

This is where things took a turn.

The being the only white person came back to bite me at this stage. He prefaced the next song with, "This is for our foreign friend here tonight, we are glad he came out to hear us. This is 月亮代表我的心, and he is going to come sing it with me." I did a double and triple take and decided I could not handle this. Backing out was not, however, an option. I went up and told him I only knew the chorus, not the verses in between. He told me no problem, we'd just do the chorus, he'd sing a verse, then I'd do the closing chorus. The 'quick' version felt anything but quick though. I started the chorus with him, and then he dropped out leaving me singing alone in front of shocked Chinese people. They didn't think I actually knew the song apparently, and didn't know how to react. After I finished the chorus there was insane applause as he started the verse, and then as the applause calmed down he urged me to finish the verse with him. I proceeded then to kinda make noises to go along with the tune, but I really had no idea what the words were. This part, for me, was extremely embarrassing. The crowd didn't seem to mind though, because as soon as I got to the chorus they erupted again. After I finished singing there was a good amount of applause, and I apologized into the microphone for only knowing the chorus and not the verses. Hearing me SPEAK Chinese and not just sing a memorized song made them even more crazy. The song after was the last song, and so I got to leave before too many people came up to swarm me with attention.

And that was my night in China.

The Return

2009-08-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

Blogspot, I have discovered, is blocked in China for the moment. As a result my mother will be posting my bloggings for me. I have taken pictures to document my journey so far, but I will not be able to post them until later. The room I'm staying in does not have internet access, so I am using a computer at the local web cafe. Once I get internet I will be able to email pictures from my own computer, and then my mother will have to figure out how to use technology to upload pictures for me.

The plane ride was glorious. I had no waiting time in Newark, as soon as I got to the gate I saw that the plane was already boarding for Shanghai. There was no one to either side of me on the plane, and I got to lay down and sleep for most of the ride over.

Once I got off the plane, however, an epic fiasco began. I had thought my preparations were thorough, and that by giving ATT extra money for international service they would provide said service. I was wrong to assume that things worked the way they should. I discovered that my phone did not have service. I didn't panic yet, as I figured my contact would be waiting to pick me up with a "Chris Marco " sign just outside the gate. I was wrong about that, too. I began to panic, and went to figure out the public phones. I bought an IC Card required to use the phones, but that didn't seem to work either. On closer inspection of the back of the card, the card told you (after you paid for it) that it could only dial other local Shanghai numbers. My contact's numbers were all Hangzhou cell phones. I went to the information desk and bought a SIM Card (expensive) to put in my cell phone. I called my contact, but I couldn't hear what he was saying and he couldn't hear me. I called a friend, and asked her to find my contact and let him know that I was here.

After her playing middle man for a bit and doing some research, she tracked down my contact and he called me. He told me not to move, and 20 minutes later found me at the information desk. He apparently had gotten lost in the airport, and for some reason went to the gate where the flight from Los Angeles was coming in. We took the bus back to Hangzhou, and the troubles only deepened.

I had asked David, my contact, many times if he would get me a reservation or if I should reserve a place for myself. He assured me not to worry, and that he would get a place for me. As it turns out, he hadn't made a reservation, just gotten the prices of several places. Every place we went to, as a result, had of course filled all the cheap rooms, and only the expensive ones were left. We went to the dorms I had stayed before, and after 30 minutes of David yelling in the local dialect and walking back in forth between 2 administrative buildings to talk with different people we finally got me a dorm room. It turned out to be pretty inexpensive, and it is pretty fun being back in the place I stayed last summer, but the process of getting there was quite a headache.

The other problems I've run into involve Wells Fargo conspiring to try and keep me from getting money. I advise anyone thinking of coming to China to not use Wells Fargo. They are dumb.

Problems aside, it has been pretty awesome being back. I've kept a positive attitude, and the difficult experiences are nothing compared to the awesome ones.

I opened my first Chinese bank account, got swarmed by people in Auchan who were impressed by my Chinese and wanted to tell me all about the house appliances I was looking at, and learned that a Papa John's had been put in next to my gym. I found my old roommate and celebrated his birthday with him, met up with my old best friend, and had countless reunions with people I don't remember in the cafeteria. It seems like every other time I walk around campus people I don't know come up to me knowing my name, it is a rather interesting phenomenon.

I got my gym card and went to my first workout, and the people at the gym are all excited to have me back. The entire trip so far has felt like some sort of an odd homecoming. The food has been great as well. I have already experienced a lot of my old favorites, but I will spare you the food stories until I can upload pictures.

There have been changes as well, but nothing too drastic. The Papa John's was a nice change, on the other hand the random guy sitting outside this internet cafe with cages full of frogs for sale is not quite as welcome. I'm already falling into the rhythm of "this is China" and not even thinking twice about weird things I see on the street. The insanity has begun.

I think today, right now in fact, I am going to explore B and Q. If I recall correctly it is an Ikea competitor, and I am going to go jump around on the beds until someone yells at me to stop.

CHINA

The One Week Mark

2008-12-07T07:12:00.000-08:00

In 45 minutes I will have crossed the threshhold into having just under a week to go. Time feels like it has been going by so slowly lately, I am really appreciating every day while at the same time steadily building excitement for returning to America.

The brunt of our tests finished on wednesday, thursday, and friday (yes consecutive - ouch) with the friday being concluded with a huge 3 hour program where we all had performances. They provide us with a DVD of the performance just like last year. No, you may not see me embarass myself yet again.

Ron came in from shanxi for the day so I got a trip to hang out with him, seeing him made me remember the old Hangzhou crew and I got a bit Hangzhou-sick for a bit. Good thing I get to see the JJ and the Bob in a week. AHHHH TOP SCORE

I need to map out the list of places to eat at before I leave, I've been mainly focusing on buying things for everyone else and forgotten to plan that part. I also need to make sure I buy a few things for myself, some good CD's, books, and Chinese movies.

CHINAAAAAAAAA WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK

One Month To Go

2008-12-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

My friend's Chinese roommate gave me a book to read a few weeks ago after hearing how much I like the movie "To Live". The author wrote the book To Live that the movie is based off of (which I plan to buy before leaving), and this book is similar is story. I picked up the book two days ago to see if I could read the first page or two and understand it, and to my surprise it sucked me in. I have now in two days read 42 pages of a Chinese novel. In Chinese. 42 pages. I gave a report on what I'd read to my teacher today and she couldn't believe I was reading so fast, and to be honest I can't believe I'm reading it so quickly either. I never imagined that I would be able to pick up a Chinese novel and read it at a pace equivalent of an English book. I am excited.

Today I drew a picture of a ninja doing a sky uppercut on a dinosaur holding a mace while using the gun in his other hand to shoot at a robot below. Meanwhile a space pirate if flying in from the left firing a cannon while Thomas Jefferson and Gandalf swing in on a rope to join the fight. I did all this on the dry erase board before class and thus got to use the picture in a lot of our grammar structures. I believe this is an outward manifestation of missing my friends. Dan is clearly Gandalf, and JJ is clearly Thomas Jefferson. I believe the robot is probably Anita, the ninja with a gun is Bob for certain, and the dinosaur wielding an awesome mace is probably Stevo. Mandy is definitely the pirate in the flying space capable pirate ship. That doesn't even need to be stated.

I miss home.

Almost As Bad As Jack Johnson

2008-11-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

This weekend I let my friends convince me that going to a radiohead-influenced Chinese band's concert would be a good experience.

Yeah that was a terrible idea.

BLACK POWDER

2008-11-29T04:48:00.000-08:00

My workouts have just been rejuvenated. One of my friends gave me some Black Powder, telling me a friend had given it to them when leaving China but they didn't want to use it. I have taken this as a sign from God as a reward for my good deeds and a mandate to workout and blow everyone's minds, and thus today I did just that. I am so excited, I have enough left for about 14 days, which is oddly the amount of workout days I have left. Tell me this isn't a sign from a higher power.

To prepare my body for the punishment I went and had my first massage since being in Hangzhou. I sprung the extra 50 RMB for the swedish style massage with oil and oh dear lord. No regrets there, I am so relaxed right now, I am really going to miss the massages when back in America.

I am sad that my computer is dead for good until I can return to America and replace the mother board, but not having the internet has been pretty good for my free time. As a result I've found some cool underground markets to explore for gifts and goodies for myself. Seriously awesome markets, you enter this 5 foot by 5 foot building in the middle of nowhere and go down the staircase into this giant underground multi-level market complete with an underground Korea Town. It blows my mind and will require several days to fully map out and buy things from.

The new infusion of Black Powder made me miss Bob and JJ and thus I had to watch (and by watch, I mean force my friends to watch for the first time as well) the Powerthirsts, Brawndos, NFL Crunchtime, and Superbingo on youtube. Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to go watch the Big Lebowski with them. PERFECT DAY.

Also, Texas beat OU.

Technology Continues To Betray

2008-11-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

My computer has died. Randomly, without caust, it refuses to turn on. I have taken it in to a Toshiba certified shop, and as we have eliminated most other causes we believe it to be a motherboard problem. Hooray.

That news put me in a foul mood, and the only way to cure foul moods is to go to the gym. In this case, I needed an epic gym trip. I decided to channel the spirit of JJ and Bob, the two gym partners I have been missing dearly since our parting of ways in Hangzhou.

I haven't taken preworkout drinks in a little over a month, and I finished my last cycle of Creatine before returning to America around that time as well. Thus my workouts, while excellent, don't have that epic Bob-insanity level that they had before. I decided that only through the power of Bob's beloved Red Bull could I do that.

As I explained to my friends, for a balanced and truly epic workout you must combine the 5 elements, much like when forming the Power Rangers or Captain Planet. There has to be five:

JJ is the power of smoldering rage, you simply take whatever is bothering you at the time (girlfriend, homework, bowel problems, China) and turn it into sheer willpower. Give homage to the spirit of JJ before working out, and your rage fueled workout will leave you happy and carefree after the workout. Side effects include epic hair.

Dan is the power of epic metal, only through harnessing the power of a well stocked ipod and focusing ones inner spirit can one truly find harmony with the epic gods of metal and have a fulfilling destructive workout. Only through him can you find the power to do 10 sets of pullups and call it a warm up.

Stevo is the power of competition. Oh, you lifted that much last week? Well the Bear Spirit of Stevo will not only add 20 pounds, but he will do 3 more reps than you did with the lighter weight. It shouldn't be humanly possible, but since when is the bear spirit Stevo confined to logic. Pussy.

I bring with me the power of excess. Yes, that weight is dangerously heavy. No, it is not necessary for me to do that many sets of bench press. I'm not sure what you mean by 'rest day' but the concept sounds silly. Embracing the power of Chris requires moderation, it can bring great gains, but within this power also lies the path to overtraining, one of the great sins against the workout gods.

Bob brings the power of insanity. Not controlled insanity, not refined insanity, simply insanity. Embracing the spirit of Bob is what leads people to mix red bull, noxplode, and instant coffee in a nalgene before working out. Bob is the reason 24 hour fitness has a coffee station in the middle of the gym. Bob is a strong man, and he dares any of you to take a run at him.

I combined these elements and had one heck of an epic workout yesterday. I embraced the raging fury within me, bought two red bulls (the non carbonated Chinese version), and with Through The Fire And Flames blaring loudly downed the first in remembrance of JJ in Hangzhou and his love for the occasional single preworkout red bull. I looked at the second, and with a thought of remembrance for Bob and his reckless abandon seen in the concoctions made preworkout in Hangzhou, downed the second Red Bull. My ipod seemed to know that this was not a normal workout, and the shuffle seemed to switch perfectly from Dimmu Borgir to Ayreon to Blind Guardian to Iron Maiden, keeping me supplied with fresh epic workout fueling metal. I began with Dan style pull ups, pushups, and dips to get into the mood, then pointed out the trainer that likes to think he can compete with me to come and be my spotter, loaded 225 onto the squat bar, and the rest became a blur as the 5 elements combined to form whatever we combine to form. I like to think its a gundam or megazord or something.

Man, now I want to workout. CHINAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Andrew Jackson

2008-11-19T05:40:00.001-08:00

Me: Any ideas on what my presentation should be about?

Mother: OK --just brainstorming here -- skyscrapers, what we eat for breakfast, Andrew Jackson, Chinatowns in America, OU UT game.

Andrew Jackson.

America in 5 Minutes

2008-11-19T05:24:00.000-08:00

This week has been simultaneously eventful and yet not much of mention.

I have a new partner my friend introduced me to at the gym. And since I'm me, there is obviously a story attached. She wants to practice her English, which is decent already, and since I already ended my dedicated language pledge with speaking to my mother I decided why not. Turns out this girl is, in the Chinese sense of beauty, an absolute knockout model of perfection. I wouldn't quite echo this sentiment, but after I spoke with her the first time at the gym all the male trainers found me in the locker room and asked me what I thought, what we talked about, if I could introduce them to her, etc. I was the cool kid before due to being white, large, and powerful with my use of the Chinese language, but now I have achieved superstar status after becoming this girls tutor. These people are fascinating sometimes.

Speaking of, the topic is America in 5 minutes. I have been wracking my brain all week trying to think of my topic for my end of semester presentation. At the end of the semester we head to a rural school and give our 5 minute presentation to a class of students using Chinese to introduce something about America. Last year it took me a long time to think of something and finally decide upon football, and this year is just as difficult. Other students are doing Christmas, Thanksgiving, or the NBA, but I feel these topics aren't unique and engaging enough. So far my list has cowboys and barbeque as the top contenders, but I still haven't decided and must do so soon. Just can't think of what to tell them about.

My technology jynx continues. My camera, gameboy, external hard drive, and computer (fan) all continue to betray me at random points and either not load, not charge, or malfunction randomly. However, I still do not trust the mechanics in China to not break my things: America hurry!

I kept starting a topic this week about the things I miss most, but I just couldn't bring myself to go through it all. I wanted to commemorate that I had under a month to go and start getting myself excited about America, but it is still too soon to start doing so without getting too homesick. The majority of the things I missed revolved around Bob and JJ and all the things that I used to do in Hangzhou for fun. I still do some of them in Beijing, but no one understands me.

And perhaps the best news for last, I found and bought the ultimate Christmas gift for myself and the other members of the workout team. I can't say what it is since I don't want to ruin the surprise in case they read this, but I can say it involved long dealings, shady transactions, and possible bribery. Epic gifts are epic.

To The Korea(s)

2008-11-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

I originally sent this as an e-mail to Gloria and Sinae, then realized that my non Korean friends may enjoy this, as well.

Dear Koreans I Hold So Dear,

I have begun a trend in China.

I have explained to them that Korea is China's Canada, and that Korea should thusly be blamed in any and all situations with the shaking of the fist and the simple angered yelling of "Hanguoooooo!~". We have translated the "Blame Canada" song into Chinese with the lyrics "Blame Korea", and on the trip to Harbin this previous weekend the trend spread out of our class and into the mainstream like wildfire.

Currently all our teachers, students, and Chinese roommates make daily hand shakings with blaming of Korea ranging from a speaking mistake to a student forgetting homework to stubbing one's toe. When I arbitrarily chose Korea as the country to become "China's Santa Cap" and subject of China's blame I never thought I would make such a big movement.

You are all welcome for me bringing fame to your country.

Love,

Chris Marco
Korean (HANGUOOO) Expert

P.S. Don't forget to turn off your fans before sleeping and avoid fan death.

Seriously, though, the whole Korea thing is getting crazily popular. It is pretty much hilarious.

Harbin Is Far Too Cold

2008-11-09T18:42:00.000-08:00

That city was terrifyingly cold. If the weather is that cold I expect to see snow, and there was only bitter chilly wind.

The train ride there was annoying, the guy across from me snored louder than anyone I've ever heard. I had my ipod going on max and could still make out parts of his snoring. The ride back was much better, though I was a bit too wide for the beds on the train.

The city itself is beautiful, the architecture is interesting because it is Russia meets China. We went to a few different cathedrals, mosques, and landmarks like the 731 Germ Warfare Museum and the Harbin Jewish History Museum, but for the most part I didn't really care or have interest in the different places we went. The good news is they at least had some good food. I think the weirdest thing was eating this large bird leg, and then after eating the meat you were supposed to take a straw and suck...something...out of the leg bone (I'm guessing marrow?). It wasn't particularly tasty, nor was it bad, the experience was pretty crazy though.

I am a bit retarded, I managed to lose one of my gloves and my cell phone in the back of a cab. I am in the process of figuring out how to get my phone number back, but I get to spend money buying a new phone as punishment for being dumb.

I am waiting for my friends to post pictures. I took some picturse, but quickly realized that every time I turned on my camera that it was having a problem with the memory card, and that my camera is effectively broken. Trying to figure it out and fix that, but until then I'll just have to steal pictures from friends' facebooks to post here.

Harbin 哈尔滨

2008-11-06T02:53:00.000-08:00

I am heading out tonight to Harbin, the capital city of ice and snow and all things miserably cold in the world. It is also coincidentally the capital of the Heilongjiang province, but that comes second.

I am nervous about the cold, but I have prepared well with many layers. There is a tiger park there, apparently if you pay money you can feed chickens, lambs, or even cows to the lions. We are currently planning on pooling some money to put a whole petting zoo of animals in there for the lions to chase around. Only in China.

The election was a point of interest. The students were going crazy all afternoon (your midnight) when the results were coming in favoring Obama. I've never seen people so excited about an election. More intriguing, though, was that the election was called for Obama by the Chinese media hours before CNN or anyone in America dared to call it. It was called suspiciously early, perhaps China got to vote in this election, too?

Oh snap time is here gotta run and get on the train!

Go Bad Walls

2008-11-02T18:37:00.000-08:00

I love the spam I get in e-mails. I keep track of the best ones and Dan and I use the best of the excellent engrish phrases in every day speech, but there has long been one that has dominated. I got one spam message that simply stated, "Invaried beanboles, undeported seaboards." and nothing more. No link, no picture, simply the cryptic phrase.

A year has passed since that fateful spam email, and today I finally got another link free pictureless cryptic message. "Late wings spoke, go bad walls." I think someone from the future is telling me something through these random spam emails. I must figure out what it is.

On the China front, I spent the weekend revisiting some of the places I went with the mother and aunt for shopping. Most of the time spent revisiting was all done on one big stretch of road spotted with excellent shops and cafes. Aside from that, I had plans to go to the trophy row until UT lost, and then I just decided to go to the gym and work out instead.

But Chris, what is Trophy Row? Thank you for your curiosity. Last week when we were riding a bus to the forbidden city we passed stopped at a light, and I looked out to see a shop filled with trophies. All they did was engrave and sell trophies, which didn't a bad business model until the bus began moving and you saw that the next 10 or 15 stores on both sides of the street did nothing but sell trophies. It was mind blowing. I need to go take pictures of this phenomenon, and then perhaps get some excellent trophies made for those who deserve them. For example, "Dan - Slayer of Dragons and Savior of Mankind" engraved in Chinese and English on a trophy with a female golfer on top. Or perhaps a, "JJ - Master of the Seven Swords of Salishar and Keeper of the Sacred Flame" in Chinese and English on a race car trophy. The combinations are endless and excellent.

The Stories

2008-10-28T06:29:00.000-07:00

The mother has come, and the mother has gone. The Aunt was here with her, and together we made a trifecta of American might. That said, there were obviously some great occurrences along the way. These: are the China files.

Frank - The Meeting
I took the fast train to get to the airport, but since I didn't know the terminal of the continental flight I was unsure of which terminal to get off the train at. I exited the first one we came to in order to check the board, and discovered two other guys that were headed for the same flight. One spoke good Chinese and was from Shanghai, the other was apparently from Singapore, spoke very little Chinese, was leaving for America instead of waiting for people to arrive, and thus was quickly excluded from our cool kids club.

The former was Frank, and due to the plane from America being late we had a long time to discuss every aspect of China. I seem to have a habit of doing this with strangers, it is how I have met most of my friends with connections in China. After exchanging what we did in China, what the people we were picking up did in America, and why the people were coming to China we proceeded to hit up a Starbucks to pass the time. I, being a pansy, opted for orange juice, and he followed suit in typical Chinese fashion. We spent the next hour discussing various things, most important to the story being our plans for our guests. He was showing an important cardiovascular doctor around in a giant convention, and thus we were swapping ideas on where to take foreigners in China. He invited me to come eat with him at a nice restaurant on Friday, and since I wanted to return I invited him to come eat with us on Wednesday.

I should mention at this point that he is attempting to recruit me to help edit his medical journal, and as such it added a bit of pressure for me to look good at the dinners. The first dinner went over without a hitch, I ordered the food well and had a good variety and balance. The second dinner, however, is the true story.

Frank - The Dinner
So I told that story to get to this story. The place he invited us to go to on Friday was a very, very fancy restaurant that featured classy food with performances during the meal. There was Beijing Opera, Beijing Face Changing, Kung Fu, and some other instrumental performances and singing. The most important performance to tell you about was the girl with the pot. She started by laying on her back with her feet straight up in the air and then spinning a big pot around on her feet. After awhile they changed out the big pot for a gigantic 160 pound pot, and I have to admit seeing her spin and juggle that was really impressive due to the imbalance in the pots shape. They then asked for a volunteer from the crowd, and Frank told me that I had to go and thus I did. What happened next was caught on video and will be uploaded in the next few days. They had me sit in the pot, then 6 men lifted the pot and placed it on her legs. She then spun me around for the audience to see before setting me back down. I wasn't concerned about her dropping me as much as I was concerned at the trouble the 6 guys were having with letting me down. Video is coming, I promise.

But I digress. I had originally been under the impression that the dinner would just be the 5 of us again, but upon arrival we discovered that there were in fact 12 people. We were eating with leading cardiologists from two American hospitals, Frank (who is a doctor), two leading cardiologists from China's two most important and largest hospitals, a cardiologist from Singapore, and the guy in charge of a Chinese medical journal. We quickly realized that we were sitting at a power play meeting of Chinese trying to woo American doctors, and we felt extremely awkward and out of place. The other people at the table seemed to be looking at us with the, "Why exactly are you here? Who are you here with? You are important...why?" I proved my usefulness through my Chinese and my knowledge of Chinese culture and food, and thus helped the Chinese and Americans bridge some of the gaps, but the question still remained of why we were here and were we just freeloading off of all the important doctors.

Thus, the place he took us to cost far more than the place we treated him to, but I feel it was fair for him putting us in that crazy situation. It was excellent because the whole dinner it felt like Sarah and my mother were on their best behavior so I would look good in front of my important friends, and I finally understand what my parents had felt like taking me to meet coworkers or important people at dinners. It was a recurring theme, I was basically the parent the entire trip.

Bonus tidbit, I also had to basically feed Sarah to keep Frank from yelling at me in Chinese to take better care of them and make sure they were enjoying themselves.

Ito Yokado - America 1 China 0
The conquering of the Ito Yokado cashier! So Sarah and the mother decided they wanted to purchase some jade, and once they discovered they could pay with credit card got extremely excited.

We make our way from the place were you select what you want to buy to the cashier counter, wait in line, and then present our cards for our purchases. Sarah's goes over without a problem, but Kelly hadn't signed the back of her cards and the cashier lady (who let's be clear now is a antagonist here) refused to accept them.

We were a bit rankled by this, but we decided we'd just walk away, sign them, and try again. So we did that, and upon returning to the counter she grew indignant and said, "You signed these just now didn't you!" I thought to myself that she sure had made a brilliant deduction, and went into Chinese confrontation mode. We argued for a bit, but she refused to take the cards and when we walked away in defeat looked very proud of herself.

The lady at the jade counter, angered by why she couldn't make a sale, went over to raise hell on our behalf. While she did so, I told all the other clerks around us our story, and they were all on our side and ready to back up the big jade lady. Managers got involved, and since China loves their rules and technicalities we were unable to win despite the jade lady being on our side.

We went up a floor to shop for some toys while trying to think of how to buy the jade, as coming back the next day with our cards signed was not very convenient. We were thinking of pooling our cash and then going to get money out of the ATM, but instead mother and Sarah came up with some complicated deal and that involved Sarah buying the jade on her card for Kelly.

Excited about our new plan and determined to defeat the cashier, Sarah and I walked over and got in line. The lady saw us behind the person she was helping, and shook her head and said to herself that foreigners never learn. I am fairly certain she thought that Sarah was Kelly (sisters + all white people look alike), but upon getting to the front of the line she realized what our new strategy was. She panicked, and in her desperation to not lose to the foreigners after taking Sarah's card got on the phone to call the manager from before. She didn't want to sell it to us, to which the manager responded asking if there was a problem with this card, when she admitted there was no problem the manager told her to sell it because duhhhh money and sales are gooood. After having us use her system against her and being beaten by her own rules, she angrily swiped the card and loudly stamped the receipts. It was our turn to be proud of ourselves as we walked away from the counter.

America 1, China 0.

Tiananmen Closed

This is just a small side story really, I don't think it even needs its own bold title as I am fairly certain I figured out the mystery behind the story, but seeing as how I need to have something to offset the good stories, I'll let the story feel special and let it keep the title.

We went to Tiananmen following our trip to the Forbidden City, but I was confused at first by the lack of people and the presence of cars. I checked to get my bearings, and was certain that we were at Tiananmen. All the underground pathways to cross the street and enter the square were closed, so I asked a nearby guard what the deal was. He apologized, and then said that he was sorry for the inconvenience but was unable to tell me why. When I pressed him for if it would be open tomorrow, he responded with, "Not necessarily." Though I was happy that I was learning the Chinese methods of secrecy and confidentiality, I was sad that I couldn't take my family to the square.

I am fairly certain it was closed for the Asian-European summit due to top European leaders being in China. Though who knows...perhaps there is a bigger story here.

Guest Post: Mother In China

2008-10-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

All -- this is a guest blog from Chris' Mom. I arrived in China last week Tuesday and this morning am packing to leave. I can not believe that a week has flown by so quickly. And, what a week it was!!

We arrived with Chris waiting for us outside the gate. He had met a friend waiting for our one hour late plane. It turned out to be a coup for us as he joined us for dinner that evening and then invited us to a dinner and a show on Friday night.

Hotel Man -- Robin/Sean was waiting for us at our Hotel. What a grand Hotel. Marble and gold everywhere in the lobby. We checked in ran upstairs to put together the gifts we brought for Hotel Man/Robin/Sean and then presented them.

It was muggy and foggy before we arrived. The calm before the storm. It rained that night on our way back to the hotel and then turned chilly. But a nice chilly. Absolutely perfect weather -- crisp air, blue skys, awesome. Thank you China.

The food has been absolutely tremendous!!!!!! Stupendous!!! Delicious!!!!! Day one was Peking Duck. Day 2 Purple Bread, Fish Stew, and Dumplings, Beers on the Lake. Day 3 Corn Yogurt and Purple Bread, KFC on Wang Fu Shen Shopping District, Peking Opera Dinner. Day 4 Red Bean Yogurt and Purple Bread, Fragrant Pot, McDonalds at 9pm (got caught on subway and Chinese Restaurants had stopped serving). Day 5 Dim Sum, Hot Pot! Day 6 Hotel Buffet Breakfast, Snacks at the Mall (Green Tea Bun and Crab Custard Bun), Noodles at 'The Hallway'. Day 7 plan is for breakfast at Hotel and Lunch with Hotel Man. Suffice it to say we ate VERY well!

We saw The Wall, The Malls, Carrefour (think Chinese Walmart), Forbidden City, Tiammen Square, Chris in a terra cotta pot upheld by a small Chinese girl on a bench, Pearl Market, Nanlougu Market, Arts District, Night Market, Hutongs (Sarah and I did a bit of our own off the path exploring),Beijing Zoo and the Pandas, Tea House, Beijing at night, Beijing in a cab, Beijing on a Bus, Beijing on a subway and Beijing on foot. We got around.

We have had a lot of fun, laughed a lot. This city is incredible. Chris was an excellent tour guide. He negotiated the subways and buses with ease. He helped us our purchasing. He laughed at our poor attempt at Chinese yet worked with us to improve. We were in awe (and increaingly stay in awe) of his language and cultural skills. His friends are amazing .

We enjoyed the people and people watching. The people, cars, buses move as one and no one waits on the other. People in travel are one minded -- get out of my way. Yet, as we pondered over a map or tried to figure out where we were in a mall, people would stroll over and help us out. It is a very quiet and clean city. We didn't see a laundry mat. We heard very, very, maybe one siren. For a city this large, no fire trucks and ambulances dispatched every 5 minutes. Honking is done to gently make aware the presence of a car to walkers and bikers. Cars use all the lanes on the freeway, even the invisible lanes between lanes.

Sarah and I were a bit leery of the toilet situation. We are converts now! We love the squatters. Our first squat was on The Wall.

We love split pants. We love to see families in power squat position resting. We love to say Ni Hao and practice our Shey Shey everywhere. We love to torture Kelly with the question game.

I have left a ton out, so those who know me ask for the great stories, I took notes in my journal daily. I also took close to 500 pictures and several videos. And Chris, from the bottom of my heart and Sarah's -- Xiexie.

Great Wall

2008-10-20T06:20:00.001-07:00

The great wall is far too large. The first character in the Chinese name for the great wall is 'long', and I feel that is a much more honest description of what the Great Wall is.

We took a 3 hours bus to get to a section of the wall that was a bit out of the way and not the usual tourist spot. This spot had not been repaired yet, and some of the sections were downright dangerous - there were moments were I was climbing at a 75 degree incline.

The wall was impressive, I guess. I'm not really one to get impressed by it, and after hiking for 3 hours all good feelings had turned to fatigue and smoldering hatred. It was interesting to think of how it was built though, it was so massive and if climbing it made me so tired I can't imagine building it. In some of the parts where the stones were loose you could pick up a flagstone or two and realize it was not light labor. In addition, people not only had to live up here but do patrols and move military equipment. Thinking about that blew my mind a bit, but since I was racing to be the first to hike from our starting point to our ending point I didn't have time to stand around like an idiot.

I was, of course, the first one to get to our destination. We descended the wall and went into a nearby village where the program had arranged hotels for us. We didn't have to stay in the hotels if we didn't want to, but it did provide a good place to place our bags and hang out until nightfall. Our hotels were the historical Chinese houses that were all the rage a century ago, and the architecture was beautiful. It was cool to see these housing complexes in movies come to life before your eyes. Even cooler was the Mahjong table we had inside our sleeping room. I'm not sure why, but we were the only group with the table in our rooms, and thus we became the social hub. To top it off, the magical Mahjong table was electric, and it sorted all the pieces for you and racked them and wow it blew my mind.

I had videos of the Mahjong table, pictures of the unrestored portions of the wall, and more, but sadly my Camera bugged up and erased all of those pictures. We discovered this when I took out my camera to take pictures before going to bed, and had to take a few panic pictures of the wall before we left in the morning. Sadly this was the restored portion, so you only get a general idea. In addition, due to the lighting most of those pictures turned out crappy, so there's that.

Night at the great wall is cold. Too cold. We were all wearing multiple pairs of socks, pants, shirts, hoodies, and jackets inside of our thermal sleeping bags, and it was still cold. The only thing that kept me excited enough not to freeze to death were the updates of the OU game being texted to me by Sam back in Beijing. (Hook 'Em by the way)

Despite the cold, we did manage to sneak to a darker part of the wall and pee off the wall into the abyss below. It had to be done. It was premeditated. It was awesome.

At about 3 in the morning we all woke up from the sheer cold and discovered that the sky above was just a mass of shooting stars. I had never seen nighttime sky like it before, it was magical.

I think that covers the basic great wall. Figured I'd write something despite my frustration with the internet and the pictures before I forgot everything. Here is a picture of me and my burnt orange sleeping bag, a picture of me on the wall, and then a video of the surroundings of where we slept in the morning.

The Internet

2008-10-10T08:45:00.001-07:00

Does not want to cooperate. We've been having internet problems the last few weeks, and the internet has thus only been available when I don't need it. Every time I actually find time to sit down and write the internet is not working, lately it's been down about 90% of the time during the day/night.

I have backlogs to write that probably won't get written as I am preparing now to go to the Great Wall tomorrow morning, and I feel that writing about that will take precedence.

Here's to hoping I have a great adventure.

The Magic of China's Medicine

2008-09-28T20:33:00.001-07:00

Chinese people, I was told before, know their 拉肚子 (laduzi - diarrhea, sounds better in Chinese), and now I believe that.

I was given 3 medicines yesterday, I was to take the first one immediately, 3 hours later take the second, then 1-3 hours later when my stomach started to hurt take the third. I was told not to take the final, big daddy pill until my stomach began hurting. I was also told if it started hurting before I could take it. So I took the first 2 and still had no reprieve from the upset stomach symptoms, and like clockwork an hour after taking the 2nd one my stomach began to hurt. Thus at 4am I took the third one, and it knocked me right out. When I woke up my problems were gone, and I've been fine all day today with no issues whatsoever. It was like the third one nuked my digestive tract so hard it knocked me unconscious, and while I slept Chairman Mao himself entered my intestines and showed them who was boss.

I love being healthy again.

The Chinese Hospital

2008-09-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

Been sick all weekend with what I am fairly certain is either food poisoning or a really bad reaction to some unclean food, I'm pretty sure it happened when I ate something I'd left in the refrigerator for far too long. In any case, I got to have a wonderful lesson in the differences between the Chinese and American hospitals.

I opted to go to a real Chinese hospital instead of one of the English speaking foreign ones, and the experience was fantastic. I was scared of dehydration so I had been drinking lots of fluids all afternoon, and when I did the urine sample it came out clear as a result of all the liquids I'd been drinking and she didn't believe it was my urine, she thought I'd spit in it. Aside from that, the main part of excitement was talking with the doctor and being able to understand and answer all of the questions. She's got me on some medicine with English names that sound powerful and strong, so I am certain I will return to full health in no time.

This One's For The 爷们儿 (Real Men)

2008-09-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

I've given up eating a lot of my favorite dishes in my recently began effort to get my body fat percentage a bit lower, and as a result I have begun cooking some fantastic fusion. I mix Mexican, Italian, American, and Chinese cuisine together to make some fantastic healthy dishes, tonight involved chicken, bell pepper, spicy pepper, garlic stir fry. Whenever I cook I have an audience of girls wanting to learn from me, most of the guys in China are too cool or traditional to learn how to cook, their loss. They are a bit shocked by the amount of eggs I eat every day, but aside from that they are eager to learn my recipes and habits. I am already acting as personal trainer at the gym for two girls at the moment, and more are trying to get set up with times with me. This all exploded in the last week as people coming into the kitchen to grab their milk or leftovers saw me cooking massive meals - my habit is to cook several dishes to last me for a few days of variety eating, just stir fry or microwave a bit to reheat - and it is a bit overwhelming.

This is for JJ, Dan, Steve-o and all the others who must listen to metal and pump iron every day, we are like sharks and if we stop we will die. The 爷们儿。

Lately, I've been listening to copious amounts of Evergrey while studying or walking to the gym. My actual gym music has been dominated by throwbacks to Symphony X (Paradise Lost album), Iron Maiden, and Persuader. In addition, I've been listening to a lot of Ensiferum and Kamelot to get some new music in the mix. The latest great discovery I've made though is listening to the Ayreon I got from Dan. JJ, go get Aryeon right now, it is great listening music (not exactly gym material).

This is a Bad Idea

2008-09-19T05:45:00.000-07:00

中秋节 - Mid Autumn Festival

2008-09-15T05:03:00.000-07:00

Mid Autumn Festival happened yesterday, the holiday designated for spending time with family members. Since I didn't have any family in China, I spent the day learning how to make Chinese food with Chinese people and the night out looking at the lights and moon.

I made all sorts of goodies, but the most important/impressive is my ability to now make and wrap dumplings. And or the naysayers out there, such as Jessica Lin who insists that it is difficult to make them pretty, I would like to say mine were moderately attractive and showed definite improvement over the course of making about 50 of them
.
After the giant lunch/dinner, we took a long journey to a big fancy park bedecked with giant art displays adorned with lights. The majority of them looked like holiday floats made for showcasing during the night with blinking lights, and some of them shot water or rotated to music. Mixed in with all of this was all the ancient architecture of the park itself, namely the bridges, which were also bedecked with lights for the holiday. The tradition is to go out and look at the moon, but since it was overcast and a bit smoggy we opted to look at the lights instead of the slightly gross yellow moon.

I would show you pictures of all this, but I forgot to charge my camera the night before and there was no charge left when I went to grab it for picture time. Yes, I am quite dumb.

100 RMB in the Subway

2008-09-12T20:01:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, after leaving the internet cafe I go to for my post test celebration, I decided to stop and add some money to my subway card before boarding and heading home. I didn't need to, I still had enough money to last me for about a week, but I figured that now would be a good time since I wasn't in a hurry. I was wrong.

I followed all the instructions well, but when it came time to put in my money the machine took my 100RMB bill and didn't put the money on my card, just threw my card back out at me without asking me if I wanted to put the money on the card. I turned and asked the nearest Traffic Police attendant person what to do about it, and thus began what seemed like a gigantic event in their lives. I had witnesses to prove that I had put in my money, hadn't done anything wrong, and been cheated by the ominous machine, but still every person that came to investigate was incredulous that the machine could fail. How could the machine fail? It's the machine! It's new and improved and designed to make our lives either and would never betray us and cause us trouble! I feel, after writing that, that there is probably political satire in there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to find it and make it less obvious or more crafty since it wasn't really intentional. In any case, more and more higher ups kept coming down from wherever they come from, each one having the same investigation progress:

Oh you speak Chinese? Good! Your card didn't get the money? Well let's look for ourselves. Hm, you're right, no money. You followed the instructions correctly? Okay, that can't be. Oh these witnesses say you did it right? Okay, this is odd, let me talk to someone else, please wait a moment.

I waited for about 2 hours as different people came and went, and really I didn't care about the money in the end I just wanted to get on the train. They, however, had committed to solving the foreigners problem and they were determined not to be denied. They went behind the machine and took out parts of it trying to get the money thing open. After what must have been a long time fiddling with that, it was evident they didn't know how to get it open and weren't going to succeed. One of the ladies with relatively high status as indicated by her armband and some stars on her shirt asked me if I was sure I had put the money in, and if so perhaps the thing had spit the money back out onto and it had been blown in a breeze onto the floor. I wanted to tell her I wasn't retarded, and that for it to both spit out the money and then that money to be taken by a strong enough breeze to fall down I would need to have a severe problem, as the money accepting slot is in the middle of the machine and I never looked away. I indulged her though, and let her and 4 other police officers crawl around on the floor searching. It was touching.

In the end, the machine defeated them. They could not manage to make it cooperate. They took my phone number and said they'd call me today to get my money back to me, finally letting me go on my way. I'm fairly certain I won't see that 100RMB again, but I'm glad they at least let me go. The one thing I kept thinking throughout the entire ordeal was what if I were a foreigner who didn't speak Chinese? The main reason I got the level of help I did was because my Chinese was good enough to poke holes in their dumb theories and explain what the real problem was, if I were just a foreigner I wonder how fantastically blown out of control things would have gotten. A man can dream.

On a quick after note, Ron from Hangzhou (from America) came to Beijing to visit for a bit. We went to an awesome restaurant last night specializing in spicy stuff and something called ma, which they think is spicy but is in fact a tool of the devil. This is a taste/effect that American food does not have, it is a type of spicy that after eating sometimes causes the wasabi like sinus clean out, but then the real effect kicks in as you start getting weird tingles on your tongue or lips as though your mouth were going to sleep. To round it out, the taste is pretty good, too, so I take it as a challenge to see how much crazy ma la stuff I can eat whenever we go somewhere like this. I forgot to take my camera because I am an idiot, but we ate some excellent (read, expensive) fish, some vegetables, rabbit meat, and snail. The snail was excellent, it came with a plastic glove and skewer to wear and you had to work it out of its shell before you could eat it. It tasted amazing. The rabbit was the most punishing of the dishes, it came last and was just swimming in the peppers that give the dishes their signature taste. Slowly people around the table tapped out as they reached their limit of spicy/ma la, and it was up to me to finish the dish. The end result was us walking away from the with runny noses, sweating, and drooling uncontrollably trying to fan ourselves as we set off on a quest for ice cream and water.

It was a good night.

THE MYSTICAL PURPLE BREAD

2008-09-08T20:38:00.001-07:00

BEHOLD!

Mmm Fancy Restaurants

2008-09-04T06:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went and researched the different types of tea China has to offer at a local tea shop. It was partly for class, but I really do need to learn this stuff so I can show my mother the best tea places in China when she gets here and sound like I know my stuff. I am still trying to find White Tea for Dan, it is rather rare here as well, the lady at the tea shop has ordered some for me to try, so I need to wait a few days on that. Bought a whole heap of tea to add to my collection, including all the fun types that bloom into giant flowers and such when placed in tea. I've got herbal tea, floral tea, black tea, everything. I will be the tea master when I get back, even if I still don't really like the taste at all.

Today, after giving my report on tea, I went back to the New Century Hotel Nikko to meet with the infamous hotel man and get a room for my mother and aunt to stay in come October. This time I came prepared, dressed nicely and expecting a much larger even than merely showing off hotel rooms.

I am glad I prepared. He took me around and showed me off to different people, for 15 minutes we basically walked around the hotel showing off the amazing Chinese speaking white man, I am glad I made him proud. We took a look at different rooms, some of them frighteningly nice, and according to the brochure frighteningly expensive, but due to our long friendship I was told not to look at those prices. In the end I settled on the standard room, which although is standard is called the 'deluxe room' and is normally in the 2300 RMB range. I got it for 630. Connections baby, connections.

Following the show and tell and the room decision, we went to eat in yet another restaurant in that the hotel has. I have no idea how many restaurants are hidden in there but it seems ridiculous, I think every floor has a fancy and different restaurant. We ate some gloriously delicious things. First we had a soup that was both sweet and spicy, I couldn't quite figure out how but the combination blew my mind. We had this meat that I am convinced is the best of western and asian cuisine blending. It was basically beef as tender as a fillet mignon covered with onions and a sauce with a very distinct Asian flavor. It was fantastic, and only beaten by the excellent 肉饼, which is basically this fantastic concoction with a layer of bread, then meat, then bread, then meat, then bread. I can't really describe it without using Chinese. This is a bad sign. The place was ridiculously fancy though, so I am excited for those two to hurry up and get here.

你说的英文very good!

2008-09-03T05:18:00.001-07:00

I had a girl misspeak to today and tell me "你说的英文very good!" "You speak English very good (should be well, but she is having trouble with nouns so I'm letting that go)" attempting to make a joke and instead looking like an idiot in front of all her co-workers. Rest assured, I definitely made fun of her, too.

Lately been extremely busy being responsible and writing essays. My Chinese class is far too easy, and to prove that I should be put in a level by myself I've been writing 600 character essays to turn in every day. They give us a bunch of topics from what we study during the week to write about expecting us to turn one essay in on Friday, but I've so far turned one in every day this week. That'll teach them to put me in a level too easy for me.

Probably not.

The gym has been fantastic, the notable difference is that people like Trunks and DMS (see me for stories) are not there, and that you don't have to do the ridiculous weights they do with 0 form and 100% cheating to get respect. It is just a cleansing feeling really. Aside from that, there is also an excellent warning on one of the adjustable ab benches I've been meaning to take a picture. It states that if the machine is "used in improperly you will be damned", so every time I work my abs I laugh to myself because that means all the Chinese people I see flopping around on the bench are totally going to hell for it.

The roommates moved in awhile back, and we of course celebrated the first night with some authentic Beijing 串儿 (MEAT ON A STICK). It's pretty much the most awesome thing available on a wooden stick for 1 RMB. Pictures and more to come.

Students Arrive

2008-08-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

The students have arrived, and I am concerned about what class I will be in. We took our placement tests today, and I must admit though long it was ridiculously easy. I am, however, a bit concerned as to whether or not I will have anyone else in my level. When we were having our lecture from the local Police Bureau on what to do and what not to do, the officer would first speak Chinese and then the RD would translate. When she paused for a moment for questions about passports, I questioned her about something she had just said and told a short story about Sam and how she had been asked by policemen on the street for her passport and hukou. The problem was, I did this all in Chinese instead of going through the Resident Director. When I spoke Chinese, murmurs went through the room and it was clear that none of the other students had understood me. Whenever I speak with the students I can tell that the aren't at my level, and they all think/thought I was another Resident Director here. If I am in a level by myself I will be very sad.

I did, however, get to lead the tours today. Which turned out to be a good thing, because the roommates that had come a day early to lead the tours definitely did not speak enough English to lead the tour properly. Most of the people wanted to go with me when we split into two groups, and it was sad to see the other two Chinese roommates go off with only a few students while I took a huge group. I showed them around to different places, namely the gym. I definitely hit the gym and got to negotiate a group discount rate with the boss, I felt like a badass just bargaining for it, very professional. I'll give you one example of the bad english skills of the Chinese roommate that had come with me. When we got the big department store, we again split into two groups, I took the people who wanted to buy cell phones and cell phone plans up to do that while she took students to the supermarket. Why she chose the easier task I don't know, but before we split off we exchanged phone numbers in case either of us had a problem. She had a problem however, she called me just as we were finishing up buying all the phones and asked where I was. She sounded panicked, and asked me to come down to the supermarket because she had a problem. I rushed downstairs, literally ran down the escalator. The problem? A student wanted to buy a soap dish. He didn't know how to say it in Chinese (or much else in Chinese), and she had no idea what soap dish was in English. For some reason she thought it was urgent and that he really needed his soap dish. Don't worry, the situation was resolved, we found him a soap dish.

Aside from that, I had fun doing the tour guide, and later on I got to co-host the discussion about roommates in China with the resident director. It really is like I am working here, I love it. My teachers all say my accent has changed though. They say I speak a lot better, but I sound very southern now. Oh well. They also say I have lost weight, one of the teachers didn't recognize me since I apparently left last year with more hair and not being as skinny, then when she saw my name on my test as I turned it in looked at me, then at the paper, then at me and yelled my name - disrupting all the other students testing.

Also got a warm welcome from the cafeteria guys I used to play basketball against, and got to play a little 2 on 2 with them today.

Also, I don't know if I wrote about our favorite past-time in Hangzhou before but I am writing it (possibly again) here. We loved to go out the main gate on our way to the gym because there was this bridge with a speed bump at the end of it. When we got to the bottom of the bridge, we would look up at the bikes coming downhill hopelessly fast straight at the speed bump. Normally they would see white people and stare at us, not noticed the speed bump waiting to destroy their crotches and future children. We would derive so much joy out of seeing guys rack themselves, and I thought I had left that behind in Hangzhou. Tonight, however, I discovered that one of the potholes is hard to see in the dark, and one guy on a motor scooter nailed it. It is fantastic, when something like that happens the whole world slows down like the Matrix. First you see him collide, and his face contorts with the expression of, "Oh no! What have I done! My children!". Then, midway through the jump, they realize they have a back wheel, and you can see their face change as they futilely attempt to swerve or rise up and avoid the impending second hit, but their body is still in shock from the initial impact, and they are helpless as they collide again. It is the single most hilarious series of faces in the history of Chinese facial expressions. And that is the mental image I will leave you with.

Back in My Comfort Zone

2008-08-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while I was asleep the door opened, and in walked Sam's roommates back from vacation. They had no problem with me staying a bit longer, but it felt cramped and I felt like I was imposing on them, so I decided to make some phone calls and see if CET would let me into the dorms early despite denying me earlier. Much to my surprise, they let me move in early for a still undetermined price per night. Somewhere between 100 and 280 RMB a night, they'll have me pay money later when they decide.

Thus today I went to the gym and then visited my old favorite restaurant for dinner:老边饺子 (laobianjiaozi - don't translate it in a translater). As soon as I walked in I was swarmed by all the servers who remembered me, and I had to tell explain why I was back and tell stories of Hangzhou. It was a fantastic welcome, and even better they still have all the good food from before. This is the place that got me hooked on jiaozi(dumplings), and I insist they have the best in all of Beijing. They are also the origination of my green bean obsession with 干边四季豆 (ganbiansijidou) and 干扁豆角(ganbiandoujiao). I got some 糖酥里脊 (tangsuliji), or sweet and sour pork/chicken as you may know it. It is a bit different here in China, and whether I get pork or chicken seems to depend on the place I go, the name doesn't change for some reason. I also got the latter of the aforementioned green bean dishes, and some rice. I will be going back with a friend for their dynamite dumplings because there is so much variety to choose from I'll need the help eating it.

Also, I am not posting or talking about the field hockey game for two reasons. One, China lost and it was very depressing. Second, why on earth is field hockey an olympic sport but football isn't. Synchronized swimming, field hockey, and ribbon dancing (Rhythm Gymnastics is a nice word for it) should not be Olympic activities. Period.

So there is that. Now: soccer pictures.

First, a video of them building the olympic stage. I thought it was hilarious because when they started they seemed to have no idea what they were doing and changed formation a few times. They then brought out too many blocks and had to turn around and carry them back. Fantastic organization.

This is the tasty meat dish I mentioned earlier.

And these are the green beans. This differs from the other variety in that it has a very strong cilantro like effect, I am not sure what exactly the green vegetable added to give it that taste is.

Simply a picture of the three teams about to board the newly constructed stage. Notice who is in the middle. Oh yeah, not you Brazil, you cry on your lower platform. They actually did cry, I don't know if you can see it in the picture.

Okay one picture from the field hockey game, Ron and I dressed up undercover to fool the Chinese into thinking we are one of them.

I found this funny, the Diabetes Hospital No. 01, implying there are more around Beijing. I feel like America needs some of these.

This is a picture I got with the first few people who lined up to take pictures with me. I insisted I document the moment. Symphony X, ice cream, soda, flag, goofy face, forearms larger around than that guys neck. I am leaking America.

CAPRI SUN. THIS HAS MADE ME SO HAPPY. This, and jollypong. Mmm Korean snackfood, it comes with its own mini plastic shovel so you can get fatter faster. Koreans do it right, cheez-its need a shovel.

And last but not least... for those of you who enjoy Battlestar Galactica...CYLON COFFEE! AHHH:

Redeem Team

2008-08-24T01:21:00.000-07:00

REDEEMED!

People in China are going crazy over this game.

美国加油！

2008-08-22T01:20:00.000-07:00

Went to see America vs Brazil in the womens soccer finals yesterday and it was so amazing. I sang the national anthem loudly before the game, and even louder and more proudly after the gold medal was secured. I have never before cared about soccer or had much interest in watching it, but once you watch your own country playing live for a gold medal all that changes. It seemed like most of the Chinese were pro-Brazil, making the stadium make-up approximately 2/3 in favor of Brazil. It was just indescribable, I will do a picture dump tomorrow after I watch the field hockey finals tonight. China will be in those finals, this should be absolutely insane.

Before the game Ron and I went and haggled to buy large American flags to drape over ourselves and wear to the game. The result of wearing those flags were lots of Chinese people lining up to take pictures with me. Last year when I came to China I never experienced this type of treatment, so I must admit it caught me a bit off guard. I misunderstood the first people that came to have pictures taken with me, I thought they wanted me to take a picture for them not with them. After I understood I wanted a picture with them, too, after all it was just as novelty for me as it was for them being my first time being blindly adored as a foreigner before. A bit later we also had two Chinese guys come and try and buy one of our American flags. They explained in Chinese that they loved America and really wanted to buy a flag to wave during the game, but Ron and I were both willing to sell ours and definitely didn't want to try and profit of our own nation's flag. It was really weird sensation of pride having them want to bear our flag.

I previously made the assertion that everyone in China viewed locker room time as get naked and talk time, but after my time in Hangzhou I must revise my statement to say that this behavior seems to be uniquely Beijing. I never experienced in Hangzhou the strange phenomenon I have seen at both gyms in Beijing where as soon as they have entered the locker room men strip naked and start conversations about everything. You can even hear loud jovial conversations coming from the shower rooms. I still can't get accustomed to just stripping down and carrying on conversations with strangers.

Phelps is a Big Deal

2008-08-19T03:07:00.001-07:00

Despite China winning lots of gold medals, Michael Phelps and our basketball team is totally stealing the show. With Yao Ming and the basketball team struggling and Liu Xiang the hurdler out with an injury, we are China's heroes. It is pretty much hilarious.

In a related note:

Into the Unknown

2008-08-17T15:43:00.001-07:00

Today I begin on a trek with my friend to her home (老家 how else to translate that) in 石家庄市 (Shijiazhuang City) in 深泽县 (Shenze Xian). She was one of the roommates in Hangzhou, and we became good enough friends at that time that she invited me to come visit her during the school break when she returned home since it is just outside Beijing. She has spent the last few days in Beijing, and this morning we are going to buy bus tickets to ride there together. We were going to stay up all night and watch the flag raising ceremony in the morning (complete with music and scary troops!), but she didn't make it past 3 AM. I still haven't slept since sleeping for under 4 hours does me no good, so I am currently wired on caffeine and anxiety about traveling to rural China. She thinks I won't be able to get accustomed to the life their, and is impressed that I am trying to stay for a few days rather than just 1. We'll see how this goes, I am returning on my own so it is simply a matter of how long I am willing to endure whatever it is I face out there.

I am ready to get stared at. The journey begins.

Edit : the journey ended on the way there. I was exhausted from the all night the night before and collapsed on the bus ride there. I scared the high hell out of some Chinese people even though I was only down for like 10 seconds apparently.

Sometimes I Get Bored

2008-08-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

I have been busy out of my mind entertaining guests the last few days, I've had to schedule all my lunches and dinners. I did manage to find some time in there to spend some money on Olympic tickets, so I will be going to see the Women's Soccer Finals and the Women's Field Hockey Finals. The latter won't be very exciting, but I figured after I went to one event I would want to go to others just for the yelling and screaming and cheering part.

I got bored the other day and perused the emoticons available to me on the phone I bought in China. Some of them are weird and seem to have no use, like the snowboarder and snail. Then there are some that I think are hilarious, like Dolly Parton or - even better - Ronald Reagan. 7:^] Why does a Chinese phone have a Ronald Reagan emoticon? Why don't American phones have them? When do I have a chance in text messages to be discussing Ronald Reagan and then send the appropriate text message with my post? When in China do I have that opportunity? "The way China is running these olympics is totally trickle down supply side economics 7:^]" or "Them Russians in Georgia think the cold war is over, they are so wrong 7:^]". God I love China.

Went to the Zoo yesterday. PANDAS! Panda videos! Enjoy. Video problems, post it later I guess.

Ramblings of Beijing Madman

2008-08-11T02:47:00.001-07:00

And now for random, unconnected thoughts from Beijing to catch you up on the last busy week.
Each class level chose one student to give a speech at the graduation dinner, and I was elected by our class to deliver ours. The problem was, I partly forgot and partly didn't have time to prepare, and when they called me up I had to do some fantastic improvising. I tossed my camera to my friend hoping he would take a picture, not realizing that he would instead video tape the entire thing. So we have evidence, it actually happened. The speech went well, apparently I spoke quite fluently and impressively because I was swarmed afterwards by some recruiters. They had come to pass out flyers to anyone interested in teaching English, and after hearing my speech and discovering from my teachers I was going to Beijing they attacked.
And to continue the trend of being swarmed by Chinese people interested in knowing what I think, the next morning JJ and I got interviewed by the paper for the Olympics. We told them all about how we felt about Yao Ming and basketball, and as a result I got my name in the headline on page A17: "Foreign Student Chris Marco Says". Except it is in Chinese, of course. I have a copy of the paper, and it can be seen online here at http://jrzb.zjol.com.cn/html/2008-08/09/content_3426638.htm. I am pretty much famous in China now, all 25 people who made it to the 17th page without falling asleep now know who I am. I'm kind of a big deal.
Spent some time in the night market with JJ and Bob helping them find presents before they left. I had lots of fun putting them in awkward situations. I didn't want to buy anything, so whenever a lady asked if I needed help I told them that I had no idea what to buy, but my friend Bob was looking for the perfect gift for his girlfriend and could really use some help. A few times this backfired because they became fascinated with me speaking Chinese and forgot to sell things, but most of the time it worked, and I not only got to shop in peace but also got the entertainment of sales people smelling blood in the water and circling him to sell the perfect rose scented Chinese warrior tea doll.
I said my sad goodbyes, but it still really hasn't sunk in yet that I've left Hangzhou. I miss it already, though I think I miss the routine I'd gotten used to more than I actually miss the city. The people I genuinely miss, but I don't have much time to mourn them while trying to juggle all the friends who want to eat lunch or dinner with me now that I'm back in Beijing. I managed to get two people who knew each other to go out with me at once today, but for the most part I've had to schedule lunches and dinners for the next few days to show all my friends I truly didn't forget about them while in that big, strange country known as America.
Before I got to Hangzhou, though, I had to make it through the airport alive. The airport itself wasn't too hard, but once we were on the plane we didn't taxi, we just sat for half an hour. We got a message about 15 minutes in that "the plane had been delayed because of the plane delay," which if you didn't understand the Chinese before it is hilariously confusing. Luckily I was paying attention, and we had basically been delayed because other delayed flights needed to use the runway and that all flights were getting pushed back, but I delighted in the delay due to delay anyways. The flight itself wasn't bad, aside from drinking way too much orange juice and talking to the Chinese family next to me while eyeing the line for the bathroom, squirming and frightening them.
The first night in Beijing we went out to a bar near the foreign quarter to eat and watch the olympics. The girl I'm staying with's boyfriend was with us, and since he has some long term friendship going with the bar we got free food and drinks all night. It was the first of many free things I've had since getting to Beijing, everyone keeps treating me to everything it is overwhelming. In any case, I had the Ceasar salad, which was terrible. I followed it up with the nachos, which while bad by American standards had jalapenos and guacamole (most likely both from cans) and thus was fantastic. Eventually the game started, and though the nimble Chinese and their 3 pointers kept up for awhile, the game quickly got out of hand in favor of the large scary foreigners. It was at that time I realized I was the only one in the bar that was for the American team. The other foreigners were European that from conversations I overheard apparently equated American basketball success with American hegemony, and the majority of the bar were Chinese people. I was betting with the Chinese girl to my left what the gaps at the end of the quarters would be, and I felt really bad when the gap I guessed was only half the size of the actual margin. We got out of the bar pretty fast fearing some type of vengeful anti-American basketball mob.
Today I went with my gym friends from before to their new gym to get a membership. They apparently have a new place they work at, and I got a really good deal on a membership card. I got double the time I got in Hangzhou for literally 2/3 the price, creating a fraction my brain can no longer handle. We went out to lunch at a nearby restaurant for fish round two. Last time I went out to eat with them I ended up biting into the bony, crunchy tail of a fish thinking that it was edible and intended for consumption. Yes, dumb. This time they ordered fish with no bones. Looks like we are both learning.
I am so excited about the food in Beijing. The restaurants I all love are still here, and I can't wait to get my fill of dumplings and fried pig stomach and peppers and green beans and oh I am excited.
It has been very weird wandering some of the familiar streets. With the exception of some little things the streets I frequented before haven't changed at all, they are outside of Olympic jurisdiction and maintain all the charms and quirks from before. I am excited to be back in Beijing.

Last Week of Hangzhou Class

2008-08-03T04:18:00.000-07:00

My elbow has been continuing to bother me, and since I'd rather have elbow pain than lift less than 300 pounds, I've gone on a quest to find Icy Hot. Bob has jumped on board with me as he needs something to take out the pain in his dislocated shoulder. He dislocated it a week or two ago during the basketball game, but he claims it isn't as serious as the times before when he has had to have surgery to repair it, and is thus working out still and doing less weight. It was fantastic, for the first week he just had his arm in a sling and did squats on the smith press using one arm to stabilize it. In any case, the two of us who apparently can't listen to the obvious signs are bodies are giving us have been dragging JJ with us in search of stores with medicines to offer us. The first thing Bob found was some type of Tiger Balm, which smells terrible and doesn't seem to have much effect on his shoulder. I opted not to use it. Today, in a moment of desperation, I decided to wander into a Chinese pharmacy since our bus was taking a while to arrive. I explained my problem, and the pharmacist showed me to two items. The first was something she insisted was the perfect fit for my problem, and the other was something else that might help and have the same basic function. I looked at the first one, not really understanding the Chinese or English list of ingredients, and thus moved on to examining the second. What was the second one? Lidocaine, 利多卡因. I may be mistaken, but I was fairly certain that lidocaine required a prescription. Needless to say we bought the spray on lidocaine, and Bob is trying it on his shoulder tonight. This country is fantastic, maybe if this doesn't work we can find horse steroids or something.

Everyone around me is getting so excited and talking about the last week of class and how they are almost ready to go home, and I am having trouble relating to them. I still have months to go, so I feel kind of weird being the only one continuing. On a related note, I need to decide if I want to take a plane or train to Beijing. I originally wanted to do the train, but I realized that with a train ride that long I'm destined to end up sitting next to 'that guy' who wants to talk to the American the entire ride. We had voting last week for "Most likely to...", and while I don't think anyone voted for me as "most likely to kill a Chinese person" before, if they saw me on a train after a few hours in that environment I might be the winning candidate. I am not sure how much trouble it is getting a plane ticket though, so I am still trying to decide.

37 Hours without Sleep - GLORY

2008-07-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

Just coming off of the aftereffects of pulling an all nighter 2 days ago. Or however the defining of 'days' comes after pulling an all nighter, I basically suffered yesterday waiting for the sweet embrace of 7pm sleep.

We opted to attempt the all nighter in the face of what seemed to be an insurmountable wall of homework. Our plan was homework, then gym, then homework, then sleep at 3 if we can get done. If we were not asleep by 3, we were gonna bust out the movies, buy some late night snacks from the market, and dig in for the long haul.

The gym was what altered the course of the plan. It was our second time going for the day, and our gym itinerary wasn't the normal "I will work this body part for this many sets, going for this goal and this result," but rather the popular Trunks-style, "I will lift as much weight as I can and make lots of noise to get myself psyched up and have fun." To aid us in this plan, we took our pre-workout drinks like we would for a normal workout, and that is when things went terribly wrong. We are not sure if it was the caffeine late at night, or the fact that it was our second time taking it, or because God decided we needed to show the Chinese the meaning of crazy Americans running wild, but we went insane. I remember distinctly running from our dorm to the back gate to get a cab because running just seemed so NECESSARY. On the way we saw a group of our teachers walking after a peaceful dinner, which caused us to take turns yelling 健身房！ and "SPARTANS! WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION? HOO HOO HOO!" They were frightened.

At the gym we saw the program director, who was happy to see us if a bit confused as to why we were at the gym at 10pm right before it closed. We proceeded to do gratuitous amounts of bench press, and I'm pretty sure I set new world records for looking like a meat head. JJ and I were yelling at each other in English, Chinese, and I think some caffeine fueled mix language that no one but us understood. It was fantastic.

After we got back we were riding the gym high and the caffeine and we just refused to stand still. JJ and I decided this is what it must feel like to use the dark side of the force. We realized that we needed to use our new force powers, which caused JJ for some reason to move all the plants around, then caused a handstand pushup contest, followed by running to the balcony on the fifth floor for mop fights.

At some point we also found a dry erase marker and wrote "I am man!" and a Chinese equivalent of it on the board in the community study room about 50 times each. After declaring our manhood, we finished our homework and began the long road of recovery that ended this morning when I woke up.

On an unrelated note, I found some awesome Chinese music from my roommate. It is Iron Maiden in every way except for the words, which are not English but Chinese. In addition to that, I now have a Chinese cookbook written in Chinese with some of my favorite dishes, a fantastically biased map of China, several children's versions of popular Chinese stories, and the 56 episode 红楼梦 Dream of the Red Chamber. The Dream of the Red Chamber is tied as the most popular story in China, it is one of those novels that has its own college courses and people that dress up as characters from it on certain days of the year. The Chinese cookbook looks promising, too, I've already made one dish out of it yesterday. The only daunting part is buying the ingredients, some of the things you see in these markets are frightening beyond words. There are an abundance amount of cute and possibly disease ridden birds, I want to buy one but I don't want to die of Avian flu.

Gold For America

2008-07-25T04:01:00.000-07:00

The game just ended, and America dominated. Tonight we had a Chinese students versus America full court basketball game on an inside court with a nice little crowd. For awhile it was 5 Americans and about 8 Chinese guys, so they had plenty of chances to substitute and it stayed tied into 20's at half time (or 40, we were playing by 1's). Finally a little after halftime 2 more Americans showed up, and with the infusion of non tired people and someone decent to draw double teams of JJ and me America pulled away and never looked back. 58 - 40, the final score here from Hangzhou. Back to you in the studios Chris.

In other news, lately Chris and JJ have been living like rich Chinese people (or poor Americans). Last night we went to the gym, followed by KFC, followed by massages. It was a very good set of events. Today we found a mall near the Chinese Hooters we went to a week ago. I don't know if I wrote about it and I'm too lazy to check so I'm gonna do a quick recap (or introduction) on it real quick. The food was great, the girls were not attractive, I bought a shirt, but most importantly, they asked us if it was our first time because they had a surprise. What followed was an extremely disturbing rendition of "you are my sunshine" sung by all the Hooter's girls complete with a weird, kindergarten level dance. I do not want to go back. In any case, the mall had a fantastic bakery, a Papa John's we will go to later this week, and a host of other stores to just waste time browsing for things we'll never buy, namely the picture below. THEY ARE PANTS WITH BUILT IN BOXER TOPS TO LOOK LIKE YOU ARE SAGGING. I need to buy them and then sag them. "Yeah these are my boxers, these are my fake boxers, these are my pants. So hood."

Tommorrow I am going to the bookstore to buy a cookbook, Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber in Chinese to read again and see how much I understand, and a high school level history book to see what they learn.

The 后门 has the best food

2008-07-23T05:53:00.001-07:00

Today I saw a guy on the street with a bucket full cleaned and unfeathered of goose heads. Like a big bucket. I didn't know why he had them, and I'm not sure he quite knew why either.

Busy Week

2008-07-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

Rui'an is possibly the most beautiful place in the entire world, and is most definitely the most breathtaking place in China. It was well worth the 6 hour ride on the bus there and back - we watched Drunken Master 2 twice. And yes, it was awesome.

The hiking in Rui'an was tiresome, there weren't formal stairs or tourist friendly paths. They were slippery stones and almost no railings anywhere - there were quite a few falls and injuries on the way climbing back down. There was a potential for a typhoon to hit land near us, which meant that no one else had come to the area we were climbing that day. This also meant that the wind was blowing just enough to make it very comfortable instead of skin melting Hangzhou hot. They told us not to swim, but when our 5 man MAN GROUP climbed up all the way to the 9th pool we had to get in. As the other students arrived they opted to join us, and then the teachers did as well. It was ridiculously fun and overwhelmingly beautiful, trees and waterfalls like I've never seen before. It was as if all those Asian nature paintings that look too pretty to be real had come to life.

The performances in Rui'an went well. I played all the different "Chinese person" roles in our skit, ranging from teacher to random people on the street to dressing in drag to play a girl. The latter was the most popular, and somehow we were the only ones to put together that putting a 200 pound guy in girls clothing is hilarious. I got the best actor award for the night, and as my prize won a very fitting pink clock.

In our four person group, Dan and Andy did most of the writing and joke crafting and then Ron and I did all of the embarrassing parts and complex speaking. It was very convenient having Ron and I (two of the best if not the best two speakers in the program) together, we could actually have witty conversations and make jokes aside from dressing up like a lady. Though there were many parts that everyone loved, I think the part of the skit I most enjoyed was the ending Dan decided to add during the writing process. Essentially it involves me tearing open my shirt and mimicking the "THIS IS SPARTA" to yell "THIS IS CHINAAAA" and kicking him in the chest. All the Americans got it, half he roommates got it, and few of the teachers understood. They all yelled and clapped, and as we bowed the roared for more it was fantastic. The roommates explained to each other why I had just torn my 衣服 and kicked a student in the Chest, and the teachers all talked amongst themselves and tried to figure out why all of the other Americans were so happy. Needless to say, last night we all watched 300 together last night to educate them.

I found a 'hamburger' here in China. There is a red and white sauce of unknown origins, the meat seems to be lamb, and there is for some reason an egg involved. It is tasty, but it is no hamburger. I think tomorrow we are going to KFC to get JJ and Bob some comfort food, I am very excited.

I have, of course, made friends with the entire gym staff. I go there 2 hours a day, it is to be expected. Apparently I was described as very approachable and easygoing, easy to talk to. Bob is described as nearly the same, but apparently JJ's long hair and demeanor makes him look fierce and some other great adjectives that mean something along the lines of unapproachable. In any case, yesterday one of the trainers beckoned me into the office in the center of the gym. When I say office, I mean more of like a raised pedestal with waist high walls, I don't really understand it. I didn't really understand why he wanted me up there at first, then he pulled out the measuring tape. The other trainers watched as he measured my arms, which to me was very weird. I measured in at 42cm, or 17 and a half inches, which I think is pretty monstrously awesome. I told the head teacher about it, and she said they are sizing me up for an advertisement. Apparently a student last year and the year before were both chosen for different advertisements, one was picked up at a bar and the other oddly enough at a gym. She thinks they probably want me to be in an advertisement for the gym, and that if this is the case they would pay well. I don't really care about money though, I care more about my dangerously inflated ego.

And last but not least, before showing you the pictures and video, I will let you know that I finally road on my first 3 wheeled motorbike taxi with JJ in the back with me, and we raced against Bob and his roommate through the streets of China. It was dangerous. It was awesome.

There Are No Words

2008-07-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

Only Images. Making this only half a Dream Theater album. It is still a precursor though, without a doubt.

Now that the Dan-Chris inside jokes are over, I shall share with you two glorious pictures and a movie. After that I will pack for our weekend trip to Rui'an and prepare for the performance we must give while there.

This was found at the China Pizza Hut. It is the World Conquerer Pizza, winner of the 'best name on the menu' contest we had. There are other good monarchs of cuisine, but this one is the greatest. We ordered it. It did, indeed, conquer our taste buds.

This is beyond words. This may be the greatest word I've seen translated into English in a weird way in the history of forever. I am sending this one to engrish.com

And finally, there is this video. The entire staff of a haircut place outside, with music, doing a choreographed dance for I am assuming either attracting business or attracting mates. Enjoy.

Randoms Things I've Noticed in China

2008-07-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

People in the gym locker room attempt to congregate nonchalantly whenever I change clothes. They are not nonchalant. Nonchalant means not staring at my penis and following me when I go to shower.

This country has way too much bread, I have inordinately large amounts of bread at every meal. All of those anti-carbohydrate doctors would go into shock if they saw the percentage of my diet that is carbohydrates.

Yesterday a naked man in the locker room was staring at his package in the middle of the locker room. He answered a phone call, talked, hung up, then went back to the middle of the locker room and resumed staring at himself. I'm not sure what he was looking for or expecting.

Asking for a scoop in the lunch line typically means I get 2 or 3 enthusiastic scoops as they attempt to cover my tray with generosity disguised as rice.

Chocolate preserves sanity.

Apparently, for JJ, anything but chocolate causes 拉肚子。

Clothes dry faster when hung outside in the 100 degree plus weather than when placed inside the suspiciously untrustworthy dryers.

Anything can be tied to a bike or motorcycle for transport. Boxes, printers, refrigerators. On that topic, green means go. Red means go. There is no yellow.

My English is getting progressively worse, but more worrisome is that not enough things in China phase me anymore. I think I am going to start carrying around a notebook to write things I notice, because I have about 15 "This is China" moments every day, but I forget them quickly since they happen so frequently. "This is China" is often abbreviated to TIC, and it is a term I got last year while studying abroad from two other UT students. Due to the language pledge, we jokingly converted it into 这是中国 (zhe shi zhongguo), and we like to say zh- sh- zh- as the acronym while on the streets. I would say that every bus ride to or from the gym has a zh-sh-zh moment. These include weird sightings of both good and bad nature, and all in all I think the zh-sh-zh moments are part of why I love this country.

zh-sh-zh

好久不见

2008-07-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

I just got on and noticed that in my e-mail inbox I have a message that is about 3 or 4 days old. The message states that the most likely cause of all the students getting diarrhea has been all of the back alley local restaurants, mainly the smaller ones that may not be properly keeping meat. I think all of the Americans in the program have or are just getting over the Chinese version of Montezuma's revenge, which is interesting to me since I have been suspiciously immune. Don't think it is because I am careful, from the inordinate amount of peppers, vinegar, and other potentially havoc wreaking food items I put into my body at every meal you'd think I was in a race with to get acid reflux by age 25. Additionally, I have definitely been eating at those small local restaurants at least once a day for the last week and I will definitely not stop just because a few white people can't handle their spicy foods. Damned white people.

On the topic of food, I finally found - in one of those local restaurants ironically enough - the green bean dish I've been searching forever for. After leaving Beijing I last year I began a 6 month quest to find it in America that did not have the success I hoped for, and up until 3 days ago all the attempts at finding the delicious 干扁四季豆 (ganbiansijidou - aka ganbiandoujiao 干扁豆角) have been for naught. I finally found it though, and I have subsequently eaten it every day for the past 3 days. The man who runs the restaurant is a Chinese version of my Uncle Bubba because of the manner in which he takes control and makes sure everything is hospitable and perfect. Each time I go to this restaurant (probably 5 times in all so far) I bring new people, and each time he goes out of his way to come over and takes over the ordering and paying process. The new people always struggle with figuring out the menu or ordering at the front, so he lumbers out of the kitchen, shoos away the kitchen, and breaks the whole process down. He finds out what you want, and by god he is going to make sure you get it. That is how I've gotten to eat the green bean dish I like, this chicken and pepper dish I like, and a host of other things that aren't on the menu. The food here is out of control happiness in a bowl.

Opted not to travel this weekend, instead we went for massages and movies. The massage was the equivalent of $10 US for 75 minutes, and instantly recharged me so that I could continue to dominate the gym like the American bear that I am. I think the exact quote Bob used to describe me was, "The guys at the gym like Chris because he is big like a bear, I swear I am putting on 30 more pounds of muscle before I come back to China next time." In any case, the more important part of those two m's was the movie. We originally went intending to see Hancock, but Hancock cost 4 times more than any of the other movies at the theater and for some reason at this theater had no English audio. Thus we opted to instead go and see Red Cliff (赤壁 chibi), a movie I didn't know much about outside of a bad quality preview my teacher excitedly showed us in Chinese class last year. It - was - awesome. It was as if Hero, the 300, and a train filled with halberd wielding bad asses had collided on screen. I did not know this (JJ and Bob did), but the movie was basically the plot line of a series of popular games called Dynasty Warriors released in the US. The general idea is that it is the time of the 3 Warring States period, and there are a bunch of heroes leading armies to battle each other. With the exclusion of Jet Li and Jackie Chan, who at this point are pretty much American movie stars, I think every major Chinese action movie star was in this movie. The two guys from House of Flying Daggers, the emperor from Hero, the Japanese/Korean/Chinese/? guy from Fearless (with the excellent scowl), and a whole set of others. Every time a new person was revealed - which happened to be about every 5 or 10 minutes - the entire crowd would erupt into ooh's aah's and "No way him too!"'s. It was overwhelming, I was like a child in a medieval war shop. Or whatever. I cannot stress how awesome this movie was, and I guarantee it will come to America in some form or another.

Oh dear, the gym crew just walked in. It is time to go destroy. As a note for Dan, yesterday we mixed NOXplode and Black Powder. Casualties were high.

Child Mob

2008-07-08T22:44:00.000-07:00

The picture upload isn't working, so I can't show the evidence, but yesterday I experienced what it may be like to be annoyingly famous. The night before last our program director was scrambling around searching for 12 students to go to a nearby Middle/High School to participate in the school's research project. And since I'm telling this story I obviously opted to go.

The school is for children from ages 14-18, though most of them were near the younger side, and they were doing some sort of function that involved bringing foreigners in to ask them questions. This school is out of control nice. It was in a gated compound with buildings that one of the guys from California said were directly out of Beverly Hills. I had no idea that this place existed in the middle of Hangzhou. Our teacher explained to us that these kids had to be among the smartest in Hangzhou to get to this nice school, but that it was also a private school with no government help, that is they had lots of money to spend on courtyards.

Only 7 of us could go, so we had to split up on our own and each of us went to a different classroom. There were other foreign students our age from other study abroad programs, mainly students from Italy and Spain, but none of them spoke Chinese. To be honest, I think for some of them their English was barely better than the students they were meeting with. Thus when I walked in and introduced myself in Chinese I became an instant celebrity and overshadowed the British guy and 3 Italian girls already in my class room. That's right, America wins again.

After a bunch of games and some question answer time, the teachers gave the students free time to take pictures. As soon as she declared this the students formed a line to take pictures with me, and after about 5 minutes of pictures they scrambled to get pens and paper. They tore the paper into squares and had my autograph them in English and Chinese. It was ridiculous. The best part of it was the shirt they gave me. I got a shirt with the name of their camp. The other foreigners put it on, but I opted to lay mine on the table and have the kids sign it. They swarmed all over it and left all these fun English/Chinese mix messages and pictures.

Tonight is Karaoke night with the whole program. WOOO

So beautiful a flower. It more need your love.

2008-07-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

The fourth was relatively uneventful. We went to the West Lake, which at night was hot, crowded, and uneventful. I need to go back during the day when there are more things to see/do. We stood around for awhile waiting for these fountains with lights and water to start their show, and I have to say I wasn't impressed.

All the Americans wanted to go to a bar, and all the Chinese roommates and I wanted to go find lots of food, so we first took the Americans to a bar, dropped them off there with a roommate, and then we went and found lots of meats on sticks. I am a big fan of the kabob style food, though on the way I almost went and tried the Medival themed McDonald's. Check this thing out:
We got some more tea that night. It definitely wasn't anywhere near as tasty or weird as the tea I got on Thursday with the raw egg in it, but I guess that means it was also safer.

In any case, we went to bed relatively early on the night of the fourth since we wanted to leave early the next morning. JJ and Bob left for their destinations before us, but we ran into them at the bus station.
I think JJ is trying to build a house out of pens, or maybe just hammer that pen into the table. Whatever the case, things got very boring waiting for our respective buses to arrive. We eventually engaged in some arm wrestling competitions, doing our best to further any stereotypes the people around us had about Americans being competitive and/or violent. Oh yeah, we are those guys. Since we can't sing English, we are 'those guys' that sing the guitar riff of Back in Black or the Rocky theme song as we walk into the gym. Bus stops are no exception. JJ came to a draw with one guy's roommate, and I demolished my roommate in such a convincing way that no one else would arm wrestle me. I guess that makes me that champion of Chinese Bus Stop Arm Wrestling?

We eventually got to Qiandaohu, I won't go into the length of the bus ride or any of that nonsense. The only thing worth mentioning is the fun process of getting a hotel. I would hide around the corner while my roommate went in to bargain. All the hotels write 500 yuan for a single room, but even if you are a foreigner you are expected to bargain and get it down to at least 300. I would hide because it would invariably be at least 100 yuan cheaper if they didn't know I was staying there, too.

I found heads of garlic in the store that I chose to buy for a snack. They were preserved in some type of vinegar to add taste and make them easy to peel. They were not good.

We couldn't do anything that afternoon since we got there too late to get on the last boat heading out, so we basically sat in our room eating KFC and watching the Chinese State Sponsored version of animal planet, namely a long program about dinosaurs. It - was -awesome. Probably the best part of the trip. We sat there teaching each other the names of the dinosaurs that came on screen in our respective language, and I'm pretty sure that KFC was the best thing I've ever tasted in my entire life. I guess you can say that in a culinary sense I very much miss home sometimes.

The next day was long, hot, and not rewarding. The Qiandaohu lake is advertised as some of the cleanest, prettiest water in all of China. The Nongfu Springs water and other famous companies all bottle their water here. The water, however, was anything but clean and pretty. I attached the pictures that didn't have pollution, but you can still see some of it in the monkey statue picture. The water was just full of trash. The tour guide said it was because it rained recently and lots of trash somehow got washed into the lake, but this was out of control. I've never seen so much random trash in water before. Hats, basketballs, shoes, bottles, cartons, styrofoam, everything was floating out there. There were probably just as many small islands of trash as actual islands, it was disgusting. I highly recommend not going there. The weather was also pretty hot, it got gross pretty fast.

The good part of the tour was the random Chinese people and the Chinese couple we encountered. As for Chinese people, there was one girl wearing a Viagra shirt just as happy as could be with no idea as the meaning. Actually, it was more like a Viagra baseball jersey. It blew the mind. Another girl was wearing these weird tennis shoe heel hybrids. But best of all was the family we sat with. It was a Chinese couple from America and a guy from Singapore traveling together. They at first tried speaking English to me, but eventually we spoke mostly in Chinese. It was odd, they alternated between English and Chinese a lot amongst each other. The husband was from East Malaysia originally, the wife Taiwan, and the traveling partner from Singapore. They talked about their children and how they don't want to travel to China with them or learn Chinese or about Chinese culture, and when my roommate and I opted not to eat food since it was too expensive they ordered extra and insisted we eat. On a side note, Chinese know how to stir fry a pumpkin and holy hot damn is it good. In any case, they basically treated my like their child on vacation with them the entire time, it was actually quite fun. We all road a cab together from the harbor back to the bus station, then we all rode the same bus back to Hangzhou. They said they lived in Houston, but I probably won't see them ever again. They were the bright part of what my roommate and I agree was an otherwise excessively hot and disappointing trip.

On the up side, I did get a picture of this sweet statue. The islands were all themed. We went to the monkey island, the ostrich island, and a bunch of other islands that don't really translate well.

Real monkeys. I have lots of videos of the monkeys just running around. The cutest was a mom hanging one handed from a tree, the kid hanging from its stomach, catching food that was tossed to it with one hand and eating it. The most entertaining, however, were the children that got scared by the monkeys running free. Only in China can you take a boat to an island where there are 20 monkeys running around feet from you. The children screamed and cried and I was extremely entertained. This was topped by the child who while trying to feed a peacock on one of the islands enraged it and got chased around for a good 2 minutes, which in turn was topped by the child who got tricked into riding on an Ostrich. His parents, in what I'm guessing was an attempt at a surprise they in some deranged state of mind decided a child would enjoy, made him cover his eyes then carried him around the fence, into the place where a tamed Ostrich sat for taking pictures, and then placed him on the Ostrich. He opened his eyes and looked around, slightly confused. The Ostrich turned its head backwards to look at him, and the child screamed as loud as I've ever heard any child scream right at its face. The ostrich didn't even flinch, that thing must have been drugged to the high heavens, but the child ran for dear life. That is years and years of therapy in the making right there. He will never trust his parents to surprise him again.

And this is but one of the many excellent Engrish photos I am gathering. So beautiful a flower. It more need your love.
There is so much more I feel I should probably be writing, but I am getting tired rapidly. Thus, to distract you and let me bring this to a close, here is a picture of the fish on one of the islands whom, after what must be years of tourist visits, follow tourists around expecting food.

Thousand Islands Without the Dressing

2008-07-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

About to get on a bus to head the Thousand Island Lake. Stories of that and the 4th on Sunday upon return.

The weather is so hot and there is no wind. I sweat through 3 shirts a day.

明天考试

2008-07-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my first test. We'll see how I do, I have a 500 character essay to turn in tomorrow, I write another essay during the test, and I have another essay to turn in on Monday. All on the same topic. My writing feels so redundant, but I know it is for the best to help me remember.

So I asked my roommate if a few of these red dots on my hands were normal, I had 1 on each hand yesterday and today I had about 2 or 3 on each hand. They looked like bites but they didn't itch and there was no bump, just a small small red circle. He said they were fly/mosquito bites, and asked if I had others. I said I didn't think so, but as I said it I was inspecting my arms and discovered my underarms were covered with them. I have like 20 or 30 of these 'bites' on my arms and hands, and a few others on my leg. Bob says he has something like them on his back, but I'm a bit worried as to what they are. It looks more like a rash to me.

In following with the list of things that concerns me, we had a dinner with our teachers and students tonight, and after dinner some of us went to get Milk Tea. My teacher ordered a drink for me since I wasn't really familiar with and didn't really like Milk Tea, and she ordered this drink that among other ingredients featured orange juice and a raw egg. The raw egg part concerned me. But I drank it, and damn it was good.

The 4th of July is approaching, and before my roommate leave for the Thousand Island Lake trip I am in charge of figuring out what we are gonna do for our celebration. I have to figure out whether I want to go to a BBQ place nearby and see how American it is, or perhaps go to the Papa John's I saw when I went to the bank yesterday and see how it is. Either way, we are definitely going out to do something.

It Rains Every Day

2008-07-02T06:31:00.000-07:00

I bought a Charmander toothbrush in the Campus Store today. I saw it and immediately had to have it, it was my big achievement for the day.

The other large achievement was finally going to the big Bank of China (literally translated) to get my traveler's checks changed. You have to go to the big (main) Bank of China to get them changed now, the small ones stopped changing them about a week before I arrived, something about wanting to be more safe with the influx of travelers for the Olympics. In any case, the person assigned to help me was in training, which made for a fun bank experience for all of us. Each sentence had to be spoken twice, once in the formal mode required and then again in normal terms. He had to say it all formal first since his supervisor was there, then when I stared blankly at him he would glance at his supervisor, then tell me what he had said in Chinese I could understand. The vocabulary differnce would be the equivalent of "This T-39 Form indicates that the undersigned is in agreeance with the aforementioned terms and your subsequent signature discloses..." and so on, and then he would say "Sign there to say that you are you." It was a fantastic waste of time. And the thing is it wasn't legal jargon he was using, there is just a very formal way of speaking Chinese involving the choice of certain verbs and terms over others and I just can't be bothered to learn customer service Chinese used for other Chinese, though I was flattered he was attempting to use it on me.

Now I will indulge how to upset your stomach in China. Step 1, when eating noodles, take your friends up on the dare to drink the broth solely for the sake of taking a picture. The first few sips are tasty, but remember that the key to step 1 is to ignore the fact that the broth is spicy and very likely going to ruin your digestive tract.

Step 2, celebrate your victory with your friends. This involves downing lots of the carbonated beverages seen in the pictures, this in no way encourages the war that has begun to rage in your stomach.

Step 3 is not pictured, but I can say with confidence that chugging the broth is probably a bad idea.

I have to conduct some research now, this weekend my roommate and I are going on a trip. We are getting reimbursed for the travel costs as long as we leave the city, so we have to choose somewhere fun to go. The winning idea right now is the "Thousand Island Lake". Each island apparently has a different theme. There is a bird island with lots of birds, and a cow island with lots of cows, and a flower island with lots of flowers, then there are interesting ones like lock island and such. I've seen the pictures, lock island and some of the weirder ones look really fun. No idea yet though, we are pressed for time as we can't leave until he is out of class on Saturday at 11 and have to be back for his class at 8am Sunday.

Jia you! 加油！

Hot Pot

2008-07-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

One wall of my room has large glass doors leading out to the balcony, which was cool until this morning when I discovered that the sun rises really early in China. I hadn't heard my alarm go off, but rushed out of bed when I saw it was light outside. I rushed over to check my phone and discovered it was 5:30. I would have gone back to sleep, but the adrenaline from a fear of being late was already rushing through me. Curtains are not enough, I need something more intense.

Tonight was a night of hot pot. The general idea is you order the type of what I guess is best described as soup you want, then they place the giant pot into a hole in the middle of the table that has a burner underneath it. While it heats up you order all your things you want to place in fondue style, the sauces you want for dipping, and away you go. It was fantastic, the only problem was I had never personally been in charge of ordering before, I always had a Chinese friend or roommate to do it for me. Tonight was my night to be tested. I asked lots of questions and figured a lot out, but ultimately I still had to guess on a few things since Hangzhou's hot pot is different from the types I've eaten in America and Beijing. It was amazingly good, and I ordered all the right vegetables. The meat was a bit weird, some of it came out in large singular mound form that we had to shave apart with our spoons, and I'm not sure when or how but I managed to order some seaweed like vegetable. It was good though once you fondue'd it in the broth and then covered it in the sauce of your choice.

Pictures later, must prepare for class.

The Internet is Fixed Part 2

2008-06-30T08:18:00.000-07:00

Update: My roommate is currently reading a book while standing up next to his desks and doing low and then high karate style kicks.

I decided to share some pictures to show you what the octopus and ye xiao look like.

And as an added bonus, here is a fun painting we found on the way into the men's locker room at the gym we bought a membership to. We think that bulge looks suspicious, it is a bit too low to be a hip...

Okay, my roomate has started playing some type of flute. Will the random activities ever cease?

The Internet is Fixed

2008-06-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

The internet is fixed, yet still moderately slow.

First things first, as per a few requests I will teach you how to pronounce Hangzhou. The hang is pronounced with the vowel sound of long, but with an H instead of an L. The zhou is pronounced like the name Joe. Hong-joe.

The first day of class was today, and it was fantastic. One of my teachers has a thick northern accent, which means that when he speaks it sounds like he is swallowing on his sentence. I don't have any good classroom stories. Yet.

I did, however, eat some awesome food in the last few days. I've been in charge of ordering food for the most part since my Chinese is the best in the circle of friends I go out to eat with. I have been searching for this green bean dish I used to eat all the time in Beijing, and though I have not had luck with finding it yet I have gotten very close. Tonight we ate 'mian', or basically a bowl of noodles in broth with meat and cilantro. I opted to eat the whole bowl and then drink the broth so I could take a picture of my accomplishment, and if I may recommend: don't drink all the broth. My stomach is battling me viciously right now. In any case, I found some excellent beer which translates best as "Redstone Beer". It was actually quite tasty, I bought it at a small store before we went into the restaurant and brought it in to drink with dinner. I offered some to my friend Bob, who upon drinking it demanded to know how much it cost because it was far too good to not be expensive. I told him it was 2.5 kuai (for conversion, divide that by 6.5 to get to dollars). Upon hearing how cheap it was, Bob accidentally broke the language pledge and yelled "No fucking way!" in a large, crowded Chinese restaurant. Now Chinese people in Hangzhou don't speak any English beyond what they learn in movies. This means they can say "Hello", "Goodbye", and the F word. Thus they heard one of the key words of English they knew being yelled from a table of foreigners, and thus we got some fantastic attention.

I am fairly certain Chinese people go crazy after 10pm, or at least my roommate does. He is extremely spastic right now. He will slap at mosquitoes in a very animated fashion, or rub his face vigorously while making "oooh woo woo" noises, or rummage in his desk while making "waa waa waa" noises with his mouth, and he just finished eating what he insists is a peach in a pace that was far too fast and crazed to be safe. He offered me this 'peach', and I ate, but I am not certain what it is. For one thing it is green, and starting to turn red on parts, so I don't even know if it is ripe. My experience with peaches and their colors tells me that this is not a peach, and the taste is unlike any peach or any fruit I've ever eaten. The weirdest yet is that he just came at me asking if I want to go eat 'ye xiao', or the local night food. The stuff is fantastic to eat, but I don't want to go at 11 when I have class early in the morning. After I said no, he said it was too bad and ran around the room yelling "YE XIAO YE XIAO YE XIAO, WO AI YE XIAO" (I LOVE YE XIAO). I don't know if it is the radio or the peach or if this is just how he gets on monday nights, but I am a little bit nervous right now.

To elaborate on the ye xiao, the translation is 'late night snack' or 'midnight snack', and the stuff is fantastic. They have all sorts of things. There are all sorts of omelette type concoctions, all sorts of odd sandwiches, dumplings, stir fried bean sprouts or rice, and kabob style food. The trick is that it is all made the moment you order it right in front of you. The ingredients are all laid out, and you point to what you want or don't want added and watch as it all comes together. One example is this fantastic sandwich type thing this one man makes. He ladles what looks like pancake batter onto a hot flat circular grill top. He thins it out and it quickly becomes what is best described as bread, it has the consistency of thin noodles or dumpling wrappers. He then starts adding things, asking if you want them along the way. He throws out a handful of green onions, followed by sweet sauce, then a spicy one, then he peels the bread off the grill and folds it over once. Next he adds another sauce, some wafer like substance, bean sprouts, and then folds it again and again. He cuts it in half and puts it in a little plastic bag for you. It tastes fantastic. They also can and do put everything they can onto a stick and grill out. I love the lamb meat that is grilled on the street, but they also have green beans, peppers, bananas, and even octopus, and a host of other things on skewers that you can ask to have grilled. All the things I've listed I've tried and taken pictures of the eating process, and there are some things I've eaten that I don't to this day know what they were. It is fantastic though, if it can be put on a skewer you can find it to get grilled Chinese style.

All this food talk is making me hungry. Perhaps I will go for some ye xiao after all...

The Internet Is Slow

2008-06-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to find a decent place for my computer to use to connect to the internet. Until monday I can sit in the room next to the office and connect to their wireless. It is however, a very weak signal and very slow, so I don't think I can get on Skype or anything else. Posting these entries takes a long time.

In any case, that is how I posted these, and here is my mailing address in China both in English and in Chinese characters:

CET Academic Programs
Zhejiang University of Technology
Number 6, Zhaohui District
Box # 1026 CET
Hangzhou, P.R.C. 310032

310032 中国浙江省杭州市
朝晖 6 区浙江工业大学
1026 信箱
CET 项目学员班"

Zhejiang Gongye Daxue is a college.

2008-06-27T05:54:00.000-07:00

I discovered today that I won't get internet until Monday. Apparently to get internet service in our rooms we must first have our passports processed. From what I'm told, it seems that due to the olympics everyone is checking passports for everything these days. When I went to get a gym membership I had to have my passport, to get an internet connection approved they first want to see your passport and check your visa, to get a hotel room or do pretty much anything it seems you must have a passport. I guess it is safe and a good move on China's part with the Olympics coming, but it sure slows things down.

I have a steadily growing collections of cards; it seems everything in China has a certain card for it. I know have a gym membership card, a card for the dining hall, a program insurance card, and soon I will be getting a bus card, a student identification card (not to be mistaken with my international student identification card I had to get before leaving), and who knows what else. The abundance of cards I carry around with me almost requires a second wallet at this point.

Today was a fulfilling day though, I finally got to get the green bean dish I've been searching for in America for 6 months. I hope that grammar is correct, I am already losing some of my English and writing long sentences is becoming increasingly difficult. They keep seeming like run on sentences of some of the grammar seems awkward. But I digress. Aside form that dish, we also got to go get full body massages afterwards.

It did, however, rain all day today. It has rained every day since I got here, and currently it is Hangzhou's rainy season so it should keep raining every day for another few weeks. The rain itself isn't that bad, I learned how to say umbrella and subsequently bought one, the problem is the humidity that results. It is about as hot as Houston but much, much more humid. All of us white people are sweating everywhere we go, inside or outside we are constantly being besieged by the humidity and sweating. The only place this is a benefit is in the gym. Not only do you think you are getting a better workout than you normally do, but you also get that nice glisten that makes you look like you are oiled up for a bodybuilding competition. Hmmm, on second thought that is just gross.

We took our placement tests today. That is all on that topic, more tomorrow after we find out where we ended up.

I don't have any embarassing stories that come to mind, but I can say it is fun being a leader everywhere we go. I am always the one chosen to figure out how to get somewhere, or who and how to ask certain questions. Additionaly, my room has become the cool hangout. Last year in Beijing Blake's room was the cool place to be, he was on the first floor and his roommate was cool and it was just convenient to all meet there and discuss our plans for the day or the weekend or whatever. This time I got placed on the first floor right near the stairs, so I have the convenient room that we all gather in to plan and hang out in between excursions. I leave my door unlocked as people come and go, and it is really fun to be Mr. Popular until you need to shower or change clothes. Then it gets kinda weird, especially if someone doesn't understand the vocabulary for shower and change and doesn't realize I'm trying to ask them to leave for a moment.

Ooh, and to end on a good note, I forgot to write that yesterday I finally found and bought the "Black Man Toothpaste". I had seen the brand in America after my teacher showed it to me, but apparently they changed the English name to avoid racial stereotyping. That, however, is all they changed. Fantastically enough the cartoon picture of the smiling black man in a top hat and suit is still there, and the "Black Person Toothpaste" is stll written on the box in Chinese. And as an added bonus, a snoopy mug came with my toothpaste. Chinese grocery storse have this fantastic policies of giving away a lot of free things with items that are on special, but it seems the free item always has nothing to do with the product. For example, the snoopy mug taped to the box of toothpaste, or the folding laundry hamper taped to a small vacuum.

WOOO CHINA.

Hangzhou is a city.

2008-06-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

As of this writing on this wednesday the 26th of June I still am without internets. I finally got my computer plugged in and charging, so at least I can type these up and create a cascade of blog entries for super happy fun time reading whenever I get my internet fixed. They tell me this should be tomorrow. We shall see.

As I expected, sleeping on the plane was impossible. I think of the twelve and a half long hours on the plane to Shanghai I slept for about 45 minutes of it total. The three of us all traveling from UT all got to sit together, and I was the aisle seat for both flights. The flight from Shanghai was especially interesting, since white people were in extremely short supply the three of us sitting together were a bit of an oddity, and the people around us chose to talk to me about it. I was the most accessible and thus became the liason for our group, and I must admit it helped the time pass. The flight wasn't too bad, the old lady sitting in the row in front of us got cut off - it was hilarious. In addition to that we had a child behind us, who wasn't much of a problem with the exception of 20 minutes during the middle of the flight. The child slept the rest of the time, but those 20 minutes were brutal. The child woke up, and the only speaking it had mastered were how to say mom and dad in Chinese. The child said this nonstop in the 20 minutes she wasn't sleeping, and at one point the parents had her raised up behind my sit to let her look at me. All 3 of us had moments where we nearly struck an infant. "Baba...mama...baba...mama" for 20 minutes without pause and a constant tempo of baba's and mama's as it annoyingly struggled to dominate its parents attention.

After getting off the plane we met 3 of the Chinese roommates. Oddly enough, not our roommates but some random ones that came to meet us. They were nice, and the ride on the public bus to Hangzhou gave me a chance to catch 3 hours of sleep. The only thing eventful and worth mention is that at some point in time during my sleep on the bus my phone escaped my pocket without my knowledge. Thus today I had to buy a new phone. I was not thrilled.

My roommate is fantastic, we get along well and I'm sure I will have some great stories from interacting with this guy. When I first met him in the room I was so sleep deprived that I shook his hand literally 4 times. I introduced myself and shook his hand. After he asked me where I was from, I told him I was from Texas and shook his hand. I asked him to write his Chinese name for him, and after he wrote his I chose to write mine, then I gave him back then pen and shook his hand. But wait, there is still the best of the four handshake setups. Following this I gave him his gift, told him I was going to go shower...and shook his hand. I apologized before going to bed for being a bit happy with the handshaking and that I was just nervous and tired. Each time I shook his hand I didn't realize I was doing it until I saw the weird, awkward look on his face and noticed we were shaking hands. Apparently after I hit the 30 hour mark of no sleep I start shaking everyone's hand. Who knew? On a side note, the gift he gave me was a Pabst Blue Ribbon, which I think is a fantastically random if horribly tasting gift.

The shower is by far the thing I have most enjoyed so far in Hangzhou. It is glorious, not only do I have my own shower and bathroom, but the bathroom has this fancy little fan that you turn on when you shower. When this is activated it blows hot air and turns the bathroom into a sauna, effectively letting me shower in a steam room. If it weren't for the faint smell of mildew that slowly gnaws away at sanity I probably wouldn't ever leave the shower. So at the top of the list of things I enjoy we have the shower, and after that comes the food. My roommate chose some crazy food for me for lunch and dinner, things which I will get pictures of tomorrow, and they were almost all fantastic. The one exception was the water that had seaweed floating in it that tasted like how a fish market smells. I love how China has this weird ability to take the oddest smells and put them into food. The fish market smell water ranks up there with the milkshake that tasted like a bike tire smells and tofu that tasted like how a barn smells. It is so fascinating you almost don't mind the taste as you try to figure out how they did it. Almost. For dinner we had some spicy mian (noodles), and oh the goodness. I finally found some spicy food in Hangzhou, and this stuff knocked my pants off. In classic Marco family style the spicier it got the faster I ate, and as I write this 2 hours after dinner my lips are still feeling the slight painful tingle from the mian. Perfection.

The most exciting thing that has happened so far is the roommates' and teachers' response to my Chinese. I must admit, it is really inflating my ego. I won't tell all the stories of how I've surprised people at restaurants and bars by understanding everything they say (something that I couldn't do completely in Beijing, but the accent is so much easier here). I think learning how to understand the intelligible people in Beijing really helped me, that and the last semester of Chinese I took with rapid Chinese speaking in a southern accent every day. The most important and exciting result of this is that I got a special interview just now with the program director and the academic diretor. They were impressed from some of the things I had helped them explain and in Chinese and act out to students earlier, and when I walked into the office (which was apparently a zone where we could speak English and ask questions, something I didn't know) and asked all my questions in Chinese, they were impressed and asked me to sit and talk awhile. Hence, the interview. They asked me if I feared new words, and then asked if I feared being in the top level. I said I didn't fear either, but the way she chuckled and smiled as she asked, I had this feling that whether I said I was afraid or not she was going to put me in the highest level. I got the feeling they weren't sure yet what textbook I was going to be using, but I am quite sure they are going to try and kick my butt and I am going to really enjoy it.

Challenge time. Hoo ha.

China is a country

2008-06-22T12:56:00.001-07:00

Last year when I went to China I was a bit lax in communicating with those left behind stateside. My mother, needless to say, freaked out trying to understand what I was going through. As a result, she began reading random blogs about other students studying in China to try and understand me.

I figure this time, the least I can do is provide her a sporadically updated blog that actually has pictures of her son on it. If you end up reading this, I am sorry.