The Sick and the Dread

Oi, long time no see. Last time we met I had finished my training and just moved to Hsinchu and observed some classes.

Now, I am officially Teacher Eric. I walked into my classes and all of them except the teenagers just started laughing. It actually surprised me a little, because I figured of all people to find foreigners funny, kids who see and interact with them weekly would be more resistant to the novelty. Figured wrong. My first week one girl requested to touch my hair. She said it was like Barbie hair.

I walked into my first class and they were going berserk. Kids tend to do that when they are forced to attend night classes after already being cooped up in their soul-sucking elementary schools for the past 8 hours. I also found out that my CT (co-teacher or Chinese Teacher, take your pick) Vera was the head CT for my branch. Although not technically my boss since the NSTs (Native Speaking Teachers) have a separate chain of command, she says “jump” and I ask “how high?” She is definitely my superior.

Class itself was rough the first day. I forgot to introduce some vocab and students were correspondingly lost on the story. I did a terrible job explaining grammar points, and the students were again appropriately confused. It was definitely a fake-it-til-you-make-it experience. Show no fear and the students won’t devour you whole, or something like that but nonetheless my brow was accumulating sweat beads as I made an idiot of myself for 110 minutes. When it was all finally over I immediately apologized to Vera for the mistakes I knew I made and the ones I didn’t know about too. I hope she is warming to me.

My second class that day was with the oldest students I have, around 14.There are about a dozen of them and every single one has quite strong English. The curriculum for them tackles fairly advanced concepts like pollution, transportation, evolution, and for this level at least, natural-world themes. Most of my other classes are with young kids, some as young as 5. The young ones are awesome. They are jazzed to be in class, like to move around, yell loudly when repeating words, and find Teacher Eric’s impersonation of lions, tigers, and bears to be just the awesomest thing ever. For the super young ones, there is even story time when I sit on a chair and the kids gather around me. The most challenging are the middle ones, who are taking the English seriously (if you’re five you certainly don’t) but still aren’t that good at it.

Getting to work was an adventure in itself for a while. I bummed rides from my boss the head NST for a while, but my HNST Japie had to go all the way across town, and occasionally he had early classes so I took taxis a bunch of times. It got to be a huge pain, but getting a scooter proved harder than I had thought. My apartment complex is relatively far from downtown by Hsinchu standards, definitely not something you walk. The few scooter stores I found near me all wanted proper documentation or gave prices too high. I am not licensed for Taiwan as an international license is not enough, so they refused to hand me the deed. Apparently many places sell under the table to foreigners but all I’ve got near me are legit.

I was worried my boss would get annoyed for another reason too; I called in sick on my second day of work. I agonized over it, tossed it over in my mind. But after I had spent half an hour feeling crappy in my local convenience store, I realized that were it not my second day and I’d been at the company I would call in sick in a heartbeat. I soon phoned my HNST Japie and he didn’t seem too surprised or miffed.

So what did I have? I think it was Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Why, you ask? Well put these together: first our fire alarm goes off at 1:00am. Then the next morning we discover the fridge is broken and not cooling, though still plugged in. Throughout the night I am nauseous, have a pounding headache, and feeling kind of like it feels when you’re massively hungover yet still slightly drunk from the night before, only I’d been straight sober for a week. I looked up the CO poisoning symptoms and they matched. I looked up refrigerators and though many models are not a risk, some in America before the 1970s are, and I’m not confident standards are better here. The final kicker is that they only are a problem when the cooling unit is broken.

One thing I’m not sure of is if it was entirely responsible for the ensuing 3 days of bowel movement. Extremely regular bowel movements. That could have been something I ate, I’m not sure and I’m definitely not a doctor. Either way it sucked and it carried over into much of that weekend of the 4^th. Another problem was that our freezer died and it took all our food with it including the two dozen chicken breasts I had just bought. They started to rot and since I still had my cold I mentioned at the end of last post, I couldn’t really smell it. My poor roommate, however, could. I cleaned it out and bleached it but it’s still an absolute stinkbomb to open the freezer. I’ll probably have another go at washing it soon.

Speaking of food, some things truly exist only in America. While watching my daily dose of ESPN.com clips, I saw an ad for a Papa John’s Double Bacon Six Cheese XL pizza. If you think that exists anywhere outside the USA and the Great White North then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. There is Costco pizza here and it’s the closest thing you get to back home, but nothing that makes your jaw drop and your cholesterol rise.

Not that I haven’t cooked however; since the repair of the fridge I bought some steaks and have already cooked two of them, with fried potatoes. I like cooking, though I only have a stove. I don’t know if it’s ironic or just plain makes sense, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t learn anything about making Chinese food here since it’s all so readily available and good, while I am my own best source for Western food and should see that ability rise. My first steak was marinated in too much soy sauce, but it seemed to leave to all be concentrated towards one end so it wasn’t too bad.

Last weekend I was able to get out once and go to bar alley. There isn’t much to it, just 2 bars that are open nightly and a third that seems dead. At the end of the alley there’s another bar close by. It’s foreigner haunt #1, but they show sweet movies like 300 as well as EPL matches. The beers on special are only 100 bucks which isn’t bad for a bar but is still  expensive compared to any sort of store.

During the week I was also able to explore a little bit more of Hsinchu. One of my CTs Lara wanted a Language Exchange so I met her and her friend Eunice and we went to a market and then they took me around downtown Hsinchu a little, including to a temple. It was nice to see something that wasn’t the road to work or a bar and I tried some meatballs that were surrounded by a gloopy starch. I also had a weird omelet sort of thing but the oysters it came with were a bit past their prime so it wasn’t that good.

I survived teaching my full load of 10 classes last week, and managed to enjoy the weekend now that I wasn’t sick, moving into an apartment, or getting worked to the bone in training. I am lucky enough to not have any Saturday classes for a little bit (all changing next weekend) so on Friday night I might another NST from my branch at a bar near the central canal in Hsinchu, close to bar alley but not on it. It was a lot more relaxed and without the creepy foreigner vibe. There I met two other guys who had worked at Hess previously. We talked about work, the benefits and drawbacks of a structured company, then got on our scooters and zoomed off away from the bar, up a hill, and to some random creek. We were planning on going to a temple but decided against breaking in.

Oh wait, the scooter.

I am borrowing one from an NST currently on vacation back in South Africa. It has more than 60,000km on it so each time I ride I wonder if I won’t be going back on it. Starting it up requires you to start it, wait for it to die once, then start it again. Still, it’s a godsend. I can go anywhere in a flash. No more bumming rides, I can schedule my own time however I want. It doesn’t have the greatest pickup in the world, and the horn doesn’t work, but it’s so convenient. After going up to the creek and having a nice late-night/early-morning debate about the future of tribalism and nationalism with regards to Africa, I returned home to sleep. The next day I would need my energy.

My roommate Marné wanted to go to Taichung a few days back, so we planned on it this Saturday. After her class we took off in the afternoon and I scootered our way to the train station. Having a backseat driver is not fun. The oohs and ahhs are enough, but then there’s the shifting of balance and clenching of fists as I pull off maneuvers common to Taiwan and frankly drive quite conservatively. We got to the train station, I parked in a ‘handicapped zone’ and we went to wait in line. We bought our tickets and 2 minutes later were on the train, standing-room only. An hour after that we arrived in Taichung, found dinner (dumplings!) and waited for another friend to arrive. The 3 of us then met a guy we all trained with and he took us to a holiday party a friend of his was having. It was nice to get into the holiday spirit. They had a fierce punch, eggnog, lots of Christmas decorations, and a KTV Christmas CD. There were no microphones so we had to make do with singing loudly, but I sang a couple anyway. I love Christmas music and I love KTV, so it was only natural. From there we went to a club called Spin. $600 for all-you-can-drink. Girls had it even better than guys at $350 each.  There wasn’t exactly dancing inside, just people sort of swaying. Worse yet, there was no Liar’s Dice. It ended up okay though as I met a Taiwanese friend of someone from the holiday party. We found a stairwell where the decibel level was under 100 and talked about the future of Taiwan and how screwed it is. Like it or not, it is. Sorry.

After suffering through many a poorly made Long Island Iced Tea the police showed up, or at least idled around outside. At first I noticed I could hear myself think, then long lines for the bar formed. The club manager turned off the music and stopped serving alcohol. I don’t know what kind of place is too cheap to invest in soundproof walls , but I guess the answer would be ‘apparently the kind of place you go to Eric.’ Eventually the party was restarted but the club never really recovered that night. We went back to the training friend’s apartment and crashed on various flat surfaces searching for sleep. After fitful rest, the next day we went to McDonald’s then the train station and headed back. Standing room only of course, but when it’s only 1 hour who cares?

That’s that, my first truly fun weekend here. I’ll be in Taichung several more times, as that is where follow-up training is on the 21^st, and then again January 16^th for our yearly banquet. I doubt I’ll go to Taipei before I get my first paycheck, perhaps not even until the second. Turns out things cost money and they want me to work here. That’s okay with me though.

Until next time! I’ll try to get one done before New Year’s.

P.S. Clarence, Kenny, notice the time. 5 AM on a weeknight. That’s how much I care.

The Zoo Stories

I’ll get classes out of the way again early. Theory of Organization Management was another three hours eradicated. The professor wasn’t there as she was wrestling with something of a fever, but the TA was and we were made to do presentations anyway. The same presentations we had to do because the previous week neither of the two groups that overlapped with each other stepped up to the plate. Our group went second of seven. I regurgitated some stuff from our textbook about horizontal and vertical structures while simultaneously wowing them with the talent I refer to as “White Lighting.” It’s quite easy to pull off. Pick a spot and stand there. Look at people, and be white. Then return to what you were doing; reading, fiddling with your phone, or in my case making a presentation. Continue being white and looking around. Wash, rinse, repeat. For advanced studies in White Lightning, there are courses on idly stroking your thick beard, muttering barely audible words of English, and nonchalantly pulling out your American passport to fan yourself. Personally, I say keep it simple.

Sometimes though, it can backfire. In my class on Marketing Management, I was the lightning rod. With every new example in the powerpoint, the professor quickly turns to me, interrupting my ever-so-diligent studies.

“Er-uh-ka!” Crap. This always happens with Chinese people. They don’t have a hard k sound that isn’t followed by a vowel. Thankfully most of my classmates don’t seem to get it.

“Yes?” I give him the three second look, then a quick glance at my computer and a drawn out examination of the projector, showing how enthralled I am.

“Do you prefer Coke or Pepsi?” As an American of course, I am not presented the opportunity of liking neither. But I live up to this stereotype and like all colas, so I play ball. (For the record, I am an RC Cola man.)

“Ummm… I don’t know. Both, I don’t care.” Pause.

Maybe it was a tiny cock of the head, or his smile drooping a tiny bit, or a furrowed brow. But I knew instantly; in a question with only right answers, I managed to get it wrong.

Rather than backtrack I went the explain-my-fault route. “Whichever one is cheaper.” Hey, this is a business class, right? And it’s true besides.

Good enough. “Hah! Okay! When I went to America I drink the Coke...” He starts in on an example of marketing product to local consumers. I drift back to the internet. He quizzed me three times over the course of the lecture. Before you say that’s not a lot, it was three times as much as the rest of the class combined.

Which brings me to the White Lightning-vs-Dancing Monkey problem. They are rooted in the same thing, i.e. skin pigmentation. The White Lightning is about receiving respect that I quite frankly don’t deserve, or perhaps haven’t merited. I haven’t been particularly brilliant in class, I don’t ask insightful questions, hell I barely talk. Yet there is an unmistakable sense of awe, even by people who are deemed educated. Then there is getting poked and prodded, told to go this way or dance that way. Sometimes literally. While passing another group studying in the hall of my dorm I was accosted and asked if I like to dance, if I could dance. The truth is grey (alcohol helps in both departments, but if I ever need to dance my way out of a political prison I will pop lock and drop it so fast Huey wouldn’t know what hit him) but I said no, because I wasn’t feeling in the mood for a public showing.

“All Americans can dance!” The guy proclaiming as such was from Vietnam.

I left no time for more groupmates to pile on: “Do you know kung-fu?”

“No! I’m from Vietnam!” He might have been offended.

“Doesn’t matter,” I replied, “All Asians know kung-fu.”

“No we don’t!” I don’t know who said it, but from the group makeup she must have been Indonesian, Mongolian, or Vietnamese.

“Same with Americans and dancing.” I continued on to my room and awaiting noodle dinner.

The constant attention can truly get annoying. When I go to 7-11 for a Coke and some crackers, I don’t want the world to stop, gawk, and gossip. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, not having a bunch of other Americans at my back means there is no way to deflect this, even if the reaction is the same as it ever was. So over the past few weeks I’ve been feeling like all the attention has made me paranoid and given me an undeserved superiority complex. Surely not everyone staring cares that much, or thinks I’m that awesome right? If only.

A few days ago I went to many of the side streets near campus, stalking restaurants for 餃子jiaozi aka 水餃shuijiao which is simplest to describe as potstickers, or at least an ancestor of them. I ordered two servings, paid, got my food, and moved over one shop to a tea stall. Purchased my coffee smoothie, and as usual charmed the pants off all the shopkeepers with such linguistic wonders as “Hello,” “Two, please,” and “How much money?” The typical meal protocol for new places, with typical compliment deflection. Happy with a 3 dollar meal-and drink combo reaching an 8.5 on the deliciousness scale, I wheeled and started toward the main boulevard that cuts through campus and leads to all the good-eats side streets. Not ten yards away was a couple of cute girls looking at me. Not uncommon. As I was getting at earlier, everybody looks; professor and student, girl and boy, dog and goldfish. I returned the look, but then something weird happened, or rather didn’t happen. They kept looking, making eye contact. Nobody here does that! How dare they! Wait a second, this means, uh oh…

You know those moments where you just know what’s coming next, but it’s already too late? Like when you’re leaning back in your chair, your center of gravity is too far over, and you reach for the desk to pull you back but your hands grasp air and for .2 seconds you achieve perfect clarity of thought, when your mind instantly and totally refocuses on the impending disaster? Yeah, that happened. I knew where this was heading.

One of them opened up. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Sure hit that one out of the park, Eric. The other grew tired of all the small talk, apparently.

“You are very handsome.”

“(stupid silence)” Even when the chair hits, you’re still stunned. And I definitely wasn’t expecting anything that blunt. After maybe a second: “Uh, thanks.” This would be the time to respond with something like “You’re very pretty,” or perhaps “That’s a pretty dress,” or even “Did you catch that Yankees-Rangers game!” Anything but blank staring.

The one that greeted me giggles. She is wearing jeans.

Pretty Dress is only getting started. “Do you have a girlfriend?” Jeans laughs again.

At this point I’ve more or less recovered, able to respond to her English questions in Chinese. “No.”

“Why not!? You-”

“I’ve only been here two weeks!” Admittedly, I’m flustered. Thankfully she reins it in a little, though I don’t think it was out of pity. She moves on to another question.

“Where are you from?”

“America.”

“Oh.” (Approving nod.) And if there is a god, he certainly shined his good graces down at that moment. A mother and little boy walked past. The mom was so pleased I spoke Chinese. She and Pretty Dress had a small conversation, blessed reprieve! The boy asked me in surprisingly clear English, “What is your name?”

“Ma Ai Rui.” He laughed a little bit and ran around. Pretty Dress picked him under the shoulders in a Simba grab and said something pretty fast. Then Jeans spoke again.

“Do you have MSN?”

“Ehhh… uhhh.” I do, but I hate using it because it sucks. Not a problem though! Everybody has Facebook, and that was her next question. I exchanged my email address for Pretty Dress’ real name in characters and Jeans’ Facebook username.

“Okay! Bye-bye!”

And then I just walked away, replaying the conversation in my head and wondering endlessly. Being so popular is truly an embarrassment of riches. It’s annoying, and hard to deal with. Being upfront and aggressive is one thing, and I can definitely understand that. If she knows what she wants and goes for it, kudos to her. The problem is my lack of information. I don’t know her. I do know that she doesn’t know me, which means I have been selected solely due to my whiteness. Is it a ploy to anger her parents? Is she looking for a foreign boyfriend because she thinks white guys are here only for girls and I’m an easy mark; or perhaps it’s because she thinks that as a Westerner I’ll play by some different set of dating rules? If she thinks I’m super attractive, am I even going to get the opportunity to show her my personality and find hers or is that not even on the radar? I know this all may sound like spoiled whining and don’t get me wrong I’d much rather be in this situation than being regarded as hideous or invisible. Still it’s important to realize that while being white in this highly homogenized place can make you seem like a C or D list celebrity, it cuts both ways.

Adding to the list of differences, the international students on my floor don’t seem to knock. Bathroom door closed? No problem, just go ahead and open it! Don’t knock, don’t say anything, don’t knock and wait two seconds, just walk in like you own the place! I know this is a cultural thing and we all need to learn to respect differences, etc… but I must disagree on the grounds that when you throw a bunch of people together, everyone’s reaction should be to be as cautious and accommodating as possible. If it makes me insensitive for thinking everyone else should be sensitive, then I guess I’m just a cultural imperialist. Related: the Vietnamese guys come into my room and touch my stuff. Oh is this a metal die on your desk yes I’ll just pick this up and throw it to myself while chatting with you. And don’t mind me while I help myself to your Coke Zero as I ‘ask’ while it’s already in the air flowing down into my mouth. Also I’m going to help myself to a couple of these empty water bottles on your desk. I don’t really care about any of those things in the slightest, and if they asked or even mentioned it I’d be pleased to say yes. But I haven’t known them for a decade much less a month, so it’s not typical American behavior. Builds some sort of understanding I guess, and I can forgive it. I just hope whatever terrible faux pas I commit are likewise excused.

While we’re on the subject of things that irk me, a Vietnamese guy (not the Mr. David Tran who went to Taichung with me) was correcting my tones just earlier today. Now, being brutally honest is great when it comes from a native speaker or someone who has studied it for a long time. It’s the only way to learn and correct entrenched mistakes. When he has been studying for a month or two, has obvious pronunciation deficiencies of his own, and doesn’t even know the correct order of the tones, my reaction is not just neutral, it’s outright disdain. Funny karma: his employer called while we were talking and he started speaking in Chinese but had to repeat several phrases five times before dropping it entirely and moving on. I’m no savant at this whole Mandarin thing but I’m a Buckeye fan before I let him give me sass.

Things that don’t irk me are the baozi at 7-11. Seriously, they sell steamed pork buns in a convenience store. They aren’t exactly the most authentic thing around, but they work in a pinch and are totally adequate. Their hot dogs are actually pretty tasty too.

I also started my tutoring at the English Corner this past week. I am one of two native speakers they have, and if the rest of this post hasn’t given you an idea, the time I’m there it’s often quite crowded. Thankfully one of my three hours is during prime class time so I can rest a little then. Mostly I just talked about mundane subjects, the usual name/age/major/city and then go from there. Some people are very talkative and others sit back and do not respond to any attempts to get them involved. Their choice, not mine. In some of that downtime I was able to chat with the Mongolians who were seated with me. One, an MBA classmate, was officially a tutor as well, but all of them knew pretty good English. The other two I discovered were sixteen. They knew more Chinese than me, spoke pretty damn fine English, and really I mean they’re sixteen. I feel like it’s too early for me to start saying this, but when I was their age I played Magic Cards and World of Warcraft. So I sat there for a little while tossing that around in my head but before I could inquire further some students came in looking for conversation so we had to start conversing with them.

That’s pretty much how this last week has shaken out, or at least the highlights. The shuijiao I discovered really taste great, they’re deep-fried and come with some sort of plum sauce and fries. I also found another mom and pop restaurant with solid fried rice. The food’s getting tastier which only makes everything better. And sorry for no pictures, just didn’t happen this week. 

再見

P.S. I tried to friend Pretty Dress on Facebook but Facebook thinks I’m spamming unknown people so blocked it, Jeans’ profile seems not to exist, and I haven’t received an email.

Young Turks, Mongol Hordes, and ALL NATURAL MALE ENHANCEMENT

My room, my side on the left.

First week of classes under the belt, and I have to say I’m bored to tears. They’re three hours long and I honestly don’t even know what we’ve learned. Research Methodology was very similar to the library orientation freshman year of high school: journals are your best academic sources, anything not peer-reviewed is suspect, and you can use different Boolean operators to refine your search.

Woooo.

With the boring crap out of the way, I’ll start in on some more interesting things. The Engrish here hasn’t been as tragic as it was on the mainland, but that clearly doesn’t stop people from wearing shirts that say PORN on them. Though technically not Engrish and not as funny as YAMP, it’s the funniest clothing I’ve seen yet. There are also plenty of typos everywhere, including large billboards. Hey, why buy eyewear when you can buy eyewaer? And should we get a chiken sandwich for lunch?

Another similarity here is the traffic. Size matters, and right of way is measured in kilograms. Buses are on the top of the food chain, then trucks, large cars, compacts, mopeds, bikes, and pedestrians. Also, if you want a bus, you have to hail it. If you’re standing at a stop it will breeze right by every time. And while waiting for a bus, I saw an genuine Chinese fire drill. At first I didn’t believe it was actually happening, but they stopped at the red light (shocking in itself) and got out, rotated counter-clockwise, and were on their merry way.

Yet more similarities: I’m the token American, except now I don’t have 60 others to share the title with. I am 1 of 2 at this school, the only one in my dorm, and so far the only blonde I’ve seen. This means a) more stares than in Tianjin and b) everyone wants to be my friend. Everyone, including Gentry. Or maybe it’s Jentry, Gentri, Jentri, or whatever. I don’t really ask, but I like to think it’s Gentry for the irony factor. In his case, I don’t care to know. He’s creepy. Why? Well he’s from Indonesia. He’s Christian. So far, no problems. He’s getting a doctorate in pharmacology. Okay, cool. He’s friends with Obama – wait what? And he saw a blue light come from under a door and zap him in the heart. Huh? Which turned out to be his guardian angel so now he likes blue but it’s also the color of part of the American flag and liked by a lot of Americans so he’s clearly American too and hey he used to have a green card and had the number for it but someone stole it so he can’t go to the US but he will use his contacts with Barack if only I could put Gentry in contact with 44 and by the way getting a green card means he is totally a citizen but wait maybe not but hey if he marries a nice American girl he can become an American but she has to be Christian no Muslims or Jews because they’re dirty and he wants one that’s super attractive and he will always love and support her so if maybe I
have some friends that want a husband that will provide [absolutely nothing] for them I could go ahead and call them as a favor to both him and her since I have blue eyes which basically means we are like blood brothers and besides he’s studying pharmacology so he can refine the extract from some plant in Indonesia that you rub around certain parts of the anatomy to make them magically grow in less than 3 minutes and it’s really great if only he could sell that he would make millions but hey Gentry can use my MBA expertise together with his bullshitology and we can rule the world like if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs got together with Sergey Brin and Larry Page and basically out anything it would be really cool and oh if I could just help him get to America since being a citizen I clearly have pull with all 300 million of my compatriots.

If you were able to parse that in one read I commend you because that’s pretty much how our ‘conversation’ went. He would talk at me and I wouldn’t even dignify him with a smile and nod but rather space out and cruise the internet. He seems to be a misogynist, racist, zealot, and the icing on the cake is that he smells bad. In no way do I want to associate with him.

The locals here are pretty cool. I find them to be quite 友好, friendly, despite the numerous stares. In search of lunch one day I walked down a street adjacent to campus, and then kept walking some more after turning at an intersection. I found an establishment that had dumplings, just what I was looking for. I stopped in, tried to get the old woman’s attention as politely as possible, and ordered my dumplings. Then she started talking at me quite fast and I wasn’t able to pick up too much. With the dumplings I also got beef noodles and a terrible, horrible drink. It was some sort of tea, and it was the worst non-alcoholic drink I have ever tasted. It was simultaneously too bitter, too sweet, like tea on road rage if it were sentient and angry. Still, not finishing it was simply not an option. I killed my dumplings, worked on my noodles, and every so often took great heaping gulps of tea, careful to slosh it straight to the back of my throat. Punishment over, I paid and got up to leave. Then, the lady told me to wait a second and produced some produce. She thrust a heavy green fruit into my hand. I took it, and the next day dissected it. I could immediately tell it was citrus, but beyond that had no clue. As I found out later, it is in fact the pomelo fruit, which Microsoft Word doesn’t even have in its dictionary. Nice. And just today I bought some meat-on-a-stick, 11 sticks for supposedly 110 kuai, but the bossman refused to accept more than a hundred.

This weekend I spent with the Mongols and Turks basically. On Thursday I went for a walk. Then I kept walking, walked across a dry canal, skirted a farm and through bushes. I wound up close to the golden arches and decided I needed a snack. I popped over to McDonald’s and saw three classmates sitting outside. As I discovered, they were Turkish and all on the MBA track like me. Again I found it convenient to be un-American in geography, and the two-city strategy paid off; knowing of both Istanbul and Ankara made quite the first impression. This definitely helped to offset the image of a sweat-soaked blonde dude literally walking out of the bushes with thistles and branches hanging off him. We made small talk about our countries and majors, and then went back (by bus thankfully) since they had already been sitting there for a while.

Limbs, after I tried cleaning up from the bushes.

The next day I went out to take some night photos. Sadly I’m still crap at it. On the way back though, I ran into my roommate Yaoo and his Mongolian friends sitting outside the gym, drinking beer. There are no open container laws, so I never really made it back to the room until later. I turned around and hit up 7-11 and bought some Asahi, and we proceeded to roam around campus for the next 5 hours. We mostly discussed music, as everyone had a turn going through my phone to see what kind of music this genuine in-the-flesh American listened too.

The next day was another with the Turks. Osie Selman, and Zehra asked if I wanted to go to a coffee shop. I met them, and being hungry, we first went to… McDonald’s. Their idea, not mine. As it turns out they go quite often since they can’t really take most any of the local food. Well it’s their loss I think, as I’ve had some damn fine fried rice, noodles, and dumplings here. But hey whatever. After the quick ride over and back, we eventually hit our target destination, a shop called Circus. Nothing Circus about it, and the playlist draws heavily on Fort Minor and Eminem, but no complaints there. I ordered a strawberry smoothie, and absolutely blew the waitress away. The Turks speak no Chinese, and their English is not that spectacular. So rolling up with a wo yao yi bei cao mei bing sha put the waitress on her feet and had her repeating it to her coworkers. We settled in as the Turks smoked and demanded English out of me. I tried my best to appease them and monologued for a while, then got tired of it. I wanted to talk with them, not at them. So I went for the question surest to get an interesting answer:

“What do you think of the United States invading Iraq?”

The next time I checked my watch it was almost 3 hours later.

We talked about war, (it’s bad) pipe dreams, (we should all just ‘get along’) George W. Bush , (not a popular guy) and bloodthirsty Americans. I tried to explain how a war wasn’t in the people’s best interests, how we don’t just drop bombs indiscriminately, and did my best to dispel myths. It’s not easy but I think I was changing some opinions. Or maybe they were just changing mine.

After talking for many hours we returned. I for one was still in recovery mode from the Mongolian adventure the night before which kept me up until 6:00 AM. I managed to stay up long enough to see the Badgers open up 14-0 on the Goofers, then awoke to a satisfactory final. Today I had to meet with group mates for a presentation this week, on Arrangements of Reporting Relationships in an Organizational Theory class. And since I’m the only native speaker in the entire class, I’ve been tapped to deliver for our group. Yay.

拜拜

Basically the entirety of July

Sorry about the delay dear readers. I never really got the 4th of July update up, then things sort of snowballed.

We had a 3-day weekend over the 4th of July weekend. I and 3 other friends on the program went to Qingdao. You probably know the city but by a different name; Tsingtao, as in the Tsingtao beer. For the curious, Tsingtao Brewery Group is minority owned by Anheuser-Busch. Qingdao is also a totally awesome city in its own right however. It is sort of split into two different sections that are separated by a large overpass high over a valley, but it was a great place to spend our long weekend and the 4th.

We left Tianjin as soon as we could on Thursday. This ‘as soon as possible’ was after the continuous trainwreck that is my Erhu learning experience. After our end-of-week test, several 白人 (bairen, white people) congregate to continue our assault on the noble cultural tradition that is the Erhu. I’ve already shortly described the instrument, but let’s just say that my play of it has only marginally increased. Every time I create the unsatisfying chalkboard-screech, somewhere a baby Confucius is crying plum sauce tears. And there are a lot of them.

Anyhow, we got out of Erhu class and quickly got our bags and hailed a taxi for the new secondary Tianjin train station. This one is totally out in the sticks, a 60 kuai cab ride away. It replaced the old Tianjin West station which had a history of “more than a hundred years” when we asked the cabbie how old it had been before being retired. I believe that account though; having been there last year, I can attest to the fact that it is a grotesque shithole where people sit on newspaper, benches do not exist, and all the stall doors in bathrooms have been broken off so when once happens to wander in you are glared at by 3 Chinese dudes taking dumps. But enough about last year. This time we went to a gleaming station that when we went still had asphalt being laid down for the drop-off traffic circle and as-yet-unfinished steps. This is usually the cue for me to talk about change and slave labor but I’ve already gone off about that. Anyhow, we caught a D train for Qingdao and only 5 hours later or so were there. D trains are a very fast class of train. At the bottom are the 4-digit trains and the K, which stands for kuai, fast. These trains were classified as fast a long time ago in a far away bureaucratic office. These trains are those for the migrant workers, poor, and just plain unlucky SOBs who missed out on the other tickets. These are the trains that smell awful, the trains that you do not want to be in. After that there is the T-class of trains which I have heard stand for te’bie, approximately meaning special. These are your average train. Nothing terribly sinful, nothing great. And then you have the Z and D. Z is generally for overnight express trains containing only soft-sleeper berths. The Z goes from Beijing to Xi’an a full 6 hours faster than the K, a difference of 12 vs. 18 hours. D is a similar speed of train but used for shorter distances, and tends not to have sleepers but rather just soft seats. These trains can hurtle along at up to 330km/hr. Not quite maglev fast, but these things are blazing.

Arrival in Qingdao was early-evening. We got to our hostel and discovered they had one room for two people and then 2 dorm beds in a room, and no other beds. We took them, checked in and then checked out the hostel’s common area. It was a pretty cool hostel, and had a decent bar as well as available hookah, a movie room, a PlayStation 2, and a pool table. It was here, on this glorious green velvet battlefield, that it was proven, my pool prowess. And by that I mean the 4 of us played a team match against each other in what may have been the slowest-moving most scratch-ridden competition involving the sinking of opponents’ balls ever to have resembled a game of billiards. The quality of play was terrible, but a decent way to pass one of the humid afternoons. Back to the Qingdao arrival night however; we went out exploring the nearby streets. It was here that we discovered the joy of bagged beer.

I have never before purchased beer measured by weight. In Qingdao however, on the streets next to the little kabob places and small convenience stores, were people selling beer right out of the keg. And when you sell beer to people that are walking the streets, how do you get it to them? Well you could put it in little plastic cups, but that limits you to about 16 oz per serving. In a bag however, you can double that by serving a kilogram of beer! Beer is roughly equivalent to water in density since so much of it is water, so that’s a liter of beer! More than a 7-Eleven Big Gulp! Verily, is there anything in this pioneering country that is not possible? Well, a fair judicial system probably isn’t but whatever. Let’s not get too picky shall we? Settling for cheap beer over rights, we continued to walk the streets. We discovered many seafood and produce markets, I had some meat kabobs, others had egg-and-vegetable burrito-type things, and we generally walked around getting the regular stares. After finding a place for an informal dinner and some more walking, we returned to our hostel a few hours later and went to sleep.

The next morning was brewery day. We got up at a reasonable hour and took a cab over to old brewery. It still functions as one of their several factories, though it is also a museum. It was pretty cool to see the history of Tsingtao, including both the cosmetic and real changes it went through as it was alternatively owned privately, then by the Japanese, then Nationalists, then Communists, then privately again. (It was recently privatized about a decade and a half ago.) We also got to see the bottling and canning process in live action, in addition to seeing all the machinery that they use both currently and from years past. It was pretty cool, and we got to taste a batch of their unfiltered beer (it wasn’t that different) and at the end of the tour we were given a small 1.25L pitcher to split between the 4 of us. I bought some nice souvenirs in the attached gift shop, and they were actually quite reasonably priced.


We walked around the restaurants near the brewery but they appeared to be pretty dead. When you don’t know the restaurants in an area, and don’t have any recommendations to go by, we stick pretty well to the common tactic of ‘if there are no other locals present eating, you shouldn’t either’ so we returned to our hostel. I had a halfway decent sandwich which, like much of the Western food in China, served only to remind me of glories I am missing out on and did little to sate my desire for grease and preservatives in the same dish. After the pool fiasco and a game of hearts which involved moon-shooting by yours truly, we went out to a really awesome seafood place. Here we were able to get fresh crab, fish, prawns, and all other delights. We were also able to see the waiter absolutely smack the living daylights out of a fish after we selected it. For our second fish, the second waiter was a lot less enthusiastic and just tapped it, so it probably wasn’t even stunned when it encountered the boiling water. But it was sure as hell dead when it entered my belly, swimming in delicious juices and practically falling off its tiny bones. After this delicious-but-expensive dinner, we returned to the hostel and then walked down to the beach. I got big time déjà vu, having walked down the exact same stretch of beach and out to the exact same pavilion precisely one year ago, but it was still really cool. Last year I was only in Qingdao for less than a full day, so it barely counted anyway. After marveling at a cool phenomenon which had the ocean water we kicked up looking a fluorescent blue and observing the sketchy old men going for a swim, we returned to the hostel to turn it in. The next morning would be pretty early.

The others got up sometime around 7:00AM. I kept sleeping until I got a call from them at 8:30. They were already at “Old Person Beach,” a stretch of sand a few kilometers long and many more kilometers away from our hostel. After a pricey cab ride, I met them there and we proceeded to walk along the pretty clean beach, which is always a notable accomplishment in China. We considered hiring jet skis, but they only had 2 available and required the passenger seat to be taken by one of their supervisor guys, so we didn’t go for that. We also could have taken a boat ride, but no one seemed particularly interested in such a pedestrian activity for the cost of 100 yuan. So we walked along the beach, made fun of the Chinese for their terrible fashion sense and its extension to bathing suits, built a sandcastle, made sand graffiti, and attempted to jump over waves. Despite that short description we managed to spend a while at the beach and I got an awesome burn over my shoulders and part of my torso.

Once more we made our way to home base and basically zoned out for the afternoon. The heat and humidity was stifling, and there was no inclination by anyone to go out exploring in the sun. However in the hostel common room we met another group of 4 from our program who were staying at the next door hostel. We decided to go to dinner, and being as it was July 4th, a Mexican restaurant seemed pretty fitting.

I ordered some mediocre fajitas. Some got burritos and your other standard Tex-Mex food. We decided to cheap out and BYOB since it was so cheap and nearby. At this dinner, our waitress was wearing a shirt that declared “Free Hugs” and I found this pretty entertaining. At the end of the meal, we turned on her and demanded what her garment promised.

Now imagine you are a petite Chinese girl, probably in your early 20s, weighing not more than 100lbs and coming in certainly no higher than 5’4” but probably more like 5’2”. You have just served 8 loud Americans. You may not realize it is their national holiday, but they have been drinking. Drinking in quantities such that, were it your body metabolizing the alcohol, you would probably be struggling to stand. (No one in our party was drunk yet, we had had less than a liter of beer each.) Suddenly, without warning or apparent reason, this blonde, 185 centimeter/77kg foreign devil is approaching you, arms wide, with an oafish smile. Do you:

A) Cower and look panicked?
B) Yell for your boss and start swearing?
C) Take a shot of liquid courage and approach?
D) Cry and then kick said whities?

Sadly the answer isn’t terribly surprising or entertaining, and the correct one is A. Nonetheless, the four of us who approached got what was duly owed, and then explained to her what her shirt meant. Discussing it later, we determined it was unlikely she would wear that shirt again while working. Victory for English and America.

We walked around the corner looking for more places to eat drink and be merry. We found a happening place and asked for a few pitchers of Qingdao beer and cooked peanuts and edamame. And it was there we stayed for many hours.

I was saddened that when we saw the foreigners sitting just a couple tables away with shirts containing disparaging remarks about Ann Arbor, they refused to join us. They were Ohio State University students. We explained that we were Badgers, and could at least come together under the banner of the Big Ten and Michigan antipathy, and more importantly than any idiotic sports associations, we also happened to be citizens of the same great country when it just so happened to be that country’s birthday and we were all stuck in China. Instead they made rather inappropriate gestures in our direction. So we invited some nearby Brits to join us and they were a blast. We played a large and rather rowdy game of Circle of Death/Ring of Fire/King’s Cup with British rules. One of these was that without possessing a Jack, one is not allowed to go to the bathroom. If a player is to do it anyway, the rest of players are to come up with a punishment. This resulted in pushups, random hugs, and 2 girls from the other group we met standing on chairs singing “I’m a Little Teapot.” Also during the game we twice broke into song, once being for the national anthem, and another for God Bless America. It was truly beautiful. I am one of those saps who probably puts way too much stock into gimmicky patriotic stuff like that, but reflecting on being in China, and how much we really do have in America, it was easy to get sentimental about very concept of freedom.

After a long night which involved 30*1.25=37.5 liters of beer split amongst us, as well as our share from dinner, we made one last taxi pilgrimage to our hostel. And 1 liter of water later, I was asleep. This all occurred pretty early on in the night since we had a train to catch at 7:46 the next morning. We were able to make the train just fine, though I sadly left my Say No To Scurvy shirt hanging in the hostel room. It had a good run though, and I hope it enjoys its next life being worn by a Chinese person who has absolutely no clue what it could possibly mean.

After the long weekend things settled down pretty much. The weekend afterward, our AC broke and since it was on a weekend it took a couple days to get fixed. I have still been demolishing reading material. My sandal broke as we were leaving Qingdao, which was a pretty big bummer. I have replaced the nice American ones with some crappy-quality foam Chinese sandals that have tiny little glittery plastic beads in them. They were the most manly thong-style sandals available, so go figure.

Also in the past month some of my classmates have been diligently preparing for the speech contest, held this Sunday. I elected not to participate as although I see a great value in improving my speaking skills, it is mostly about face. You probably already know the importance of saving face in East Asian cultures, and getting face is what this contest is all about. A few students are picked to represent Wisconsin in Beijing, and these students are groomed into speaking machines. Wisconsin always wipes the floor in this competition, and wants to continue to do so, so the speakers are given non-stop tutoring in an effort to perfect this one speech. I know for a fact that the students selected are great at Chinese, (half of them are good friends) and given who they selected I probably wouldn’t have been able to qualify anyway, but I didn’t want any surprises. I just didn’t see the value in delivering a speech memorized rote, repeated hundreds of times, containing vocabulary inserted by teachers.

Since the conclusion of our week break, we have also switched into new classes. I am now done with Classical Chinese and into Fourth Year. It is a thrill to be back in something that is more intellectually stimulating. I am able to pay attention in lecture, and furthermore have to in order not to fall behind. In short, it is back to how normal classes function. I am back to learning new vocabulary and grammar patterns. Classical was major-required so I don’t really feel like it was a waste, and though getting back into standard classes has made life here more rigorous, it’s still a nice change. Also, I helped myself to a magazine from the train we took to Beijing at the beginning of the break, and also one from the plane when we flew back to Tianjin. (More on the break later.) I’m a big time believer that reading real magazine articles and then highlighting new characters and grammar constructs is a great way to learn. This has also been our source for third and fourth year class as well and has probably been a common language teaching tool since the invention of the periodical, but it’s nice to have as-real-as-it-gets content to draw from and relate to. For example, one of the articles is about Culture Street, a wildly popular tourist trap in Tianjin.

A little before the break I went shopping and happened upon some glorious 100% imported Land-o-Lakes cheese. Imported stuff is a dead giveaway when it has not only the label you are familiar with from America, but has a massive sticker just pasted on in Chinese since there is absolutely none on the original packaging. I also found a cool fountain pen that draws from a real inkwell and looks super fancy. I also got a care package from America (thanks mom!) including all sorts of salted snacks including Goldfish and Cheez-It Snack Mix, which is delicious. But those are all long gone by now, and in fact have been since the break. It’s about time I actually tell you about that mythical break I keep mentioning.

Technically, it is a field trip as it involved choosing a topic and then asking questions of locals where we went. But that is boring and our report hasn’t been written yet so I’ll spare you the academic details. This thing had been in planning since even before the 3-day. From Friday to Sunday, July 17-26, it included a total of 10 days when considered generously, so it is also called the ten-day. Five of us went, and we met up with the boyfriend of one of the girls who was starting a trip to China. We quick a took train to Beijing and then caught our major one down to Guilin, a city in Guangxi. This second one was 23 hours chock full of the standard sketchy middle-aged Chinese men and broken air conditioning that seem to be part and parcel of the China experience. Between reading, sleeping, and chatting the time somehow slowly passed, and we arrived in Guilin significantly smellier but not permanently scarred. Thankfully our hostel was right across from the train station, as we couldn’t really be bothered to go anywhere. Unthankfully, they informed us that though we had booked for two nights, they only had beds available for one. Wonderful. There wasn’t much fight in us left though, and we got in, showered, and got some food. Bedtime was early, as we had reserved a tour for the Dragon Back Rice Terraces at 8:00AM.

We got up, put all our bags into the luggage room, and departed. I feel obligated by my pride to mention here that I managed to cram every single thing I needed for this ten-day expedition into a single, regular-sized school backpack. Adequate shorts, shirts, toiletries, my camera and swimswuit, my Lonely Planet and a novel, everything was made to fit within my Bag of Holding. Just thought you should know. We got on the bus for the terraces which took a while itself. It was a big bus with lots of pickups and plenty of waiting for others, so we didn’t actually leave Guilin until past 9:00 and then got there a couple hours later. We then took a minibus farther up the mountain, and ate at a restaurant that served bamboo chicken and rice. Basically, these were just cooked inside the bamboo. It was delicious however, and the rice was extra sticky and the chicken extra juicy. One of the culinary highlights of the trip. We then walked up a little bit and made it to the actual rice terraces. It was awesome.



I took a ton of pictures but a lot of them look very similar. Lots of them are just me messing around with exposure/field depth as well as saturation and contrast. It was basically like being in the Discovery Channel. We were also able to walk out to the end of one of the terraces. Again, it was just really cool and a great sight to behold. After feasts for our eyes and stomachs, we went back to the base of the mountain and walked around a village of the local minority population. Ever since it was opened to tourists in 2002, many people are basically making bank and new construction (all in the same old style still) could be seen along the banks of the little river the village was straddling. More pictures and a little relaxing ensued, and we got back to Guilin around 6PM.

Then we checked into an establishment of questionable reputability.

We got to the hotel and checked in. In the elevator we noticed there were pictures of some absolutely gorgeous girls, clad in bikinis or nothing at all, shown basically having a good time. There were also a few giving massages. We got to our rooms, and in ours there was a picture of another of these bikini girls, laying quite suggestively. The little card was “welcoming” us. It also had a phone number.

I don’t think it requires much of an imagination to figure out what was going on here. I should also note that, according to China Road by Rob Gifford, this is a completely normal experience. Usually in China I am way too cheap to stay in a hotel instead of a hostel so I can’t really comment, but I am utterly unsurprised, and have heard stories to this effect before.

The next day we prepared to go to Yangshuo but first stopped at the train station to get tickets back to Beijing. Half of us waited in line while half stood over all our luggage. It took maybe an hour for us to get to the front, an hour of excruciating sweatiness and smelly migrant workers. Thankfully no one wanted to chat us up. Then, just as our party got to the front of the line, the woman simply closed the ticket window. There was no advance warning, no invitation to step over to another line, just a curtained ticket window. This was exactly the time I noticed on the big board that there were no tickets left for our train, not for Saturday, or even Sunday. In fact there were no non-standing tickets left for this train for the next ten days. I broke the news, and after a collective sigh we basically decided that our only option was to fly. That, or an almost 40-hour K train. So we got on the bus to Yangshuo, a tiny hamlet of 300,000 people that is a major tourist destination and filled with expats. We arrived at our first Yangshuo hotel (the hostel we would go to later for 4 nights was full the first night) and ordered our plane tickets, got ripped off for $200 on a one-way domestic flight, and then went to sleep.

The next day I had one of the many Western style breakfasts available in Yangshuo. Fried eggs, toast, bacon, are all in plentiful supply there. Although not quite on par with Baker’s Square greatness, Chinese breakfast is so vile that it was divine by comparison. Another theme of this trip was the sweltering heat. Being in a sub-tropical climate in summer can have pretty predictable results. Going out for a walk would result in a drenched t-shirt. Making the hike from our old hotel to new hostel was basically walking across the town, which was also unpleasant. After that we walked around and explored the city. It has one main pedestrian drag called West Street that is filled with restaurants, bars, tour companies, KTV, and shops. It was a pretty happening town, thanks to the endless supply of tourist dollars. After grabbing a surprisingly good pizza, we walked around some more. And then the sickness started.

The next morning, the first of us fell ill. He had a basic cold and fever. The rest of us rented bikes and got out to see the countryside, including plenty of locals, and water buffalo. After a couple hours on the bikes we decided we had gone past some village famous for fans that we were looking for. I didn’t really mind and kept looking at the scenery. It was incredible. There was farmland and then massive karst peaks rising like teeth on the blade of a saw.


We turned around and biked back. In keeping with the glorious Chinese tradition of not giving a damn about safety, part of this bike ride was through a tunnel. A very, very dark tunnel with insufficient lighting that lacked sidewalks. This tunnel was often frequented by massive tour buses, regular cars, and large trucks. And they absolutely love to be insane and pass each other, completely consuming the other lane. Usually this is not a problem, as each direction has a wide lane, then shoulder, then a gravel/packed dirt side. The tunnel removed any room for error. If some bus decided to pass us (and they all did) and some other large bus was coming at them head on. We would have been made into hamburger by a quick sideswipe. And there was absolutely nothing we could do, other than pedal as fast as possible and get out of the danger zone. So that was slightly unnerving, but again, completely expected.

Bike ride over and showers done, we headed over to dinner. There I ordered some peppered beef. I asked for super spicy and it came out pretty weak. The flavor itself was still great but the spiciness was lacking. After more walking around we ended up at a bar that served 8 kuai Brandy and Coke. The owner turned out to be a cool Belgian guy who had been in Yangshuo studying, then shortly after becoming a patron rented a room above the bar, and shortly after that bought half of it. We chilled there for the rest of the night.


The eclipse (日偏食, ripianshi) happened during breakfast. It was sort of underwhelming since where we were it was just a partial eclipse. A few hundred km north and it would have been incredible I bet.
The next day we planned on going to cooking classes in the morning, but we were late to rise (maybe 9:00AM) and were all hankering for breakfast. We decided to put it off until the afternoon. Instead we attempted to watch the new Harry Potter. We bought a pirated DVD copy, but the quality was so bad it was completely unwatchable. So instead we went with The Hangover, which I must say was a really great movie. It had some pretty crude jokes, but considering how the movie was billed it is in its own way reasonably realistic, and the characters were pretty funny. After that movie we then made our way to the class.


It started out with a trip to the local market. There were plenty of vegetables, lots of butchering going on, basically everything you’d expect to find in a really authentic market. We picked up eggplant, dumpling stuffing, dumpling wraps, chives, and probably some others I didn’t notice. We went back to the restaurant/cooking school and started to make Gongbao aka Kung Pao chicken, pork and chive dumplings, and breaded fried eggplant stuffed with the dumpling mix. The eggplant thing was very rich due to the fried breading and melted like a jalapeno popper. The dumplings were alright, but I must say I make a damn fine Gongbao chicken. Now if only I get all those ingredients again and have a skilled cook looking over my shoulder, I’d be set. The lesson took us to dinner and sort of was dinner, but we elected to go for secondsies, and after that, more wandering. This night we hopped around more from a couple different places, but ended up at our old standby which by the way is named Kaya.

The next day was a nature-filled extravaganza. First we went to a water cave. This involved a couple bus rides, some off-roading, and a rickety boat that may or may not have had puke on it. This boat took us into the cave where we saw some interesting looking rock formations. They all had labels and were supposed to resemble figures or certain shapes, but for the most part they were a big stretch and just part of the touristiness of it. Then we got to the mud pool, which was really fun. There’s basically no other way to describe it. There was one pool, and it had standing, cool, soft mud that was maybe a foot or two deep, depending on where you were. Lying down in it, you float so high it’s unbelievable. Sadly I have no pictures since I wasn’t really thrilled with the prospect of taking my camera into the cave, but it was really fun. My swimsuit still has a beige tint where all the white was. And finally in the cave we got to the hot springs. The source was at the top so they got warmer the farther you went up, and it was really nice to lie down in the mini-pools and just relax. We were supposed to be timed, but we just got out when they were all filled and a line started to form.

After the mud caves, we went back to the city proper, ate lunch, and rented some kayaks. They were the typical cheap plastic shell types, and the life jackets were questionable, but it was awesome to kayak down the river, starting in the late afternoon and then ending at dusk.

The next day was just a day of rest. Others had gotten the same cold, everyone except me. And I wouldn’t get it either, but instead caught a rather nasty stomach bug. Sometime on this final full day, this day of rest (Friday the 24th for those at home keeping score) I got food poisoning. It started with some light diarrhea in the afternoon. I figured that was it, and it was gone. My stomach felt good. After dinner, I returned with the early group (those who were also just getting their share of the cold started) and after curling up in the fetal position, staggered into the bathroom, and puked. After several fountain-like heaves, I brushed and rinsed a few billion times, then went to bed. A couple hours later, I woke up, got out of bed, and visited the bathroom again. More lunch and dinner into the toilet. This then became a regular occurrence in what can only be described as the night from hell. Every hour or so, I would get up and puke. On the 3rd or 4th time, it was bile. But still it kept coming. I tried drinking little sips of water, I tried no water, I tried a liter of water. The only thing that changed was tint of the green bile. My last time puking was at 8:30AM, and then our friend diarrhea came back for a couple rounds. At this point my stomach was completely void of anything. That Saturday my stomach was still not feeling good enough to ingest anything, though I had 1/3 a cup of ramen noodles and two of the airplane snacks since I figured I should eat something. We got back to Tianjin at around midnight, and I weighed myself, clothes on, and was 73.7kg. That is less than 163 pounds. That is less than I weighed sophomore year in high school. Yes, I was very hungry.

And that is basically it. On Sunday I did see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and in theaters no less. It was awesome, even though I haven’t read the 6th or 7th book yet. I maintain that Rowling didn’t give me much of a reason after the boring, emo fiasco that was the 5th book, but now I’ll get around to those. Like I said before, we have new classes and they’re great, and both my lecturer and TA were my teachers last year in Tianjin while taking second year Chinese. This program is 2 weeks from being over, and after that I still have 1 week traveling with my friend from high school who is currently studying in Beijing. I really miss American food, and am looking forward to the start of school again though I know this semester is going to be a rough one academically.

But I’ll keep the updates coming in this time I have left! Promise!