...now...

I tried to come to China as a blank slate, not expecting anything specific. I think I did that as best I could. Maybe it's not really possible for a person to move all the way across the planet and start life there as a blank slate but I know this for sure 'It is impossible stay that way.' After a while you realize that, yup, you are a biased person. You have a nasty side that is all too quick to criticize and compare to what you consider normality. There are some times at which I've been dangerously close to cynisism (Did I spell that correctly? I don't know. Maybe I should hire an English teacher to edit for me.) I like to think that I've been capable of acknowledging negativity without becoming a cynic, both in and outside of these blogs. It's all too easy hate on a place because it doesn't have all the goodies of home. But that's a ridiculous and stupid response for a traveler. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that it's every individual's right to whine and complain but I think it should be nothing more than a momentary thing. Have a little bitch session, get it over with, and go on with life. It's good to let off that steam once in a while. So yeah, I've written and said some bad stuff about China and I'll be writing a bit more bad stuff in this blog, but not once have I ever truly hated China nor do I now.
I've been playing pool with Dave a lot. It's pool hall not a bar, but it's become a nice little hangout for a couple of tall, skinny, redheaded guys. Once in while, Andy, the English teacher from Brookline Mass. who works at Kaili University, plays with us. We talk a lot and we criticize everything. Everything. Most of the things we say in our pool sessions have more of an analytical tone that anything else. I see it as viewing China as a scientific specimen to be studied and observed, although that's not really accurate because I can't be objective about a place that I have an emotional attachment to. (Lately, I've been in a 'blah' frame of mind. I expected to either love or hate China but I find myself in some kind of middle zone. Not indifference, just not any kind of emotional extreme. If I had to choose a term to describe my experience here so far I would choose the words "Pretty good." It's not a term that's too negative or too positive. It's more to the positive side of the spectrum but I'm not jumping around saying,"I love this place." ) Mostly, we just talk about music and women. A few weeks ago I had to defend myself when Dave (Irish) said, "No Irish person would ever listen to the Dropkick Murphys." Then Andy (American) said, "The Dropkick Murphys suck and I'll tell that to the next Murphys fan I see." I declared my Murphys fandom at exactly that moment. Dave gave me a disgusted look. Andy didn't say anything. Gotta represent!
 There are some new people in my Kaili life. Brian and Tom are some young guys who are preparing to go to college overseas soon. Brian's headed to the U.S.A. Tom's headed to Scotland. They showed me a cool little  Kaili bar that has a name that translates as Trainspotting. It's much better than Pink! There's also Jim and Laura. These two are an American couple, both from Arkansas, and they are studying Chinese at Kaili University. This brings the total expatriot population of Kaili up to 7 people. Wow! Staggering!
 I recently returned from trip to Nanjing, where I met up with my friends Jody, Tom, and Sarah. They were all people I met way back when in the Shanghai orientation but never really had enough time with. I saw an amazing lake with beautiful statuary around it and I took a lot of photos. Check out my Facebook page soon, I'll be posting a giant stinking heap of pictures. Jody, who teaches in Nanjing, showed us a place called Finnegan's Wake. An awesome little pub that made me feel like I'd just wandered in after passing Fenway Park, Old Ironsides, and all things Boston. In other words, homesickness slapped me in the face as soon as I walked in. It hit all four of us. Hard. The burgers at Finnegan's put the Chengdu burgers to shame! I ate a lot of western food in Nanjing and as always it cost me my soul. I kept telling Jody, "I don't care. I'll pay." I was perfectly willing to pay the painful prices for western stuff. I say yet again, there is nothing western in Kaili.
 We went to a restaraunt for Muslim food, first time for me. I don't know what I ate but it was great. Indian food, burgers, dumplings with mysterious black ooze and, scarily, a wire inside. We had all kinds of food. and we talked. A lot! I think I need to defend the next part I plan to write because it just aint nice. We verbally ripped China a new asshole. I am not innocent of this. Take 4 foreigners, no matter how willing, into a place that couldn't possibly be more foreign for them and wait. They will complain. They will make scathing remarks that cut and burn and rip and tear apart the country and culture. They might mean some of it, but I think that a lot of it is just the fact that when you're in a safe little group of people who have experienced hardships that are similar to yours a little voice goes off in the back of your brain and says, "Yes! These people understand! Now I can say everything I've ever wanted to say!" I don't hate China and don't believe for a second that any of them do either. Nope, they probably hate me for writing about this, but I don't think they hate China. As a matter of fact there's only one thing that I truly Hate here. I've mentioned it before: The maltreatment of nature. I view 'almost' all other problems here as smaller things that can become largely problematic when piled up but manageable when dealt with individually.
There is a popular karaoke company called KTV in China. Jody had never been there. It's simply unacceptable to come to China without embarrassing yourself at karaoke, so we happily sought out KTV the night Tom arrived. The place was called Happy Day KTV. First, they pretended that they couldn't speak English. Next, they pretended that they couldn't give us a karaoke room without the requirement of buying food. When we finally discovered the first two lies, we were given a mysterious card, some kind of VIP thing. A short time later we were told to pay for the card. We refused to pay and gave the card back. Tom was outside of the room at the time which left me, Sarah, and Jody to deal with this schmuck. I noticed that the man was only speaking to me. Ignoring the women. After the card incident we learned that the people at the door refused to let Tom come in. We decided to leave and told the man that we were doing so. His response was a spectacularly scoundrel-like sentence like "Then why did you come here in the first place?" We demanded our money back and he gave us some bullshit line about company policy not allowing refunds. I began to wonder whether or not I was going to have to threaten to break the microphone before this son of bitch paid up. After a bit, they finally let Tom in. We all stood together, demanding the refund and eventually this scumbag gave in and refunded our money. It would have been fun to hold the microphone hostage, but since I'm not really eager to see the interior of a Chinese prison cell it was probably best that things never went that far. This is just one example, a great example, but just one example the utter bullshit we sometimes put up with as expatriots over here. Hence, the very very necessary bitch sessions.
You may have heard of the book 'The Rape of Nanking.” That happenned in Nanjing and I went alone to the memorial park of the Nanjing Massacre. It was intense. It was every bit as intense as the Nagasaki bombing museum that I went to back in '97. I took a lot of pictures of the statues there. That place was full of disturblingly good art. But I couldn't stop wondering 'What do Japanese people think when they come here?' I was thinking about that because of the way things were often described on the plaques and walls of the memorial. Adjectives that didn't seem necessary were all over the place. If I were a Chinese guy designing a massacre memorial site I might want to paint my country in a good light while waving a finger at my oppressors, but was it really necessary to refer to the Japanese as Devils? I saw adjectives like 'Kind' and 'Good' associated with many Chinese things there and words like 'Devil' associated with Japanese stuff. I'm not suggesting that the Nanjing massacre was anything short of hugely horrible, but I can't stop wondering if Japanese people go there, read the signs,and think, “Come on! I am not a devil, damn it. Why can't they just report the facts and leave it at that?”
Purple Mountain is the epitome of tourist traps. You have to ride a bunch of different buses to get to the site you want to go to and there are many sites to see. In our case, we chose to see Dr. Sun-Yat Sen's Mausoleum. Despite the nauseating amount of people there and the fact that we paid an exorbitant price for what was clearly the worst coffee on earth, the mausoleum looked awesome. It was straight out of one of those movies where people sacrifice goats or sheep upon a high altar in order to appease a blood-thirsty god. There was a long stack of steps leading up to a pyramidal building that housed a statue of the doctor himself. It was nice but somewhat anti-climatic after that long walk. We also saw a great place called Shishia Mountain. Pronounced Shishishishishishishishia. It's a beautiful place that had a cool red temple at the bottom with some monks chant-chant-chanting away. Sarah was bee- bopping a lot to the beat of the chanting when we discovered a little dog sitting nearby. We. Could. Not. Stop. Playing. With. The. Dog. By the way, we did end up finding a good KTV. Like I said, it's unacceptable to come to China without embarrassing yourself at karaoke. We sang until we closed the place out and my throat was raw. We all crashed at around 4AM and said goodbye to Sarah and Tom the next day. I had a great time in Nanjing. Thanks to Nanjing, I'm fully stocked up on books, CDs, and DVDs. I also found Swiss Miss Cocoa. Black Currant Jelly, and other good food stuff. I'm so glad that airport security didn't take away my food or charge me a fine for an overweight bag.
A few weeks ago, I have Ms. Fu the official, “No. I will not be returning next year.” It was kind of sad moment. There are good people here and the school has proven trustworthy, screwed up, but trustworthy. I'll miss my friends here and my students as well. I'll definitely miss these mountains. It's just that, nothing that has happened here has been good enough to make me want to return for a second year. But, I have another 4 months to go. Maybe I'll be declared King of Kaili, paid in golden elephant statues, marry a Chinese princess, and become Hu Jin Tao's best buddy. We'll see. This aint over yet.

After, after, after. Hmm, Spain? I don't know. I've been a regional/ intranational gypsy for a long time. For 5 years I'd move move from state to state to state within New England. It was the, pun intended, nature of my environmental education job. I don't really want to promote myself to International Gypsy. During those years, I spent a lot of time doing the same thing many of my coworkers were doing. Applying for other jobs. Environmental Education jobs have their good parts, but the lifestyle can be exhausting and you're rarely treated like a teacher. No matter how many times you take a group of kids into a salt marsh and show kids how to test the PH levels of water or how many times you explain symbiosis, you will encounter people who think you're just a camp counselor who does nothing but play soccer all day. I have never been a camp counselor in my entire life. There are far too many people who think that people who don't have teaching degrees can't possibly be 'real' teachers. I've seen this proven wrong numerous times and I'd like to think that I've proven it wrong myself. But...
“...teaching qualification.” What Jody? What did she just say? Did she just tell me that I need some kind of teaching qualification? Yup, yup. That's it. That's what she said. I should argue, right? I should tell her that she's wrong. I should tell her that I can get by just fine on my experience and I don't need a rotten stinking piece of paper that says “Hey look at this! This says I can teach.” Ok, I will. I will tell her wrong she is. And I'll let her know exactly how pissed off I am about all those employers that tossed my resume aside with barely a glance because they thought I was a camp counselor who never found a real job. Yeah, I'm going to...umm...wait a minute. This is Jody. My friend, Jody. I'm not mad at her. Besides, everything I've ever experienced points to her being absolutely right. Especially in the current job market. And she was nice about it. She was direct but friendly when she said it. So now I can't argue and I can't get angry. Only an idiot would argue with the truth.”
This little scene happened on my last day in Nanjing when Jody, who is a 'qualified' teacher, laid the facts down in the nicest way possible. I told her that I don't want to return to school and that was when she mentioned the Teach for America program. I'd heard the name but didn't know much about the program. I'm currently looking into it. Seems to be a program in which you earn a teaching qualification while you're on the job. That's sound better than school to me. And perhaps it's better than becoming an international gypsy. I'm checking it out. We'll see. We'll see.