One for the Road

 

This will probably be the second to last blog I write. I blog whenever the mood hits me and rather than hitting me frequently, it tends to hit me at times when I have a lot to say/write. I'll be leaving Kaili in 2 days, China in 3. It's definitely blog time. As of now, I'm expecting the mood to hit me one more time. I'm sure that many interesting experiences, goofy stories, and many of my weird thoughts will come to me before I land in O'Hare. Onward to Boston. So, expect some kind of returning home blog. I promise that I won't call it “Honey I'm Home!”

Maybe this is supposed to the blog that sums it all up. The one that wraps all of my experiences in China into a nice presentable understandable package. That's just not going to happen. First of all, I've traveled a lot but had never truly lived in a foreign country until now. It's a whole different experience when you stay for a long time. I almost feel bad for the CIEE people who left China after 5 months. It took me about that much time to get over the 'Excitement Phase' and the 'What the Hell is Going On Phase.' Ok, I'm lying. I'm not really done with either one of those phases although their hold over me has lessened considerably in the past 5 months. Second, I've never been to a place that I wanted to hug one second and hit the next. This is, without a doubt, the most confusing place that I've ever been to. I'll try to fill this blog with the silly anecdotes and stories that people really seem to read for, while I'll try to avoid ranting. I've ranted a lot in my blogs and I think I've made many of my points within those rants. However, I need to be permitted one more rant in this blog. It's a big one. The big one! I've been thinking about it all year and have never written about it. Maybe that's because it makes me more angry than anything else I can think of. Anyway, I'll try to focus on silly stories, interesting stuff, one last rant, and saying goodbye to China.

Warning: If you don't want to read about how much I utterly hate the treatment of dogs here

then it's best to skip the following paragraph. I'll start with the thing that every foreigner has heard and wondered about regarding dogs in China. The answer is Yes. The Chinese do eat dogs. At least they do here in the Guizhou Province and probably other places as well. I have also heard people say that some people eat cats as well. In the west we have a set view of dogs as companions and pets, but here in China there is a confusing existence of two very different attitudes toward dogs. There seem to be people who view dogs as pets and who take care of their dogs but there are certainly those people who see dogs as just another animal like chickens or pigs. A few months ago, one of the restaurants that I frequented underwent construction and when it was finished it had changed from its former noodle house self into a place with a giant butcher table set in the front window. They specialize in selling dog meat now and I haven't been there since the change. There are restaurants that display dog haunches all over Kaili. I've seen dog heads on display once or twice. This has all lead me to the realization that there is a massive difference between having an academic knowledge of something's existence and being accepting of it. I've been aware of the eating of dogs all year long but even if I lived here for the rest of my life, I could never be ok with it. Sooner or later, I'd see someone kill a dog, I'd hit the motherfucker, and I'd be viewed as the bad guy. But eating dogs is not the only problem. People here keep extremely dirty dogs unleashed near busy roads. There have been numerous times when I've run into the road to grab a runaway dog because the dog owner was too lazy to watch the dog or was simply not present. Even though I'm sure not every dog that looks homeless is homeless the fact that the dogs appear that way is bad enough for me. There are also sidewalk vendors that sell puppies to any asshole who walks by. Maybe the person who buys the dog will leash it and care for it. Perhaps they will leave it unwashed and unleashed on a regular basis. They might eat it. I don't think the vendors really care about what happens to the dogs. Just another item to sell. Another product. The treatment of dogs in China is actually one of the reasons I've decided to leave. A guy like me does not belong in a place where people think so little, or not at all, of caring for dogs. The maltreatment of dogs is a big part of the general lack of care about nature that I've mentioned so many times in these blogs. Ok, rant's over.

I'm in the process of saying goodbye to everyone here. Some of my students have cried and given me gifts. Some don't seem to care at all. A lot of the girls have given me cards that have my name written as 'Cute Rob.' If they were college girls, I'd be much happier about that. I've gotten few hugs, an unusual practice for Chinese kids, and suddenly everybody wants my email address. One student gave me a copy of “Walden: and Other Writings” by Thoreau. Smart kid. Many of the lessons that I've taught this past year have been old Environmental Education classes that I've revamped to have an English learning twist, so if I've managed to slip a bit of the old 'Nature is Important' lessons in with the “Pronunciation is Important” lessons then I'm proud to be guilty. China has serious environmental problems. I hope that these kids will be among the ones who realize that you can't treat your own home like a trashcan and an expendable mass of worthless land. The mountains here are being carved away for new buildings day after day and in a few years this small city will be yet another giant, overcrowded, ugly, super-polluted piece of shit like so many other cities already are now. How could anybody ever think of that as progress? Seeing those carved out mountains makes me think that the world might be better off if nature were to deliver some kind of specie-centric earthquake, targeting humans and only humans, thereby getting rid of the stupid animals so the rest may live. That was a mini-rant. Doesn't count.

I've been wandering the mountains a lot and one day when I happened upon a somewhat hidden waterfall I became so excited to photograph it that I completely overlooked the large paddy of mud near my foot. Zoop! Next thing I know I'm hanging one leg on one leg off a cliff that I'd hadn't even seen. It was hidden behind a bunch of scrub. I was probably a solid 20 feet above water that looked like regurgitated pea soup. I was more frightened of the pollution in the water than the thought of falling. I grabbed some roots that proved strong enough for me to pull myself up. I stood up, backed away from the cliff, and snapped my photo. It was a little scary but it I actually thought of it as being more toward funny. One thing crossed my mind afterward, ”Maybe it wasn't mud. Here in Kaili it could easily have been Ox dung.” I've been trying to block out that thought ever since. My clothes were covered with it, after all.

I like Kaili. I think it's clear that I haven't enjoyed every moment of my time here, but when I think back on it I always land on the words “Pretty good.” My time in Kaili was, however, punctuated by extended periods of boredom and loneliness. One reason for this is the fact that even though the city's small size can be nice it also limits the amount of stuff there is to do. My job there was easy and it left me a lot of free time, which was great because I've gotten more writing, drawing, and reading done this past year than I have in a very long time. But there are only so many hikes I can go on and so many old online movies I can watch before boredom sets in. Another reason for this problem was the fact that even though I had a large number of friends in Kaili, they were always so busy. Most of my Chinese buddies were teachers or college students and had to attend classes when I was free. My friend Wudan once told me that she thought I'd be happier in a big Chinese city. I don't necessarily agree, but perhaps a larger city would have offered more chances to meet people who had as much time as I did.

The school is currently looking for new foreign teachers to replace me, Dave, and Lucia. Dave and Lucia have decided to stay in China and are leaving Kaili for some pretty good opportunities teaching in Shenzen. That's the difficulty that Kaili No. 1 Middle School is dealing with right now. Even though they are, more or less, a decent school to work at, they are not in a city that is very attractive to foreigners. Sure you see foreigners in Kaili, but 99% of them don't show up until the summer time and until that time you can bet that any foreigner you see there will be wearing a giant backpack and be headed straight for the bus station. It's a sad thing that foreign travelers and teachers seem to be so interested in the big tourist destinations but not so much about the little places like Kaili. People go there, check out a few Miao villages, and then hit the road. A lot of people who teach in China become very demanding snobs and criticizing jerks who do nothing but complain about their working and living conditions. I've certainly had my snobby American moments but I've tried very hard not to be that way. I learned early on in the year that I was being paid twice as much money as the Chinese teachers were and although my English is significantly more impressive than theirs the fact that I receive twice as much money for half the work time just isn't fair. Kaili is not a place that foreigners will flock to when they consider working in China and I'm worried that the next batch of teachers who come to Kaili will act like demanding snobs, giving Ms. Fu and Tan Yen a hard time. I don't particularly mind if they annoy Henry. Kaili No. 1 High School is a good little place. Ms. Fu and Henry asked me to speak to people at American schools I have contacts with, asking them whether or not they'd like to form a sister-school connection. I think that's a good idea and I have every intention of doing that. I'll start with my high school, Souhegan. Perhaps they'd like to send some little yuppie Amherst kids overseas to experience firsthand a place that will teach, teach, and reteach them nature's oldest lesson. Adapt! I'd tell Souhegan, “Don't send the kids with the best grades. Send the kids who are fascinated by change. Those are the kids that will thrive on a trip to Kaili.” And I know a whole bunch of Kaili kids who would absolutely love to come to an American school for a while. They'd be amazed by how easy our high school is. I imagine that many of them would look around little ol' Amherst NH and think, “Wait a minute. This doesn't look like America in the movies.” It seems to me that most of their knowledge about the U.S.A comes from movies and advertising. Maybe we're the same. Beyond Kung-Fu movies our fear of China's economic might, what do we really know about China? I think the answer is 'not much.'

Now the sad part. I had a goodbye dinner with Ms. Fu, Henry, and Ms. Cheng. Great food, we ate some kind of complicated duck specialty. But it is not the big fancy teacher dinners that I'll remember so much as the little moments with my friends. In China, like any other place, it's the people you befriend that matter most to you. Yes, I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true. I'll probably forget about the big goodbye dinner someday, but I don't think I'll forget the lunch I had the next day. I went to one of my favorite restaurants with Tan Yen, Liao Long Liu, Dave, and Lucia. It was the day before I had to leave Kaili and we just had a casual friendly lunch with some plain old-fashioned good food. The big fancy teachers' dinners might slip my mind someday, but the little casual times with my friends are glued in too well for that. That was the last time I saw Lucia and Dave. I wish them well in Shenzen. That night, I went out for one last KTV karaoke night with Liao Long Liu, Tan Yen, and their friend Wong Hwe. My last night in Kaili, and there I was singing “Yellow Submarine” with two old friends and one new one. Three lovely young ladies and one happy guy. That was a good night and a wonderful send-off for me. I'll miss them very much. So I like pretty girls, sue me.

The school drove me to the airport in the morning and I was worried that the only person who would be there to see me off was Henry, annoying until the last moment, when I happily learned that my friend Joy could make it to the airport to say goodbye. Thank you Joy, because of you the last person I said goodbye to was actually a friend of mine. I'll miss Joy, Tan Yen, Liao Long Liu, Ms. Fu, Long Tso, Wu, Dave, Lucia, Andy, Funky Andy, June, Wudan, Liana, the smiley guy at the convenience store, the nice lady at the nearby bakery, the milk tea guy, the funny soup vendor lady, the school security guard with the receding hairline, the guard with the Elvis hair, and too many others to name. I didn't want to spend more than one year there, but you don't walk away from people like that easily.

So you'd think that the blog should be over now, right? Or maybe you just wish it was. After all, I just left Kaili. Yes, but I was stuck in Shanghai for 3 days before leaving China. Guiyang doesn't have international flights so I had to catch a plane from there to Shanghai and fly out on June 15. This next part is all about my 3 days in Shanghai, they were fast but interesting. In some ways, I think that being in Shanghai made it emotionally easier to leave China.

My year in China started in Shanghai and ended there as well. I didn't like Shanghai then and my 3 days there made me like it even less. I liked having access to western food, seeing westerners, being in a place where no one stared at me and so on, but Shanghai is a giant crowded mess of people and buildings with dark scary haze that sits on top of the city as if to suggest that the end is near. And a bunch of weird things happened to me there. First, I'll mention the annoying street vendors. I went to The Bund, which as far as I could tell, wasn't much more than a glorified shopping district with what would've been a nice view, if not for that haze of impending doom that hung in the sky. Street vendors approached me from every direction. I'm glad they're not pack hunters because it's hard enough to deal with them one at a time. They all had the same kind of sales-pitch,”You want shopping? Bag, watch, DVD?” It was always, “...bag, watch, DVD.” Vendors would walk right up to me and would occasionally be so intrusive that they would stand in my way as I tried to walk by. One vendor cracked me up when he said, “Shopping? Bag, watch, DVD.....lady massage?” I've been offered “lady massage” quite a few times in China. No mom, I did not partake. The only massages I got were at the awesome place in Kaili where you get massaged right before a haircut. So mom, if you absolutely must worry about something, worry about me falling into a lake. That seems to be the most Rob-like thing I've mentioned so far.

I'm about to make myself sound like Super Man but before I do, let me assure you that there was nothing intimidating about this man. He was a skinny, little, wimp with a bad temper. Nothing more. I was walking back to my hotel when I saw a man and woman arguing on the sidewalk nearby. He kept grabbing her arm and that caught my eye. I didn't like what I was seeing, so I loitered nearby and wondered whether or not the situation would get worse. After a couple minutes, it seemed to me that she was trying to walk away, but he was grabbing her arm and pulling her back every time she tried to leave. I considered calling the cops and then realized that I had no phone. The school had bought my mobile phone for me and had taken it back when I left Kaili. But, I realized that even if I had a phone, my Chinese wouldn't be good enough to explain the situation. And I wondered, would the cops even care? The guy was grabbing her but not hitting her. I'm not entirely convinced that Chinese cops would consider that a problem. As I was thinking about this, I noticed that they had walked out into the street. She was trying to get a cab, but when a cab came he grabbed her arm and pulled her away from it. The cab drove off. People were staring but no one was doing anything. I'd been standing around like an idiot doing nothing for a few minutes when suddenly a scary thought ran through my head, “All it would take is one little push to send her into oncoming traffic.” That's the thought that got me moving. I walked out to the street where they were and tapped the guy on the shoulder. When he turned, I mimed grabbing his arm and then pointed to her, saying, “Bie.” (Don't.) I did this a few times and even though my Chinese is weak I think he understood what I was telling him. My intention here was to play interference for her long enough for her to walk away. She was smiling a little, perhaps amused by my crappy Chinese. He was clearly fuming, but he kept somewhat quiet. I was surprised by the fact that she chose not to walk away and actually walked off with him. They walked off of the road , me not far behind, and ended up walking in the direction of my hotel. I had to go that way anyhow, so I kept a short distance and watched as I walked. He wasn't grabbing her any more but they were still arguing. After a bit they stopped walking. So did I. I wasn't convinced that he had gotten the picture. They argued, getting more and more angry, when the guy looked over and saw me standing nearby. I wanted him to know he was being watched and that I wasn't frightened of him. I smiled and waved. Next thing I know, he starts an angry speed-walk in my direction and I'm standing there thinking, “Here we go. One day until I leave China and I get myself in a fight with some random asshole in Shanghai. Guess I will get to see the interior of a Chinese prison after all.” But in my mind, this man was the scum of the earth and he fully deserved to have an angry laowai beat the shit out of him. That was her second chance to walk away, but not only did she let it pass by but she actually pulled him back to her. They continued arguing, walked off toward the intersection near my hotel, and I was left there thinking that all of my knight in shining armor tactics were completely futile. If she wasn't going to walk away when she had the chance then what the hell could I do? We reached the intersection to my hotel and I had to decide, go straight and continue following them for who knows how long or turn right and go to my hotel. I didn't know what else to do. I turned right.

There is a kind of scam called the 'Tea House Scam' and I came close to being suckered by it. I was aware of it because the Lonely Planet Guide and Chris Wray's blog. Thanks for writing about that Chris. By the way,if anyone is interested in reading a very well written blog about China, I'd recommend going to the CIEE website and checking out Ross Katz's blog. Anyway, the Tea House Scam goes something like this: A Chinese person who speaks a fair amount of English comes up to a foreigner and starts up a conversation. It's all friendly small talk and the person invites the foreigner to a tea house where they drink tea and chat together. The trick is that person has an arrangement with that particular tea house and when the foreigner receives their bill it turns out to be absurdly expensive. So when the two nice ladies in Shanghai walked up to me and started a conversation I thought it was innocent enough. In Kaili, I could bet that people who did that sort of thing were genuinely nice people who simply wanted to talk to a foreigner. But Shanghai is a different story. Everything was fine until they suggested we all go to a tea house together. Shanghai had put me en guarde since day one. After all the annoying shady vendors I'd run into I had developed a a strong mistrust for people who approached me in Shanghai. I decided to test the waters by pointing to a random restaurant up ahead, telling these women that I was going to eat there, and inviting them to come along with me. I looked ahead and saw the face of my savior. The Pizza Hut logo. I told them I was going there for lunch and they refused my invitation, accusing me of disliking Chinese food. I had been in a place with nothing but Chinese food for the whole year, so I was completely immune to their guilt trip. They tried to push the tea house one last time, but I said no and went to Pizza Hut. Just because I look like a sucker doesn't mean I have to act like one. I remember having a ridiculous but funny thought, ”Shanghai makes me feel like Odysseus, facing challenge after challenge when all I really want is to go home.”

That's pretty much it. I left China the next day. I wish that I could somehow spill my memories onto this computer screen so that I wouldn't leave out any of the interesting things from this past year. I think of Kaili as a one year place. I'm glad I went, to Kaili and to China. There's so much that people don't know about China and after my year there I think that perhaps the most important things that I've learned are 1) The world 'culture' isn't accurate when describing China. China has cultures. That S is necessary. 2) Just because a place has major issues and things that drive you crazy and piss you off that does make it bad place. China is in the midst of opening itself up to the western world and I think that will a good thing. I'm just worried that we westerners will have such a ridiculously high opinion of ourselves that we'd end up overlooking the good aspects of China. China is huge. Comparing Kaili to Shanghai is like comparing Amherst New Hampshire to New York City. They're in the same country but that doesn't make them similar. I found the good aspects of China in my students, my friends, my employer, the mountains, the food, and the art. I want this to be as clear as possible: I have decided to leave China just because there is nothing that's happened in the past year that has made me want to stay. I don't hate or even dislike China. I just can't think of a reason to stay longer.

So goodbye China. I'll miss you and I'm glad I met you.

This Blog

A few of my fellow foreigners have chosen to stay in China for a second year. I don't understand why they want to stay. What have they found here? I guess I don't know because I haven't found it. Is it the fun goofy moments when people swarm around you and treat you like a celebrity? Maybe it's the fact that you're constantly surrounded by interesting and new things you've never experienced before. Maybe it's a desire to learn more. The language barrier does keep a lot away from us, after all. There's a culture barrier too and it's every bit as thick as the language one.

I have a very long list of countries that I want to see and China has always ALWAYS been on it. When I was little I'd hover over the TV during the following shows: Creature Double Feature, The Muppet Show, and a show called Kung-Fu Theater. Creature Double Feature always showed monster movies because monsters were and are kickass awesome! The Muppet Show was pure genius and anyone who disagrees is just plain stupid and wrong. Kung-Fu Theater always showed martial arts movies. I was one of those goofy kids who grew up idolizing Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and all the guys who could do the triple flip spinning double-axle back kicks. I had a mental image of China as a place full of Kung-Fu masters, where every building was an ornate temple, and I never had anything but fondness for this image of mine. It seems as though movies don't always project the truth because reality has presented me with a different picture.

I have not seen a place full of Kung-Fu masters and I've had reactions other than fondness for China This is the place I've seen in the past 8 months: A place where the fantastic architecture of a temple sits right in the middle of a street full of businesses and restaurants. A place where it's socially acceptable to throw garbage on the sidewalk. A place where a foreigner like me is held in this elevated celebrity kind of status that can be enjoyable at times but can be incredibly annoying and exclusive at others. A place where it's basically ok to spit and fire snot missiles on the sidewalk A place where your taste buds will do the dance of joy (as long as you can handle the spice). A place where some people, at least some of my students, seem to view Kung-Fu as a joke. A place where your taste buds will do the dance of joy even if you can't handle spice. A place where mountains are being continuously carved away for new developments. A place with beautiful birds. A place where it's ok to push people and to cut in line. A place filled with interesting clothes, such as many of the colorful outfits that the Miao women wear. A place where people love English songs even if they can't understand them. A place where people work too damn hard. A place where people sleep on the job. A place where the pressure to get married is intense! A place filled to the brim with extremely thin people. A place with wonderful fruit. A place in which people seem to believe that pale = beautiful. A place with certain kinds of 'music' that I can't really refer to as 'music' because it doesn't have any discernable rhythm or beat. A place where parades of drum-banging women walk through town every time a new store opens up. A place where anyone who isn't toothpick thin might be referred to as a little bit pong-pong (fat). A place full of low doorways. A place that loves to light itself up with neon at night. A place in which students claim that there is no racism in their country and then fail to recognize their own racist remarks. There's too much to write, but these are some examples of the details of everyday life here that have made my experience in China whatever it happens to be right now.

I know that I usually save the “What's Rob planning in the future?” section for the end of the blog, but I just want to get it out of the way now. I missed the application deadline for the Teach in Spain program by a long-shot, so I was considering the CIEE Teach in Chile program as a backup. Ultimately, I've decided that I don't want to bounce away to another country so soon. I am not applying to any overseas jobs right now. I have checked out Teach For America and although I have more to learn about it, I am not really turned on by what I've read. It seems to be an organization that is looking for incredibly impassioned people who want to work as hard as possible for their cause. They would find me lacking that passion. The only reason why I'd consider the program would be for the chance to earn a teaching qualification without going back to school. After reading about TFA, I'm disappointed to learn that a teaching qualification is not a guarantee (ashamed to admit that I misspelled 'guarantee' 3 times before this). Therefore, I'm not interested. If I'm going to spend 2 years of my life dedicated to a program that I don't necessarily care to be part of to begin with then I damn well want to come out of it with a qualification that will magically improve my career options. Right now, the only option that really 'turns me on' is heading home and seeing whether or not my experience here in China has spruced up my resume enough to land me a good ESL teaching job in the states. After all, this has been great professional experience for me. If I can teach numerous classes of 60-70 students with minimal equipment in a school with a severe 'lack of communication' problem in a small Chinese city in which people almost never see foreigners, then you bet your ass I can handle a lot of the stuff that an ESL school in America could throw at me. The funny thing is, besides wanting to see family and friends of course, I don't have any particular need to remain in the U.S.A. forever. I think there are numerous places that I'd be more than happy in. Places like Canada, England, Ireland, Norway, any place in which everyday life makes the slightest bit of sense to me. So I'll be headed home in early July. I'll smell that scent that I've always associated with Logan Airport (some kind of cleaning fluid perhaps), meet up with the family, eat all the cheese that New Hampshire has to offer, and plug away at the job search. I'm currently looking into various ESL schools in any part of the U.S.A. that seems to have a decent amount of ESL positions open.

I just found out that Bin Laden's dead. I'm not about to get into the rights and wrongs or goods and bads of the situation. I'm no journalist, just another schmuck with a blog. All I know is that I want to find some Americans here in Guiyang tonight because I think we are all in need of a beer or two.

Funky Andy. This is my new friend in Kaili and that is his DJ name. He's hilarious! He's a DJ and hip-hop dance teacher in Kaili and he's sooooo enthusiastic about showing off his brand new, shiny, American friend to everybody in town. He's offered to give me a free hip hop dance class so, as everybody knows how incredibly hip hop I am, I've decided to take him up on the offer. I think it will be a great way to meet new people in Kaili and since I've never really had any problem with embarrassing myself in public I think it will be fun. I first met him when he was DJing at a food court area. He was so excited to meet me that he decided to get up on stage and sing me a song. He said the song was dedicated to me and proceeded to sing some hideous boy band song that I'd never heard and never want to hear again. On one hand I was thinking that he had merely chosen that song because it was in English, but I wasn't really sure what to make of it because it was kind of a romantic song. A lot of Chinese guys have a habit of putting their arms around one another. Andy kept doing this and I kept telling him to cut it out. He asked me if my coworkers Lucia and Dave stayed at home so often because they were afraid of being touched. Put yourself in my shoes, this guy who you barely know is putting his arm around you a lot, singing boy band songs for you, and telling you that he wants to be your 'Special friend.' All of this leaves you to wonder “Is this just the language barrier and culture differences playing tricks on me or is this guy looking for something that is...not my style?” We went to a club with some of his friends and after I'd given him clues about which girls I found attractive, he asked me, “Rob, do you know gay?” I said,”What?” He said, “You know gay? Like two men together.” I nodded as I sat there thinking, 'Ok. This is it. Any second now he's going to hit on me or ask me out or something. Just remember, he's a nice guy so you're going to have to be calm, cool, and friendly when you shoot him down.' Turned out that all he wanted to do was point to some pretty girls that were all grinding on one another. Culture differences can really mess with your head sometimes. Andy is a straight guy with a girlfriend who just so happens to have that arm around the shoulders habit that so many Chinese guys have. His English and song choice lead me to consider signals that he wasn't really sending.

Still at the club with Funky Andy. One of his dance students was a 5 year old boy with revolting fake blonde hair, but damn this kid can dance! He was all over the place in the club, pulling off moves that most adults can't do. Apparently, he's been featured on some big Chinese dance shows. After he tuckered himself out dancing, he sat with me on the couch and I showed him how to throw peanuts into the air and catch them with your mouth. His aim was better than mine. Probably around 3AM, two people showed up. The first was Andy's brother in-law. A nice guy who just so happened to be turning 33 that day. I looked at his face and really really really hoped that I didn't look as old as him. We were, after all, the same age. The second person to show up was a beautiful girl I'd seen dancing earlier. I managed a few Chinese sentences that were trying to push their way up to official conversation level when Andy came over and told me we were leaving. When I asked why, he told me that they were going to have some special food to celebrate his brother in-law's birthday. Not a lot happens in Kaili, it can be very boring sometimes, so when I'm having a good time at a club and talking to a pretty girl I sure as hell don't want to leave. But Andy wouldn't let up. He actually made it sound as if it would be insulting to his brother in-law WHO I HAD JUST MET 5 MINTUTES BEFORE if I didn't come. I verbally fought for a few minutes and then figured 'Ok. Just once. It's the guy's birthday after all.' We went to a restaurant on the far side of town and Andy kept telling me about the special food he wanted me to try. It was exactly what I didn't want it to be. Pig dick. Again. I ate the rice, the eggs, and every surrounding dish, but I steered clear of the 'special' food. Accuse me of being close minded and not being open to new experiences if you want to, but I'd already eaten pig penis once before and it was not something I wanted to try again. One is enough to last me a lifetime. Andy kept telling me that he really wanted me to try it because it was special food. I gave him every excuse I could think of and I grew progressively irritated as the minutes ticked by and he wasn't letting up. I've met some people here who don't seem to understand that there is a thin line between being a generous host who would like for their foreign friend to try new things and being a pushy annoying asshole that won't take 'No' for an answer. I'd decided that Andy had already convinced me to leave the club I'd been having fun at to come to this dinner that wasn't much fun so there was no chance in hell that he was about to convince me to do anything else that I didn't want to do. I've been open to trying new things during in my time in China, but I have limits. Sometimes people just have to be shut down before they start thinking that they can get their shiny new foreign buddy to do anything they want. Andy's really a good egg, this was just one crazy night. We'll hang out again and I'll be taking that hip hop class soon.

One Saturday morning, after an intellectually stimulating Skype conversation with my nephews and niece (every 5^th word was 'fart' or 'poop') I decided to head off to Guiyang because I had few days off. Upon exploring Guiyang rather thoroughly, I learned two important things: I can walk that city North to South in 40 minutes and Chinese Papa John's pizza is much better than Chinese Pizza Hut pizza. Important info.

I was in Guiyang, walking to meet my friend Joy, who is possibly reading this right now, Hi Joy, when I noticed some guy following me. He had a creepy smile on his face and after a minute or so he sidled his way over to tap on my shoulder. I sidestepped, gave him nasty look, and sped up. I thought that I left him far behind me but right about the time that I found Joy, I noticed that he was there again, walking right alongside me. I stopped to talk to Joy and this guy stood a few feet away, just staring and smiling like a freak. He had followed me for nearly a quarter mile and I wanted him gone as soon as possible, so I stepped forward and shouted, “Fuck off! Bu ni mao (impolite).” He got the message but only a little bit. He backed away only as far as the nearest bench where he sat down and continued his freakish staring. Joy half smiled at my use of Chinese and the weird situation. We walked away one minute later, me constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure that the guy wasn't still following. Joy, via these blogs, has learned what many of my Chinese buddies haven't learned yet. I can really

an asshole sometimes.

I just returned from Guiyang. It's May 3. Ms. Fu had told me that I was off between April 30-May 3. This morning she called me just after I settled into the Guiyang train for the return ride. She asked me where I was and seemed shocked when I told her. She told me that I had classes today. I told that she'd previously told me I was off that day. Turned out she had given me the wrong dates. On one hand, this job is very easy. On the other hand, stupid miscommunications like this happen too often and after 8 months I'm pretty damn tired of them.

I mentioned the arm around the shoulder habit that many Chinese guys have, but that's not nearly as common as the habit of Chinese women holding hands with one another. This is extremely common in China. I've seen women of various ages walking hand in hand in many different cities. One more interesting habit is the habit of walking backwards. I've seen quite a few Chinese people who walk backwards for short distances as if it's some kind of healthy thing to do. It's just another interesting Chinese thing that I don't understand.

Holy umbrellas Batman! One of the first things I noticed upon my arrival in China was the number of people carrying umbrellas. It was a bright sunny day in Shanghai and there was a sea of umbrellas in front of me. I just didn't get it. But there really does seem to be a strong belief that pale=beautiful here. Many people don't want to become tan, so they carry umbrellas on sunny days. I've seen Chinese women who are so pale that they're almost ghostly. I had one class that was all about wishes. Each student wished for one thing and one of the girls wished to be as white as paper. Another student of mine, when asked whether or not she would ever date a black man said,”No. I'm already so dark! I don't want my children to be dark too.” Umbrellas come out on rainy days too. I don't see many people wearing raincoats in Kaili. I used to think that rainy days would the only days that I could blend in here because everyone would be covered in raincoats, but nope. On rainy days I appear as a tall, bright blue, hooded figure amongst a giant mass of umbrellas. My raincoat is very long with a large hood, so on rainy days I amuse myself by thinking of myself as The Blue Ghost of Kaili. I keep my head down, hoping that my hood will protect me from getting my eye poked out by the onrush of umbrella tines that always seem to be at my eye level.

Ok.. I think I've written everything I had in mind for this blog. Just a closing thought. On my train ride back from Guiyang I was treated with another marvelous view of the surrounding mountains. Lately, I've been feeling as if a lot of my interest in China is waning away as my date to head home draws nearer. However, those mountains still fascinate me. I want to dedicate these next 2 months to exploration of the mountains. They're nearby and the weather has warmed up considerably. It's time for as much hiking as possible. But, why are you reading this blog when you could be reading the story “RED” by John Foster? It's a short story inside “Book of Horror 2.” You should get it right now. It's the only way to stop the monsters from eating you.

...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.

Chengdu: Food, Too many Temples, Women, David Sedaris, Pandas, Year of the Rabbit, Solitary Confinement, The Future.

I'm already laughing. Even if this blog doesn't entertain anyone else, the simple thought of it is entertaining me.

Some people want to see the Great Wall, some want to see the Forbidden City, and although I'm sure sites like those are absolutley fascinating I chose to spend 2 1/2 weeks of my month long winter vacation in Chengdu. Chengdu is a city in the Sichuan province in southwestern China. I had heard very nice things about it from friends here in Kaili. Specifically I was told that Chengdu had pandas, great food, and beautiful women. I will touch on all of this and more. Ultimately, I chose Chengdu because I didn't think that tourists could ruin pandas for me. I've always been an animal lover and I can't think of anything more interesting or more uniquely Chinese than pandas. Back in 2001 or so, I spent some time in Mexico. My friends' family and I went to see Teotihucan, the Aztec Pyramids. They were awesome. They were also crawling with tourists and annoying peddlers trying to sell me shit that I didn't want. China is also full of tourists, many more than Mexico was, and there are far too many pushy vendors trying to get me to buy their crap. Seeing the Great Wall would be cool, but I've got a funny feeling that it would be crawling without about 10 billion tourists who would bump into me and there would be annoying peddlers stationed about every 5 feet or so. But not with the pandas. I knew ridiculous crowds and pushy people would not be able to ruin pandas for me.

I debated writing this next part, simply because it makes me look like an idiot. But it's true, and what it comes down to is that it's just too funny to leave out of this blog. So, this is me swallowing my pride: Gulp. I arrived in Guiyang to go to the airport and hop on my plane to Chengdu. The bus dropped me off at a bus station I didn't recognize. I learned later on that the bus station I knew had closed for good. The old bus station had been near the airport. This new bus station was next to a large, silver, shiny building. It was within walking distance. At this point in time I had only been to two airports in China: Guiyang and Nanchang. I walked up to the building, wondering where the entrance was, when a security guard came out. Next thing I know I'm in a room full of laughing security guards and I'm trying to ask them how to get into the airport. They took pity on this stupid foreigner and found me a taxi. I wasn't sure what was happenning until the taxi pulled up in front a large sign reading "Guiyang Airport." I realized what had happenned. Because I was so used to the bus parking near the airport in Guiyang I had automatically assumed that the large silver building near me was the airport. I had also gotten the appearance of the Nanchang airport confused with the Guiyang airport. The Guiyang  airport looks nothing like the large silver building near the new bus station. I'm starting to worry about the number of brain cells that I have left.

Even with my brain cells rapidly depleting (maybe it's all this polluted air) I managed to get to Chengdu. I checked into a place called "Sim's Cosy Garden Hostel." The name is cheesy but it's not a lie. There was a pretty little garden inside the grounds with fish in a pond and a big gray rabbit hopping around some Chinese gazebos. And the place was cozy or cosy or, whatever. The staff were nice and helpful. I met some cool travellers there, many of them were using Chengdu as a jumping off point for a trip into Tibet. That's a good idea and I'd love to try it someday. But Chengdu was exciting in its own way. The staff were absolutely delighted when I told them I wanted to stay for 2 1/2 weeks. Most people just come and go within a few days, but I had decided that I'd prefer to take some time getting to know the city well rather than go bouncing around various places in China, spending a lot of time and dealing with the hassles on public transportation. If I were a travel writer I'd be giving "Sim's..." an excellent review.

On my second day in Chengdu I discovered that I was capable of walking from Sim's, which was well on the north of the city, to the city center in about 45 minutes. Upon learning this and then peeking at the map, I theorized that I could walk to every place I wanted to go in the city. I made a decision, "No public transportation unless absolutely necessary." That was a decision that saved me a lot of money and and helped me burn off the ludicrous amount of cheese that I ate. There was cheese! There was Italian food, Mexican food, and cheeseburgers! There was Starbucks and WalMart! I even got milk! Can you believe it? I drank milk! And Guinness! There was an Irish pub in Chengdu, patronized almost entirely by expatriots. There was a place called Peter's Tex Mex Grill, where I wolfed down a few billion chimichangas. There was a place called Grandma's Kitchen which had burgers, fries, standard American fare. You walk through the door of Grandma's Kitchen and sudennly you're in small town Indiana. I sat down to the first real cheeseburger I'd had in about 5 months and it was then that I knew, "Grandma really loves me." There was also a cool place called The Bookworm. I'll get to that.

I spent an absurd amount of money in Chengdu and it was mostly because I couldn't stop eating "Western" food. Everything western was super expensive, but I knew that I'd be back in Kaili soon enough and Kaili is the land of nothing western. There are times when I enjoy the small size of Kaili and there are other times when I find myself becoming jealous of people teaching in cities like Chengdu. Cities that have western food, foreigners to talk to, and stuff to do. In Kaili, the nightlife scene is almost entirely karaoke. I have yet to find a bar where I can just go and hang out without having a giant group of people with me. It seems that every bar in Kaili has a ridiculously high minimum drink purchase price that makes it almsot unthinkable to go the bar without a large group of people or planning to get completely shit-faced.

I don't want people thinking that the only stuff I ate in Chengdu was western food. I knew perfectly well that I was in the famous Sichuan province. In America we have quite a few Sichuan restaraunts and I just HAD to know what authentic Sichuan food was like, another reason why I'd chosen Chengdu in the first place. Sichuan food is famous for its spiciness and there's a perfectly good reason for that. It's spicy stuff! I really really love Sichuan food! In fact I like it more than the food here in the Guizhou province. Sichuan food is spicy but this is spice for the sake of flavor not just for the sake of spice. There were times when I got the feeling that the locals were actually a little proud of me for taking on the spice. I paid some terrible gastronomic prices for that decision (somehow I managed to avoid the dreaded "Mao's Revenge") but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. You sit down at the table, taste the food, and every time you're faced with the same decision: Dig in or wimp out. I dug in. Every time. What's the point of eating Sichuan food if you're not going to take on the spice? But the not-so-spicy stuff was good too, even if there wasn't much of it. If Chinese food is art, then Sichuan food is a masterpiece.

A lot of the sites to see in Chengdu were temples and monasteries. On one hand, I'm fascinated by the amazing architecture of many of these buildings. On the other hand, I feel like I'm getting to the point where I see a temple and start thinking, "Another temple. So what." It is either strictly forbidden or just considered rude to take photographs inside of most temples here, which is dissapointing because the interiors of these buildings tend to be amazing: statues galore, fantastically colorful pillars, masks, gold, all kinds of Bhuddas sitting around. I go to temples in Kaili, Chengdu, wherever, and I watch the people praying or whatever the proper term is and I start becoming an amateur philosopher. I am not a religous person and I'm perfectly happy with my unbelief, so I stand there watching huge tides of people come in and out of the temples, buying their firesticks which they burn at the at the altar, usually near a statue of some sort, and I just don't get it. But that's ok with me. I don't need to get it. I don't need to understand why sooooooo many people believe in coming to a temple and worshipping Bhudda or whatever the proper term is. It's just interesting to think about. Some things strike me as odd. At places like the Wenshu Monastery I see things that seem out of place to me. Monks on cell phones. That was surprising.

I see animal statues all over China: Lions, Tigers, Birds, and of course the ever present Dragons. I see animals depicted in art a lot. And yet I also see homeless animals every day. I see live chickens being carried home in plastic bags as if they were nothing more than a abiotic object. I know that I'm in a country full of cultures unlike my own and the polite thing to do, the culturally sensitive and mature thing to do, is probably just to keep my mouth/keyboard shut, but I sometimes feel like I'm in a place that makes a big show of its nature and then trashes the hell out of it by polluting everything and treating animals like shit. I've mentioned before that there are certain things that I outright hate in China. The treatment of nature is number one on my hate list.

Unlike Kaili, Chengdu has unmarried women in their 20's and 30's so dating was possible. There is a lot of pressure for marriage, mostly for women, in China. I went on two dates with a cool woman. After a short time she decided that my name was no longer sufficient and she started referring to me as, Big Boy. Later on, she decided that Big Boy wasn't good enough either so she began calling me, Shu Mao. Panda. No I am not getting married and I don't even know whether or not I'll have a chance to see her ever again. That's as far into my lovelife as blog readers are allowed to go.

The Bookworm is a Chengdu hangout that caters to expatriots. It's a restaraunt that's full of books. For a book junky like me, it's great. What made it even better was the fact that on my 4th day in Chengdu I found a Bookworm sign that was advertising a David Sedaris reading there. I was psyched to learn that, yes, I would still be in Chengdu when Sedaris came. I decided that my brain cells were not quite so depleted to make me dumb enough to miss a Sedaris reading, so 3 days before leaving Chengdu I went to the Bookworm and saw David Sedaris do a reading from his recent book "Squirrel Meets Chipmunk." David Sedaris is a cool, little, wiseass (that's a compliment) of a man and I enjoyed the reading. He had previously been to Japan and was doing a quick tour through China. Almost everyone at the reading was an expatriot and we all laughed our asses off when Sedaris began comparing Japan to China. He described Japan as being place full of very polite people and then he mentioned his experience in the Beijing airport. He was in line when he sudennly felt a lot of pressure from behind him. His first thought had been that he was being pushed but then he thought, "No. People wouldn't push." At that point, I shared a telepathic connection with every expatriot in the room. We all wanted to stand up and say, "Welcome to China."

The pandas were kickass! Just north of Chengdu lies the Panda Breeding Center. It houses both Giant Pandas and Red Pandas. The giant pandas weren't really all that big. They ranged from 3-5 years old and not even the 5 year olds were much larger than a standard New England Black Bear. But they were a lot of fun to watch. They seem to have two different modes: Sit Down and Do Nothing Mode and Extremely Funny Mode. They are completely graceless animals which makes them hilarious. There was one goofball up in a tree who tried climbing down by stepping onto a tree branch that was sure to give way under his weight. I had gone to the center with a tour group from Sim's and I stood there with a Canadian dude as we tried to figure out how this heavy clunky animal was going to make it down the tree. In the end, the branch held and the panda ended up doing a surprisingly successful manuever in which he dropped off the branch and spun down the trunk by "bear hugging" it. I apologize for the bad pun. This same panda, a short time later, climbed up onto a swing that had been built for them. He hung out there for a little bit just swinging and then started climbing up on the horizontal bar in the middle. I don't know what the intention was but the result was that he promptly front-flipped over the bar and plopped down on the opposite side of the swing platform. We all laughed like crazy. I knew I had made the right decision, there's just no way the Great Wall could be better than that.

Red Pandas are cool little guys who look like large red raccoons with small panda heads. They're energetic little animals and they're a lot of fun to watch. They skitter all over the place and chatter a lot. The British girl next to me got one to come over to her by imitating it. I couldn't do the imitation. Damn it! And she was there with her boyfriend. Double damn it! There was also a panda museum which shared such interesting "facts" as: Giant Pandas are 9 million years old. There was a hilarious poster showing the evolution of various bears of the world. Every bear depicted on the poster had lines branching off of it showing its ancestors. Every bear except the Giant Panda. There was only one line going from the present day Giant Panda 9 million years back to a single ancestor. I want to check the credentials of the "scientists" who researched the information in that museum.

It's the Year of the Rabbit now. I can tell because of all the decorations. I see cartoon rabbits everywhere. But mostly, I can tell because of the fireworks. Fireworks at 2PM. Fireworks at 8AM. Firworks on New Year's Eve, of course. And fireworks at 3AM when I'm making a futile effort to sleep. In Guiyang, I saw an intersting thing where people were lighting fires inside what looked like paper lanterns and then launching them into the sky. It looks fascinating. But the excessive celebratory fireworks here have made what is already a gigantic pollution problem even bigger.

I said goodbye to Chengdu reluctantly. Even though it's a fairly large city and I've never considered myself to be a city mouse, I had a lot of fun there. I might go back someday. But, I caught my plane and went to Guiyang. I got ripped off by the cab driver and didn't even realize until it was too late. Cabbies here are like vultures. They wait outside the airport for you and a lot of them seem to think that shouting "Hello!" at you will make you want to take their taxi. A lot of these guys won't turn on the meter unless you tell them to. I forgot tell him and for some reason the red flag that should have gone off in my brain didn't go off. I had spent a buttload of money in Chengdu, had been walking around wearing a backpack that weighed about as much as I do, and I was tired. I found a cheap hotel, went to the room, and laid down on the bed.

This is what I thought was happenning: I went to bed around 11:30 at night. When I woke, the clock read 1:30. The hotel room was pitch black. The only window looked out on the hallway. Who puts a window looking out on a hallway? It was closed. I thought it was 1:30 in the morning. The walls were thin as could be and the bed was hard as stone. I could hear everything in every nearby room. I lay in bed trying to sleep. Impossible. Around what must've been 2 o'clock the phone next to my bed rang. I didn't answer. I couldn't believe these people would call my room a 2 in the morning and wake me up! Around 3, I still couldn't manage to sleep, a staff member knocked loudly on my door. I thought, "What the hell is going on?" When I didn't reply, she opened the door. Either I'd failed to lock it or she had a key, I'm not sure. I jumped out of bed to see what the hell she wanted and when she heard me she just walked away. I tried to sleep more. I was hungry, but I didn't think that any restaraunts would be open until around 8 so even though I didn't believe I was going to get any sleep I sat there reading until 6. At 6, I quickly packed up and walked to the front desk. They charged me almost twice as much as I they had initially told me. I had been ripped off by the cab driver the night before and the receptionist who admitted me to the hotel had been a rude woman. I was under the impression that I had been sleep deprived, all night, in an uncomfortable bed, in a thin walled room, with people calling my room, knocking on my door, and then opening the door in the early hours of morning when all normal humans would have been sleeping. When she gave me the bill, I was seriously pissed! I said, "Fuck you!" to the receptionist (this was a different receptionist) because I thought she would understand those words or at least the tone of my voice. She understood. I left, found an open restaruant and ate while I thought about what time I wanted to get my train to Kaili.

What must have really happenned: I thought I have been more or less sleep deprived. But when I sat in that restaraunt eating my "breakfast" I realized something. It was nearly 7. The sun hadn't come up. I had essentially slept ALL day, from  11:30 at night until 1:30 in the afternoon. I could hear people moving and talking loudly because it was the afternoon. They called me and knocked on my door because I had only checked in for one night, but had stayed in the room until 6pm. I said, "Fuck you!" to a perfectly nice receptionist because I thought I was being ripped off. This all could've been avoided if my phone displayed AM and PM. I've never been in solitary confienment, but I've heard that one of the most torturous things about it is the fact that you lose all sense of time passing. That's sort of what happenned to me. I never sleep that long! I'm still shocked! When I went to sleep, it was dark. When I left the hotel, it was dark. I think I'm well on my way to insanity.

I'll mention a few more things and then stop. This blog is friggin' long. I'm halfway through my time here in China, 5 months to go. I'll write more about this later, but I'm at the point where I'm trying to fugure out what I want to do after this year. I know that I want to return to the USA to see family and friends for a while, but I'm not just teaching English here for a fun and excitement. I'm not trying to 'find myself' or anything so cheesy as that. I'm trying to build up my resume. Since I have abolutely no interest in returning to school, I'm going to put this experience on my resume and hope that it will be vaulable enough to get me a decent job elsewhere. However, most American companies that I've checked seem to want their English as a Second Language teachers to have at least 2 years of ESL teaching experience. After this year I will have 1.5 years of ESL experience. That means I have the following options: Return to the USA and hope that my experience is valuable enough to get me a decent job there. Extend my contract here in Kaili.Return to China later and get some more experience. Go to a different country for more experience (the program I came here with is called CIEE and they also have a Teach in Spain opportunity which sounds interesting. Many of the ESL schools in the USA seem to value teachers with experience in a variety of places and Spain has always interested me.) Months ago I got in touch with a man in England who told me he could get me ESL teaching work in for summer time in one of various British cities. These are all options that are spinning around in my head right now. Happy Year of the Rabbit!

A Christmas Blog

I knew I would have plenty of material for a Christmas blog and I do.

I realize that I haven't written very much about the students here, but I've got some good stuff to write about them. There were two, student-thrown Christmas parties here. One party was thrown by Dave and Lucia's students and another was thrown by my students. I seem to be somewhat famous on this campus because the students of Lucia's and Dave's classes readily included me in their Christmas show; songs dances, and giving of candy. And apples. I still don't understand why, but these kids always associate Christmas with the giving of apples. Interesting. So I sat in on a Christmas Eve show that I hadn't even been told about beforehand, but the kids certainly knew about it and they had fully prepared for our arrival. Seeing as I don't even teach these particular kids, I was kind of flattered by the fact that they included me. Dave played a Tom Petty song and before I knew it, the kids were asking me to sing something. I'm pretty sure that I gave those kids the most rockin' acapella version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" they've ever heard. When I left stage, a laughing boy asked me, "Are you always crazy? Even in America?" I immediately said, "Yes."

On Christmas day, I went to the party thrown by my students. This party was specifically targeted at me and no other teacher. There were probably 50ish kids there singing songs, dancing onstage, reading poetry, and giving me candy, giving me candy, giving me candy, giving me candy, giving me candy, givi... One girl had written me a letter all about how she wanted me to have a nice Christmas in China and that she knew I missed my family and my home. I couldn't help myself, even though I knew it would completely embarass her, I had to walk up onstage and give her a hug. Again, I sang "Ruldolph" but this time I did the silly version with the various shoutouts: "Like a lightbulb!" and "...with glee. Yipee!" But I changed, "...like Monopoly!" to ,"...like Mah-jong!" and ,"...like George Washington!" became, "...like Michael Jackson!" The kids love to hear me screw up my Chinese and apparently my mispronunciation of Mah-jong was the funniest thing they'd ever heard.

There was also a nice Christmas Eve dinner that was arranged for the school teachers. The food was amazing and I actually drank baiju. A lot of baiju. Henry seemed impressed by the amount of baiju that I drank. The fact is that I despise the stuff, but with it being Christmas and all, I just figured 'What the hell." Baiju is super strong stuff, I think this particular brew was something like 35% alcohol or more. I don't know. What I do know is that Henry, along with most of the other baiju drinkers at the table were absolutely sloshed within a short period of time. Baiju is strong stuff but I'm no lightweight with it. I'm certainly not immune to its effects but it takes more than a few small cups of it to mess me up. I left that table with my manly reputation fully intact and slight buzzing in my head.

I went straight to the Mah-jong table, where I found Lucia and Dave, along with my new buddy, Wu. Wu is also an English teacher at the school. He had gotten himself pretty well messed up on baiju and was talking to me about how people in China genuinely fear their government. My brother John has suggested that I write a book about China and sometimes that really seems like a great idea. Everything here is sooooooooooo different! Although I've always thought that if I attempted to get my writing published it would probably be some kind of fiction story, I can't deny the fact that there is interesting nonfiction for me to write about around every corner over here. There's so much that world just doesn't know about China and this small city has me completely engulfed in its culture.

Anyways, Mah-jong. I've been learning the game slowly and just when I think I understand the rules I realize that I don't know a damn thing. I thought a I had a fantastic hand when another teacher, her English name is Cherry, laughingly informed me that I had, "...no chance to win." I thought it was hilarious, so I just began randomly taking blocks and throwing blocks away without concern, each time stating the fact that I had no chance to win. I wasn't palying for money so it was no big deal to me. As a matter of fact, I found it incredibly funny. I'm sure the baiju was helping with my mood. A quick note on Mah-jong: The female English teachers play this game like pirates. They're fucking ruthless! I will never play them for money. I wouldn't stand a chance. And when the school principal, Mr. Wang, learned that we were not playing for money, he laughingly got up and walked away from the table. Shortly after the game, I learned that Ms. Fu had driven Henry home because he was too drunk to walk. I laughed like crazy! I should mention that, lately, I have been on good terms with Henry. I have mentally accepted the fact that he is a problem-causing moron but not a bad person. I think I can maintain a way of laughing at him without actually offending him.

On Christmas Day Eve or the Eve of Christmas Day, whatever, I met a few friends a went to do some Christmas partying. I'll introduce the perpetrators: First there's Tan Yen, blog followers know all about her. There's my new friend, Joy She's a local college student. There's my coworker/new friend Wu, who I previously mentioned. And last, there is Tan Yen's friend, Liao Long Liu. I've met her a few times and have so far managed not to refer to her as, Dragon Lady. I haven't dared to, despite the fact that it wouldn't really be an insult to her. After all, Dragon Lady, is essentially what Liao Long Liu means.

We went to a bar called Pink. I will never let Tan Yen choose  the bar we go to ever again.

This was only my second time in a Kaili bar. My first time was a couple of months ago when I walked alone into a joint called the 99 only to find it filled to the brim with middle-aged dudes, not a female in sight, who looked like that they had all just swiped their time cards at the construction site HQ.  I didn't stay long.

Pink was another story altogether. Perhaps another entity entirely. Chinese pop music was blasting its bass line loud enough to trigger a seismograph and this place was full. I mean FULL! There are plenty of things that I dislike about China, plenty of things that I do like, a few things that I downright hate, and some stuff that I just plain love. China always seems to have crowds and my reaction to the crowds around here lies squarely between dislike & hate. But, it was Christmas. Christmas is party time. We went in, me guarding my wallet the whole time,  and sat down. I'm fully aware that, as a foreigner here, I'm often targeted as a bank and pick pockets would love to mark the foreign sucker. So far so good.

I was happily surprised to learn that Pink had Budweiser. Wu had ordered a bunch of it for us and I think he did it because he thought I'd like it. I did. I would've preferred Guinness or Shipyard, but I guess those just weren't options. It was fun, despite the crowd. I had made a very conscious decision to be happy at Christmas. Homesickness is a very real threat, but I was operating on the belief that I could be happy if I wanted to. I was right about that. We talked, drank, and I laughed about the Chinese pop music that I neither liked nor understood. As a kid who was raised on rock, I pretty much consider pop music evil, no matter where I am, but in this city I've got a feeling that I'll never find a place playing Metallica or Bon Jovi. The pop music played for about half an hour and then it started to get weird.

There has only been one other time in which I've been to a bar with a drag queen and that was in Provincetown Massachussets and let's face it, that's the kind of place a person can expect to see a drag queen. I'd been mentally prepared for that one. But two days ago, there I was just out for a few beers with my buddies and this elegantly dressed drag queen walks out on stage and starts singing these high pitched and highly annoying songs that, in some skewed way, were probably mean to be romantic. I simply don't like drag queens and I said as much to Wu who felt the need to say, "Don't worry, Robert. This is not a gay place." He's funny. A short time later, I told him that that was the first time I had ever been to a bar where the only people who were dancing on the tables were men. Again, Wu said, "It's ok. This is not a gay place."

What kind of place was it? Judging by the music selection, I have no idea. First they were playing nothing but Chinese pop, then the drag queen sang annoying high pitched love songs for a while, then a rapper came onstage. I don't generally consider myself a fan of rap. Most often I just find rap uninteresting, but once in a while I'll hear some I like. Although I had no idea what this guy was singing, he was good. I really liked the rapper. Then the Chinese pop returned and spent the rest of the night making people dance to it. Its spell was only broken one last time. I was drinking, listening, drinking, listening, and before I knew it the abundant laser lights shooting all over the room turned green and I heard...I couldn't believe it...electric guitar. And I liked it! Then the drums came. Rockin! And sudennly, the ground shook, lightning thundered from the sky, and German heavy metal began pouring out of the speakers. People continued dancing as if nothing had changed. The world of Pink had just gone from Chinese mass produced pop crap to German metal that spits in the face of Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and other the other musicians that the kids here love so much. It was hilarious.

Ultimately, Christmas was a great time! I had a lot of fun. It was very weird but I will certainly never forget it. My Chinese friends are wonderful people and they did their best to make my Christmas special. I'll write agian soon. There's still so much to say.

This Blog Will Be Longer Than One of Those Chinese Dragons in a Parade

I have no idea of why I do this, but I always manage to do the same thing. I wait a ridiculously long time between blogs and when I finally get back to it, I have soooooo much material to write that I have try to juggle memories and anecdotes while keeping it all straight in my head and trying not to bore the 3 or 4 people who are actually reading. Sometimes I wonder, do I write this more for the readers or more for my own therapeutic reasons? Expect complete randomness in this blog, my mind has been all over the place recently.

My last blog was a decidedly negative one. My day at Shaogaoshan was a fairly bad experience and I think it showed through pretty clearly in my writing. I make no effort whatsoever to color any of my experiences in these blogs; if my experience was a bad one I will make it as clear as possible in my writing. And of course, if the experience was positive then you will be able to tell because of all the fluffy bunnies and ice cream drops that are scattered around the words on your monitor. I'll start this blog by addressing what is, quite possibly, the biggest issue for me over here. My own temper.

In these past 3 months, I can recall 4 times when I have lost my temper, 2 have ocurred since the writing of my last blog. One of them happenned on the day that I finally got Henry to buy a heater for my apartment. Keep in mind that part of my contract states that the school will provide an apartment for me. They have provided things such as a microwave, TV, and so forth. They did not, however, provide any heat source and Kaili is becoming fairly cold. When a New Hampshire boy says it's cold, it's cold. So that day in the store when Henry insisted that the reason why I was cold had to do with my choice of clothing and not to do with the apartment just set me off. I shouted at him right there in public. Must've been a quite a scene for the locals of this small city to see a big angry white man shouting at the little confused looking Chinese man he came in with. A couple weeks later, I lost my temper with one of my students. I had tried nearly every trick in my book to get this student to listen to me when I was talking, to stop talking while I was teaching, to participate in class, e.g. Nothing had been working for me. But none of this excuses the volume of my voice when I shouted, "Get out!" and kicked him out of my class one night. A better teacher than myself would have come up with a more effective mode of discipline. Maybe one of the requirements of  the world's 'Top' teachers is sainthood. If that's the case then I don't qualify. Later, I found out that this boy I shouted at was actually
a girl and although that probably shouldn't make a difference, to me it did. One of her friends found her crying in the hallway after class. That's the worst I've felt in a very long time. I totally lost my cool that night. By the way, the kid's English name is, Brian. I had no idea.

I've been playing with some thoughts about how I can deal with my own temper and besides: Jack Johnson Therapy, long walks, excercise, reading, writing, drawing, studying Chinese, and numerous other ideas, I have decided that what I really need is a change of mindset. I think I've been taking all the errors people make, all the rudeness I've encountered, and general frustrations too seriously. If I can treat it all with the humor that I know I have inside me then I think I can make my remaining 7 months in this country temper tantrum free. For example, I have decided not to take Henry seriously when he feels the need to keep tabs on me by consistently asking me, "Where are you going?" From now on, his question will be answer with responses such as, "A block past Maple." Or, "Your house, because that's where the party is." One day, when I'm in a particularly devious mood, I will get a piece of paper and a pen and draw a map that will show Henry exactly how, "I will take the No. 9 bus to the town square at which I will hop off at the corner of Elm and Main St. I will then go into 7-11 for a slushy and run on over to the corner, you know the area near the big brick building that overlooks 95 and Route 3?" Answers like this will be fun for me and will completely confuse Henry. And if, repeat, if, he has a single brain cell floating around somewhere in that box on top of his neck, he will eventually realize that I have no intention of answering his question seriously ever again. I hope this kind of thinking helps me calm myself down. It's the best idea I've got.

One of my worst fears came true a few weeks ago. My friend Liana was shipped off to work in her company's other school, far west of Kaili. She has no way of knowing when or if she will be able to return to Kaili. Also, my buddy Long Tso recently told me that he will be back in England by the beginning of January. Two more friends that I have to say goodbye to.

Thanksgiving was a very simple time for me, but it was fun. I spent the night playing pool with Long Tso. I don't think he realized this, but he actually gave me a kind of Thanksgiving gift by showing me that Kaili had a pool hall. I love pool. I'm not saying that I'm good at it, I'm just saying that I enjoy the game. We played 8 games and tied 4-4. Before he leaves for England, we have to schedule, "The Ultimate Pool Game of Death" to see who is the pool champion. I was shocked to learn that this pool hall didn't have beer. It just felt wrong to be holding a pool cue in my right hand while my left was holding a plastic bottle of cold tea. Long Tso actually made a special effort to ask the man at the desk if I could bring in some beer the next time I came. It's a Green Light. The "Ultimate Pool Game of Death" will be accompanied by my little buddy, Tsingtao.

I've made a few new friends. My ingenious plan to hang out with college students has been working perfectly. I met a college student named Simon who seems like a really nice guy. He pals around with a guy named, Sirvir. I swear, that's the guy's English name. He said it was the name of a god or something. One of my Kaili college student friend's has become my Chinese teacher. Her name is Maggie and she's awesome. She's a P.E. major who likes to regale me with stories about the hardships of her Ping-Pong class. I find these stories incredibly entertaining and besides being a great friend she is also helping me learn Chinese much more quickly than I was previously. She has a very quiet friend named Mei Hua (May Flower). These two are always together and they're a fun pair to hang out with. There are also two Americans I've met recently. Andy and Jon are a couple of Peace Corps volunteers who teach English at Kaili University. They're both really cool guys and I intend to hang out with them more in  the future. Jon is from Philadelphia and Andy is from, I can't believe it, Brookline Mass.

Staring. People stare at me ALOT. Most of the time I just take it as a given thing, but there are certain times when it becomes more interesting than usual. Like the day when the man walking next to me wouldn't stop staring as we proceed down the sidewalk. I was not in the mood to put up with it, so I stared a wide-eyed stare right back at him. He was so shocked that he nearly knocked over the little girl in front of him. Don't worry, she was ok. There was also the day that I nearly killed a man just by walking into the gym. He was running high-speed on the treadmill, saw me walk in, and stared for a second too long. Whoosh! There he goes off the end of the treadmill. He was ok, but things like this make me think that I have a certain kind of potentially dangerous magic in my foreign eyes. I need to be careful of who I make eye contact with. Part of my new philosophy of calming myself down involves, quite literally, an eye for an eye. I used to just put up with the staring when it annoyed me, but now I stare back. It works.

Touching. I didn't really think that the Chinese would be big on physical contact, but at least some of them are. Unfortunately for me, a lot of them seem to be dudes. There was the time I went to the bathroom in the bar in Nanchang. I'm doing my thing at the urinal when a guy walks up behind me and starts rubbing my shoulders. Creepy as hell. I'm preparing to turn around to see what the hell is going on, when I realize that this is the same guy who was standing at the bathroom doorway. This man is the bathroom attendant. Massaging a guy's shoulders while he takes a piss is actually part of this man's job. I decided to finish my business as calmly as possible and get it over with. After I'd washed my hands I saw this man standing by the door with a tray laden with money. Shit. I had to pay this guy for his creepy, little, unasked for massage.
When I go to get my haircut, I have the wonderful option of getting a massage first. It's great. But the last time I went weirded me out a little. Make any comment you want to make,  but I did not want the dude with Flock of Seagulls hairdo giving me a massage, or any other dude for that matter. Liana was right next to me and as I sat there trying to remember the word for "Woman" Liana read my mind, or more likely, my face, and told the employees to find me a female masseuse. Just a sidenote, I see a lot of guys over here with hairstyles that would probably get them their asses kicked in any New England trucker bar.

This would be a good time to take a 5 minute break. Get a drink, stretch, and if you want to read about my recent trip to Guiyang then come on back to the blog.

I felt like taking a break from Kaili for a short while so I hopped on the bus and took the 3 hour ride to Guiyang, which is the closest thing that anyone could call a big city. One of the first things I saw in Guiyang was a  WalMart Supercenter. I laughed my ass off. Temptation got the better of me and I just had to go in and see. It was a zoo! All hopes I had of searching the store for cheese were swept away by the fact that I didn't want to spend a quarter of my weekend in those Disneyesque lines. I also found a giant statue of Mao and eventually, PIZZA HUT! The waitress was either impressed or horrified by the fact that I tackled a large pizza all by my lonsome, I'm not sure which. And I don't care. All that matters is, I got cheese and a lot of it.
I found an English bookstore and loaded up on novels which made my backpack twice as heavy, but I was too happy to care. I've been itching for more books for a long time.

Still in Guiyang, I woke up on my second day to track down a movie theater in which I would, hopefully, find Harry Potter. I found a couple theaters that were playing Chinese movies but was having no luck with Harry. What I did find was a very excitable group of teenage girls who thought that I was just the best thing they'd ever seen. I took advantage of my undeserved fame to ask these girls if they knew where I could find a theater showing HP. They knew. Yeaaahhhhh! The most excitable of these girls, Lunyi or Lyn, or something like that, translated the cinema employee's Chinese for me and told me, 2:10. Great. That gave me plenty of time to explore before the movie. I said goodbye to my crazy teenybopper fans and walked off to find coffee. 10:30 AM. The sign said "Coffee and Cappuccino." I walked in and was immediately told that they were not open yet. And why would they be? Who in their right mind would ever want a cappuccino before 11:00 AM? I walked on to a place called "Time Coffee." Not "Coffee Time." "Time Coffee." All I wanted was to sit on my ass, drink coffee and read my new Stephen King book. What I got was a very excited, somewhat scary lady who spoke very fast Chinese and told me that they did not have coffee. And why would they? The place only had the word "Coffee" in the title. I ordered a Sprite and sat down to read. She sat down across from me and began speedily talking to me. I tried to focus on my book, but to no avail. She would not be ignored. 10 minutes later I found myself in the most confusing "conversation" of my entire life with her, a cook, and one of the cleaning ladies. They were all talking very fast Chinese and although I never reverted to English (it wouldn't have done me any good) I couldn't help but to repeat things like, "I don't understand." And, "I don't know." At one point, she began asking me if I had any American money with me. I said no. I said no again. Again. I said "No," in just about every way I could possibly think of, but she was not getting the picture. As a matter of fact, she was becoming louder and more insistent as she went on. It was becoming a bit scary, so I quickly paid my tab and walked out. And besides, it was 1:00. Almost time for Harry. After some quick noodles, I went to the theater as excited as excited could be. I quickly spoke to the man at the cinema door and walked away, sad faced, one minute later. It seemed that my hyper-active little fans had failed to translate one little word: Mingtian. Tomorrow. Sorry Rob. No Harry Potter for you.

Before getting on the bus back to Kaili, I managed to find a cool little cafe where I got a passable latte. One of my goals while in Guiyang was to meet some other foreigners and although they were both busy, therefore I did not want to bother them, I did see 2 other round-eyes in this cafe. It's a nice place. I will go back there: for the atmosphere, for the round-eyes, and even for the coffee. I will go back to Guiyang. It's a nice break from the small city of Kaili. Although I know I wouldn't be happy living in a city of that size, I like having the option of hanging out in Guiyang once in a while.

I have a lot of time off in February. Right now the leading vacation options are, hanging out in Chonqing with Tan Yen and Wudan or going to Chengdu to try some real Sichuan food with my friend XiaoLi. Tan Yen says that Chonqing has the most beautiful girls in China. Long Tso says, no, that place is Chengdu. I might just have to go to both.

Now it's time for me to wait another ridiculously long time before writing again. If you read this far, then you're a real trooper. Wan an.