...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.

Shaogaoshan

We climbed a mountain near the school yesterday. By we, I mean myself, Ms. Fu, some guy whose name I can't remember, and a guy named Zhang. Zhang appears to be Ms. Fu's main squeeze. We walked to the mountain and I was glad to learn that there actually was a decent sized climbing mountain within walking distance.

By the way, my Chinese name is Yangshan. The name was given to me by Henry, of all people. We had been having lunch with the Yang family who kindly lent me the use of their last name. Then Henry told them about how much I love to talk about the mountains near Kaili. The word for mountain is, shan. So: Yangshan. Yang Mountain, that's my name.

The mountain we climbed yesterday was called Shaogaoshan, Little High Mountain. It's a decent size and I've been mentally referring to it as the Kaili version of Mount Monadnock. But sometimes I think that if China were a pitcher it would throw nothing but curveballs. I knew something would be off when we climbed the mountain, I just didn't know what it would be. I get that feeling a lot over here. That feeling that tells me,  "Things are not going to turn out the way you would usually think they would, Rob. There will be something strange or skewed about what happens." Shaogaoshan was yet another mountain with a stone staircase going all the way up and down it. It's a gorgeous place, but where I come from MOUNTAINS DON'T HAVE STAIRS!

Anyway, it was a pretty climb as well as pretty foggy climb. There was a restaraunt about one third of the way up and I tried some Chinese porridge, basically chicken and rice soup. After a while, we returned to climbing and I started to worry about Ms. Fu. She hadn't eaten anything, hadn't drunk any water, and really did not seem to be in climbing shape. It was almost like being back in my Environmental Education job again. I would offer her water, she's say no. I'd ask her if she wanted to rest, and of course, she'd say no. Maybe she was embarassed, but mountains have a way of kicking peoples' asses when their unprepared so I kept my eye on her. It was a little bit being back in Nature's Classroom or W. Alton Jones, but with a significantly older student.

I took some photos on the way back down, the fog had finally lifted. There hadn't really been a view on top, just a television station tower and some funny ladies dancing. On the way down, we ran into one of Zhang's friends who happenned to know about a Miao village that was on the mountain. We decided to eat lunch there.

Picture this: a small Asian village right out of a post card, but don't forget about the big basket ball court that's smack in the middle of it. We entered the village and walked into a small room that seemed like it was a room in someone's house. We met two more people there. One of them was a random man who was never introduced to me and I didn't bother to introduce myself because that would've required going within 5 feet of him. He smelled like a mix of hot tar, fish, and 10,000 year old sweat. Best description I can give. The other person was a Miao woman who was clearly the cook.

Now I find myself in a room full of people that I have difficulty communicating and some who really don't seem to want to communicatewith me. I'm told that I was an important guest there and yet I kind of got the feeling that it leaned toward sideshow freak at some times and not so much important guest. Everybody's chatting away in speedy Chinese and it dawned on me that even though this was an interesting experience, I didn't really care for the people around me. Other than Ms. Fu, I really had no interest in knowing these loud people were mispronouncing my name (either Robaht or Roberta) in their sentences and then not bothering to tell me what they were saying about me. Ms. Fu translated once in a while and I appreciated that, but I mentally tuned myself out after a little while. I started thinking, "I could've gone back to the university today. Could've had lunch with Tan Yen and met some more college kids." But, I was in a Miao village and that was pretty cool, so I tried to dwell on that thought.

I spent most of my time there watching the two funny dogs that kept wandering in and out of the house. I liked the dogs more than the majority of the people there. We were eating in the common public Chinese style, which puts everybody circled around one table with a bunch of different dishes on it. You reach onto the table with your chopsticks and grab what you want. I've always had very unsteady hands, so this kind of eating makes my hand tremor very obvious when I have to reach for my food. It's usually not a big deal. I'm fully capable of using chopsticks, it's just not pretty when I do. But sometimes, I think it gives people an impression of weakness or nervousness and when you can't communicate with the people around you how do you tell them what the situation really is?

Hospitality in China is funny to me. At the dinner table, I mean. It's very common for a person to pick up food from the serving bowl and drop into my bowl, whether I ask for it or not. This is a way of treating me like a guest and introducing me to new foods, I understand that. But, I'm a temperamental American and sometimes I can't help but thinking things like, "Get your damn chopsticks away from bowl." Or ,"Did you think I was lying when I said I wasn't hungry anymore? Stop giving me food that I never asked for!" And of course, Dum Dum Dum, baiju. It's the most revolting form of rice wine I've ever had and I'm a man who has experienced Sake in Japan (ok) and Souju in South Korea (yuck). People shove baiju at me every time there's some kind of public meal. I hate the stuff, but of course, the important guest/ sideshow freak has to drink it. To refuse is to insult to person in their home. I drank this crap until I discovered that the house also had beer. I've on decent terms with Chinese beer so I opted for that instead. But this particular brew was, seriously, a lot closer to seltzer water than anything I'd call beer. It was still better than the baiju, but yuck.

So  now I'm in a situation in which people keep toasting, over and over again. I've got one drink that sucks and one that sucks even more. Sudennly Ms. Fu translates for me that the men are worried that I will not be able to finish my bottle of beer. I'm not sure, but I've gotten the impression that you're somehow considered unmanly here if you don't finish your whole beer. How do explain that the reason you haven't fisnihed the entire bottle has nothing to do with your worth as a man and only the fact that the beer is awful? Fortunately, I didn't give a rat's ass what these men considered manly, so I called it quits on both the beer and the baiju.

We left the village and it was beautiful and sunny outside. I took a few photos and promised myself that I'd return to Shaogaoshan, alone. We caught a bus and while we were on it Ms. Fu told me that she was getting off at a market and Zhang would go with me. It wasn't until after she left the bus that I realized what this meant. This guy Zhang was supposed to babysit the helpless American who couldn't possibly find his way around this tiny city without a chaperone. I had had enough bullshit for one day, so I slipped off of the bus at an easily recognizable landmark and decided to walk home. The plan was to slip out when Zhang was trapped in the throng of people on the bus. I didn't really care for the guy anyway, so there was no guilt when I just hopped off the bus without saying goodbye.

Since coming to China, there have been two times when I'd say that I have officially lost my temper. One of them was in my fourth week here. The other was yesterday.
One day Henry took myself, Dave, and Lucia to buy bikes. This man just complicates everything and what should have been a one hour excursion of choose your bike and ride it home turned into a three hour ordeal of ,"Yes, Rucia. This is same bike you want." Lucia: "No, Henry. Look at the picture. It's not even the same model." Henry: "But Rucia..." You get the picture. So by the time we returned to the school I was in no mood to put up with any bullshit. I went to lock up my bike. I remembered that I used to  lock up my old bike with a chain lock that would weave through the bike's frame as well as the tire, so I tried to do that. The chain lock was very short so it proved to be a hassle. Without a word, Henry reaches over and grabs the chain lock out of my hand. I couldn't of stopped myself if I'd tried. I said, "Let go!" In a voice that told Henry I was in the mood to tear out his throat. He backed off, looking like a deer in headlights. That made some sadistic part of my mind very happy.

Yesterday, I left the bus to escape my unecessary and unwanted babysitter, Zhang. I went walking down a road I knew and turned right to check out an interesting place called, The Miao Theme Hotel. It was nice. Lots of great carvings. I was admiring the artwork, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I knew who it was before I turned. There was Zhang. Immediately, I knew what had happenned after I left the bus. This son of a bitch had pushed his way out of the crowded bus, onto the sidewalk, and chased me down, because his hubby Ms. Fu thought I needed a babysitter. Never mind that the fact that I've been here 3 months and this is a small city. Never mind the fact that I'm a 33 year old man. Never mind the fact that I have already done a significant amount of traveling on my own. Zhang asked me, "What are you doing?" I launched a therapeautic, "I'M WALKING!" at him and walked away at a pace that obviously said, 'Don't follow me.'

I suppose I've been dwelling quite a bit on the negative in this blog, but this is the stuff I needed to write, if only for my own peace of mind. The good and bad really come entwined over here and I have no idea how to seperate them.

Nanchang & Stuff

I recently had 9 days off, so naturally I wasted two of those days doing absolutely nothing, then I went to see my friend in Nanchang. I saw my friend Amanda at her teaching post, Jiangxi Normal University. If there's an "Abnormal" university then I have no idea where it is. Anyways, I spent about three days there and it was pretty cool.
It was a big university, well outside of the main city. I often commented to people there that the entire downtown area of Kaili could fit into the university campus and that was not an exaggeration. This school was kind of like a town all its own. There were many other foreign teachers over there and it was great to have some other, not-so-Chinese, folks to hang out with. But my favorite thing about my trip was simply having the chance to hang out with the college kids. My middle school students are great, but there was a fun dynamic with the Jiangxi University kids that just isn't present with the younger kids. And plus, you can't drink with middle school kids. Speaking of drinking, hehehe, yeah. It happenned. Somebody managed to find Johnnie Walker in China and we downed about 5,000 bottles of it in a Nanchang bar. I met my future wife there. In other words, a very very inebriated college girl surprise-attack kissed me. It was nice, just a bit shocking.  And I can't forget about the next day when we got pizza. That's right, I ate pizza! Very small pizza, but it qualified. The first thing I told Amanda when I arrived in Nanchang was, "You're not in China. You're in Chinatown." I said that because I'd been amazed by all the McDonalds and KFCs and WalMarts, and all the western things I'd seen on my way there. Kaili has none of that stuff. But Nanchang had Pizza Hut. Gotta love the Hut.
Murphy's Law was waiting for me as soon as I had the silly idea of returning to Kaili. I had problems with the bus, problems with the plane, problems with the other bus. If I could kill the Nanchang-Guiyang public transportation system, I would stab it and then twist the knife, but only after I doused the blade with rat poison.

Since my return, things have been pretty smooth here in Kaili. The big issue right now is heat. These apartments are not only completely lacking heat, they actually seem to trap cold within their walls. It's often warmer outside than inside my apartment. It's good to be a New Hampshire boy on cold nights here, because I'm naturally built for the cold, but I did get myself a little room heater to help out. I've mentioned to my boss that I need a "real" heater, because I only expect it to get colder as winter comes in. Let's see how many months it takes my boss get to moving on that. I'll probably have to blatantly "remind" her, but if I do I think I'll actually get the heater. My coworker, Dave (the Irishman), is skinny as a rail and has already gotten very sick from the cold apartments here. I've been ok so far, but I don't plan to take any chances.

I came back from Nanchang with two specific goals in  mind. 1. Make friends with university students. 2. Explore the nearby city of Guiyang and try to find some other foreigners there. Before my trip to Nanchang, I had just discovered the Kaili University. It's a nice school, if a bit small. I went there today and made myself  two new friends within five minutes. Not bad, eh. So, the college friend buddy making plan is in effect right now and I'll put the foreigner finding plan into action as soon as I have an idea about where to look for round-eyes in Guiyang.

Today was kind of a crazy day. I got a call last night from a man named Mr. Yang. Yang is like Smith over. Everybody and their mother is named Yang. In other words, I had no idea who this guy was. He invited me a nearby city and did not tell me why. I said no while I wondered how the hell he got my number. I told him that I was going to the university today. He asked me who I was going with. I said ,"Tan Yen." Then he told me he would call, Tan Yen. Either he didn't understand what I'd said or he was outright ignoring it. Again, I said that I was going to university and told him that was no reason for him to bother Tan Yen. He sounded dissappointed and hung. I wondered what the fuck had just happenned. Later, Tan Yen called me and said that this mysterious Mr. Yang had called her and asked her to cancel her university trip with me. She asked me if I wanted to go with Mr. Yang instead, but I told her that I didn't even know the guy. Mr. Yang called me again this morning, right after I woke up. He asked to change my plans today. I said ,"No" as solidly as I could without putting any vehemence in it. I eventually found out that the mysterious Mr. Yang was one of the English teachers here at the school and that I'd given him my number at a teacher's dinner last month. The word "friend" gets tossed around a lot over here. I met this man once for a short period of time, was stupid enough to give him my phone number and now he thinks that we're such great "friends" that I couldn't possibly want to do anything other than go to some random town with him. Sometimes I get extremely fed up with people trying to make my weekend schedule for me without even considering the possibility that I might NOT want to do what they have in mind.

Around 5 today, I got a call from a person I actually did know. Ms. Cheng. Most of the time, she's just kind of a funny little chatterbox, but this phone call was just crazy: "Robert, are you home? We go to dinner now."
Me: "I'm not hungry. I just ate."
Cheng: "Ok. We go. I meet you at the school gate."
Me: "No, Miss Cheng, I'm not hungry. I already ate dinner."
Cheng: "Yes. Now. Now. Now."
Me: "Ms. Cheng." (starting to boil)
Cheng: "Oh. You ate...." (it finally dawns on her.)

This is another example of the way in which people around here sometimes try to shove their events in my face without even considering the possibility of my saying  no. They simply don't offer a choice, so I interject my own. There's a big difference between being flexible and open to culture and letting people boss you around and walk all over you. Guess what Ms. Cheng, if the American doesn't want to go to dinner with you and your friends ,"Now. Now. Now." he's not going to fucking go! Crazy!

Ms. Fu said that she's going to take me to a mountain to go climbing tomorrow. I'm somewhat excited, but my expectations are not high. The last "mountain" that my friends took me to "climb" around here had stairs all the way up and down. I expect to see a great view on the summit tomorrow but I also expect to be somehow unsatisfied by the climb. I've been spoiled by the Appalachians. We're leaving early tomorrow, which may be a good sign or may be no sign at all, so I'm going to bed. Good night.

Halloween

No costumes today. No kids coming to the door saying "Trick or Treat." Homesickness likes to creep up on me once in a while. Fall is my favorite time of year back in New England and the hardest time to 'not be there', in New England, in the USA, is right about now. The funny thing is that China has so many great qualities to it that homesickness never really sticks around too long. It doesn't seem to be capable of anything more than the occassional bother. My friends, primarily Liana (who I've finally discovered is actually named Jiao Wun Wun), Tan Yen, and Long Tso, are a constant reminder that I'm in the place that they're from and since they are fascinating people it follows that their homeland is also fascinating. Another reminder is the mountains right outside of town. They're like no other mountains I've ever seen and a simple look at them makes homesickness take a backseat for a while. I expect Christmas to be even tougher than this, but something tells me I can deal with that when it comes. I didn't come to China to whine about how much I miss pizza and blonde girls. I'll head back to the states someday. The big question in my mind right now is, "Will I want to stay there when I do return?" The honest answer is, "I don't know."

China has an amazing ability to piss me off one second and then make me smile the next. People I don't know ask me for my phone number and it becomes annoying. Little kids wave at me and it makes me laugh. Kids are shocked when they find out that I'm not very good at basketball. Adults seem impressed when I say that I'm not cold in this weather. I see homeless animals all over and it makes me angry. People want to meet me just because I'm white and it's a good/bad experience depending on my current mood.

I'm planning a trip. My class schedule seems to be in a constant state of change, it just won't sit still. One week I'll be working my full contract load of classes and then all of a sudden, like this week, my boss will tell me I have 7 days off. I might head to the city of Nanchang to see a friend or I might head to Changsha. It's high time that I explore more than just Kaili. Xijiang and Zenhyuan were nice cities but I didn't spend too much time in either one. So, my current goal is to get my ass out and about so I can really see the country. Maybe I'll avoid the tourist traps. Maybe I won't even bother with things like the Great Wall or the Terra Cotta warriors. Maybe I'll just go where the locals go. Go to the places that small town NH boys never hear about.

A few comments on my schedule. It changes every few weeks and I can't get a straight answer as to why this happens. Mistakes are a regular thing when it comes to schedule making and it's honestly not my fault. I don't make my own schecdule. I receive schedules from Henry and Ms. Fu. I find, all too often, that some kind of unexplained change has happenned. A class has been moved to a new time or a new day and it sure as hell wasn't on the slip of paper that was given to me. Or maybe Ms. Fu said that I did not have class on Wednsday when she actually meant that I did have class on Wednsday. Stuff like that. My work schedule is actually pretty easy but all the changes and the lack of people informing me about the changes can be pretty damn aggravating sometimes. However, I worked a lot harder than this back in the states and that helps to keep it all in perpective. As long my pay continues to arrive in full and on time, I can deal with nonsense like that.

Language. Chinese is hard and the fact that Kaili really doesn't have any classes for foreigners who want to learn Chinese makes it even harder. And although I don't have a 'real' teacher, I do have three good Chinese friends who take it upon themselves to help me learn whenever they can. I think I'm at a level where my Chinese is just basic enough that I can feel relatively comfortable taking a solo trip to just about anywhere in the country in order to mispronounce the names of food in a restaraunt or stare in blank ignorance of the question that the lady at the train station asks me. In other words, I expect plenty of errors, misunderstandings, and complications but I expect to find ways of working out those errors, misunderstandings, and complications.

Happy Halloween! My night will include a half-full bag of peppermint patties, thanks Heather, and possibly a dinner with Dave and Lucia. Most of my other friends are currently out of town for work, so it's possible that tonight will end up being a bit more quiet than I'd like for Halloween. But, I don't intend to let things stay that way. I intend to plan my trip. I intend to explore. Maybe tonight will turn out to be quiet but tomorrow won't.