Its almost Christmas

Sorry I have not updated this is a while. There has not been all that much going on besides the usual and I have been lazy. That being said there have been a few things. First, last week I caught an awful cold that lasted for a few days and gave me a decent excuse to not go to class for two days. Partly connected to that incident, I started watching Chinese television. This includes but is not limited to:

Cartoons- some Chinese and some American, but all in Chinese

American (English) movies dubbed in Chinese- so far parts golden eye of sister act and parts of a few others

Chinese game shows- including a Chinese version of price is right and a few physical/skill testing shows that make fun of the common Chinese person’s physical ability

That is most of them, but there are also a few more like Beijing Opera and really bad music videos. I have slightly convinced myself that having these on while I study will be good for my Chinese, but I kind of doubt it. Nonetheless, they are great for a laugh.

In addition to having a cold, I also managed to scald myself. The story goes: Jason and I went to a friend’s house for dinner. He made spaghetti for us and we arrived just before he finished cooking. He turned off the noodles and grabbed the plastic strainer. Handing it to me, he asked if I would hold it over the sink. I listened to him, because I clearly was not thinking.

Fortunately the steam from the recently boiling water pouring through the strainer did not burn me. Unfortunately, when the last bit of water and noodles were poured from the pot they did not land in the strainer. Instead they landed on my left hand. I instantly ran cold water on it and for the rest of the evening kept meat or frozen goods on it, but the damage was done. We spent the rest of the night gorging on spaghetti and assorted other foods and talking. To help the pain we drank some of Jason’s mead, most of my bottle of Jameson and two bottles of French wine.

The majority of the burn is on my ring finger from just below the first knuckle on the finger almost to the next knuckle. It also is on my pinky finger around the first knuckle and on one spot on my thumb, though the worst is in on my ring finger where it extends for about an inch and a half. The morning after the incident, I awoke to find to large blisters. The larger of which was almost the size of a dime. Since then it has gotten better, though it will take a while to heal.

In last day or so the pattern from the strainer has become more prominent, which makes me very curious as to what it will look like when it heels. This is by far the worst burn that I can remember having, but at least it is just on my already scared hands. Maybe, because of the strainer, I will end up with something pretty? Like a scar resembling something drawn by a small child with a very limited section of stencils. It’s almost like one of those eggs that I had as a child. You know, the blue, green, yellow, or red small eggs/tablets that you would throw into water to see what would burst out as the shell/capsule dissolved. The only difference is, when all is said and done, my finger will not look like my favorite dinosaur or sea creature.

Other than that everything has been pretty mundane. We are getting close to the end of the term here and I have Chinese tests for the next few days and am finished on Friday. I doubt that I will do very well on my exams, because I am still behind the other students. If I had it to do over I would not have enrolled at this university and instead would have tried to find a smaller private school that would have started at the beginning for me. I have noticed that while I have learned a lot, I am missing many basic things that make basic communication difficult. Oh well, though I have learned and I will continue to learn wherever we go next.

Speaking of which, I am only going to be in Harbin until the 2^nd of January! Next week I will put together a bag to travel with and pack up the rest of my things. I will either drop them at a friend’s house for storage or take them with me to be stored with someone in the South, because Jason and I are determined to live somewhere different when we come back from our break. Harbin has been alright, but we want someplace more vibrant, more exciting and also it would be nice if it was warmer.

Break for Jason for about seven weeks but I get out a week earlier than Jason, giving me about two months. Our break is longer than most, but most Chinese will get at least a week or more off to go home for Chinese New year. This year the actual day is January 26^th. So our plans are rough but we do have a few plane tickets to give us direction. Go to this link to follow along with the itinerary below and see a places of interest.

January 2^nd - I fly from Harbin to Beijing and Beijing to Kunming, Yunnan. From Kunming I will take a train and a bus south to reach and cross the border into Laos. I am going to Laos primarily because I need to leave China because of my visa, but I am staying for about a week because Laos sounds pretty great. I am not sure what I will do, but a UN World Heritage Site maybe in my future. If anyone has any good information let me know. All I know is that I will probably stay in northern part of the country because I will only be there for a week.

January 9^thish – Jason will fly from Beijing to Kunming. He may be in Beijing for a few days prior to this depending on how quickly he decides to leave Harbin. We will meet up in the next couple days, depending ground travel times and where we meet up. Depending on how cool Kunming is, I may meet Jason there or we may meet up in the area near the border, because we have heard that there are some really beautiful and interesting places there.

After we meet up we will spend the next few weeks traveling wherever we want for how ever long, while eventually working our way to Guiyang, Guizhou. We will honestly stay in a place for as long as it is interesting and then move on. We have heard of a few fun things to do such as hikes and cool cities, but we do not have any firm plans besides our next plane ticket.

January 29^th - We fly out of Guiyang headed for Xi’an, Shaanxi in central China, to stay with one of Jason’s Chinese roommates from the summer. I am not sure what is planned for our stay but I am sure that it will be great since we will have such an awesome tour guide.

January 8^th - We fly from Xi’an to Guangzhou, Guangdong in the South. From here it gets a little fuzzy. We will meet up with a few of Jason’s friends from Pomona and maybe a friend of mine from Bellingham. Our only obligation after this flight is to get Jason to Hong Kong for a Fulbright meeting that starts on March 3^rd.

My goals for the trip are:
1) Have fun and enjoy China
2) Practice my spoken Chinese (this will be inevitable)
3) Eat lots of good, spicy, Southern Chinese food.
4) Take lots of pictures (because I have not been taking very many so far)
5) Setup/figure out where we are going to live next. This means finding a project, another university, or a contact.
6) Meet up with Amy G!

Also, as promised here is a link to the tiger park pictures as well as a few others on my brother’s site. Here is a clothed dancer at a new bar that we went to a week ago, another one, and some that are really good.

On behalf of the industrial art planners of the city of Haerbin and myself, I wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

A whole heck of a lot

The week before this was the most irregular week I have had since arriving, although the weekend proved to be the really unexpected part. It all started during the week when I began to actually understand the Chinese in class. Yep that’s right, I am learning this stuff regardless of how ridiculously difficult it is. Not only that but I am learning it so well that one of my teachers gave me a present in class for doing so well. (The present is a small trinket on a string of a double fish, which is said to bring you luck or something. I have attached it to my cell phone to help me blend in.)

I think I mentioned before that I stopped going to my listening class and for a few reasons. The first being the quality of the tape and textbook, which is the reason that I gave to the other students to pass on to the teacher, although the teacher herself as well as the “boom box” had something to do with the decision as well. So I was, to say the least, thoroughly surprised when I was told the teacher had changed materials on account of me… sort of.

Apparently my decision to not go to a worthless class made sense to other students. The result was one who was not going at all anymore and a few absences from students who previously held perfect attendance records. In a class of six students this is a big impact. I was less surprised about the change in materials after hearing this. Needless to say, I have returned to the class and the text is better although, and this is not surprising, the teacher is not. Oh well, at least for the majority of the class she conveniently lets the “boom box” do the talking for her.

The second unexpected thing that happened to me last week was that I had a dream. I briefly thought about parodying MLK Jr. with the description of my dream but I think that a fair few people have done that already so I will just tell you instead. I dreamt in Chinese! Now if that is not impressive, I know it is not so because you have heard me try to speak. In any case, I was astonished when I woke up the next morning and started preparing to go to my Chinese class only to realize that I had studied for it unconsciously the night before.

Now on to the weekend. Friday was rather quite. Jason and I had two friends over for a movie and then I went to bed early to finish the book that I had started at the beginning of the week. As a side note, I think that this marks the first time that I have ever finished a book in four sittings and is therefore evidence against my longstanding belief that I am slow reader.

Saturday started slow, but by noon Jason and I found ourselves holding tickets to the Harbin Tiger Park and contemplating buying a chicken, duck, sheep, or cow to feed to the tigers. This park is no joke. It’s only similarity to a zoo is that it holds wild animals in cages. In all there are probably more than 200 tigers being held at the park. Their cages are rundown, weeded, tracks of land enclosed by tall chain link fences and some barbed wire. They feed the tigers out of Toyota 4runner that is rigged with wire armor over critical areas such as windows, tires, the engine compartment and the roof. To release the smaller animals, the driver opens the door throws and closes the door very quickly, although the tigers are quicker and I not once did I see a chicken reach the ground.

Our tickets bought us a ride in a similarly armored bus. The bus went from one area to the next stopping for pictures occasionally, but speeding along dirt roads for the rest of the time honking the horn to clear tigers from the road. There were several sections all with double gates at the entries and exits that would alternate to ensure that tigers did not make it out of one area and into the next.

After going through several areas we disembarked the bus wearily because the gate behind us was left open although the secondary gate was closed. We entered a long, snaking, raised walkway that was enclosed by two fences, about eighteen inches from apart to create a buffer, made of half inch wire. This boardwalk led us through a large area that more resembled a zoo enclosure with fake concrete rocks and a few frozen over ponds. The enclosure held at least twenty tigers, maybe even thirty.

As we walked along looking at the tigers a woman walked up behind us pulling a little, not so red, wagon with cages on it. The cages held chickens and they were for sale. For less that seven US dollars you could feed a chicken to a tigers, or several tigers, while it was tied by one foot at the end of five foot long walking stick. Although we did not purchase any chickens we did get to witness the action. It was like playing keep away. The chicken end of the stick was stuck through the fences and bobbed up and down as the tigers would cluster together and eventually begin to jump for the chicken. I had never seen tigers jump and I am glad that I have never encountered in the open. I definitely would have underestimated its speed and never would have guessed that it could jump at least fifteen feet from a stand still.

After that excitement we loitered watching the tigers in the nearby enclosures and eventually made our out. On our way we say cheetahs, lions, jaguars, and even a liger. According to the informational board next the latter a liger is defined as “affinity between lion and tiger”. I took this to mean that when a lion and a tiger fall in love… you get a liger. We went to the park with a few friends and after a late lunch and a quick sweet we parted ways.

Jason and I headed over to a friends house to get free stuff because he was moving and stopped by a grocery store on the way. We found dark beer! Two types of it actually both made in China. We have since tried one of them and it was not anything close to what we were hoping for but I am holding out hope for the second type. Then I rushed home and got ready to go to dinner.

Dinner was planned to be a Beijing duck restaurant. For those of you who have not heard of Beijing duck, it is basically a duck roasted whole in a very specific type of large oven. In Beijing, many of these ovens have been in use for a long time. This means that in Harbin Beijing duck is not nearly as good as it is in Beijing, hence the name. I went with a Russian classmate and a Latvian friend who also lives in our building. The duck was alright, but the spicy clams were amazing!

After dinner my Russian classmate invited us back to his apartment to drink cognac and eat dark chocolate. How can you refuse an offer like that? You cannot and I did not and it turned out to be a very interesting night. The cognac was French and it was delicious. The Russian dark chocolate was very dark and amazing and it was perfect with the cognac. What made the night even more interesting was drinking the entire bottle, as I think is tradition, and then promptly going out to meet other people at a bar. I hurt dearly the next day but oh was the cognac delicious.

I spent most of Sunday recovering. I got up from a nap at around four and shortly after I received a call from the same friend had gone to the tiger park with us. We had been invited to go to dinner with her, Tera, her friend from Indiana who was originally from China, Danni, and his cousin Wilson. The dinner was being held by the Mayor or Vice Mayor of Commerce for Harbin. Since Danni and Wilson’s family is well to do in the south of China, they were more or less required to socialize with important figures such as the Mayor of the City. We had talked about this the day before, but we were caught a bit off guard because the call came so early. We arrived at the restaurant at five and did not leave until nearly eight.

The dinner was ridiculous. There was way too much food ordered, yet we were expected to eat a lot of it and at times it was even put on our plates for us. There were two stages of food. The first was more than enough to fill everyone at the table, yet after we had all eaten what we wanted of it another round came out. I was stuffed to the brim with food by the time that my plate was taken away. The same went with drinks. There were more than a few calls for the Chinese version of “cheers” as well as the call to finish your drink. This was followed promptly by refilling your glass or having it refilled for you.

The table was a large round table with a large glass plate in the center that spun to allow access of the food to everyone. Jason played translator for most of the night as he and Wilson were the only competent mandarin speakers at the table. The other guests that attended were a nationally famous TV anchor and her daughter, who Tera may be tutoring in the near future. The Mayor was a very friendly woman with a sense of humor and many other well honed social skills. One to note for china, was the ability to pick up the bill even if it was never brought to the table. It is common in China for people to fight over the bill and I mean fight. There are of course rules such as the guest to a city will never pay, but that does not mean that there will not be a fight first and there was.

Over all the night was quite an experience and one that I will not soon forget partially because we did it again on Wednesday night. That’s right. We were invited out to dinner with the Mayor, or whatever her title is, for the second time in four days. This time it would only be three of us because Danni and his cousin returned to Guangzhou. Other than that we knew nothing of what this dinner was supposed to be about. We had thought that it might have something to with teaching English, but again we were only guessing.

We were picked up at the front gate of our university at five by the Mayor and her driver and then picked up Tera before heading off to a restaurant, the name of which Jason could not make out. After a bit, we pulled up to a large building with a rotating door, parking lot attendants and a parking lot. As most of do not know, parking lots are rare in Harbin, usually cars are parked on the street or it is even more common for people to take taxis, the bus, or walk to their destination. So a parking lot usually means it is a big deal and as soon as we stepped in we knew it was true.

The restaurant was called (something in Chinese) Fisherman’s Wharf and they had some great seafood. We ate raw salmon, prawns, some other type of seafood (it was red and white and the texture was similar to squid), and bitter melon and cooked abalone, squid, shrimp, smoked beef, whole shrimp and small fish (everything except the head), fried minnows, and so much more. The other people that came were an author and provincial administrator of education, a director for one of the national television stations, an engineer (of some rank I’m sure), and two musicians from a nearby university (one was a pianist and the other specialized in Chinese opera).

The night again was full of food, drinking, and conversation although this dinner was much less formal because, with the exception of us, all of those that attended were friends of some sort. It was great fun and amazing food. Afterward the mayor rode home with one of her friends from the dinner and sent us home in her car. The driver went the extra long way and drove extremely slowing on the way, we think because he wanted to talk to Jason. He invited us to eat with him at some point also and he and Jason exchanged numbers.

While out buying ice skates I saw something that was absolutely astounding. It is winter here and there has been ice and snow on the road for a few weeks now. There are no snow plows or sanding trucks. Instead people just drive on the roads as is and a few of them slow down but not many. With that said, it is stunning to see that there are still a good number of bicycles, motorcycles, and scooters on the road. Besides just the conditions it is also bitter cold to be out on a road at any speed.

I thought that I had seen it all but yesterday I saw something to top it all. All of the cycles are used to carry items and people, usually in excess of what they should. Yesterday I saw a scooter with two men on it carrying a 20-25 foot ladder. It wasn’t attached to the side of the scooter or pointing straight up, instead one end of it was tied onto the rear rack of the scooter while the other end trailed 20-25 feet behind. At the far end of the ladder a set of wheels had been attached to keep the ladder from just dragging because that would be just silly.

We live in a cold place

So I appreciate the few of you that guessed about the Jacket. To clarify, I was asking for you to guess the look of the jacket as well as the two words printed on the sleeve but the confusion was my fault. Nonetheless, no one guessed either the jacket or the words, although there were a few good guesses. Amy’s guess can be seen here. What the jacket really looks like, it in action and another photo just in case you cannot read the letters in the first pictures. Here

I am lucky that we got the jacket when we did because it has turned cold. The weather forecast even included the word “Frigid”. Jason listed off the temperatures in one of his recent posts but to summarize: highs of 10F and lows of -4F with gusts of wind and very light snow showers. The coolest thing about this, pun intended, is that the university has recognized that it is winter and that the temperature will not go above freezing for the next few months. This means only one thing, or at least only one enjoyable one, ICE SKATING!

The grounds workers started to flood the field near our house at the beginning of this week. It is cold enough that they do not even need to erect barriers around the edges to keep water from running of because it freezes too quickly after leaving the hose. So to recap; they are making an ice rink… on a field… with a hose. What could be better than that?

The cold of course has downsides also. The main one being that it is sometimes painful to be outside. Slight breezes are brutal and exposed skin is dangerous. For weeks my teachers have been telling me very politely that I need to wear more clothes and until now I did not listen. Also, this is just the beginning. This week is the first full week of subzero temperatures we have another five or six to go and I am sure that the ones in the middle will be worse. I have decided that two things will keep me warm. The first is several layers and the second is cheap booze. So cheers to winter!

The other day I went for a walk in the forest park to take pictures at sunset it was dreadfully cold and I left at four and missed the sunset but caught dusk. I went again a few days later and took some photos. You can see them here. Also the first photo was taken last week out of our window.

I started private Chinese lessons on Tuesday and they are great. My teacher is a Vietnamese man that has been in China for a number of years. He is at this university studying Wood and Materials Science. He is here with his wife and one year old child. He has been speaking Chinese for several years and, according to Jason, he speaks very well. He lives on the third floor of our building and we will meet in his home to do Chinese lessons every Tuesday and Wednesday. On Fridays I will be helping him with his English.

My first day was mainly just pronunciation and tonal lessons, so not all that exciting, although since it is private he has started at the beginning which I believe is what I need. (I am a bit a frustrated with my Chinese courses at the university, but that is another matter entirely) When we study sometimes Wo Meng Xiang’s wife sits in with us and repeats as I repeat. She is also learning Chinese and has been for about a month now.

One of the exciting perks of the lessons is being around their child. He is just over a year old and is very shy. He is walking, and quite well, but he does not speak yet and is extremely quiet. I would say that vocally he is the exact opposite of Jack Carrica. Over all he is pretty cute and adds to the excitement of Chinese lessons, which after six hours of lessons a little walking distraction is just what I need.

One last note. Tonight we went to a traveling Chinese Opera on campus. The show was full of acrobatics, talented singers, and stunning costumes. It was quite a site to see and different from anything that I have ever seen before. Also, when we first arrived there something that has grown very normal happened. This prompted me to add to my list of things about China.

9) Since arriving I have noticed that many people stare at me. It is obviously not rude to do so in China, or maybe seeing a foreigner is just an exception. It is ridiculously bad. I preface tonight’s event only by saying that it has been a frequent occurrence. So here is how went down. Jason and I are shown to our seats by an usher and we are in a relatively empty row. I think that it was reserved for foreign students, but since the opera was in Chinese not many came. We were waiting for the show to start and I decided to look around the hall since I had not been in it before. I looked in front of me and to my left and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then I looked to my right and caught something out of the corner of my eye.

I turned around and what did I see,
two Chinese girls taking pictures of Jason and me.

There they were with their camera phones, at the same time, in the exact same way. When they noticed that I saw them, in the screens of their phones, they giggled, grinned, and attempted to hide though this was difficult because they were only a couple feet away. It was hilarious. I have decided that from now on whenever they stare I am going to stare back and whenever they take pictures I am going to take pictures. I will update you all on how it plays out.

Learning about what learning is like in China

Although you certainly already know, I must mention…Obama won! The reasons why I am thoroughly ecstatic about this can be categorized into two groups. The first consists of all of the reasons why I decided to vote for him in the first place. The second is based entirely on the fact that all of sudden people of all nationalities look at Americans, such as Jason and me, in a much more positive light. All I have to say about the latter is that if there ever was a way to begin repairing the reputation of the United States it was electing Barack Obama as president.

In other news, I have been in class for a bit over a week now and I can evaluate each of the classes fairly well. Also I must make a correction I have three classed not two. They are: Grammar, Speaking, and Listening. I have listed them in descending order according to quality, which decreases drastically.

Grammar- This class is taught by a teacher that is pays attention to all of the students in the class, includes me in the speaking, answering, and repeating drills, and on the whole is a pretty good teacher. She repeats herself to ensure understanding, writes new vocabulary on the board, and even gives us time to write it down.

The only drawback to this teacher is that she speaks in an octave that is several higher than my own. This is only a problem because occasionally I get lost in trying to correctly pronounce words and their tones and when I repeat the word after her I imitate, or attempt to imitate, her octave. The rest of the students think it is hilarious. I have decided to not take it too seriously and look at it as such: at least I can make people laugh without speaking the language, or rather BECAUSE I do not speak the language.

Speaking- This class is taught by a teacher that also pays attention to all of the students to in the class, with the exception of me. She has taken it upon herself to decide that I am a problem because I am not at a level even close to the other students and therefore should be ignored. If I do say so myself, and I do, she has done very well in carrying out her decision. She did slip up on Friday when she took 30 seconds to tell me to start at the beginning of the book over the weekend. This is of course something that I may have thought of on my own. I should say that, contradictory to her overall treatment of my situation, she is quite nice and the other students think that her teaching is alright. Alright is defined in comparison to the other teachers, grammar being very good and I will get to listening next.

Listening: This class is horrible and not just because of the teacher but also because of the format of the class, which may or may not be designed by the teacher. First, I will describe the teacher. She is very loud and gets louder every time she has to repeat herself, which is often because does not ever repeat herself exactly. Instead she rephrases herself and this tactic could be helpful if the problem was that we, as the students, did not know the words that used the first time. In my case this is true, but it is not the reason why the other students did not understand. The reason why the other students cannot understand what she says is because: (I paraphrase this) the teacher speaks extremely quickly and has a very thick accent as she is from southern china and does not speak putonghua (standard Chinese) as her native language. So it is easy to understand why her method of speaking louder, in different words, and just as fast, does not help.

I mentioned before the teacher is not the only reason for the failure of the class, because the format of the class is also terrible. This class is centered only on the student listing to and understanding mandarin language. To facilitate this, the teacher has a small boom box with a cassette player in it. At this point, I will mention that the word “boom” in boom box is misleading in this case as the max volume is slightly quieter than normal speech and significantly quieter the booming voice of the teacher. The extent of this problem is emphasized by the fact that the teacher sits in the front of the room with the “boom” box pointed towards her, and therefore away from the students, to allow easy access to the play and stop buttons. This is coupled with an already poor quality cassette to add all new layers to what is meant by when the student is asked to listen and understand.

I have decided that I will not stop going to my listening class for at least a week. I have good quality recordings at home, which I will listen to on my headphones, as a substitute. When I told the other students what I was going to do and why they said they also did not understand much of anything that was on the recordings but went to class anyway. I am not sure why they still go. It could have something to do with attendance. They tried to convince me to stay, but they did not present any consequences that I did not already account for. The main one being that I would no longer have the teacher as a resource, but I do not really see this as a consequence.

Other exciting things include the possibility of a Saturday hockey league with this, extremely proud to be, Canadian fellow and maybe a few other Canadian but mostly a lot of Chinese. When we found out about hockey and told Dereck, the Canadian, we would like to play his response was something along the lines of, “That’s great eh! You know how to play, eh?” We told him that we could skate and had played street hockey, field hockey, and broomball. His response was, “That’s great eh! Most of these Chinese don’t know one end of the stick from the other eh!”

This Saturday hockey was cancelled, but hopefully next Saturday it will happen. You may have guessed that I paraphrased the above dialogue, but I did so for good reason. What his actual speech lacked in “eh’s” his actual persona (complete with Canadian, rubber, wristband) made up for.

The last bit of news has to do with the weather. Jason and I have been watching the local weather here intently and we decided two things. First, the fact that the local weathermen are awful and constantly project that eight days from any day the temperature will drop ten degrees from what it is currently. Is and continues to be the trend of the ten day forecast. Second, regardless of the incompetence of the weathermen we know:

1. It is very cold.
2. It is very, very cold at night.

And finally

3. It is only going to get colder.

The outcome of this was the decision to go coat shopping for me. I now have a coat and I will post a picture of it in a few days but for know I would like you to guess what it looks like. I will give you a few hints:

1) It cost around $50. (yes that is in dollars)

2) It has fur on it, though it is not real fur. What do you expect for $50?

3) It has two words on a rubber tag on the left sleeve. The first word starts with an ‘F’ and is seven letters long and the second word starts with an ‘L’ and is six letters long.

I will accept both written and illustrated submissions.

Class is in session!

Today I went to my first day of classes. There are two very important things to note about this. First, the teacher does not speak English and neither do the students. Second, the class has been in session for 8 weeks already. So, to say the least, I am behind.

I have class for four hours Monday through Friday. This consists of two classes. At eight I have “speaking” and at ten I have “listening”. The speaking class was alright because I could pronounce the pinion and keep up with the rest of the class, although I was not able to read very many of the characters. The only difference between the other students and me was that I had no idea what I was saying.

The listening class is taught by a different teacher who is much less jovial than the speaking teacher. The class followed the same attitude of the teacher. The entire two hours was spent listening to short sections of a cassette over and over and answering questions about what we heard. As the Korean girl next to me described it, “this class … annoying”. I agree.

I was told that there were six people enrolled in the class and there is a rumor of students not going to class here. I was surprised to see there were actually six students in the room when I arrived this morning. (I was late because when I registered, I was either not given a schedule or somehow Jason and I misplaced it. So we had to search for the room.) The class make up is as follows:
1 old woman that I have no idea what nationality
1 Russian guy who is in his mid twenties and works somewhere around here
1 Sudanese man who is here for his Ph. D in civil engineering
3 Korean girls, all in their early twenties

Also, I mentioned that I would get a picture of the dog but Jason already has several. They are here and here.

Venturing into the city

6) In most Asian countries that I have been there is a massive stray dog problem, because at one point dogs were introduced or somehow got loose. Then they found highly populated cities with lots of trash for a food source and they bred. Their existence is very similar to that of rats, but they do not try to hide. Also there are no distinguishable breeds just moderate sized mutts usually afflicted by mange or other diseases.

In China or at least in Harbin this is very different. There are many breeds of dogs and I even recognize many of them. Also these dogs are not strays. They are extremely loyal to their owners and usually follow them around unleashed. There is also a trend for these dogs to be extremely small and ridiculous. (I will take a picture of the next one that I see to illustrate my point about how ridiculous)

So this is my third day here and today Jason and I ventured into the city for the third time. The first stop was at a large shopping center that is all underground in long hallways. To be honest it resembled a shopping mall setting the only difference being that it was underground, but you would not know it from the look. The area was originally built by the Japanese as bunkers. Then we stopped in for my first taste of Chinese sausage and poked around a very expensive market for a while. We also looked around a very large clothing market that was nearby. This brings up an interesting point of contrast.

7) Harbin does not have very many street venders. Pretty much the only things that you see on the street are seasonal produce, food, and some small clothing items. There are no large outdoor markets or even streets crowded with vendors. The simplest answer that I have for this is the cold. Today it was 8C.

8) Also the streets are very rarely crowded. This is surprising being that this is a city of several million people.

After that we went to a different part of town to go back to a shop to purchase another Halloween costume for Jason’s old roommate. We also picked up some more tea because I still am not feeling quite on par. I think I have a slight cold. The tea selection is pretty great and even includes many types of flowers and dried citrus. We picked out some dried lemon today that I am excited to try. Then we headed for a snack.

We were very near to an amazing alley that we went to yesterday to eat and decided that it would be a good idea again. Yesterday we went to this alley specifically to eat and there is a good reason for it. The alley is full of all different types of food: from fresh meats and seafood (even live shrimp) to baked breads and other pastries to cooked meats of all kinds. We were shown this great find by a friend of Jason’s named Ken. The three of us picked up a random assortment of foods as we walked though. The best of which were some great fried breads and some amazing pork in a salty, chili broth.

The three of us wondered for a while longer until our smack wore off and headed for a lamb restaurant that had been recommended. It was a bit disappointing because it was kind of expensive, there was a fish wrapped in cellophane that kept twitching, and the meat was lacking because it was fat instead. The pork fat that we had earlier was amazingly flavored and in moderation, but this was too much. It was enough to go vegetarian. I know that I can make the statement that yesterday I ate more straight animal fat than I ever have before and hope to ever again.

I forgot

Also I posted a bunch of photos of my pre-china travels at this address http://flickr.com/photos/godzillainvadeschina

Be sure to look at the photo albums on the right hand side because they organize the photos.

I probably will not use it anymore but they are there for now.

I'm in China!!!

So I may or may not finish with my explanation of where I was before I left for china because now I am in china! Below you you will find out what is up so far.

So I am not going to dance around it, my trip started off a bit bumpy and it was my fault. For some reason I was set, for several weeks, that my flight out of Seattle left in the afternoon. When I checked my flight numbers one last time just after noon, to my surprise, this was not so. In reality my flight out of Seattle had left… without me… at nine that morning.

I would still be kicking myself, but it worked out. I went to the airport and, after calling the airline for my connecting flight in Vancouver I learned that it had been delayed by six hours due to weather in Russia. So I bought a flight to Vancouver and made the flight with plenty of time. Thank you freak Russian snow storms!

My flight from Vancouver to Beijing was eleven and a half hours, so it always helps if the person you sit next to is nice and willing to converse. Luckily mine was. He was named Francis was from Hong Kong but had moved to Canada in his teens. He was probably in his fifties and liked to talk. We talked about China a lot. He traveled here every two or three months for a few weeks at a time for business and has seen a lot of the country. The time flew by, pun intended, and before I knew it we were in Beijing.

We landed at 11:30pm in Beijing and everyone who had connecting flights had missed them, so the airline herded us into shuttles to take us to a hotel. I say herded because they would not tell us when our flights were the next morning and all of the actual airline desks were closed so there was no way to find out. Once arriving at the hotel, around 1:30, we were told that we needed to be back on the buses by 5 the next morning. People were not happy to hear this, so unhappy actually that I saw my first argument in Mandarin. Imagine one airline representative against fifty disgruntled airline passengers of which at least 15 have circled said airline representative and are all giving him their piece of mind at the same time. The amazing thing is that after about 5 minutes of this nothing had changed and we went to our rooms as if nothing had happened.

I shared a room with Francis, who I had met on the airplane. We had been sticking together since disembarking because we had guessed that we would have to share a room. I have to thank Francis because he argued with the desk attendants at the hotel to allow me to keep my passport on me. They had insisted that they needed to keep it at the desk while I stayed at the hotel and I knew better, but arguing with someone who you share only 20 words is rather difficult. After a minute or two of exchanging mandarin words aggressively, they made a copy of my passport and his identity card and returned them to us. Then we went up to our room and promptly went to bed with our alarm set for 4:40.

At 4:15 we got a call from the front desk. The airline attendant had told them to call everyone and tell them to get down to the lobby by 4:30 to board the buses and go back to the airport. Following Francis’ advice, we took our time and they called twice more before 4:30. We went down to the lobby at 4:45 to find that most everyone had the same idea. Then we were rushed back to the airport to wait for half an hour for the airline desks to open. Then I waited for another 2 hours for my flight at 7:30.

Since I have arrived in Harbin Jason and I have not done anything extremely exciting. I was exhausted from my lack of sleep the night before so we did some shopping and eating and low key activities.

I know that there will be an overwhelming amount of differences between China and what I am used to and for at least the first few weeks I am going to try to make of list of them.

1) Many things here are given cartoonish qualities, often related to cartoon renderings of animals but not always. For example our broom is all pink and in the cast plastic there is a smiling face that is topped with glue on eyes.

2) Pedestrians have all of the right-of-way that they want as long as they can make it across the street before the car that they just ran in front of hits them.

3) Drivers are very space aware and will test such space awareness in many ways. Such as: following other cars by inches, missing pedestrians by inches, and squeezing between cars with inches divide by two.

4) It is okay to stare. Especially if the person you are staring at is white and wears funny clothes. It is also exciting to talk to said white person. The staring will take time to get used to, but the second part is great because everyone is super friendly and more so after they learn that Jason speaks their language.

5) There is no such thing as waiting in line. If say you want to check out in the US you would hop in line after the last person. In China, there is a person at the register and who ever is at the counter gets to check out. So if get in the back of the line you are missing that there is a lot of space between you and the person at the register and it will take you a while to check out.

What I have been up to

Since moving out of my place in bellingham, I have been traveling around North America. Many of you probably know this because I probably visited you while doing so. So where exactly did I go?

First I went to Idaho. I was there for about two weeks, but I went to Colorado for a few days in the middle of my stay. I went there to see my dad, other family, and friends and say my good byes. I had a wonderful time and wish that I had more time.

The next adventure that I went on was from Seattle to Montana.. on my motorcycle. I was followed by a Subaru packed with all of my things and driven by none other than Gabriel Prestella. The trip took us two days and went off without a hitch. The bike did not even break down, though I did have a bit of vapor lock in Spokane. The only thing I would change if I had to do it again was to have more padding in my seat. I had reapoulstered it over the summer and oh man, I should not have gone for form over function. I was walking like I had been a horse for a week after two days.

Once we were in Montana Gabe and I hung around my grand parents house for a day and then headed up to glacier national park. The park was absolutely gorgeous this time of year. All of the low lieing shrubs and trees had started to suck up those nutrients and change colors. This made the hills look as if they had been smeared with pastels. It was amazing. We spent the first day mainly on th park roads because we did not arrive until the afternoon. Unfortunately the pass was closed, but we did make it up to summit of the road from the east entrance.

That night we stayed in a campground near the same entrance reading comic books and drinking beer by flashlight. While this may sound romantic, I do not suggest to drink while you are camping because there is one major side effect. Both Gabe and I had to get out of our tent in the middle of the night to use the nearest bush in near freezing temperatures. We returned to Polson, after a great hike and a short swim, the next day.

Gabe and I flew back to Seattle on Saturday and parted ways. I unpacked and repacked my things to leave on Monday for Massachussettes. I would be there for 16 days including travel on either end. I flew out in the evening and had a red eye from Seattle to New York. When I booked the flight I chose it based mainly on price, though I was not opposed to spending a night on an airplane. I did make a slight error in not paying attention to the length of my flight. I thought that it would at least be a 6 hour flight and 6 hours of sleep is not that bad. Although this is assuming that I sleep for the entire flight. As it turns out my flight was only 4 hours, which I have had shorter nights, but the real problem came to light as the last few passengers were boarding.

One of the last people to get on was a family of five: a mom, a dad, an 8 or so year old, and two twins around a year old. Immediately I knew that this was not going to be a good flight because the father of the family began demanding things as soon as he got to his seat and realized that he did not have anywhere to put any of his bags because the overhead storage was full. This is rediculous because the family could have boarded first, because of thier children, but they chose not to. I saw them as I was boarding and they were just waiting. I assumed, and was glad to see, that they were not getting ready to board my flight with thier already crying twins. So you can imagine my saddness when they did board and they did proceed to get almost the entire row directly in front of me and the father did begin to argue with the stuartis about why he did not have the right, as a father traveling with children, to force other passengers to move. After he was finally settled and the plane took off the father slept while one of the twins screamed in the seat next to him for the majority of the flight. It was as if he was intentionally ignoring his child to punish the rest of the plane. I got 15 minutes of sleep, a very small cup of water, and a bag of gluten free crackers. My flight was no longer the great price that I thought it was.

I landed in New York, where they apparently either eat at rib joints or 9 dollar smoothie places for breakfast because nothing else was open. I was not having a great trip so so far, but then I called Sam. It was 7:30 in the morning and he was set to pick me up at 10, but he had an hour drive so I thought that he was probably up. I was wrong and it was hilarious. When Sam picked up I heard the familiar foggy pronunciation of someone who had been sleeping seconds before. As soon as I heard this, I felt bad and planned to just say, "sorry sam, I thought you would have been up by now. Go back to bed and I will see you at 10." But sam, being that he had just been disturbed of his deep slumber, and this probably had something to do with sam's usual routine of sleeping until noon, did something that I did not expect. I barely got, "hey sam", out before I heard the sound of fumbling on the other end. It was no more than a few seconds before sam's awareness changed from still partially asleep to panic. See, when I said hello and started talking I never mentioned that I was in New York with another connection to go. Sam came to the conclusion that I was already in Hartford airport and that he had overslept. He was less than happy to find out that I was just calling to say hi and that he could have been sleeping for another hour and a half.

I will write more later and give a link to pictures soon.

So I made a blog

and this is it. I will try to contact everyone that I think would like to read it, but a few will probably fall through the cracks. So help me out and tell people that would care about my blog. That is all for now, but I will update more soon.