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.