The Unsinkable MB

Bowel Cleanse 2007

2007-12-12T16:00:00.000+08:00

Just the thing to celebrate the upcoming holiday season!

I get to drink a gallon of vile tasting cherry stool softener.

Mmm mmm mmm!

Can't wait to get started!

I have to drink it until the poo is clear.

Oh well.

So, tonight I will be heading down to Chicago for my surgery on Thursday and hopefully will be able to post again in a couple of weeks (don't worry, no pictures). But I will probably be pretty drugged up, so my post might not be too intelligible.

Talk to you later!

Radioactive

2007-12-03T10:49:00.000+08:00

I just got back from my CAT scan and they made me drink a bunch of nasty tasting stuff until I barfed up some, then had to drink some more to replace the barfed up part. Ick.

Then I was injected with the contrast dye.

When I was at Beloit I found out by a totally freak paralysis incident that I was allergic to CT dye. So this time I was prepared with this knowledge to combat the evil hives that resulted afterward. I took the Prednisone and the Q-Dryl to prevent the itchy bumps. But, alas, I still have hives, not as bad as before, but still there. AND I am also working on my hopefully last stomach full of vomit from the liquid nastiness they had me chug.

Will write more about details later, but right now, one more trip to the toilet and some shut eye.

Productivity

2007-11-28T22:40:00.000+08:00

Today I rolled around on the floor and cried all day because of my abdomen pains.

So, no posts for quite a long while, but this is why.

If you want to know more, tell me a joke or a story, just drop me an email or post a comment - it will be a nice distraction from the floor.

The Other Americans

2007-11-12T00:34:00.000+08:00

America is great, well, except for some of the other Americans. This is an account of the "other" kind that I don't really agree with on their trip to Tibet.

http://chad.theworldrace.org/index.asp?nMonth=3&nYear=2006

It still amazes me when I come across stuff like this.

You're Right Al Franken!

2007-11-05T14:58:00.000+08:00

I have been reading Al Franken's book, "Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right". It is a good read and brings up a lot of questions and good information. But he mentions something about Ann Coulter and the like only writing and appealing to the people who already consume their material, preaching to the choir if you will.

But is Al really doing anything all that different?

From that, I decided that I have to suck it up and read some of the writings from the hysterical right. They always say that it is good to know what the enemy is thinking. I know, I know, I shouldn't necessarily call the opposing side "enemies" but that does seem to be the terminology the current administration is comfortable with. I guess I could change it to the "evil doers", another nod to official administration lingo, and, ultimately, that might actually be more accurate because of what they are doing to systematically to bring down our nation.

I have to read Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and others. To know how they are misrepresenting facts, twisting information and lying to the masses.

My favorite example of Coulter's lying that Al highlights would be the using "any words written in a newspaper can be attributed to that newspaper" technique.

Coulter wrote in her book:

"For decades, The New York Times had allowed loose association between Nazis and Christians to be made in its pages. Statements like these were not uncommon: "Did the Nazi crimes draw on Christian tradition?" ... "the church is 'co-responsible' for the holocaust...."

Team Franken researched the bejeezus out of this book and found that the first quote was actually from a 2001 book review that was in the Times in which the reviewer was framing a question posed by the book he was reviewing. The second quote is actually a quote of a quote from a 1998 Times article called "John Paul's Jewish Dilemma." In which the author of the article is quoting a critic of the church.

Nice technique, huh?

So, how much of this is going on? Not just in published works, but on TV, radio and newspapers? How much of the nation's media does Rupert Murdoch own? How much personal, political philosophy finds its way into what we view, read, listen?

So, that is my most recent charge, to read the shrill works of the right. But I don't want to buy them in the mainstream (don't want any money going to them) so will have to look for them used and library (I guess, but wouldn't that be an embarrassing checkout history? I will have to check out the Satanic Bible and The Communist Manifesto just to balance it out).

Awhile back I saw Clerks II and there was a funny part about reclaiming a phrase that is commonly regarded as a racial slur (has to do with a tailed primate and a, ummm..."deck"). There is another word that in recent history has been made out to be a dirty word. I think we should reclaim it.

Liberal.

Okay, off to tackle my neo-con book challenge! If I don't post up for long periods of time it is probably because I am rocking myself in the corner, confused and mumbling nonsensically.

Wish you happy everyday and happy reading if you choose to take the book-con challenge with me!

Feeling crummy :(

2007-11-05T02:34:00.000+08:00

I feel like a couple of rungs below shit.

Ugh.

I have been having a lot of pain and I should go see a doctor. I won't go into specifics but it seems like my body is turning against me and is attacking me from the inside. Sometimes my body wages a sudden battle when I am out and doing stuff and there is so much action that I have to just retreat to my home and rest.

They also like to stage skirmishes at night, so my sleep has come under attack as well. And lately for some reason they really rise and revolt whenever I eat barbecue sauce.

It sucks.

Shame on you Denzel Washington!

2007-11-05T01:45:00.000+08:00

I went to see American Gangster last Friday and it was okay. I think I was expecting something more dynamic, but it was still a decent enough flick to hold my attention for about 3 hours. Kinda weird to critique someone's life though - "Hey Frank, your life was at times a little slow paced for me."

Ah well.

But the main thing that I took away from the movie was, "look what happens when you turn chinchillas into coats! Look at the whole downfall of your heroin empire because someone supported the slaughter of 100 or so chinchillas. You deserve it schmuck!" Yes, I taunted a movie. But seriously, who could kill sweet little chinchillas?

Yep, that's what I got out of the movie.

Good job Hollywood.

Going Retro!

2007-11-04T21:22:00.000+08:00

- insert your favorite retro tune here -

Retroactive that is!

I need, need, need to catch up on my pile of posts so when I make an update I will post an announcement here with the title so you can find it! I will also pair it with one of my favorite retro songs just for my own personal amusement (note: sometimes the song will have nothing to do with post, or really be retro, but hey, it's my blog). Happy reading!

**************************************
4 November 2007 - Original Post date: 13 September 2007, Title: Chinchilla Fun Song: Welcome to the Jungle

4 November 2007 - Original Post date: 21 October 2007, Title: Happy Birthday? Song: What's My Age Again?

30 October 2007 - Original Post date: 12 September 2007, Title: China Moments Song: What I am (Edie Brickell)

30 October 2007 - Original Post date: 19 September 2007, Title: Stealth Chinese Song: The Peter Gunn Theme

30 October 2007 - Original Post date: 2 October 2007, Title: The World's Biggest Tea Party Song: None it has its own sound track, check it out! This isn't a China post, but something that I had started in MN, but never posted up because of laziness.

30 August 2007 - Original post date: 21 July 2007, Title: Staring at err... Celebrating Diversity Song: Like a Rolling Stone

30 August 2007 - Original post date: 21 July 2007, Title: Deja Vu Song: Take Me Home, Country Roads

17 August 2007 - Original post date: 20 July 2007, Title: Q: What has 2 wings, 4 engines and 400+ happy people? Song: Here I go Again (gotta whip out the Whitesnake!)

16 August 2007 - Original post date: 20 July 2007, Title: Leaving on a Jet Plane. Song: Leaving on a Jet Plane (duh).

BOO!!!

2007-10-31T10:32:00.000+08:00

It's Halloween and all I have to say is:

Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag! Wonka Bag!

Now, I don't expect all of you to understand the sheer beauty of the Wonka Bag, in fact there may only be one other person out there that shares the full tilt Wonka passion with me.

Nothing special to share today. Just Happy Halloween and eat lots of candy!

Chinchilla Paging

2007-10-29T06:17:00.000+08:00

Last night my chinchillas paged me.

They aren't the most vocal of creatures, but they do have little sounds that they occasionally make. One of the sounds that I hear every now and then is for companionship. It is a little chirpy/chugging kind of sound. Usually when I hear it, it means that they want something.

When I was in MN, they would make this little sound and I would go in to check on them and pat them on their little heads. Happy chinchillas. Sometimes they just want treats and will make their little noise until they get their greedy little hands on a cube of papaya or alfalfa ring.

I usually check on them before I go to sleep. But the other night I neglected to do so. So I had just settled in to go to sleep when I hear their the call. I thought that they would stop. Nope. Chugging, chugging, chugging. They are both calling. Finally, I get up and check to see what they want. It seems that they just wanted to play. I let them poke their head out of the door and scratched behind their ears and closed them back up for the night. Back in bed and time to go to sleep.

Apparently not quite satisfied with the little chinnie massage they both start to chirp again and once again they just won't stop. I get back up and go into their room. They are both waiting for me by their cage door. I go in and try to give them a bribe. No go. They weren't interested in treats. They just want to play or something. So, we played a little chase game they like and I went back to bed. 10 minutes later they both start chugging again. This time they also wake Matt up. They normally don't make so much noise. So, again I went into their room and they were back at their door eager for my to play with them. This time I just decided to sleep on the floor next to their cage to quiet them down for the night. So, I curled up on the floor and listened to them bubble and coo for a little bit before I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I woke to find both of my little girls fast asleep right next to me on the floor of their cage. I guess they were just lonely.

Happy Birthday?

2007-10-21T14:10:00.000+08:00

So today is my birthday.

31. Meh.

I guess the big difference between 30 and 31 is that now I am officially IN my thirties rather than just hanging onto the 29/30 cusp.

Old?

Not really. Always will be people older and younger.

I didn't do much for my birthday, I just wasn't feeling up to it. We went to Madison and enjoyed the Farmer's Market - I got the last box of pumpkin squares, I grabbed them just out of some college kid's lazy reach. HA! Take that youngin'! Not quick enough to take my p-squares away from me! Looks like my China grabbin skillz are still up to snuff. Oh, and I felt entitled to them because I was coming from out of town, and, well shit, it was my birthday. I dunno, but if it came down to it, I might have pulled an episode like the bacon in China. Maybe. I'm about 60% sure I would have done something to wind up with the goodies.

Other farmers market treats we indulged in - spicy cheese bread and an almond bear claw. Yum! For lunch we went to Kabul, which is a long standing Beloit favorite. I remember making the trip up to Madison by Van Galder bus and later on in the comfort of private transport, just to get a nice bowl of the Mashawa soup and bread. I got my good ol' standby, the curry chicken and it was delicious!

After the Madison fun we headed back to Racine. I ended my birthday with a pumpkin shake from Culvers. Man, October is just the best month for so many reasons! Pumpmkin delights everywhere, cranberry treats and pecans. Mmmm!

Anyhow, thanks for all of the birthday wishes!

At least I am still immature.

Sorry this post is so vanilla. It should be pumpkin flavored.

Dracunculus Medinensis

2007-10-07T23:12:00.000+08:00

Nothing too exciting to report. I have been trying to catch up on my email that I let get way out of control. I found messages from July that I had not responded to - yikes!

Anyhow, I am getting ready to skip town again to my new home and I will finally be able to stop living out of my suitcase and cardboard boxes. Geez, I have been a little hoboish, but y'know, the kind of hobo that has a roof over his or her head and cable TV. Oh, and I haven't had to eat beans out of a can - yet.

I was going to work on some posts, but got distracted by the unreasonable size of my inbox. I have too much writing to do and no attention span to do it. Oh well, eventually I will get all of it done - I have some fun posts to put up...some day....

The post name?

Has nothing to do with anything. It is my favorite parasite. I had to study and research it in college. And no, for those of you who know me really well, I have never had this parasite. It is a little questionable what I might have swimming around in my system now as not all is right in the world, if the world is my mid-section, that is.

So, that's all for now, but I will be adding and posting when I can. Oh, and my flickr pro account expired :( So all of my nifty groups and whatnot are gone, but they will come back when I renew. But renewing my subscription, unfortunately, is not one of the $$$ priorities at the moment. I do have some photos to load, but now I have a small monthly limit, so that will be slow going until I renew.

So that is about it for the updates for now. Keep checking back!

The World's Biggest Tea Party

2007-10-02T14:24:00.001+08:00

I think this is one of the more creepy and ridiculous things that I have seen in a really long time - and that's from someone who is just back from China! I was watching some vapid television program and completely spacing out the surrounding world when this little gem popped up on the screen.

"The World's Biggest Tea Party"

I couldn't believe that I was actually seeing this, this, this...thing on TV! Who would actually think that My Little Pony would represent well on stage? Who's brainchild was this? They have international shows - does My Little Pony translate well? and, my most important question, WHY???

I didn't really, really believe that this was true, so I did what any responsible, inquiring person would do. I went online. True. There is a stage production of My Little Pony. AND they have a preview video! 1:18 minute long gem of a video clip of singing and dancing ponies. I think everyone should check it out - http://www.mylittleponylive.net/default.asp Yes, speechless would be the words to describe how this Hasbro production left me.

I do truly believe that the best way to watch this would be in the same way that many young adults watch the Teletubbies. Still, I don't know what is scarier that baby sun thing or these dancing and singing ponies. Hmmm...okay, I still think the baby sun thing is still far creepier, but dancing ponies, in my opinion, isn't too far removed from the creepy children's programming awards.

Then I noticed that it had suddenly gotten very quiet in the room. I looked over to the TV set. Apparently, the TV was in as much shock as I was in because it completely froze up on the ad for the Tea Party leaving its overly pink picture burned into the forefront of my memory.

That station remained frozen on that image for the rest of the night. Apparently too terrified to change.

Stealth Chinese

2007-09-13T14:58:00.000+08:00

Being back from China has had some interesting moments. It's not like I feel a certain camaraderie towards Chinese people I happen to meet here in the Cities. BUT I can understand some of the things that they say.

MWAHAHAHAHA!!!

I have had just a few run-ins with the language but the best one so far was when I was in a dressing room. A Chinese woman went into the stall next to me. Her son peeked under the door and waved hello to me before his mom swiftly pulled him up. A few moments later the little boy wanted to go, so he started to whine, "Zou! Mama wo yao zou! Zou! Zou!" or "Go! Mom I want to go! Go! Go!"

I think the general tone of this request coming from the under 8 crew always sounds the same no matter the language. It was really funny to me. I started to laugh from my little room. Then the little boy poked his head under again and laughed to. He pointed at me and said, "A Chinese!" I corrected him and told him that I was Korean, which he then asked what a Korean was.

After everyone was dressed, I got to meet his mother and we talked in Chinglish for a little bit and I told her that I had recently come back from China. She was originally from the southern part of China and came over because her husband was working over here. Anyhow, it was fun to eavesdrop in on another conversation in a foreign language. Now, I know that my Chinese skillz are not very good at all, but it is interesting to overhear little snippets of conversation and see what the "foreigners" are thinking about the little bit of world that I now occupy once again.

Chinchilla Fun

2007-09-13T14:51:00.001+08:00

Today my mom brought home a little pet harness and leash for small animals. I had been wanting to try it on Deva, one of my little chinchillas. Now, many of you have never met Deva, but she is just about the tamest chinchilla ever. I can just kinda push her over and pet her belly. Easy mark. So operation, "Walk the chinchilla" was beginning to take shape.

Task One: Get Chinchilla Out of Cage. This was pretty easy as she is almost too trusting and can easily be tempted by a raisin. So chinchilla out and ready to proceed with Task two.

Task Two: Put Harness on Chinchilla. This isn't as easy as one might think. You have a little creature who looks a lot chubbier than she actually is and that can shed her fur at will and (the most obvious part of the operation) does not want said harness put on her. So my little Deva squirms and squirms, gets the strap in her mouth so she can slip it through. Puts her arms out in a strange position so it is impossible to line up the straps. Ugh. Worse that a toddler getting ready for bed. But the end of everything I was wearing about a chinchillas worth of fur and I had a very pissed off little ball of chinchilla fury.

Task Three: Attach leash. Deva tried to make a break for it with the harness on before I could attach the leash. She wound up just jumping and flipping on the bed wrestling with the harness. I got the leash on on put her on the floor. Squirt! She popped right out of the harness and ran under the bed.

Task Four: Lure chinchilla out with piece of papaya and repeat task two.

Success!?! She HATED the whole thing and while on the leash would just flip around and circle her tail trying to figure out what was happening. I know she didn't like it, but it was still really funny. Laughing at the misery of others, ah, good times.

I don't think that it help that (I think) she knew she looked utterly stupid. Once back on the bed she struggled with the harness and flipped and flipped until she just decided to lay there, dejected until I took the harness off.

Oh well. I was good for a laugh and now I know what to do when she's naughty 'cause she was starting to have fun with her old chinnie punishment.

Eventually I'll put up a picture. Eventually.

Filling my head with crap

2007-09-13T01:50:00.000+08:00

Yes, yes, that is what I have been doing since getting back to the US. I have been systematically and ruthlessly filling my head with crap. Maybe it is because I need to catch up on 2 years of stupid TV pop culture crap, maybe it is because all of the channels (except for one) are in English, maybe it is because everything is new, or maybe it is because I just have to see who Bret Michaels picks in the end of his reality show. I dunno. I can't stop watching.

I was watching CSI: Miami the other day and my dad asked me if it was a re-run. I just had to laugh a little as I would really have no idea if it was or not. Everything is new to me. The crap is fun for now and I have been finding some good stuff!

I do have some favorites - I loooove the Food Network! Unwrapped is great and I just finished watching the last installment of Feasting on Asphalt 2 - The River Run (motorcycle trip up the Mississippi River and stopping to enjoy the local cuisine along the way). Also I can't get enough of LA and Miami Ink! Other than that I have been just watching the marathons of CSI, Law and Order, and The Sopranos. Good to know that I have been using my time at home productively.

Between episodes of the Dog Whisperer, I have managed to get some things done like look for apartments, jobs, cars and such. I have also been sorting through a bunch of my old stuff and the oodles of boxes that have been coming from China. So far, nothing too broken! It is fun to go through all of the China stuff - a lot of, "I remember bargaining for that!" nostalgia.

Hmmm...what else do I do...I do some surveys online and get $$$ and gift cards for doing so, win stuff, etc. I like winning stuff. I think I will try to do it more often. This may seems like an unusual if not impractical goal to have, but for me, it actually makes a little sense. I win stuff. I just do.

Every now and then I will email, but haven't been too good at that lately. I went out to see a couple of cars and met the most apathetic used car salesman ever. It was almost comical. It almost seemed as though he was trying not to sell a car. ANYHOW, still no car. Don't know if I will get one before I move again, but I am looking for 1999 or newer, under 80,000 miles, 4 door, manual or automatic car. Pretty broad requirements, but it would be nice if it wasn't too big and sorta cute.

Sometimes I read. Not a lot, but sometimes.

I hang out with my mom. She's cool.

I had another toe stubbing day recently - same little left toes as in China, and still hurts like a !?%#*

I keep on telling you to hold on for more posts, but have only been working on them half-heartedly. I just haven't been in the writing mood lately. I have some more pictures to post up too - the last batches from China. But I need to renew my Flickr subscription, maybe after we have a little more money....

Anyhow, that's about it. I have some other recent events to write about, but mostly I have been filling my belly with cheese popcorn and my head with guilty pleasures. So all in all I would have to say that I am now full of crap :)

I Suck.

2007-09-12T23:00:00.000+08:00

It's true.

I haven't been working on my posts at all.

AND I haven't been answering any email.

I don't have any good reason, I just don't feel like doing anything. I'm just lazy. Absolutely, positively lazy.

Wanna get me on the phone? Chances are I won't pick it up. If you leave a message there is a pretty good chance I won't call back.

Wanna email me? I might read it, but no guarantee. Will I write back? From the way things are going and the current size of my inbox, I would answer that with a big N-O.

Wanna try to IM with me? Good luck I might be on, but you can't see me.

Wanna invite me to be your friend for a social networking type of thing? Keep sending me those invites and MAYBE I'll get around to it, but not until at least two of the invite time frames expire.

Hmmm...sounds pretty anti-social, doesn't it. Not like, the clinical anti-social disorder kind of anti-social (eek), but a little more like the self-imposed isolation kind.

I'll try harder.

But first I have some serious corner time to think about what I have done (or in my case, what I haven't done).

China Moments

2007-09-12T15:01:00.000+08:00

Like "Senior Moments" but, like with China.

So the adjustment is going very well. I am having fun being back and having the opportunity to hang out with my parents again. But I thought that some of you would like to hear about some of my China moments - well the top three, the rest would bore me by telling you.

1. Toilets. Y'can't smell the public ones from down the hall. There is paper in every stall, each stall has its own door, and you can sit down. I must confess, I still sometimes throw my used paper in the garbage can rather than flush it down. I do have to say though that I LOVE going to the bathroom without an audience. Not that I really had a huge problem with it (at least later on in China) but I still prefer doing my business without one.

2. Chinese and Chinglish. I did spend most of my time in China speaking English, but I didn't know how much I got accustomed to saying certain things in Chinese. And now when I need to ask or say the English equivalent, the Chinese comes out first. Usually it has to do with asking for something, asking where something is, asking what something is and asking what the price is of something. But there are other things too, but I won't go in to all of the excruciating details of all of that.

3. English. I often find myself not listening to the English being spoken at me. It is just too fast sometimes, so I just glaze over and not really listen to anything of what is being said. I also find myself speaking really, really slow and often using very simple English. Sometimes in public, I think that other people may think that I am a foreigner because my English is, at times, so strange, slow and simple. Either that or a little retarded. Sorry, but it's true.

Car Sick :P

2007-09-03T13:59:00.000+08:00

Ugh. I am tired of looking for cars. Why can't someone just give me a rad car? There is just too much to consider. Ack!

So, to all of you out there, do you have any car advice for me?

The Tale of the Least Offensive

2007-08-27T03:42:00.000+08:00

This past weekend I hit the road on the Greyhound bus. It was interesting. The first leg of the trip brought me to La Crosse, WI. It was an okay ride, hardly any people on the bus so we could all spread out and not have to look at each other once. We stopped off in Winona for our little break and I got myself an excellent Bloedow's doughnut at the Sinclair station. Winona has the most Sinclair stations that I have ever seen in a smaller city!

Anyhow, I met Matt in La Crosse and we drove around the city for a little bit to see if it would be a place where we would like to live and then set off for Madison. Madison was great! It was really nice to visit our former home. I got a great deal off of Priceline for a hotel room and the first official stop on the Madison tour was indeed the most important, Casa de Lara.

Casa de Lara...oh so good! It was delicious as usual and did not disappoint. I had my usual, the especial burrito, washed down with an Horchata and Matt delighted in his Nopalito con Queso. Everything tasted sooo good - god we missed that food. We were able to find an acceptable Mexican substitute while we were in China, but nothing even remotely comparable to Casa de Lara in Madison. I have a feeling that we will always go back to Madison for a little treat from the house of Lara.

On Thursday we made the rounds. We visited my Beloit pals Ben and Josh at their awesome store, Civitas (Ki-vee-tas) and went down for a little peek at State Street and also stopped in at Matt's former office. Later I went to visit The Guild. I loved working there and they were great to see again! There have been many changes to the office since I left, but it is good to see that the company has grown and nice to see the people who helped make my time there so wonderful! Unfortunately I was not able to visit my couple of Sand County pals, but I will just have to come back to see them (and get a little Mexican food magic).

After the Madison fun we headed out to Kenosha. Kenosha. Ummm... Let's just say it wasn't for me. Or for Matt. It seemed quite run down and there was at least 1 or 2 houses for sale on just about every block. The cheap hotel that we stayed at was a smelly dive. We were in a "cottage" aka "cement cell". The check in woman made me feel uncomfortable with her painted on smile and vacant eyes. I don't know if any of you have seen the horror flick, "Vacancy", but it kinda gave off that kind of vibe to me. Like at any second, someone would pop out of the bathroom and kill us. The room smelled, the a/c was right above my head on the bed and the drain in the sink burped up a spider. Groovy.

We drove around the town quite a bit to find that with every block we explored, the city did not really get any better to us. The downtown was really run down and on the fringe of the city were the basic grocery and national chain sort of stores. But nothing really charming or interesting about the city - except for one thing, Frank's Diner, which was featured on the Food Network and I will talk about a little later.

So after knocking myself out for the night with anti-histamine (if I was going to be killed by the creepy check-in woman at least I wouldn't really know...), we went into town for Matt's interview. I hit the streets for about an hour. I quickly ran out of things to look at. There is a nice looking city museum and a new Upper Midwest Civil War museum (will open in 2008), but nothing really fun downtown. A lot of closed store fronts and particle board windows. I wound up just sipping a latte at a cafe right across the street from Matt's interview.

After the interview Matt and I went to one of the treasures of this city, Frank's Diner. It was excellent! My burger was gi-normous and tasty! I got a most excellent 1/2 pound, blue cheese and bacon in the middle, grill perfect burger. Mmmm-mmm-mmm! If I had my camera I would have taken a picture of it (I mean, why only take pictures of foreign food?). I couldn't finish all of it, but I knew I could count on Matt to step up to the plate and over eat for me.

After a filling lunch (Frank's is known for something called "the garbage plate") we decided to drive around the surrounding areas to see if there was a more appealing place for the two of us. We really liked Racine. It's no Madison, but it was a nice looking place and had some charm to the city, it's livable and close to Milwaukee.

After we wasted as much time as we possibly could driving around the Racine area, we headed up to Germantown to visit another Beloit friend. After we exhausted the entertainment possibilities there, we just decided to wait for her in the parking lot of her condo. It was so great to catch up with her again! We hadn't seen each other for about 4 years because she was still abroad when we were leaving for China. Anyhow, she took us out to dinner since Matt and I are poor and we had a good time catching up.

Anyhow, the next day we all got up bright and early and set out for Starbucks, where she moonlights as a barista and she gave me the hook up with a little taste sneak peek of the pumpkin spice latte (my favorite). Then Matt and I headed back to Madison to go to the Farmers Market. We had fun walking around the square again and got almost all of our favorite treats - spicy cheese empanadas, whoohoo!

Then it was time for me to catch my bus back to the cities. The bus was coming up from Chicago, so a lot of the bus was fairly full. I was lucky though, I was the last person to get a solo seat, meaning I had no seat partner. Now I hadn't really ridden the bus for a long time since my Beloit days, so I had long forgotten the rule of not mixing races when choosing to partner up in a seat and, of course the rule of the least offensive.

You can see the rules go into action the moment that solo seat riding has been ruled out as an option, then everyone in a seat avoids eye contact (lest it be mistaken as a friendly invite to seat share) and the one seeking a seat starts to walk down the long row at a steady pace (as to not seem desperate) and sizes up his or her options. "Who can I tolerate sitting next to for the next X hours?" Tolerate. As the seat less wanderer makes his or her way down the aisle they have the power - the power to take away a cushy ride on the bus from someone. So people will put a bag up on the seat, pretend to be asleep, make themselves seem really large, burp/fart, etc. Anything they can do to avoid the question.

"Is anybody sitting here?"

Once that question is asked there is no right of refusal, all one can do is wince out a smile and say, "Oh, no" as you try to shove yourself as close to the window (or aisle) as humanly possible so not to risk *gasp* touching each other (shrieks in horror).

Quite an amazing process!

I had forgotten about the rules completely. I was too busy rejoicing in my luck on being the last single seated person and was just in the process of looking up at the last of the seat less wanderers when I made eye contact (dammit). As soon as that happened he coasted on over and asked the question. I had no other choice but to coax out a smile and respond, "Oh, no" and

I was the least offensive and

I got a seat partner.

Troubled Bridge Over Water

2007-08-16T10:31:00.000+08:00

Yes, I mean it like that.

I am apologizing to all of you who have written to me expressing concern about the recent bridge collapse in the past weeks because...I never wrote back to you.

Um. Sorry 'bout that. I didn't mean to worry you all.

I am fine and wasn't anywhere near the site when it happened. My family is also fine.

Thank you all for your concern and I promise that I will be more expeditious with my email replies when I am in the vicinity of another disaster.

More blog stuff on the way - I promise and apologize for my uber-slacking!

Catch Up

2007-07-26T20:56:00.000+08:00

I owe you a ton of posts! I will be gradually chipping away at all of the posts that I have drafts of or that I just haven't bothered to write down yet. I fully blame China, not my own laziness....

Yeah, um...

It is true though that I haven't been able to really access my blog in China since I got back from Guyuan and the remote posting by email was just not working either. So I did try to post. A little.

I am back in the US and not quite sure about being back yet. It is different and a little scary. But I will of course tell you all about it later :)

Just hang on for a little while longer and I will have oodles of posts for you all to enjoy! I will put an anouncement up if I post-date some of the entries.

Talk to you later!

WDCD?

2007-07-22T10:18:00.000+08:00

Cheney to be in charge during Bush colonoscopy

* Story Highlights
* President Bush will have a routine colonoscopy Saturday
* While he's anesthetized, his powers will be transferred to the vice president
* Bush had last colonoscopy in 2002, which found no problems

So my question is with these presidential powers...

What Did Cheney Do?

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Staring at...err...Celebrating Diversity

2007-07-21T21:00:00.000+08:00

WHEW!

Back in the good ol' US of A, finally!

My Molly Brown crew helped me lug my bags onto my cart and we all headed to immigration. I got a nice, "welcome home!" from the official and got waved through by customs (whew!). Then came the next task - finding and re-checking in for my flight to Minnesota. I had a concern, if I would have to pay the overweight charge again as it was a new airline. I mentioned this to one of my plane friends, and he said to just tell them the story and they would let get away with it.

So, I get to my new airline ticketing line and it is finally my turn. I pull all of my stuff onto the scale only to hear from my fabulously flamy ticketing agent, "Sweetheart, your bag is overweight and I will have to charge you..." I exhaled (I was holding my breath!) and before I took my next breath in I heard from the line, "She was a volunteer in China for the past 2 years! Let her through!" and "She hasn't been home for 2 years and was on that delayed flight out of Beijing - let her through!" The agent just smiled and passed my bags on through. Before he gave me my ticket, he grabbed my hands and said, "You're almost home honey! Just a little longer, hang in there!" then took my hand and walked me out to the door leading to security and the concourses. Thank you crew and ticketing agent!

My initial impressions upon coming back were how big the people were. I had become used to being "the big one" but now I look absolutely tiny in comparison! Also, I admit, I was staring at the black people. Not just glancing, but full on staring. I would catch myself time and time again, but I just couldn't stop. Jesus. I can't go out in public until I can learn to stop it. I mean, I can at least squint and pretend that the Mexicans are Chinese. But black people, wow! Fascinating.

Security check. My first in-country flight and I get randomly selected to go through the special security screening. The man scribbled yellow highlighter all over my boarding pass and wouldn't give it back to me until I was finished with the screening. Ugh. The person conducting my special screening was a big black dude named Tyrone. When I gave him my ticket he gasps and bellowed out, "What did you do?!?!?" then burst out laughing. We had a little time to kill between me and the person in the security quarantine area so he filled me in on all of the airport security stuff since I had left the US - I got another refresher on the new carry-on liquids allowance. Finally my turn - shoes off, computer out, jacket off, arms spread, blah, blah, blah. I got the wand treatment from the female screener on duty and then had to open my stuff for swabbing. Finally I got my now bright yellow ticket back and was waved to an area to put all my stuff back together.

I had forgotten that O'Hare is actually just a huge shopping mall with airplanes. So I looked around, got a doughnut and bagel (extra cream cheese from the bagel guy because he was nice). I also had completely forgotten about sales tax, so both times I had my money all ready to pay and, whoops, surprise! Tax. I bet people thought that I was a foreigner, looking all around, staring at black people, speaking English a little too slowly for a native speaker, smiling at everyone, y'know.

Anyhow, I made way to my gate and had the misfortune of over hearing a conversation about why Snakes on a Plane was not a realistic situation. It was then that I had my first "it really sucks to be able to understand everything" moment.

Finally it was time for my final leg of my journey home. My last flight - a mere hour until I would be back home. One more hour after the 45 some odd hours it took me to get back to the US.

Home.

I got into the Minneapolis airport at night and walked down the concourse toward baggage claim - I saw an i-pod vending machine! And when I got to the baggage carousel, there were my parents to welcome me back home, complete with cheddar cheese goldfish crackers and Diet Dr. Pepper. Ahhhh...so good to finally be home!

Deja Vu

2007-07-21T14:55:00.000+08:00

Have you ever had one of those days where you felt like you have already lived it before? Well I had one of those days, except, unfortunately I HAD lived it before. But there were some subtle differences like:

I was able to get my sweaty paws on the new Harry Potter book before it was released in the United States.

Everybody on my plane arrived at the airport at the same time.

400+ people got to cut in front of the line.

Everyone was slightly punchy and a little smelly.

Ahhh, my do it all over again day, Leaving China part deux. It went really smoothly! The airline did everything it could to make it as easy as possible for us to try it again. They paid for our hotel and transportation, gave us food vouchers and upon arrival at the check-in counter, they gave us each a "Friendship Package" - in other words, "My bad. Fill this out and we'll give you a free ticket so you don't hate us too much." All went good at the re-check in, they had to book me on a different airline for my trip from Chicago back to the Twin Cities, then we get to go through immigration and security AGAIN! Argh! The most tedious line waiting time of them all. I don't know how many times I had to listen to the new regulations regarding liquids you plan on carrying on the airplane.

This time I was stopped by security - do I have any liquids. No. Am I sure? Yes. Are I sure that I don't have any liquids? Ummm, wait!!! I pulled out my contact case that had the most miniscule amount of saline left in them. She looked at me and gave me the international "are you serious?" look and waved me through.

Right.

Next - computer out, pockets empty, walk though the arch. Done. At least in China I didn't have to take off my shoes. Then I found myself with some time to kill. Hmmm...I had spent all of my money the day before so I decided to try to see about spending my food vouchers. Hello Starbucks!

Okay, so blah, blah, blah, wasting time in the airport. Blah, blah, blah, reading Harry Potter. Blah, blah, blah, talking to some of the people on my plane to make sure we were all in the right place. Well eventually we all shared why we were in China. So I told my warm and fuzzy, I'm a volunteer exclaimation point story. After hearing that I hadn't been home in two years, they officially started the "Let's get The Unsinkable Molly Brown Home" club. Which didn't really have any actual benefits besides being able to cut in line and extra cake at meal times, but it was all good. I amused them with my tales about my time in China and they fed me cake. I think it was an equal trade off.

Right before we took off I overheard one of the air hostesses talking about the engine failure she said, "Yeah, I think they should just retire the 747. I mean, pieces of the planes are just falling off all of the time." -uncomfortable silence- "I mean, not this plane, this one has been checked over, but you know what I mean." Awesome. "Pieces of the planes are just falling off all of the time." What a nice little tidbit right before we take off.

When we took off there was a nice cheer as we took to the skies, again. I was happy that most of the people on the flight were pretty well humored about the situation and in a way it made us a more jovial bunch. We weren't holding hands and singing our faves from the Sound of Music or anything, it was just more friendly feeling. It was fun.

Q: What has 2 wings, 4 engines and 400+ happy people?

2007-07-20T23:59:00.000+08:00

A: Not my 747!

Subtitle Choices:

Leaving China was so much fun, I thought that I would try it again!

OR

Oh, so that is what jet fuel looks like!

OR

I heart customs and immigration

The choice is up to you, my friends :)

Yup, I am back in Beijing, I guess just couldn't stay away!

So, I got to the airport okay, said goodbye to my students, got flooded with sweet goodbye text messages, got all checked in, paid my overweight bag charge (eek), went through the absolute joy that is know as immigration and finished spending my remaining kuai at the airport. Everything was going really smoothly! Like butter.

We all boarded and left basically on time. I was feeling really lucky as my row was one of only two which didn't not have the middle seat booked. So my row mate and I were able to spread out a little more and celebrated our "we have a little more airplane seat freedom" with a Trident gum toast. We took off and were on our way cruising through the sky at dusk. It was beautiful! We went over some mountains that looked all purple and misty, hard to describe just how enchanting it looked.

We were about 2 hours out of Beijing and I was just finishing up saying my mental goodbyes to the country that had been my home for the past two years and to the people who I have gotten to know and love when I was interrupted by the overly spastic dinging of the seat belt bell to get everyone back into their seats.

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING!!!

-Crackle-

"Hello this is the captain. I am very disappointed to inform all of you that one of our engines has stopped working. I assure you that our other three engines are perfectly functional and we could definitely make the flight back to Chicago safely, but the responsible thing to do is to head back to Beijing and try it again. I apologize for all of this inconvenience and I am very disappointed that we will not be able to make the trip, but this is the most responsible thing to do. Please stick close to your seat and we will keep you updated as best and as often as we can. Thank you for your understanding and patience."

What?!? Engine out? Going back to Beijing?

Just them we get another announcement, that our plane will be diverted to a fuel dumping zone before we are able to land. Oh my god! I have never seen anything like it. When we were in the dumping zone over the mountains, there was some sort of spout-like thing on each wing that was opened and jet fuel just came streaming out. my seat was just behind the wing, so I got a really good view of all the exciting action. Well, exciting for about the first ten minutes of the 2+ hour dump time. We circled and circled the dumping area, getting rid of the fuel for the 12 hour flight. Then we head back to Beijing and circle around some more so they could clear a time for us to land. But we were served our meals, so I got to nosh on my specially prepared vegetarian meal while cruising over the mountains at sunset, dumping jet fuel. Awesome.

We land and then we wait.

and wait.

and wait.

and wait.

and wait, but this time without any air circulation.

As we wait, a team of mechanics rush out to the broken engine and immediately start to pull it apart. It just happen to be the engine right in front of me. Stinkin' defective engine.

Eventually, some people come around to get our information and give us vouchers for transportation, hotel and food. Then we get to exit the plane, but no slide :( and on to the super sexy transport buses back to the airport. Then, more waiting.

We officially have to reenter the country, so we get to go through immigration again, but this time in reverse. They had one desk open for us in the immigration area and got to get a special little light blue "Cancelled" stamp on the still fresh departure stamp.

Then, once again more waiting.

Now is the time we get on the buses to the hotel. All in all they did a great job with all of the last minute arrangements they had to make. I finally got all checked in my new room at 11 PM. I texted some kids I had promised to write to as soon as I got home and then was flooded once again with "what happened" messages. One of the good things to come out from the delay was that I was able to find the tastiest fried noodles I had ever eaten!

So, after some phone calls and such I went to bed and prepared for the same adventure the next day.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2007-07-20T10:45:00.000+08:00

All my bags are packed
I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin'
It's early morn
The taxis waitin'
He's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome
I could die

...ahhh, John Denver. Nothing like a good John Denver song. I can't even begin to tell you how much classroom cred has been gained by belting out Country Roads in my classrooms!

So, I am leaving today!

I can't believe that it is finally time to go. Not exactly like, FINALLY! or even finally more like finally? As much as I have bitched and moaned about my time here (which all of you have been able to read about), it has also been filled with wonderful experiences (of which, I have managed to post a few). I can't believe that it is already time to go home. It is sad. I have been running through a bunch of emotions over the past weeks - everything from "Holy shit! I'm going home! Whoo-hoo!" to "Holy shit! I'm going home?" (proceeds to chew finger nails down to the knuckle).

Sad. Yeah sad. Go figure.

I didn't really expect to feel so sad. I mean, yeah, oh course it is sad to leave something that was my life for the past two years, but I just wasn't expecting to feel like part of me was really connected to all of the craziness that was my China. It is a little sad that this particular adventure is coming to an end. I will really miss my students, or at least the vast majority of them. They were truly the highlight of my time over here and made the experience so worth it to me. I have been able to meet so many wonderful, dynamic people over here, I am so lucky.

Excited.

Of course! I have been away from home for the past two years. And as much as I would have liked US life to cease to a halt while I was away, it hasn't. My friends, family and friends of the family have had marriages, kids, birthdays and other life things that I wasn't around for and wasn't able to be a part of. Oh, and to finally see my two little awesome chinchillas! It will be nice to be able to see everyone again and escape with my best girlfriends for a little long overdue fun!

Nervous and Scared.

I should add, "as hell" to the end of that. Starting over is always scary change is also a little scary. We will be coming back home basically destitute. No money, jobs or home. Geez, I'm feeling like a Bob Dylan song. What will happen next? It's a mystery. I know that this is also an exciting time too, but also scary. If anyone of you readers has an awesome job for me, I'm all ears :)

There is so much more that I just don't know how to express. And not all of that is due to the gradual vocab dumbening due to teaching oral English for the past 2 years. Going back to real English will be a little challenging as Chinglish has infiltrated my day to day vocabulary.

I have so many questions about what will come.

I am really glad that I did this. I will never regret giving up the time to go out and have this type of experience. And if I had the choice to do it all over again, I definitely would in a heart beat.

So...

I'm sure I will have more reflective time once I get back home. And I will post all of my moments both stupid and pretentious. But I have some students coming over to help me get to the airport on time with all of my stuff. Hey, I have been here for two years, I have a lot of stuff.

Wish me luck!

But, I'm leavin' on a jet plane
Don't know when I'll be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go

Go Go Guyuan!

2007-06-19T18:46:00.000+08:00

Going back to Guyuan to visit the kiddies! I can't wait! SOOOOOO excited to see them!

Oh yeah, we'll also see Allister too. :)

So Thursday after my classes we are going to head out and then I get to see my kids! I'm so excited! Hopefully everything will go okay - we'll be getting in around 4:30 in the afternoon and need to try to catch the last bus out to Guyuan. If things all go okay, we should be getting in sometime around 9 or 10 at night.

Can't wait! Can't wait! Can't wait!

All Atwitter

2007-06-19T17:53:00.000+08:00

Arriving and getting to Guyuan went without a hitch, thanks to an old woman at the bus station in Yinchuan. We arrived at the airport and got to the bus station with plenty of time to spare. We went to the ticket counter to get the next bus out and they said that there were no more tickets until tomorrow morning.

While we were discussing what to do an older woman started to listen in on our conversation and mentioned that we try the train. She motioned for us to follow her and she zipped around to another counter and checked on train tickets for us only to find that those were also sold out. Then, she whisked us out to the bus lot and wove in and out of the parked and moving buses trying to find us one going to Guyuan. One time she pushed us onto a bus headed for the wrong place, but we were eventually able to find a bus thanks to her. So, the next 5 hours we spent in the back of a bus speeding down the interstate to our former China home.

One of the things that still amazes me is some of the places people get off at. It will be pitch black out and not a light or anything for miles around, but people will recognize this patch of dirt as the one they need to get dropped off. So the bus just pulls over and they hop out alongside the road in the middle of nowhere.

Anyhow, we rolled into town at around 10 pm. Right around the time some of the senior students were getting out of their night tests. As we walked to our hotel we saw some familiar faces - one of my students looked at me in that, "...where do I know you from...OH MY GOD!" kind of way. They didn't really know that we were coming. Even the drink guy remembered us - he was our first stop on the way to the hotel.

I was so excited I just could not sleep! I woke up at 1, 3, 5, 6 and then just got up to get ready for school.

Nobody know when I would be coming, and the students didn't know that I would be coming at all, so I went up to see the teachers first as the first period of class had already begun. When I got to the office they all screamed and clapped and ran over to greet me. We had fun catching up, talking about what we had been doing over the past year. They have been keeping up with all my adventures through Ms. Cui.

After the first period of class was over I ran out into the hall to see some of the kids. They were soooo excited once they realized that it was me. They would all scream and clap when I walked into their classroom! I was spotted in one of the halls and was rushed by about 300 students all trying to get hugs. It was great!

For a couple of the classes (before word spread that I was in town), I walked in instead of their regular English teacher. They were so shocked when they saw me and then when I greeted them like I used to in class they all stood up, "ooooo-ed", started clapping and some cried. It was fun!

Some of my students were in the middle of their testing period, so I couldn't get to them right away. But when they had their first break I ran downstairs and stuck my head into their classroom - the facial reaction was priceless! It went from "why is that face familiar" to tackling me to the floor with affection in about 5 seconds.

I got to see all of my little (but not so little any more) friends. It is amazing how different some of the looked. They all grew up and grew out their hair. So I spent my time running into the hallways during the breaks in between classes, dodging Mr. Horse in the hallways and chatting with the teachers when the kids were back in class.

It was fun! But of course, this is Guyuan, so I was invited to a dinner. I said that I couldn't make a dinner, so then it was a lunch. Ugh. With the administration. Double ugh. Luckily, it wound up just being with the Junior School admin, so it was a little more relaxed. Also because it was Guyuan, I wasn't really asked if I was available for lunch, they told me that I had a lunch with the admin at noon. That was fine and all, and told them so, but I would just be a little late because I already had made a date with my posse. Yup, my little boy posse. We were going to walk home together one last time.

The teachers didn't understand that this was important to me and to them. I told them I could go to lunch, but I would be late because I wanted to walk home with the kids. They told me that they would understand that I had other things that I had to do. So, I told them that I WANTED to walk home with them because it is important to me - it was a special tradition we had. I mean, I would walk to school when I didn't even have class, just to walk right back home with my posse, sometimes twice a day! So they told me they would send a teacher down to tell them that I had an important lunch to go to and I wouldn't be able to meet them. I struggled to get them to understand what I wanted. Finally, I just told them that I would meet them at the restaurant at 12:30 and I would pick up Matt and Allister. Then the bell rang and I left and hurried a reluctant "okay" from them.

I went to classroom 6 like so many other times and was greeted with lots of hugs as we started on our last walk. Eventually more of my students joined in and by the time we were at the corner the ranks of the posse had grown to over 50 kids! It was fun, Sam danced like usual (but limped a little as he had hurt his leg) and then announced, "this is for teacher" before pulling down Larry's pants, giggling and running off. Sniff, sniff, just like the good ol' days. I got to eat a lot of ice cream and other roadside snacks (I was already full by the time I got to the restaurant) as treats were shoved in my face - "Teacher eat this! Teacher eat this! This is definitely one of the activities I will always remember and will always be time well spent to me.

Lunch was pretty painless. The Junior School functions were usually a little more laid back than that of the Senior School. Only really one round of dice and not a lot of drinking as it was a lunch. So, we were able to get out of there in a decent amount of time and I was able to get back to school.

I spent the rest of the day just chatting and catching up, giving and getting hugs. It was a great day! The only thing that I just couldn't figure out was why in the world was one of the teachers trying to hold me back from seeing the kids by insisting that I look at all of the pictures she had taken on the computer right then when the students were on their breaks. This same teacher also wanted me to just spend time with her classes - classes that I barely saw over the course of the year I was there. I would try to get away and excuse myself gracefully when she would force me into a strage sort of uncomfortable guilt situation. I mean, I was happy to see her students, but I had limited time and I really wanted to see the classes that I was the closest to. The teachers this time around were really heaping on the guilt. They wanted me to teach their classes, both with my former students and students that I didn't know. They also wanted me to tutor someone's daughter and teach at a primary school. So between the guilt and them calling me fat, I decided to stay with the guilt free love of the students.

ANYHOW...

Over the seventh period I went down to one of my favorite two classes and talked and played with them as they had to stay indoors because of the testing. But my chatting time was cut short by the demand to take some pictures - "we all have been waiting for you upstairs to take pictures". Ugh. I said that I would be up in a moment. I said my goodbyes, and finished up my plans for the next day. They also invited me to watch their soccer game during their PE class. Pictures shouldn't take too long, so done and done.

WRONG!!! They hurried me up into the office only to wait for about 20 minutes before they started with the pictures. They took over 50. All basically the same. All I could think about was joing my kids on the soccer field. And I missed it. The price of the last 10 pictures of the same pose was that I couldn't kick it with my kids on the field one last time. I hope it was worth it to them because it certainly wasn't to me.

After the last bell rang I booked it over to the senior school, hoping that I would be able to meet up with some of my students as they got out from their tests. I hear a "Moll-yyyyyyyy" and saw several of my students run up to me. It was so good to see them! We were able to talk and arrange a time the next day, after their tests, to see each other again.

We wrapped up the night with a nice dinner at Mom and Pop's who remembered our usual and laughed as we rattled it off.

I was exhausted when I got back to the room.

It was a good day.

Kisses in the wind

2007-06-19T16:04:00.000+08:00

Saturday was much of the same. So, fun. Lots of kid fun. It was only a half day of school, I was able to set up some more times with the students who were testing and talk to some of the other classes I wasn't able to see as much the day before.

I set up a lunch with some of my kids, which I will talk about in a separate post.

I had to leave my lunch a little earlier than I would have liked because I was supposed to have a walk with Matt, Allister and the admin from the senior school. It was just a ploy for a dinner and I could smell it. So, I got to the school a little late (after a really painful goodbye) and made it to the office, in the rain just in time for the start of the banquet talk and verbal dance. Finally it ended with an early dinner so we wouldn't miss our students, I said that I would try to make it if I could but I had so many student meetings set up that I couldn't promise that I would make it, and to honest, I had no intention of trying to.

I was able to see my former Junior 3 students, now Senior students. They were a little different, attitude wise, but that mid-teen 'tude quickly melted away and we were back to the joking banter like before.

I was also able to see my former junior 2 students when they had a break between their test and class. They were as sweet as ever. As soon as the test let out they poured into the hallways and wrapped a silk scarf around my neck. I got to see my soccer player and the student who gave me his necklace from last year. It was so good to see all of them, they are such a good spirited group, I feel so lucky that I was able to get to know them in the year that I was there. Our time together this time was just too short. But at least I was able to have one last moment with them as well.

Last was my senior classes. I had made an arrangement with their class monitor to have everyone who wanted to see me wait after their test and I would pop in and see them. I walked in the room to see almost ALL of my students. I was so happy to see them! We were able to blow the rest of my poloroid film and just had a good time together. They hadn't really been able to practice their spoken English, so they had lost some of their speaking ability, but that didn't stop them from trying to tell me all about what has been happening in their lives in the past year. We spent over an hour catching up and laughing with and at each other. It was great!

Near the end we all decided to walk home together. As we split off, we said our goodbyes, some of them tearful all of them sad. When I got to Hong Bao (our hotel) I said goodbye to the last of the group, one of the most difficult goodbyes was with the student who sang me a special song on our last day together last year. He just threw his arms around me and planted a kiss on my cheek and said...well, that's all I wish to share. I couldn't hold back anymore. I cried. They were all holding it back, but I could see the emotion bubbling up in their eyes as well. I crossed the street as they all waved and we exchanged kisses in the wind.

Goodbye.

2007-06-18T23:52:00.000+08:00

Later on Saturday night we (Matt, Allister and I) got a nice visit from two of my students. We had a great time talking with them! I was really impressed with Wang Hao's English - he was able to keep up a native pace and joke around with us. He is such a funny guy. I am so lucky to have him as a student and even luckier still to have gotten to know him.

It was getting late when my students left, so we decided to pack it in for the night as we were going to have a busy morning the next day. At 8 AM we met one of my students who had something arranged for us to see. Um...let's just say it didn't quite work out and she was really quite upset about it afterward. Really, really upset.

It was still raining and the ice cream place was closed when we got there. So as my students started to arrive we all huddled and talked together under some nearby tents. One of my students had told us that it was his birthday on Tuesday and he really wanted to celebrate it with us so he brought a cake. My kids brought me little embroidered tokens to remember them by. But what they don't know is that there is nothing that they could give me that is as special as the time and love that they gave me every day for a year and every minute of my visit. I don't think that I could ever forget them.

Eventually the shop opened its shutters and we were able to pile in. Not a huge group but a nice sized group of people that I love. We sang happy birthday and watched the candles blow themselves out all at once (it was really quite strange). He made a wish which he only told me. Then I just loved to see all of my students interacting with each other - from my juniors to my seniors. It was so sweet how the older kids talked and helped out some of the younger ones.

The monitor for one of my Senior classes gave me a special photo album with images of the sites of Ningxia around the borders of the pages. We went through the sites together and had our last history talk. Before, we would get together and just talk for long periods of time about politics and history. Another one of the Guyuan times I just can't forget.

As it was time to leave, we left all of the younger students at the parlor to finish up their ice cream and the Seniors all walked us out to the bus station. I said goodbye, got their last hugs, kisses and tears from my dear children. Then I had to say goodbye to my little Ma Li. I have written about him before. He and his friends came to visit me in the apartment last year. We wound up posing for some silly pictures together. There is one picture of us together which he showed his teacher and exclaimed, "I can't hardly believe how happy my face is!" He showed me the picture that we took on that day and told me that he always keeps it with him. He told me that he looks at it whenever he feels sad or stressed out or just when he wants to remember a really happy day and he instantly feels better. I just didn't want to let him go. I want to take him home with me. Ma Li was trying so hard not to cry, but we both just could not hold on any longer and we said our very tearful "I love yous" and "goodbyes".

We got to the bus station with a little time to spare. My Seniors helped us get onto the correct bus (I'm glad they checked and put us on the correct bus). We all knew our time was just about over but didn't want to admit it. The student who had his birthday, said that he would remember this birthday forever because it was both one of his happiest and saddest birthdays at the same time. We said our watery eyed goodbyes and I got my last Guyuan hugs and kisses. A couple of students ran onto the bus for just one last moment.

As we pulled away from the station, they huddled together, consoled one of the students, waved and blew kisses until I couldn't see them anymore.

Me?

I left a big piece of my heart in Guyuan.

Emotional Hotpot

2007-06-18T18:52:00.001+08:00

I'm saving this post for last because it is the most difficult for me to write. I don't think I will be able to get through this without tearing up at least a dozen times, one time because of anger, a couple of times from laughter, some from sadness, and most from love.

On Saturday noon I arranged to have a "no teacher" lunch with my kids. We decided to have hot pot because then I could get some of my favorite potato noodles - they think that it is hilarious that my favorite food here is potato noodles.

The previous day on our walk home together, they started to talk about the possibility of having lunch. As the English teachers walked by, they urged me to hurry up and get to the lunch. After they passed, the boys whispered to me in a low voice that this would be a "no teacher" lunch. So then they asked me if they could call something other than teacher. I told them they could call me what ever they would like as long as it was nice, so it was decided that I would be their "Beautiful Sister of the West". After my new title had been established, we set up our plan for Saturday.

I met them after their class let out. They all wanted to go home and change their clothes and we would meet on the corner in half an hour. In the meantime, Sam asked me if I would go with him to visit his home. I told him I would be happy to see his home and a very proud Sam strutted off with me down the street. I have written about Sam before and he is just a sweet, hyper kid who likes to sing and dance and pull down Larry's pants. He's a little taller now and his voice has dropped, but he is still basically the same sweetly naughty child that I got to know and love.

So, I met Sam's parents and let's just say that by meeting them, it explains a lot. It was absolutely one of the most bizarre and hilarious parent meetings that I have encountered. We walked into the apartment, and they weren't expecting me. Sam told them who I was and then they got really excited, like puppy excited. Sam's dad started to talk to me at about a million words per minute and kept on shaking my hand. Sam was trying to get him to stop and calm down. Eventually he pulled his dad into the bedroom and closed the door. Meanwhile, his mom was heaping food into my hands, which Sam promptly took out and returned it to the kitchen. When he returned his dad was back out talking and Sam pulled him back into the bedroom and closed the door which was just long enough for him mom to put more food in my hands which Sam returned to the kitchen. This cycle happened about 5 times before Sam announced that we had to go and basically fled his apartment, trying to shut the door on his parents. Ah, Sam. Always making me smile.

We met the kids at the corner and set off for the restaurant. We took about the longest route possible to make the walk last just a little longer. They shared some music with me and we just chatted away like we do. It didn't seem like any time had passed since our last lunch. They asked me what I wanted to drink - they were saying liquor in Chinese, and I shocked them all when I knew what they were talking about and answered them in Chinese.

The food came, as did some rain, but something felt a little off with the lunchtime conversations. They started to ask me if I liked their English teacher. So I went fishing to see what was up. The English teachers were a little mad? jealous? that the students were having this lunch with me because they would only get one lunch with me because of the short time. I learned that their English teacher had pulled one of my posse boys to the front of the room and laid into him. She told him that his English was too poor for him to go out to lunch with me and that he was just wasting my time when I could be doing more important things. She told him that he had no business wanting to use up all my time because he can barely speak to me. Way to encourage a kid, right?

After I learned about that maddening news, I told them that it's nice to be able to see the teachers, it's nice to see the city again, but really the only reason why I came back to Guyuan was to see them. That they were the single, most important reason for my visit. The only reason why the teachers get to see me is because of the students. This boy was one of my best students, not because he had the best English, but he tried in my class. He volunteered to speak at every opportunity, had a great sense of humor and was really a positive asset to my class. I had to let him know that there was nothing he could do that would be a waste of my time. I valued him and all of the time we have spent together. And no matter what some one else told him, he was special to me and she can't take that away. Then he just hugged me and said "I love you always".

Nobody can tell my boys that they aren't worth my time.

So lunch went on and I was sitting next to two of my most special students, Alex and Bob - one of the original posse members. Alex was one of my Junior 2 students last year and one of the students I was closest to, but he was having some problems, so he was held back a year. At the lunch I noticed that he had quite a stutter, not just in English but in Chinese as well. I also noticed that he was really dominantly left handed. We talked about how his teachers would hit his left hand so hard that he would have to use his right hand for writing. He's had a really hard time in the Chinese educational system. Matt was his brother's teacher and he was perhaps one of the nicest students at the school. If either of them found themselves in the US we would put them up without hesitation.

Alex never really liked English, but at the end of the year he was trying harder so he could speak to me. I gave him my leather cuff and wrote a little message just for him. His brother told me that he wears it all of the time and it is really important to him. He also told me that Alex thought that I was the only teacher who actually gave him a chance and didn't just brush him off as hopeless. Throughout the lunch Alex spoke with me in English. Rather than have someone translate for him, he would ask his friends how to say something to me in English, practice it and then ask me. I was so proud of him.

We took some pictures.

The first to go was Sam - he had to take a test. As Sam was leaving, he started to get a little emotional, so he quickly said goodbye and ran out the door. I ran after him, caught him and gave him a huge hug while we both shared some tears. He whispered in my ear, "I love you, teacher. I don't want you to go." I just hugged him and told him that I would never forget him and I will love him forever. After a little bit we said goodbye.

It was the first of the "I'll probably never see you again" realizations that hit home.

I came back to the room visibly upset, I just couldn't totally regain my composure. The boys were upset that I was upset. They told me that they were all really, really sad, but they couldn't cry because they had to try to be men. It was then that Bob just couldn't look me in the face any more. He told me that he kept the picture of just us in his room where he could always see it...then he choked up and had to stop. He would try to say something, but then just trail off and have to look out the window to just hang on. Alex and another couldn't let go of my hands. We all knew that the inevitable was coming but just couldn't let it happen yet, just have to hold on for a little longer.

To distract us for a little they decided to take a group picture for me to always have. I glanced at it briefly, but had to put it away before it completely developed because I would definitely lose all composure. I still can't look at it.

So at the end of the lunch we walked down the stairs, we still couldn't let go of each other's hands, they walked me out to a cab and we said our goodbyes. I gave them all hugs, each one more hard to let go of. I got into the cab and rolled down the window - they crowded around and grabbed what they could of me - they were blowing kisses and trying to kiss my hands while telling me that they loved me, will miss me and that they didn't want me to leave. Alex grabbed my hands and there was this indescribable change in his face - realization that he would probably never see me again and intense panic and sorrow. I just lost it. He did to. (I'm losing it right now, just thinking about it). I reached out and kissed him on the cheek and just whispered that I would always have a special place in my heart for him and that I would always care and love him.

The cab pulled away while they were still holding on to me. They didn't let go until they had to. As we got down the street, I turned to look back at them and saw something that just got me completely undone, I couldn't bear to look anymore. I saw all of them standing on the side of the street, staring at their feet completely silent and motionless.

Next Generation Facing Fatal Pressures

2007-06-09T13:14:00.001+08:00

Unfortunately, USTB is a part of the statistic for this year. A student jumped off of a building a couple of months ago because of a broken heart.
*********************************************
At noon, on May 16, a young woman committed suicide by jumping off the 11th floor of the building. So far, university authorities have not revealed her identity. Local media believe she was a doctorate student from the literature school preparing her graduation thesis. While some doctorate students have shown sympathy, the response of many students has been stony silence. The apparent numbness could be a result of a spate of college student suicides, which have occured this month.

One day before the tragedy at Renmin University, a female postgraduate student of Beijing Normal University leapt to her death because of depression and academic pressure. On May 14, a junior student in Tsinghua University and a sophomore of China Agriculture University took their lives on their campuses, with the suicide reasons still under investigation. More than 10 college students this month have leapt to their deaths. Hu Deng, director of the Psychological Counselling Center of Renmin University of China, admits he is nervous these days because May seems to be a dark month for suicide-seekers on the campus. Between March and May, college students come under the biggest pressure because they must hunt for jobs, wait for the results of the entrance examination to postgraduate or doctorate schools. And they also must prepare their thesis.

Lacking the ability to cope with this adverse situation is a common problem and the examination-oriented education system has largely neglected students mental health, he says. Hu and his colleagues have probed into several suicide cases in recent years. They found that a big proportion of the students had a medical history of psychological problems, such as depression. "Rather than seeking help from us, the students with psychological problems tend to hide it for fear of affecting the future of their studies and employment," he said.

On the Internet, many people expressed deep sorrow about the tragedy. A student named Xiao Wei writes in a blog, "Another doctorate sister has quietly left us. Her dormitory building is next to mine. I do not know whether it was a coincidence but on the same day last year, a doctorate sister from the journalism school chose the same way to finish her life. I had met her in a class one day before her suicide. I feel regret for her." Xiao Wei respects those who committed suicide, and says one would never understand the pains of others. In fact, Xiao Wei had thought of committing suicide, but the love for family pushed the desperate idea away.

Zhao Jie, a first-grade doctorate student from the same literature school, has paid more attention to the death than most of his schoolmates. Like others, Zhao chose to pursue a doctorate degree in the hope of changing his previous career as a college staffer. However, he has learnt that a doctorate degree without much experience would not secure him a promising job. "The gap between high expectations and cruel reality would keep imposing an invisible pressure and anxiety throughout the three-year study," he said.

Economic strain is another factor contributing to anxiety. Besides expenses on food and accommodation, Zhao needs to pay 12,000 yuan ($1,560) of tuition fee each year. Like Zhao, most doctorate students depend on family support, their own savings and income from part-time jobs to pull them through the three years.

Zhao describes the everyday life of a doctorate student as "dry and dull". He has to bury himself in books all day to complete the required number of thesises published in national-level academic journals. Communication between students even in the same class is scarce, he says. Zhang Yanping is deputy director of Beijing Suicide Prevention and Research Center, which is affiliated to Beijing Huilongguan Hospital. Zhang is unsure if the spate of student suicides in May reflects a pattern or is just coincidental. But she notes that one suicide could possibly influence another. She classifies recent suicidal students into two groups. The first group, which represents about 63 percent of suicide cases, has psychological disorders, such as depression. For people with a history of mental illness, she suggests psychological counselling and the necessary drug treatment. The second group feels hopeless and is isolated at the time of suicide because of excessive emotional stress caused by employment expectations, examinations and their looming thesis.

For this group of students, suicide intervention is even more difficult, Zhang said. Zhang's center conducted research among people who attempted suicide. Researchers asked the students about the time intervals between suicidal ideas and action taken. About 37 percent said they acted on their negative thoughts less than five minutes after they occured and 60 percent of the group was less than two hours. "Suicide is one of the most extreme ways for people to solve their problems. In fact, they have many other options and could have talked to people close to them, such as friends, family, and classmates," said Zhang. Staff operating a free hotline service, opened by Zhang's center, reveal the common problems college students encounter. The major issues include depression, academic pressure, romantic rejection, family conflicts, economical difficulties and frustration because of the gap between the job market and high expectations. As a professional psychologist, Zhang has observed in recent years that college authorities have been paying more attention to the mental health of students. Some teachers are obtaining counselling certificates and professional counselling services are also being introduced on university campuses.

Since 2000, Beijing Normal University has initiated the Capital College Students' Psychological Health Festival on May 25 every year. Famous psychologists were invited to give lectures on the subject last Friday in Beijing when universities across the country took part in the festival. However, experts point out the media has conveyed misleading information that the campus suicide rate was significantly high. Zhang estimates the suicide rate among college students is only six people per 100,000, which is much lower than 23 per 100,000 among the whole population and more than 30 per 100,000 among people between the ages of 15 and 34. However, Zhang believes that improving the mental health among students is a life-long project. "The starting point of cultivating mental health is definitely not the college campus, but from early childhood," she said.

About Your Pearly Whites...

2007-06-09T12:50:00.001+08:00

The strike is still on, but I just thought I would forward this on to all of you!

************

On June 1, 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the following warning regarding toothpaste from China. The warning, which is repeated in its entirety below, can also be found at http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01646.html

FDA Advises Consumers to Avoid Toothpaste From China Containing Harmful Chemical
FDA Detains One Contaminated Shipment, Issues Import Alert
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today warned consumers to avoid using tubes of toothpaste labeled as made in China, and issued an import alert to prevent toothpaste containing the poisonous chemical diethylene glycol (DEG) from entering the United States.

DEG is used in antifreeze and as a solvent.
Consumers should examine toothpaste products for labeling that says the product is made in China. Out of an abundance of caution, FDA suggests that consumers throw away toothpaste with that labeling. FDA is concerned that these products may contain "diethylene glycol," also known as "diglycol" or "diglycol stearate."

FDA is not aware of any U.S. reports of poisonings from toothpaste containing DEG. However, the agency is concerned about potential risks from chronic exposure to DEG and exposure to DEG in certain populations, such as children and individuals with kidney or liver disease. DEG in toothpaste has a low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury to these populations. Toothpaste is not intended to be swallowed, but FDA is concerned about unintentional swallowing or ingestion of toothpaste containing DEG.

FDA has identified the following brands of toothpaste from China that contain DEG and are included in the import alert: Cooldent Fluoride; Cooldent Spearmint; Cooldent ICE; Dr. Cool, Everfresh Toothpaste; Superdent Toothpaste; Clean Rite Toothpaste; Oralmax Extreme; Oral Bright Fresh Spearmint Flavor; Bright Max Peppermint Flavor; ShiR Fresh Mint Fluoride Paste; DentaPro; DentaKleen; and DentaKleen Junior. Manufacturers of these products are: Goldcredit International Enterprises Limited; Goldcredit International Trading Company Limited; and Suzhou City Jinmao Daily Chemicals Company Limited. The products typically are sold at low-cost, "bargain" retail outlets.

Based on reports of contaminated toothpaste from China found in several countries, including Panama, FDA increased its scrutiny and began sampling toothpaste and other dental products manufactured in China that were imported into the United States.

FDA inspectors identified and detained one shipment of toothpaste at the U.S. border, containing about 3 percent DEG by weight. In addition, FDA inspectors found and tested toothpaste products from China located at a distribution center and a retail store. The highest level found was between 3-4 percent by weight. The product at the retail store was not labeled as containing DEG but was found to contain the substance.

DEG poisoning is an important public safety issue. The agency is aware of reports of patient deaths and injuries in other countries over the past several years from ingesting DEG-contaminated pharmaceutical preparations, such as cough syrups and acetaminophen syrup. FDA recently issued a guidance document to urge U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers to be vigilant in assuring that glycerin, a sweetener commonly used worldwide in liquid over-the-counter and prescription drug products, is not contaminated with DEG.

FDA continues to investigate this problem. If FDA identifies other brands of toothpaste products containing DEG, FDA will take appropriate actions, including adding products and their manufacturers to the import alert to prevent them from entering the United States.

Consumers can report adverse reactions or quality problems experienced with the use of these products to FDA's MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program: www.fda.gov/medwatch/report.htm

__,_._,___

On Strike!

2007-05-31T20:45:00.001+08:00

Okay everybody, I know that lately I have not been adding to my blog, but I am having China problems again, so I cannot really access it right now.

But I will not post until I get some email from all of you.

Hop to!

STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!

Golden Throat Lozenge

2007-05-18T01:18:00.000+08:00

Action and uses:

Coursing wind and clearing heat, resolving toxin and disinhibiting throat, transforming turbity with aroma. Cure for swollen throat, dry and sore throat, hoarse voice caused by acute laryngopharynglitis.

Specification:
Weight 2g/tablet
Approval Doc No.
Guoyaozhunzi B20020993
Lot No. of product:
See sealing place or the cover of small box

Please take the medicine according to the description.

Um. According to the description, huh? So um, where do I put the coursing wind?

Just for giggles...

2007-05-18T00:53:00.000+08:00

I recorded this today:

Henry works in a children's hospital. If doctors need to know how heavy the children are before they are looked over, he will help the children to take off their clothes.

One day a five year old boy came in with his mother. He was so nervous that he caught his mother's hand. Henry tried his best to take the boy away from his mother to the Doctor's office, but he failed. However, with the help of his mother, the boy agreed to go with Henry. Henry was very happy. He thought everything was okay. "Now boy, let's take off out clothes and see how heavy we are." said Henry. But the boy dropped Henry's hand at once and said, "you go. I don't want to."

***UHHHH***

What made this even funnier was that the guy I was recording with today was named Henry.

Do call me Shirley

2007-05-11T20:52:00.000+08:00

Thanks for being so patient with this post. I don't know what happened there.

But one moment please for an important China announcement!

[dramatic pause]

Starting on June 20th I will be on the radio! Well, at least my recordings will be. Currently I am recording some pieces for a learning English by radio program that they will be playing for the year leading up to the Olympic Games.

I am one of the main characters, Shirley and the daughter's blue-blooded best friend, Gucci. Yup. Gucci.

I will try to record some of the dialogues while I am still here, and will post up some more details when I know them!

elong ROCKS!!!

2007-04-30T01:25:00.000+08:00

Goodbye craptastic Travel Agencies and the uber-unhelpful CITS office! I love elong! For those of you who need to make arrangements for travel in China, use it and experience the joy of competency and convenience.

I booked my tickets online through elong and I couldn't be happier with their service. Within seconds of me clicking the purchase button I got a confirmation on both my email and mobile phone. Then shortly after a customer service rep called me up and spoke perfect English to help me with my reservation because the dates I booked were no longer available.

We worked it out and then the next day the dropped the tickets off at my door (free of charge) and collected the cash for the sale. How smooth!

But that isn't even the good part...

We went to check in at the airport, blah, blah, blah. While processing our information the airline guy informs us that we actually have business class tickets! Whoohoo! So, for less money than the travel agencies, we were able to get business class tickets on one leg of the trip. Awesome. I pigged out in the lounge - filo pastry with seasoned mushrooms, really good dumplings, spanakopita... Mmmmm...

On the plane the seats were just a little more comfortable and we were served more food. Actually, I felt a little over served - the peanuts were served on china with a folded napkin.

At least we rolled into Seoul in style!

Return to the Motherland

2007-04-29T23:59:00.000+08:00

Ahnyeonghaseyo! (sorry, I can't get the characters to show up so you get phonetics)

Matt and I are stealing away for another short vacation in Korea! Yeah, thought a trip to my good ol' motherland was in order with us being so close. So, you know what that means...more pictures! Hooray.

I FINALLY got up all (errr most) of the pictures from the last vacation. None have really been captioned yet, but at least there is something to keep you all busy now until the next batch.

So until next time, ahnyeonghi kaseyo!

EXTRA! EXTRA!

2007-04-28T04:01:00.000+08:00

I just posted, but it is back dated a little bit, not too much, but a little. Just scroll down to read it.

Also, I FINALLY have posted up some new pictures! So, pee-boy will no longer welcome you to my flickr site! I think my mom will be very happy to know that. Not that she has anything against the pee-boy, I just think she was getting tired of looking at him.

Other than that, not a whole lot of news. Spring is here, so there is a lot of stuff in the air - cotton crap, dirt, etc. The winds have been really strong some days - I got hit by some throat cheese - not mine, mind you. If it were mine, then I really can't complain too much as I was the one who would have been spitting into the wind. But I wasn't, so, I got pretty grossed out by that. Just not something you expect. Walk, walk, walk (wind howling) Splat! UGH!!! EEEEWWWW!!!

Uh, I sang in class and made them "sing with feeling" at 8 in the morning. Imagine 30 kids belting out "darling, darling, stand by me, oh stand by me..." Their reaction? Let's just say that at least it was funny for me. I'm such a colossal dork in class, that it was probably okay for them too. But they decided that they liked the Motown music, so we might try another one some other time.

Our school is going to have a big review this coming month. We just had another preliminary review. Apparently we didn't do so well on the first prelim. One of the math professors didn't finish one of the problems on the blackboard so he got a failing grade for the class. One problem unsolved = failing grade for class. This review will determine the school's rank, so it is important to them. Really, really, really freakin' important. Which means that it is incredibly annoying for everyone else. By annoying, I mean, sucks. I won't get into the detail now, I'll hold that until the actual review.

Now I'm just struggling with the internal rage that results from the vacation schedule - we have a "week" off, but have to make up two of those said vacation days over the weekend either before or after (or in the case of the Oct. holiday, one before and the other after) which often makes vacation less convenient, especially if you want to travel. Especially as they don't tell you the schedule until about 2 weeks or so before the vacation is supposed to start. Okay, so rage is a little dramatic, but there is something bubbling in my chest and it ain't happiness or um, gas. So this time, we get Tuesday, Friday and the following Monday off. We have to make up classes that would have been held on Wednesday and Thursday on this Saturday and Sunday. How sucktastic is that?

Anyhow, it's late and I'm tired. 4 AM.

Offensive couch label traced to China

2007-04-22T19:36:00.000+08:00

This could explain some of the dialogues I have recorded as well...

*************************************************************************************

By CHARMAINE NORONHA, Associated Press Writer Thu Apr 19, 2:57 PM ET

TORONTO - Doris Moore was shocked when her new couch was delivered to her home with a label that used a racial slur to describe the dark brown shade of the upholstery.
ADVERTISEMENT

The situation was even more alarming for Moore because it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out "n----- brown" on the tag.

"My daughter saw the label and she knew the color brown, but didn't know what the other word meant. She asked, 'Mommy, what color is that?' I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. I never thought that's how she'd learn of that word," Moore said.

The mother complained to the furniture store, which blamed the supplier, who pointed to a computer problem as the source of the derogatory label

Kingsoft Corp., a Chinese software company, acknowledged its translation program was at fault and said it was a regrettable error.

"I know this is a very bad word," Huang Luoyi, a product manager for the Beijing-based company's translation software, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

He explained that when the Chinese characters for "dark brown" are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive N-word description comes up.

"We got the definition from a Chinese-English dictionary. We've been using the dictionary for 10 years. Maybe the dictionary was updated, but we probably didn't follow suit," he said.

Moore, who is black, said Kingsoft's acknowledgment of a mistake doesn't make her feel better.

"They should know what they are typing, even if it is a software error," she said. "In order for something to come into the country, don't they read it first? Doesn't the manufacturer? The supplier?"

Romesh Vanaik, owner of Vanaik Furniture where Moore bought the sofa, said it has been a best seller. He said he checked his stock but found no other couch with the offensive label.

He added that he had not known the meaning of the N-word.

"It's amazing. I've been here since 1972 and I never knew the meaning of this word," said Vanaik, a native of India.

His supplier, Paul Kumar of Cosmos Furniture in Toronto, denied responsibility and refused to give the name of the couch's Chinese manufacturer.

"It's not my fault. It's not the manufacturers' fault," he said, adding that Kingsoft was to blame.

Huang said Kingsoft has worked to correct the translation error. In the 2007 version, typing "dark brown" in Chinese does not produce the racial slur in English. But if the offensive term is typed in English, the Chinese translation is "dark brown," he said.

Moore is consulting with a lawyer and wants compensation. Last week, she filed a report with the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Commission spokeswoman Afroze Edwards said the case is in the initial stages and could take six months to two years to resolve.

Moore, 30, has three young children, and said the issue has taken a toll on her family.

"Something more has to be done. We don't just need a personal apology, but someone needs to own up to where these labels were made, and someone needs to apologize to all people of color," Moore said. "I had friends over from St. Lucia yesterday and they wouldn't sit on the couch."

Un-Crappy

2007-04-21T00:20:00.000+08:00

Just thought that I would let you all know that I didn't have a sucky China day today. Today I went shopping all by my lonesome. My goal was to bring home a new ipod shuffle. So off I went! After thoroughly confusing the taxi driver and a 40 minute traffic jam, I arrived at my destination.

I enter the mall and am immediately accosted by people with flyers. Eventually I make my around to the ipod section. So, I communicate with the shop assistant that I am interested and want to see the small ipod shuffle in blue in Chinese. Also asked if there was an English book or CD, which there was none. Everything was going well until the end. She was saying something that I just couldn't figure out something about clear and blue. WHAT?!?! So, in a panic I call one of my recording friends to translate a little for me. He finally told me he thinks this has to do with a rubber cover that the no longer have in blue, but she thought that the clear cover was far superior anyhow. So, with the rubber cover now settled we started to joke around with the price. It just so happened that a Chinese woman was buying one at the same time, so she suggested that we go together and try to get the price down for two. Mission accomplished - we got the lowest price in the receipt book (which I flipped through while they got our packages together - nosy, nosy).

After my quest was finished, I was feeling pretty good and decided to do a little shopping around the Carrefore complex (CFC). The mall that connects to the CFC is quite a winding maze! When I went there earlier in the year, I completely got lost and could not find my way back to where I needed to go. But anyhow, this time I walked around the outside shops for a little bit and picked up a few things. Then I wandered into one of the entrances to the labyrinth of a mall. Low and behold, I found myself smack dab in the middle of a Chinese goth-ish art fair! It was awesome! Strange patch worked animals with grotesque features, anime fairy paintings, LOTS of art with safety pins, and self-loathing declarations in mangled English scrawled with fine line pen, complete with ink blobs. Ahhh...gotta love the goths.

So, I walked around looking at the interesting wares and wound up in the rotunda which was decked out with rainbow flags. I was soooo hoping that it was for a GLBT event, but thought that would be a misplaced hope here in China, but I was pleasantly surprised - it WAS for not one, but two GLBT non-profit organizations in China. I talked with some of the members of the Information Clearinghouse for Chinese Gays and Lesbians. They were so much fun and friendly! They just had such a good energy about them, I just wanted to help them out. I wound up giving them a nice donation and received 4 totally rad shirts. Hopefully I will be able to work with them a little bit before I go back to the United States.

Anyhow, after that, I wandered back to the CFC and decided to try to find some sunglasses as I had left mine on a bus some time ago. I went to one of the glasses shops that was super crowded (ugh). But had fun! What you say? You had fun in a filled to capacity and then some store? Yup I did. I was in the back with a bunch of women around my age. We sent in one of the really little women into the mob to grab as many glasses as she could manage. When she got back we were all picking through them not only for ourselves, but for each other. In the end, we all were helping to pick the "right" sunglasses for each women. I think I was there for about an hour having fun in a hot crowded store. After the sunglasses were chosen and purchased, I got my self a treat (caramel macchiato) and found out that they will be putting in a DQ/Orange Julius (score!)

Then the true test to a good day...to wrangle me a cab! I waited and waited but no cabs. Cabs would come and there would be the Chinese cab scramble and then I was left at the curb. My solution? Uh...cross the street! It was amazingly easy to catch a cab by just crossing the street! So, all my packages in one hand and a hot coffee in the other, I was whisked back to the good ol' east gate. Nice to have an un-crappy day once in a while.

Introducing...the Apple iRack

2007-04-18T17:58:00.000+08:00

Just saw this and got a good laugh from it. It takes a little long to load though.

Enjoy!

Snorting up the white

2007-04-18T00:26:00.000+08:00

My goodness time has gotten away from me. Nothing really exciting going on around here, just the same old teaching and the same old recording.

So the highlights since I last wrote in March(!):

I have been sick for the last week or so. I thought that my sicken state would give me a little break from the recording, but as it turned out my scratchy voice recorded even better, so I had a lot of work while I was hacking up phlegm in the mike (yum!)

I was walking to the studio a couple of days ago and was enjoying breathing through my nose as it was the first time I had been able to in a little while. But things are starting to blossom here, including all of the cottonwood trees. So there is a ton of white fuzz floating around in the air. I wound up snorting in a huge piece up one nostril and hacking it up a little later, covered in snot through my mouth where it flew out onto the ground (double yum!)

I am actually enjoying my Yan Qing classes this semester. My second class is really sweet. Not all of them show up every single time, which I like as I can get to know some of the other students better. We went outside for class, plopped down in the middle of the soccer field, and had a great time talking about relationships while other students played soccer around us.

I had an April Fool post all ready to go, but didn't get around to posting it and now it is just too late, so too bad for all of you! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Got a couple of fab packages from Jerry and Gfarb. Rock on you two! They are helping my cheese need.

I was recording some more material for English learning and was reading some poetry passages and inspirational whatnot (i.e. crap). One of the sections wanted me to sing, "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" a capella. The man who was recording with me convinced the people (after much argument) that although I am very talented, that unless I am a sassy black woman, that the song just wouldn't be quite right. So we did it all spoken word, Kerouac like. The result was probably just as stupid sounding.

So yes, this was me:

Out of the ruins
Out from the wreckage
Can't make the same mistake this time
We are the children
the last generation
We are the ones they left behind
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change it
Living under the fear till nothing else remains

We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

Looking for something we can rely on
There's got to be something better out there
Love and compassion, their day is coming
All else are castles built in the air
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change it
Living under the fear till nothing else remains
All the children say

We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

So, what do we do with our lives
We leave only a mark
Will our story shine like a light
Or end in the dark
Give it all or nothing

*snap, snap, snap* (beatnik style)

I know I have made some promises, that I have not fulfilled, but I have just been a little overworked at the moment, but I still have more pictures to put up (I know at least one reader/viewer who is very sick of the peeing boy picture up on my flickr site, cheers, Mom) and I still intend to put up some more about my travels as I haven't even written about Laos yet.

Anyhow, I'm still trying to get better, but I will try to update more often.

Hopeless

2007-03-28T01:33:00.000+08:00

So, Beijing is like the land of plenty when it comes to imported food. Now, mind you we can't get EVERYTHING, so we still love the care packages, but compared to what we were able to get in Guyuan, we're rolling in food wealth!

The local shop really close by is called, My Shop. They have a nice variety of food, that is keeping me well stocked with Dr. Pepper and granola bars. A little while back they started carrying a very exciting new item, Queso Dip. Not just any queso dip but a name brand cheese dip (name brand meaning that I recognize it).

I have found that my relationship with this particular food product almost borders on obsession. One time, I bought 6 jars of it at the same time just because if they sold out, I wanted to have my little stock, safe at home. But the problem is that I don't want to eat it right away. Because what if I crack open the jar, consume and then can't buy more? But at the same time the cheesy draw is just such that I can't quite keep away from it. So it is always on the brain. I think about during class. I think about it while walking around. I think about it when I am eating other food - "stupid, sweet and sour pork! You could be tangy, creamy cheese dip right now!"

So, the hoarding is a little pack rat-ish and the mental obsession is a little bit Smeagol-ish, but one of the worst things is that one the safety button is popped, there is no hope for the contents of the jar lasting the week in our household. It's like you just start to eat it and can't and don't want to stop. It's just too good! One time when I was eating some with Matt we just both couldn't control ourselves - granted this was the first jar opened post-discovery and I wound up eating it a little too far past the point of the cheese sicks. In the rare event that we are able to hold off full consumption, it goes in the fridge. Then I speaks to us. "Moooooly!!! Moooooooly!!! How about just a little taste? A little taste won't hurt you. Don't you like me anymore? Just take a peak, just to make sure Matt didn't gobble me up in the middle of the night...." NOOOOOOO cheese dip, NOOOOOOO!!! You will not trick me again this time!

They might as well just rename it cheese crack. Once all of the zesty goodness is on tortilla chip, I am just so focused on getting it in my mouth the rest of the world just drips away. And when the jar is gone, I feel a little sad and wired and I can't help but think about getting my next dose.

I'm thinking about it right now.

I can't stop.

Mmmmmmmmm...cheese dip.

*drool*

Panda Sneeze

2007-03-25T00:17:00.001+08:00

Just posting this because I can.

Say what?

2007-03-24T23:56:00.000+08:00

So another blog check-in. Nothing really special going on for my classes. Just trying how to best talk to a fairly good student about an attitude problem and come up with a lesson plan for Yan Qing. I have been trying to wrap my head around what I would like to do, but am having trouble starting. But not a whole lot other than that.

Today Matt and I went out to a Mexican restaurant with Naree and Alby! We had a great time with some good food and topped it off with a Black Forest chocolate cake. Yum!

Uh, I have been spending some more time down in the studio and have another little recording tidbit for you from yesterday.

"Oh good! The blacks are going back to their own country! I'm so happy!"

Uhhhhhhh....

Uhhhhhhh....

Uhhhhhhh....

Well, I assume and hope that they meant "The Blacks" as in a family name like "The Browns" or "The Greens" as there were other color themed surnames on the page. But this was the only one where the color was not capitalized.

So, I'll leave you with that.

Lines. It All Comes Down to Lines.

2007-03-18T21:41:00.000+08:00

It looks as if they seem to know that the current system leaves much to be desired and now that the world will be watching soon, they have decided to try to change hundreds of years of rudeness.

Don't worry. Nect month I will be getting some photographic evidence of this occurance (maybe even a video if you are lucky!)

Beijingers Urged to Queue on Monthly "Queuing Day" - Xinhua

The girl carefully pasted the card with her signature on an exhibiting board. On the card, the four-year-old Liang Miaozhu vowed to queue in the public and respect order.

Liang, accompanied by her mom, is among hundreds of Beijing citizens who participated on Sunday in activities in Beijing's busy Wangfujing Street to promote the city's first "queuing day".

The 11th day of every month is chosen as the promotion day for queuing up as part of a drive to improve the city's image before next year's Olympics, according to Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing's Capital Ethic Development Office earlier this month.

The number 11 resembles two queuing persons, according to Zhang. "That means that even if there are only two people, they should wait in line," she said.

People expressed their support for the move. "The Beijing Olympic Games is drawing near, but bad behaviors still exist in the city," said 63-year-old Liu Chun'e," we should display to our foreign guests the courtesy of Chinese people."

Although netizens voiced their doubt on the Internet and large numbers of bus passengers made it difficult to keep order, Zhang noted that it was important to create an environment where the wrongdoing was a shame. "

The Chinese people don't like to lose face," she said.

Before the Olympics, the city is also determined to eradicate bad habits like spitting in the public and littering.

Tying up loose ends

2007-03-15T21:46:00.000+08:00

Just letting you all know that I have been going through my archives and finishing up some posts that I had started but never finished. I still have a couple to finish up from my vacation (I know, I know, get it done already) and I still have some pictures to get up (can't spoil y'all too much).

I just finished up a post way back from Jan. 1st. So if you want to hear about our New Year's day, check it out! It's real easy - just look to the right and click on my archives for January 2007.

Enjoy!

Back off BSB!!!

2007-03-15T20:07:00.000+08:00

No, I didn't have a typo incident mistaking PSB for what I wrote. I really do mean back off BSB! What is BSB might you ask? Why, it is a 5 member group that has had an international presence for the past 10 years in Asia. It is responsible for making my auditory enjoyment of my surroundings a little more unpleasant than it would normally be if I didn't have them around.

Yes, yes. I am talking about the Backstreet Boys.

Seriously, I can't seem to escape them. Their musical stylings have followed me throughout Asia. I'm not kidding. Don't laugh. They sorta creep up on me when I least expect it. I'm savoring the spicy pepperoni in my American Classic pizza from Pizza Hut and all of a sudden, BAM! It hits me. "Backstreet's back, alright! BAMP-BAM-BAMP-BAMP-BAMP!" I'm listening to the Backstreet Boys, again. And then I promptly start to pound my head on the table, eventually in perfect rhythm with the annoyingly catchy pop back beat.

I go to a DVD shop and am flipping through all of the brand new, still in theaters titles and then I will hear something strangely familiar in the background. This eventually gets louder and louder until it is resonating in my head - "I'll never break your heart. I'll never make you cry...." ARGH! Inevitably I wind up stopping my DVD bin flipping on a movie title like, White Chicks or Strangeheart or, gasp, Crash or some other stupid shitty movie. At that moment I absently mindedly pick up the movie and put it into my stack, so yes, we own these movies. The Backstreet Boys actually deaden all of my senses at the same time so I have absolutely no discretion or taste from the first recognized lyric to the very last note. Or, in the case they are on a loop, until I temporarily regain some shred of composure and flee the store.

The last example I can bear to tell you was when I was in the middle of freaking nowhere. There was a large speaker in a field for the call to prayer. When it wasn't being used to gather the devout, guess what it was used for? Yup. Unfortunately. Sigh, "I don't care who you are, where you're from, don't care what you do as long as you love me." I am sorry to say that I don't really have an Indo memory divorced from that tune. It was one of the first things I heard when I came to from my surgery!

KEEEEE-RIST (christ, but drawn out in that exasperated way)!

After I came back home from Indonesia they just released their "As Long As You Love Me" single, so I got to hear it at home incessantly as well. Also mirrored was one question asked by Indo-gals on both sides of the Pacific, "which Backstreet Boy do you pretend you pillow is at night?" This was the question that I have been asked most frequently by Indonesian girls from the ages 12 to 24.

So far I have encountered their lovesick pining in Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Thailand, China, Tibet (hee, hee - that one IS for the PSB), Mongolia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. So, like, everywhere I have been in Asia. I can't shake them. I know all of the words to the songs and not because I want to. I am being stalked by new releases (which are only released overseas) and greatest hits albums.

If I ever were to meet AJ, Brian, Kevin, Howie and Nick (yes, I know their names), I don't even know what I would say. I would probably just start crying. Not out of reverence and/or girlish glee but for their constant and irritating infiltration of my Asia experiences.

And then I would slap them.

Speaking to you from the future and past!

2007-03-13T21:02:00.000+08:00

I haven't felt like blogging a whole lot, but I just added a post earlier in March, so there will be some posts to scroll down for. Sorry to make you all work, but I want to try to keep things and thoughs in order. But I will also add new posts from the top when I feel like it.

So, not much else to report on right now. About my last post, thanks for everyone for being so supportive. I'm sure that once I remove myself from the situation and when I refelct on my time here, I will be able to look through a nice, fashionable pair of rose tinted glasses rather than the muck colored ones as of late. And as far as my posts are concerned, I'm sure I will be back to toilet humor in no time, not to worry. (see my latest March 4th post).

Really, no need to be concerned, I really wanted my weblog to be an honest assesment of how I view and interpret things, because nothing is rosy all of the time and I realize that. I want to honest to myself and not just write about a bunch of happy bullshit all of the time to keep up appearances. Some times things just suck. If something kicks ass, I will make sure to tell you all. Just as if something makes me want to kick ass, rest assured that my comments will reflect that as well.

But, thank you to all of my readers who have kept up with all of the ups and downs of this journey. I appreciate it!

Getting back to it

2007-03-09T01:11:00.000+08:00

So, I have my first week of teaching out of the way. I can't say that is it exactly good to be back, but it is nice to set the pack down for a little while. I was reading some of the other blogs and emails that others have sent out post vacation. Many of them said that they are glad to be home and it feels good to get back to their respective nooks in China. I don't and have never felt this way about China.

China doesn't make me feel good. Don't get me wrong, I am actually happy that I have had this experience, and I don't regret it for a single moment, but I can honestly say that I don't really like the person that China turns me into (note: I have not used, "has turned me into" as I fully expect my Chinese funky state to be completely reversible). It's not culture shock, but something different, more deeply rooted and undefined.

I honestly feel really bad about some of the feelings I have about this place. I feel bad that I don't smile and coo over the Chinese babies. Instead, the first thought that pops through my head is more like, "Christ, another one of these people?" My tolerance is basically shot to shit. I really don't care about your "face" or mine for that matter and I really won't go to great lengths to preserve either. I am just to the point where I just don't care. That worries me. I have made attempts to care, but I was just kidding myself. I mean, I was forcing myself to care, thus, I knew I was pretending to care and therefore I was fully aware of this truly manufactured "caring" act that just emphasized even more that this was fake, and an untrue emotion. Ugh.

I just feel pretty hollowed out slowly being filled with tar and bile. After I got elbowed in the face at the train station, again, I just about lost it. After we tried to load our bags on the bus, only to have a dozen Chinese people shove their way in and push us out of the way I kind of did. It's ugly. I feel really weighted down.

Going back in time

2007-03-07T14:26:00.001+08:00

Hello! Just wanted to let all of you know that I have loaded some of the pictures from Laos and China. It will be a little bit longer for the Vietnam and Cambodia pictures because I have to wait to get my guidebooks back so I can group them appropriately.

Also, I have been adding to my blog, but I have been adding entries in the February section on my blog. So, keep scrolling down or click on 'February' on the right had side of my blog.

But just to be even more haphazard, I will also be posting current entries as they come to me.

Anyhow, I hope you are well!

Happy year of the golden pig!

The Trench

2007-03-04T10:00:00.000+08:00

On one of the multiple bus trips that we took to get back up to Beijing we stopped off at a rest stop to grab a bite to eat and to go to the bathroom. Now, since being in China I have been exposed to many kinds of toilets. The one at this particular stop was the trench style. There is a trough running down the center and a stream of water that flows down the trench to clear out the waste. There are also little half partitions up on the platform to give the illusion of privacy. You squat over the trench and let loose.

One of the 'good' things about China is that I am no longer pee shy. I can pee with or without an audience, although I still prefer without (imagine that). So I was waiting in the pseudo-line and finally it was my turn. I got up on the platform - luckily my spot along the trench was near the head of the line so I didn't have other people's waste passing below me. I assumed the position and noticed that there was a little toddler watching me.

So, I have been watched before, more as a form of entertainment than anything else, but this little girl was quite transfixed on my squat. When she stopped staring, she decided to climb up on the platform with me and squatted down behind me over the trench. So I was concentrating not to miss and squirt the kid and she reached out and put both hands on my bare bottom and started to squeeze and play with her hands while she and I went to the bathroom. This all was of course a riotously funny to the mother, and even more so when she found out that I was a foreigner. But apparently, this was the first time that she had done this kind of activity on her own so mama was proud and happy and I got goosed by her daughter.

Good times!

ARRRRGH!!!

2007-03-01T07:54:00.001+08:00

I know that I have promised all of you some travel reports and random thoughts, but China has yet again locked me out of my blogger account. So I have to post via email, and I can't get to all of the posts that I have started. SUCKS!

So, be patient and you will be rewarded with more than you could possible want!

But to pass the time, I will have some pretty pictures up soon and this time I will try to caption them!

Back to my BLT

2007-02-15T20:29:00.000+08:00

So, um. We're back in Kunming. I kinda wish that I would have pushed to have conference a little closer to this area as we had to do a major back track to get back to where we just were. Oh well. Kunming is a pretty cool city to kick it for a while.

What did we do? Not a whole hell of a lot. We arranged out flight out to Laos - Vientiane. and then hung out at the Prague Cafe to suck down some of their delectable BLT sandwiches. Don't underestimate the power of a good sandwich.

On Valentine's Day we decided to make it a cafe Valentine's Day and went to the French Cafe, the City Cafe and the Prague Cafe and gobbled down our favorite treats from all of these places. At the French Cafe they even had special strawberry tarts in the shape of a heart, served complete with two forks and a rose. Awwwww!

We also made it out to the Provincial Museum and (dum-da-da-dum!!! - the sound of triumphant trumpets) it was open. One of the first provincial museums we have visited to be so. Last year, the museum was closed for renovations when we tried to go. We got there about 20 minutes or so before it was to close. Did that stop us? NO! We cruised that museum like a [insert clever simile here]. The museum was really nice looking and modern. They did a great job updating the look and feel of the place as a lot of Chinese museums suffer from 'book on the wall' syndrome.

One of the disappointments in Kunming was that we were unable to locate Wei's pizza and not from the lack of trying. Looked up and down both sides of the street and down the alleys too. Remember that happy picture of Matt with a gigantic pizza. Well, never again will we be able to see that face. Because as far as I can tell it is gone. Sigh, sniffle, sniffle.

Other than that we didn't really do too much. We went for a couple more BLT sandwiches - we got a breakfast BLT and then got s couple more to go to eat for lunch on the plane.

So, next, Laos! I can't wait!

Who would have thought...

2007-02-15T20:28:00.002+08:00

that we would be in Hong Kong without internet!?! :) So, no posts for you!

So, conference. Wasn't too into it this time around. Not that it wasn't good to see everyone again and some for perhaps the last time. Our VIA pow-wow was out in the New Territories area of Hong Kong. It was really quite beautiful out there, quite removed from the high rises, crowds and cars.

So, what did we do at conference. Well, we talked and talked and well, talked. About um, China (duh). Here is the over-simplified re-cap(not in any particular order):

Vols arriving to conference late - BOO!

M & M being "uncharacteristically" late - a little to worried to boo right away, but eventually - boo!

Post reports - yea!/2 Nanjing boos!

Brainstorming about stuff - yea! Putting it (hopefully) in action - YEA! (hopefully)

VIA home office updates - Yea! Hopefully will put PD in a better "yea" position in the coming years.

Lesson idea exchange - Mu's lesson - YEA! Fellow vols as students - boo! Also, special mention of Naree's - boo-hoo (inside joke, yes. Will explain, no.)

BBQ - Yea! Baijiu soaked marshmallows - a big, bad, BOO!

The last supper - Yea - good food! Boo - 'cuz it's the last supper.

So, I missed some stuff, but that's at least how the recap pretty much played out in my mind.

After we said our goodbye we all split off to head out on our post-conference travels. Matt and I got a chance to hang out with the new(er) vols in Kowloon for the night before we split off for different SE Asian travels.

Hong Kong is different from "China" - I mean, no jay walking, none. Just patiently waiting for the light to turn - no pushing to get that 4 inches of better curb position for when it is clear enough to Frogger across the street. I did not see a snot rocket. A lot less phlegm clearing. I wonder if they have nicknames for the crass mainlanders? I liked the way the city moved, crowded, but smooth. Someone stepped on my foot and genuinely apologized. Immediately. I didn't even have to shoot a dirty look!

So, sorry I don't have much of a commentary on the city. I didn't have too much time to explore, but was happy to see a little bit of a place that I wasn't planning on going. Hong Kong was expensive. But good to see. I'm glad that we were able to go (even if it did through a wrench in the SE Asia travel).

I'll go see the inspiration crib for my fav designer, Vivienne Tam, another time.

Oops! We're in Macao...

2007-02-15T20:28:00.001+08:00

After our wonderful time in Cambodia and Vietnam, we headed off to conference. We boarded a train to Nanning to try to make it to our VIA-China conference in Hong Kong without being too late. The problem was that the conference was hitting us right in the middle of our break and really wound up costing us a lot to get there. So, I was a little pissed about all of that. Granted I should have been more vocal about the timing of conference and less accommodating, but I wasn't but, I still felt like I wanted to be a little late just to be a twerp.

So, well, um, we took a little side trip to Macao. We arrived in the evening and right away set out to find a nice guesthouse. The first problem was getting a cab. None of the cab drivers were very helpful. We even found some people to try to help us, but they didn't have much luck with the cabbies either.

Eventually we just flagged one down, loaded all of our stuff in the cab and then told him where we wanted to go. This was more successful - didn't give him a chance to say "no" and drive off. Eventually we found the guesthouse we wanted him to take us to. I went out to scope out the rooms only to find that they were positively the dingiest little cells that I had encountered on the trip thus far! Horrible! So those little rat-traps were a big N-O. So off to try to find the mysterious Villa Universal.

We wound up asking some kids on the corner for some directions and they tried to help us. One of the problems we found was that all of the information in the guidebook about Macao was in Portuguese and did not list the Chinese for the places so sometimes getting around with the LP was challenging. Eventually, a older lady flagged us down and waved some business cards at us. Low and behold, Villa Universal! Thank goodness she was working the corner (to strum us hotel business) or we would probably not have found it.

The rooms were pretty nice and they were clean! Also had hot water and private bathroom for a fairly reasonable price. So, we crashed there for the night. I was feeling pretty grimy and didn't want to go out, but Matt went out to find something to eat. When he got back he brought with him some fantastic cookies! Kind of like fortune cookies, but filled with crushed almond and sugar. Delicious!

The next day we set out to see a few of the sights. We went to one of the old cathedral ruins sites and then went to the old fort which has since been built to house a museum. I can't even begin to tell you how cool the museum was! They had lots of interactive sections as well as different kinds of media (could choose from 4 different languages) throughout the entire museum. It was really spectacular!

After, we went for some lunch - a Portuguese lunch. Matt really enjoyed his shrimp and coconut curry, I was less certain about my pork and tamarind, but it filled us up and got us ready for the Maritime museum! Another spectacular museum! Had a lot of fun there and even got to play pretend captain for a little while to boot!

Oh, I almost forgot!

...Ummm, my internet timed out right after I wrote that and I have since forgotten. Shit. I hate when that happens. But if I think of the missing tidbit, I will be sure to record it in a completely random post (not to worry).

We also got to look at the outside of a few of the casinos. They had dress codes and a couple of scummy lookin' backpackers weren't going to make the velvet rope cut, so we just peaked around the frosted glass as much as we could and saw chandeliers, but that was about it. BUT we did get to walk around the maze of hallways of expensive stuff (small box of Ricola - $20 Pataca!) to keep you in the realm and got to see some prostitutes tailing some old men who were guests at the $1000+ USD a night hotel/casino/fun palace.

I thoroughly enjoyed my 20 or so hours in the former Portuguese colony. But we had a conference to get to so we set out on the jetboat to the old British colony. Yup. Jet. Boat. Jetboat. Looks like a jet when you enter, but, surprise! Boat. It was a quick trip, but I still managed to get motion sickness, but not enough to use my "air" discomfort bag. Instead, I was distracted by a taped collection of favorite moments from an odd but cool Japanese game show.

The Japanese do have a certain way about their game shows, don't they? This game show involved people creating scenes with bodies. Like a rhythmic gymnast doing a routine, but instead of a ball, it is some dude's head playing the role of the ball. Some of the shorts/scenes were just downright wacky. But a good distraction from said sickness. At least I didn't fall into a toilet.

Pataca. That is one of the coolest currency names.

Macao/Macau. Too short on time, but gald we dropped by for a quick visit!

Staring...Why are you looking at me?

2007-02-15T20:27:00.000+08:00

So, if you look different, people are going to stare at you, right? Matt has been stared at throughout Asia as well as some of the other volunteers. I was not expecting to be stared at in Vietnam, I mean, I blend.

Now, so I might not look Vietnamese, although I was mistaken, but I do look a little more native than the white guy I travel around with. Sometimes I like to walk behind Matt to watch the people's expressions/gestures after he walks past. In Vietnam though I started to notice that, sure Matt was getting his fair share of stares, but so was I. I was perhaps getting even more.

This whole staring business is fairly new to me, as I have mostly traveled in Asia, so it was a little weird to me. Why are you looking at me? Do I have something on my face (check face, try to be discrete), do I have something in my hair? (check hair, try to be more discrete), do I have something on my butt? (check butt, try to be uber-discrete). Once I have determined that I don't have anything stuck on me, I still am left with the same question I started out with, "why are you staring at me"?

I have come up with a couple of possible solutions:

1) They think that I am Vietnamese and wonder why I am with a white man.

2) They are trying to figure out where I am from.

3) They think that I am a Vietnamese woman and I married an expat.

4) They think I am a prostitute.

The stares eventually made me feel a little paranoid, "Do they think I'm a whore?" and then made me want to prove my non-whoreness by speaking English very, very loudly. Did that just make them think that I was a multilingual whore? I dunno.

Some seemed curious, and others seemed, well, accusatory. Of what? I don't know.

So, what one of the above do you think was the reason for the staring? Cast your votes now, or write in your idea!

Side Thought - Bringing Memories Home

2007-02-15T20:26:00.000+08:00

While we were looking at the various curio stores and street side vendor stalls in Vietnam we would inevitably find some dog tags. It was really creepy. Because most likely they got the tags or copies of the tags off of dead US soldiers. I didn't feel right buying them so I didn't. Sifting through bowls and bowls of dog tags.

Now I wish that I had.

I wish that I had bought every single tag I could have laid my hands on just to honor the memory of a US soldier who served in Vietnam. I would have brought them back to the US and back to DC. To at least bring home the memory of someone who served the great nation (with all of its good points and bad) I call home.

I guess I have another reason to go back to Vietnam, anyone want to join me?

GIBBONS!!!

2007-02-03T23:10:00.001+08:00

Matt and I decided to take a trip out to Ninh Binh to see the gibbon and monkey rehab center. I don't know if it was totally worth the extra trip, but they sure were entertaining to watch!

We took a bus out to Ninh Binh and arrived bleary eyed at around 5 AM - still dark outside and we had no idea where we were. One of the guesthouse keepers was out to meet the bus and we eventually went out to his guesthouse. It wound up being a really nice place and we both felt really lucky to run into the man who we might have otherwise ignored.

After some needed sleep we decided to rent a couple of bicycles and bike around the city (it wasn't too big) and see some of the sights. We first set off to see the limestone peaks by boat and then cycled out to one of the small temples. The caretaker there spoke Vietnamese and French, so I had to try to bust out the truly rusty high school francais to understand what he was trying to say to me. I think I was able to get the gist of what he was saying, which is really better than I could have hoped for.

When we got back into town, we decided to take a look around and there really wasn't too much there at all. So we headed to the guesthouse for dinner. The only thing that they were serving that night was a Vietnamese BBQ - kind of Korean style. It was okay, but what topped it all off was the Ninh Binh water they shared with us after dinner. Um...I only dipped my lip and was coughing, much to the delight of one of the guesthouse caretakers. Matt said that it was at least better than baijiou, which isn't saying that much.

So early the next morning we set out with our driver to the gibbon center and other places within the national park. But the prime reason was to see some primates! The gibbons were amazing! They had some sweet little babies and were swinging all around their enclosures! They would do little mid-air twirls and turns. So much fun to watch! The monkeys that they had there were also very cool - they were really chill. They looked like little bearded men wearing red, black or grey pants. And, go figure, they were called the red pants monkey, black pants monkey and the grey pants monkey.

Besides the monkeys we went on a couple of walks through the forest - saw and hugged (just for Debz) a +1,000 year old tree, and explored a cave which was used for shelter and other things in prehistoric times. After that, our driver stopped by the edge of the road and helped us get on the right bus to Hanoi.

All in all, we made the most of our time there, I don't know if I would go back, but definitely good for a little stop to break up some of the bus riding fatigue.

I am way behind on my blogging, so keep checking back for more!

Creepy Commies

2007-02-03T22:28:00.000+08:00

Greetings from Hanoi!

Matt and I are on the last leg of our trip in Vietnam. We just saw a very cool water puppet show at the City Water Puppet Theatre (duh). It was interesting to see the way the puppets glide across the water - the water is very much a part of the show too - not just a groovy stage.

We also went out to see Uncle Ho today. His mausoleum. His embalmed body. Total creepiness. What is up with saving the bodies of communist leaders? Lenin, Mao and Ho all kept in a eerie state of waxiness so people can shuffle through and view their bodies. Did North Korea embalm "The Great Leader"? Right around Ho's mausoleum is his former palace/greeting place, residence, museum, his cars, etc. The museum was actually one of the most interestingly laid out and put together museums I have ever been to.

Anyhow, as I have been traveling though this country, I haven't really felt like I have been in a communist country - like China. Vietnam just breathes differently - a nice and refreshing different. But right around the mausoleum it was something straight out of Commie handbook 101 - big open square - check, austere concrete buildings - check, green uniforms - check, LOTS of pictures/propaganda about leader - check. Didn't so much care for that sudden reminder of where I am after being lost in my head for the past weeks, and also having a sudden reminder on where I must return to after my vacation is over.

It was really strange to go into the chambers to view the body - the chamber is completely climate controlled, and dark, except for the lighting over the body. It looks a little misty-ish when you walk in and then there is a glow over the pallid corpse. It really is quite creepy. There are uniformed guards stationed around the room as well as in the pit surrounding the platform displaying the body. People shuffle in and some pay respects by bowing slightly when they get to the central point of the railing. It was strange and surreal. I had so many thoughts going through my head at this time. I didn't know what to think - I was confused. I was standing 10 feet away from a man who's political decisions caused/contributed to thousands of deaths in the name of so-called "liberation".

"Liberation".

He is celebrated for the "liberation" of South Vietnam and unifying the country. But what a cost this "liberation" had. Now as I try to explain what I was thinking it is all very muddy, it wasn't so clear at the time either. When I got to the center of the rail, my mind was just racing. I frowned and scowled. Not because I support or oppose one political ideology or another, but I just was having a lot of trouble coming to terms with the cost of his actions and this usage of "liberation". When I looked up, I met the eyes of a guard sitting in the pit. He was not very amused by my expression. He hardened his face, frowned at me and motioned me to leave the chamber. Not that I really could or planned on camping out, I just followed the crowd out a little more quickly than I had been moving.

Anyhow, this was both a sobering and creepy experience. We also went to the Hanoi Hilton museum. A former prison which was first built by the French to house the Vietnamese, then later, was used to house US soldiers. I read all about how horrible the conditions were for the Vietnamese and saw another guillotine. I also read about how well the US troops were cared for while there and even saw John McCain's photo and gear from when he was captured and imprisoned there. It has been interesting to read all about the war from a completely different perspective. Although I am getting rather tired reading the carefully scripted propaganda in the museums. Not that the propaganda in the US is necessarily better, it is just different in a very tiring way to me.

So, we are looking to cyclo through the city tomorrow and then head out to Ha Long Bay the day after. Then, sigh, back to China. Hong Kong. Hopefully we will have some time to roll the dice in Macao, but we'll have to see if we have time as my conference is creeping up at a really bad time in my vacation and is going to wind up costing me more money than I feel it is going to be worth (so just a little angry and resentful about that).

Okay, this is getting long and too rambly for my likes. I'll write more later about Ninh Binh (Gibbons!), but it will be post-dated, so look back for it.

So, I just have to make a date with Unky Mao when I get back to Zhong Guo and then head to Russia to complete my embalmed communist leader tour. Hmmm...maybe I'll just hop back on that trans-Siberian line and finish the ride!

Tidbits

2007-01-29T17:10:00.001+08:00

Not a full post today, just some things I want to post before I forget them.

If/when you all go to Saigon (Saigon is just way more fun to say than Ho Chi Minh City), make sure to look at some of the houses - some are just freakin' amazing! There was one that had a huge Buddha on top of the house in a little garden area.

On the way to Hoi An, Matt had to make an emergency roadside stop because of intestinal discomfort and wound up squatting on some poor person's front lawn. The truckers driving by got a good view of a nice, white full moon that night (Retold with permission).

In Hoi An we stayed next to a guesthouse that Michael Caine used when filming a movie.

I have not been feeling too well - as Matt put it, I seem to be having a gastric-intestinal tornado going through me (cramps on top of cramps and a lot of funky sharp pains). I accidentally ate part of a shrimp and then felt sick afterward, not because it was bad or anything, but I just was having images of it swimming around in my stomach and that made me queasy. But, I don't think that my current state is related to that incident.

I got a pair of shoes made! If you never have had custom made shoes, you should try it! It is so much fun and I got a great big hug from the girl who was the shopkeeper! Green and red silk shoes - sooo much fun, I think I might get something tailored in Hanoi.

Ummm...

I guess that is all for now.

Uh...

I pet a really cute puppy...

Yup.

That's all.

Talk to you later!

Centuries Old Traditions

2007-01-25T18:03:00.000+08:00

Yup, China's old. I have been told that in various forms about a gazillion times since arriving here. Chinese history, blah, blah, blah, Chinese art, blah, blah, blah, Chinese customs, blah, blah, blah. But now that the whole would will be looking at the "culture" it looks as if the central gov has decided that it is time some things change. Here is the top-down approach they have decided to enforce - not sure if this is better than the spit bag idea or not:

Olympic Beijing will be polite -- it's the law
By Mark Magnier

Source: Indy Star 1/3/07):
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007701030459

BEIJING -- Take heed, rude Beijingers: Mind your manners, or someone else will.

Apparently frustrated by its limited success in persuading Beijing residents to stop spitting, act more courteously and show a friendlier face to strangers in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing municipal government has opted for a more top-down approach.

Starting next month, Beijing shopkeepers who vent their anger, act impatiently, glance at customers disdainfully or act absent-mindedly are in violation of the law. Also forbidden under the draft regulations are sarcastic or ironic comments, vague explanations and grabbing customers to coerce them into buying something, according to a report released on a state media Web site last month.

As the capital of the Middle Kingdom prepares to play host to the world in a little less than two years, it's hoping law will trump centuries of culture.

"The ancient capital has produced residents with a reputation for generosity and big gestures, but it's also fostered a tradition of arrogance in Beijingers reflected in the commercial and service industry," the China News Service reported. "Complaints of bad service in Beijing are all over the Internet."

Song Xuelei, a 27-year-old student, said he applauded the idea. His pet peeve is getting dirty looks from shopkeepers when he's only window-shopping.

But enforcing the new rules, which take effect Feb. 1, could be a bit difficult.

"People get emotional," Song said. "Maybe the shopkeeper had a bad day. It's a bit hard to control. And I don't really think this is the government's business. We just need to change people's behavior over time."

Ivy Li, 30, an advertising executive carrying a shopping bag on a recent day, sees little need. "I've never met a rude sales clerk in Beijing," she said.

The government report makes no mention of penalties, leading to speculation about how the regulations will be enforced. What will a consumer need to prove that he or she was wronged? Will a cell phone video clip become the supporting evidence of choice?

The real problem, some Internet users said, is state-owned stores with their lazy workers -- an illustration of how quickly ordinary complaints in China these days can morph into criticism of the government, especially in large cities.

"All stores should be private," one posting said. "Then maybe consumers would be treated like gods!"

As with the Soviet bloc, bad service was a Beijing fixture during decades of central planning. Greater competition and an expanded private economy, however, have put a new spin on the Communist Party's "Serve the People" mantra.

"In the old days, many consumers used to keep quiet even if they weren't satisfied," said Victor Yuan, chairman of Beijing-based Horizon Research Consultancy Group, which does polling for the private sector and the party. "Increasingly, people feel they have the right to complain and demand better service."

Zheng Haihang, vice president of Capital University of Economics and Business, told China News Agency that Beijing had modernized faster than many other parts of the country because of its status as the capital. But the deeply embedded "ye," or master, culture formed by centuries of being the seat of imperial and communist power now threatens to derail modernization and work against a service mentality.

Li Hui, 26, a shopkeeper at the Wuan musical instrument store in Beijing, welcomed the sentiment behind the new regulations. When she goes shopping, the Guangzhou native said, she is often frustrated by clerks who ignore her as they gossip among themselves or chat on their cell phones.

But it's a two-way street, she added. Beijing also has lots of rude customers, including those who come into her shop, bang loudly on the drums, damage her expensive violins and agree to prices after lengthy bargaining, only to walk away.

"I think they should also pass a law against rude customers," she said. "That might help as well. It's a mutual problem."

***okay, with all of that being said, I can see this going to the other extreme - being too helpful. I hate it when I am constantly being followed-err-"stalked" is a better word - around a store. I try to lose them, but they always manage to find me and then stick to me. Either way, I just think that that the Chinese are screwed when it comes to this and in no way does this address the real problem and complaint, the inability to queue in lines. Mayhem! Pandemonium! Can't wait!

Miss Saigon

2007-01-25T16:59:00.000+08:00

Hello All!

I don't really remember the last time that I posted - one of the nice things about traveling is losing all track of time. But I just wanted to let you all know that I am currently in Nha Trang - the beach! Today we went to the Monkey Island, but I have some other things to tell you about first.

So, Saigon was awesome! The heat is on in Saigon - but not in that hooker-brothel kind of way (at least my experience was whore less - I can't comment on the old men with really young ladies...). I love that city! We stayed at a nice guesthouse that only had about 4 rooms to rent out, so it was nice and quiet, the location was perfect too. Right near the main backpacker area, but down a little alley, so away from a lot of the noise.

I was feeling pretty rough when we arrived, so we didn't do too much - just bummed around town, looked at a market and went to the fine arts museum. The museum was okay, nothing too outstanding. For some reason all of the paintings looked a little muddy to me. Don't know if was because of the heat, the lack of sleep or if the colors just looked muddy. So, I wandered around the galleries for little bit not really looking at the pictures and then went home.

The next day we did a little walking tour of the area - we went to a couple of museums - both war related, the former palace (looked like a very amped up version of the Brady's home with a war room ready basement). Communist "revolution" museums are not very interesting to me. Reading some of the signage is interesting to a point, but generally it gets old after a bit and coming from China.... I guess that revolution would be a major event in the history of a nation, but it just seems to be soooo influential that much of the art and cultural/history museums are solely dedicated to the propaganda. Gets boring. Nuff said. At one of the museums they had a guillotine and a very disturbing display about the effects of agent orange.

Okay, so the next day we got n a tour out to see the main Cao Dai Temple. Cao Dai seems like an interesting religion. It is a mix of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Christianity. One of he main western spirits/saints of the religion is Victor Hugo and the symbol is that eye in the pyramid picture. Groovy. We went and watched one of the prayer sessions from the balcony above and now, I don't know which country can truly boast having the rudest tourists (a toss up between the French and the Chinese).

--Oh side note - when going through immigration when entering Vietnam, there was a huge crowd of people waiting to go through. There was a little gap along the side of the mass of people and sure enough the 3 Chinese people cut and bumped their way to the Head of the line, pissing off quite a few people in the process. But what was even more amusing was that the line wasn't moving at all! You had to wait for the officials to call out your name before you could go through. The Chinese were just about dead last to go through. HA!

Okay, back to Vietnam.

After the trippy Cao Dai temple, we went to the Cu Chi tunnels. Very interesting and, um, small. Our tour leader told us about some of the history (he was a communications officer for the South Vietnamese Army) about the area and the war. That was probably one of the more interesting parts of the tour - hearing about some of the first hand experiences. But we saw some of the nasty booby traps that were put out to snare US soldiers. Also watched a very interesting video about the soldiers - I just remember a line that went something like this: Look at this young little girl. She is very small and weak, but she is one of the soldiers fighting for our country! Even though she is just a girl she has received hero awards/recognition for killing Americans. Then we walked around the grounds some more and saw some of the craters left by bombs and some people chose to shoot some guns ($1.3/bullet with a minimum of 10 bullets).

A little later we went through the tunnels. They had been widened to about double the size they were originally. Damn, they were small! I don't know how Matt got through. I was following a girl from Germany (who was right behind the guide). It was pitch black and small and hot. She suddenly said, "hole!" I didn't realize that it was an actual hole that dropped down, so yes, I fell through the hole in the most ungraceful way possible. I managed to wedge my left leg and right arm up while the rest of me dropped to the ground below. Ouch!

I was really happy to get out of the tunnels. I can't imagine going through the original tunnels and having to live in them underground! We surfaced in the old hospital dug out - coincidence?

Anyhow, after all of that excitement, we jumped a bus to Nah Trang. I love it here too! Not the busy, busy time here so not overly crowded. I mentioned we went to the Monkey Island earlier. That was a creepy experience. There weren't very many people there and um...just seemed spooky to be on this amusement parkish island but have virtually no people, just monkeys. Did they eat the people? What was going on? We bought some monkey feed and were quickly assaulted by monkeys - a couple watched Matt buying it and then followed him out of the shop. So, fed the monkeys, had them follow us around. There was this one little monkey who had a bloody gash across his face and he was just screaming and screaming at us (going "ape shit" if you will) this was really freaky - I mean, what kind of "outbreak" island was this?Fun. Still creeped out.

After creepy Monkey Island, we went to see a waterfall. The waterfall was really cool, more of a hike than I thought it would be but it was fun climbing out over the rocks to get to it. Also, no one else was out there so Matt and I had a private viewing of the falls. Cool.

Today, we are just killing some time before we catch our next bus to Hoi An. We went down to a practically deserted beach and playing in the water/sand for a few hours. Met some local kids who were trying to sell us stuff, but apparently the allure of digging a big, deep hole is enough distraction for Matt, Molly and the under 15 crew. So we dug holes and built little sand walls. The kids were pretty cool, one asked me to buy postcards, I said, that I didn't need any. Then he suggested that I go with him to buy him some ice cream! Kids. Gotta love 'em.

Anyhow, just ate a really great pub burger with all the fixins and am just wating for 6PM to roll around to hop another bus. So, that is the update for now, talk to you later!

Farewell Cambodia!

2007-01-20T20:27:00.000+08:00

Well, it has been good. I have really enjoyed myself here! The country is pretty beautiful, hot, but really beautiful! For the last meal here Matt and I ate dinner at the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) and watched the sunset over the National Museum.

I have wanted to go to Cambodia for such a long time, mostly fueled by my desire to see Angkor Wat, but more recently (err...high school) because of the Killing Fields. The Killing Fields and the prison/torture museum we visited today were amazing in a whole different way - amazingly horrifying. I have watched that movie several times over the past years and have wanted to come to see the areas where these events happened. The museum is housed in the former prison. It is pretty creepy - they set up some of the exhibits in the former cells, also, they left lots of the cells intact so you can enter them. In some of the cells, they still had the frames of the beds out with a pair of shackles, ammo box, spade (sometimes), and a photo on the wall of one of the victims spread out with blood splattered all over the floor where you are currently standing. Truly horrifying.

The museum was mostly identification photos of all of the inmates - men, women and children. But they had some paintings of the kinds of torture the prisoners were subject to as well as some gruesome photos of people who where killed - one man didn't have a face left. Also, there were a couple of special exhibits with survivors telling about their time, people who never saw their loved ones again, and a short exhibit on the former guards of the facility. Emphasis on "short" in that previous sentence as not many had come forward to tell their stories.

Anyhow, tomorrow morning we will begin our 8 hour bus journey to Saigon. I hope I won't get too bus sick, but I have some good peppermint and camphor oil just in case. So, the next time I write will be from Vietnam!

PS - I wrote out postcards for many of you, but have been way to lazy about mailing them here, so I will mail them from Vietnam or from China. Talk to you later!

Wonders

2007-01-19T16:36:00.000+08:00

Okay, name all 7 of 'em...I'll wait.

That's the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World (don't Google them, that's cheating).

The Great Pyramid of Giza, right...

The Colossus of Rhodes...

The Lighthouse of Alexandria...

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon...

(over half way)

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia...

The Temple of Artemus at Ephesus

AND

The Temple at Halicarnassus

Whew!

Good job!

So, what should the new list be like? Angkor Wat? Easter Island? Stonehenge? The Taj Mahal? Well now it's time to decide and vote!

Register to vote for the new wonders of the worlds here: www.new7wonders.com. There is a pretty good list, some I totally disagree with, but others are so amazing that to not include them would certainly make the list less wonderful.

So, stop by, check it out, register, and vote!

Running at about 40 Watts

2007-01-17T18:55:00.000+08:00

I'm tired and yes, I am indeed sick on vacation yet again. I am really exhausted! Matt and I went Wat hopping yesterday and the day before. It really was amazing to see and amazing to consider going through the jungle and just happen upon an ancient wat. Angkor was of course amazing, but there were some other temples which were just as remarkable in other ways. One of my favorites was one that we saw yesterday. It looked a little different than the others - it was made of a pink(er) sandstone and the carving was exquisite!

So, after running around in the heat, humidity and sun while sick, my body just needed some rest. But not quite yet! We checked out of our hotel at 5:30 AM this morning to catch transportation to the boat docks - to catch a boat to Phnom Penh. The boat ride was about 5 hours and was okay - I tried to get some rest, but it was difficult to do so in the seats.

So, now we are here, after much battling with the tuk-tuk drivers and are ready for a new day of exploration. Well, maybe after some sleep.

Yup, I am pretty tired, one dim bulb about to go out for the night. Talk to you later!

Wat was that?

2007-01-14T19:56:00.000+08:00

:D

Hee, hee...I just couldn't help myself!

So, Matt and I are finally in Siem Reap, Cambodia! Even though we have only just got here, we already are starting to feel rejuvenated from the China funk. We got to spend some time at the Bangkok airport, like, 8 hours at the Bangkok airport, but hey, at least it was a kick ass airport! I got my sweet sticky rice and mango fix, so I'm a happy camper. Just being at the Bangkok airport and browsing in all of the shops, I am pleasantly reminded how nice Thailand and the Thai people are.

Anyhow, so tomorrow we are headed to see the Angkor Wat area and I am soooooo incredibly excited about that! I would be jumping all over the place if I wasn't so tired. So far things are nice and chill in Cambodia and I am amusing myself by watching a gecko war on the salmon and green wall. Good times!

So, I will post some more tomorrow after my day out at the mac daddy of the wats.

Outta Here!

2007-01-13T03:38:00.000+08:00

Hey all!

Just letting you know that I will be hitting the road tomorrow! Matt and I are headed south for part of the winter - Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

I am soooo excited and really looking forward to leaving China over the heaviest travel time period in this country!

Anyhow, I will be posting travel updates as I can - I don't know what the Internet situation will be like while traveling because the earthquake has slowed access in many places in Asia.

And rest assured, I think I can manage to take a couple of pictures of our travels. Just a couple.

Make your travel plans soon!

2007-01-10T22:20:00.000+08:00

Tibet, Now

The New York Times
By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
Published: December 10, 2006
Correction Appended

IN front of one of the holiest sites in Tibetan Buddhism, the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, hundreds of pilgrims fall on the ground spread-eagled, prostrating themselves so forcefully their hands bleed from being smacked on the earth. Some have traveled on foot for months from hundreds of miles away, bowing toward Lhasa after every few steps. Several seem so overcome to have arrived at the Jokhang that they sob uncontrollably or stare into the temple as if entranced.

Then the trance snaps. Behind one of the pilgrims, a tourist climbs onto one of the Jokhang’s massive golden prayer wheels, pulls out a cellphone camera, and starts snapping.

One pilgrim, a young Tibetan man, jumps to his feet and begins gesturing inside his long cloak, where some Tibetans traditionally carry a long, sharp knife. The tourist holsters his phone and walks backward, putting his hands up in universal signal of “I surrender.” But when the pilgrim leaves, the tourist starts snapping away again.
Once almost a synonym for remote, Tibet has in recent years experienced a surge of development and tourism, bringing cellphone cameras and tour leaders wielding megaphones to sites like the Jokhang. Tourism to Tibet is skyrocketing, a result of rising Chinese incomes, growing Chinese fascination with Tibetan Buddhism and easier access to the Roof of the World. This summer, Beijing unveiled an engineering marvel of a train line to Tibet. The train climbs to 16,000 feet, the highest of any railroad in the world, and workers had to build special features into the cars, like oxygen tanks for passengers gasping at such high altitudes.

“I had to come here,” one Chinese tour guide tells me during my visit to Tibet this summer. “This is where I can make money.”

This tourism boom is only the beginning. Though in 2004 Tibet received some 1.2 million tourists, by 2020 Chinese officials estimate that 10 million visitors may come, potentially threatening conservation efforts. Unesco has warned that China is allowing the destruction of Lhasa’s traditional buildings.

For many Western travelers, the tourism bonanza has added to the urgency of getting to Tibet while they can still recognize its unique culture and fragile environment. Yet even as more foreigners consider visiting, Tibet is becoming more comfortable, with easier access for independent travelers and higher-end accommodations like Lhasa’s first boutique hotel, which opened this summer.

Lhasa, the historic capital of Tibet, has become the center of the development and tourism drive. In the sprawling newer section of Lhasa, cranes loom and hammers clatter, erecting boxy glass-and-steel shopping centers and fast food outlets so popular they employ bouncers, like elite nightclubs. In central Lhasa, Chinese tour groups pose with red-robed Tibetan monks, who look distinctly uneasy appearing in the photographs. Young Chinese hippies with wispy goatees gravitate to smoky Tibetan bars — for young Chinese traveling on a shoestring, remote Tibet has become their Goa.

Despite the development, once I walk into the Barkhor, the older Tibetan section of town, Lhasa still resembles a medieval city, suffused with the smell of yak butter, juniper and incense. In the Barkhor’s narrow, winding alleyways, flanked by mud-brick homes topped with prayer flags and churning with crowds, monks bless Tibetan children by blowing on their heads and crowds of pilgrims walk in circles around holy sites, murmuring to themselves as their eyes roll back into their heads. Porters hoist slabs of yak cheese on their backs or hack apart bloody sides of yak right on the sidewalk, leaving bones strewn in the gutters.

In the center of the Barkhor, I wander into the Jokhang Temple. Avoiding tour groups in the main sanctuary, I head into the back rooms, past warrior deities painted on the walls. In the back, I am alone with one Tibetan devotee, who spins a line of golden prayer wheels. Though murals on the Jokhang’s front walls have faded — during the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards attacked the Jokhang — in the back the mural details become clearer, and I can even make out goddesses’ long eyelashes.

Above the Barkhor stands the Potala Palace, traditional residence of the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet. The 13-story-high Potala’s size and detail remain impressive. The exterior walls, constructed from mud and wood, are painted such a deep, rich crimson that from a distance they appear covered with plush carpet. A walking tour climbs through endless, labyrinthine throne rooms, side chapels and catacombs, emerging onto roofs topped with golden pagodas. In one chapel alone, cabinets hold more than 1,000 images of the Buddhist god of longevity; in the room housing the tomb of the eighth Dalai Lama, who died in 1804, his coffin glimmers with what is said to be 5,574 ounces of gold leaf, inlaid diamonds and pearls.

But the Potala feels empty, ghostly, a museum of a dead culture. In a room where Tibetan leaders once received religious teachings, a kettle still sits on a mantel, as if the current 14th Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after the Chinese invasion, would be coming right back for tea. Few monks pray in the Potala, and most rooms lack residential furniture, giving visitors little idea of life before the Chinese takeover. Only near the end of the tour does one faded mural provide a glimpse of the past — of Lhasa crowded with monastic orders living in the hills surrounding the Potala, of a Potala swarming with monks.

The Potala exit sends me into a sea of vendors selling prayer beads. Though they are selling Tibetan objects of worship, most vendors seem to be Chinese migrants. “The Chinese tourism just allows migrants to take tourism jobs — Chinese businesspeople mass-produce Tibetan jewelry and they run the jewelry shops in the Barkhor,” says one Tibetan guide.

Still, some tourism specialists believe high-end travel to Tibet could empower Tibetans. This summer, Laurence Brahm, an American entrepreneur, opened House of Shambhala in Lhasa. The city’s first high-end boutique hotel, with elegant suites, a yoga center and a Tibetan crafts shop, it seeks to revive Tibetan arts and train Tibetans in tourism management.

After choosing to build in a traditional courtyard home that once housed a calligraphy school, Mr. Brahm employed a team of Tibetan restorers. They filled the rooms with antique hand-painted furniture and natural stone and wood floors, and outfitted the interior courtyard with prayer wheels and a small shrine. The design proved so authentic that, one morning, I wake to a fashion crew using House of Shambhala for an advertisement featuring an actor dressed as a Tibetan warrior in chain mail.

Other high-end operators have followed suit. One foreign nongovernmental organization helped found Dropenling Handicraft Development Center, a Lhasa initiative producing Tibetan crafts, like handbags, geared toward Western design sensibilities. Luxury travel agencies now run plush Tibet trips, like Imperial Tours’ high-end jaunt, or Power Places Tours’ trip, led by a guide, Gary Wintz, who was one of the first Westerners to live in Tibet in the 1950s.

The new train itself exudes luxury: In the plush four-bed sleeper berths, each bunk includes a personal television. When I board the train, I see many local travelers dressed up for the ride — Tibetan men wearing tattered pinstriped suits along with traditional high boots — though as we approach 16,000 feet, some Chinese train riders ruin their clothing by lying on the floor, moaning as their heads ache from the thin air. Like a cruel joke, a scrolling board constantly displays the current (towering) altitude, and a placid electronic commentator explains all the ways high altitude can damage your body if you are not in shape. “Dear guests, you better have done some sports before you came to Tibet,” the voice tells us.

The train soon will become even more luxurious. Next year, a company called RailPartners plans to introduce $1,000-per-night cars that will include private suites, butler service and haute cuisine.

It already ranks as one of the most impressive rail rides in the world. Snow-capped peaks shrouded in clouds loom over a plain studded with small stupas; the scope of the Tibetan vista makes America’s Big Sky country look small. Out the window, I watch nomads with long, flowing black hair herd flocks of woolly yaks across the rolling Tibetan grasslands. Seemingly amazed by the train, some nomads tether their horses next to tents and watch the cars roll by.

TRAIN travel also can help get travelers away from the Lhasa region. After several days outside the city, I decide Tibet still retains its majesty. But while in the past travelers could just stumble upon that allure, today you have to work to find it.

Disembarking from the train, I drive to Namtso Lake, at 15,500 feet one of the highest lakes in the world. The fierce, high-altitude sun turns the Namtso water a glimmering bright turquoise, and I watch one crane soar over the lake. From its shores I can see the serrated Tangula range, which Heinrich Harrer crossed during the epic trek to Lhasa immortalized in his book “Seven Years in Tibet,” and where mountains top 21,000 feet. When I walk toward the lake, I understand Tibet’s environmental fragility — crunching under my feet, the ground is little more than a thin veneer of grass over cold hard tundra.

Returning from Namtso to central Tibet, I stop at Ganden Monastery, traditionally one of the most important in Tibetan Buddhism. Unlike the empty Potala, Ganden feels like a living, working house of worship. Monks are everywhere — unloading trucks of food, debating Buddhist scripture by slapping their palms to emphasize points, joking with pilgrims camped nearby.

Sucking wind, I climb to the top of the monastery, nestled atop a mountain with panoramic views over the nearby Kyichu Valley. From the ridge, I can watch handicapped pilgrims crawling to touch Ganden’s sacred rocks. Near the apex of the mountain, a family performs a Tibetan sky burial, an ancient tradition that sometimes horrifies Westerners: Tibetans take the bodies of the deceased to a holy high point and leave them to be consumed by animals.

The majesty is even easier to find in culturally Tibetan areas outside Tibet province itself, officially known as the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Chinese government generally exerts less political pressure on monasteries outside the region, so they can practice traditional elements of Tibetan Buddhism with less interference.
On another trip, when I visit Labrang Monastery, a major site located in Gansu, a province near the autonomous region, I arrive in time for the annual harvest festival. Tibetan nomads in long black coats and gauchoesque wide-brimmed hats have ridden here from hundreds of miles away and now wait at the monastery gates. Within minutes, a senior abbot in a huge banana-shaped yellow hat appears at the gates, and the crowd of nomads surges forward, grabbing my arms and legs and pushing everyone inside the monastery. From the roof of the monastery, topped with paintings of grinning demons, young monks blow trumpets so big three men have to carry them, the rumble echoing back from the valley below. Other monks walk swiftly out of the monastery, beating drums and hand cymbals into a deafening racket. With no warning, they then unveil a series of enormous paper sculptures, light them on fire, and furiously stamp them to pieces, destroying evil spirits.

It’s a memory that comes back to me my last evening at House of Shambhala, as I climb a rickety ladder to the rooftop restaurant, which boasts views over the Barkhor, and watch the sun set over the Potala. Because of the sightlines from the Shambhala roof, I can stare directly at the Potala without seeing any of the sprawling, ugly newer part of Lhasa. For a moment, I can imagine the Lhasa from that Potala mural — a city teeming with spiritual passions, truly cut off from the rest of the world.

Toy Trucks, Plush Pigs, Pussycat Dolls?

2007-01-09T23:31:00.000+08:00

Hello all!

I just wanted to share this "I wish I had my camera with me" moment!

I was walking to the recording studio a few weeks ago and I pass a kindergarten on the way. Usually the kids are tearing it up outside, running all over the place and screaming. But this time they were all standing in lines according to height and dancing along with the instructors.

Awww...how cute! A bunch of 3 and 4 year olds dancing.

Wait!

What are they doing...?

Are they dancing to the...no...wait...yes, yes they are!

Lines of little kids, barely out of toddler phase where thrusting and booty shaking to, the groove of the Pussycat Dolls.

There's just something not right about seeing cherubic little kids grinding to "don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?"

Yeah.

Hilarious and a little...um...weird....

Seriously, they should be extinct.

2007-01-08T18:29:00.000+08:00

So, their main survival skill is that they are cute and humans want to save them and will pay mounds of cash to keep 'em.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. - If you think kids are picky, try feeding a giant panda.

It takes four full-time bamboo hunters at Zoo Atlanta to satisfy the palates of the zoo's panda pair, Lun Lun and Yang Yang. And they are not always successful.

The animals' diet consists almost entirely of bamboo, but they will eat only about 20 of the 200 or so species that grow in Georgia. What type they like also varies by the time of year. Sometimes the pandas will eat nothing but one variety for a week, then refuse to eat it anymore. (Sound familiar, parents?)

And the bamboo has to be fresh — the pandas turn up their noses at dry or wilted leaves and discolored stalks.

So the zoo relies on a bamboo hunting team to find and harvest local patches of the plant. The bamboo they collect cannot be grown with pesticides or near polluted waterways. And most important, it must be appetizing to the pandas.

Bamboo grows wild — and fast, like a weed — in many parts of the country. The Atlanta zoo could, of course, grow its own, but that would not be very practical, given the pandas' ever-changing tastes.

"They might eat golden bamboo from Mr. Smith's yard but they won't eat it from Mr. Jones' yard," said Jan Fortune, manager of the zoo's animal nutrition department.

The finicky black-and-white animals are native to China's Sichuan Province. Lun Lun, the female, weighs around 250 pounds; Yang Yang, the male, is closer to 300 pounds. Each panda eats 20 to 30 pounds of bamboo a day. The leaves and stalks account for about 95 percent of their diet. (They also get soy biscuits and apples as treats.)

That means that the bamboo hunters have to haul in about 400 pounds of bamboo each week to provide enough food for the pandas and a few other zoo animals, like the elephants and gorillas, that also eat the plants.

The team works five days a week harvesting bamboo from the yards of homes and businesses on a list of about 1,500 approved donors within 100 miles of Atlanta. Their jobs will get tougher in nine months when the zoo's panda cub Mei Lan, born Sept. 6, moves from Lun Lun's milk to the stalk.

Zoo Atlanta spends $2 million each year on the pandas, which includes the costs of leasing them from the Chinese government and employing the bamboo hunters.

On a recent morning, Zoo Atlanta's bamboo hunters trooped through a wooded lot carrying a saw, a lopper and twine. They sawed, chopped and bundled the long, green stalks with ease and efficiency, filling the back of their truck in a couple of hours.

They brave yellowjackets, wasps, snakes, fire ants, poison ivy and every kind of weather. They have even been chased by a wild boar.

"Sometimes, in the country, people come out with their guns and ask, `What are y'all doing?!'" said Rytis Daujotas, one of the bamboo hunters.

The plants must be free of chemicals, bird droppings or other animal feces, which can be toxic to the pandas. Bamboo grown near a busy road is no good because auto exhaust can contaminate the crop.

And the bamboo team cannot use power tools because any oil or gas residue would poison the pandas. The hand-held saw and lopper are greased with cooking oil after being disinfected every day.

As recently as last year, Zoo Atlanta also relied on a bamboo farm in Savannah operated by the University of Georgia. But the availability of closer sources and the growing cost of hauling the bamboo 250 miles to Atlanta ended that relationship.

Other U.S. zoos with pandas get their bamboo in various ways. The Memphis Zoo has a team that harvests bamboo in the area. The zoo also grows the plant on its own seven-acre bamboo farm.

The San Diego Zoo grows all the bamboo eaten by its three adult pandas. The Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington gets most of its bamboo from a private donor's property in Maryland, but it also is trying to grow some at the zoo.

Since pandas are picky, most zoos have found that growing only one species of bamboo won't cut it. Zoo Atlanta keeps files on what types of bamboo the pandas eat each day, but the animals often change their minds.

"You have to kind of play it by ear," Daujotas said. "It's a good thing we have elephants. What pandas don't like, elephants like."

Non-Toxic, Whew!

2007-01-08T17:28:00.000+08:00

So, I sort of drank my liquid glue stick.

Yeah.

I'm cool.

It was next to my cola flavored high fructose corn syrup beverage.

But I do have to question the toxicity of the glue as it is Chinese and has some random English words on it, so is "non-toxic" random or real?

I guess now it is just a waiting game.

I'll let you know. Or won't depending on what happens :)

Anyhow, I have been having oodles and oodles of internet problems and I have recently written to many of you - Mom/Dad, Q, Debz, Bri, Gfarb, Jerry, Kerrie, but I don't think all of them will be able to jump the broken internet cable gaps in the pacific, so if you haven't heard from me lately that's why. But don't worry, I haven't said anything of any importance in any of my written correspondence, so you're not missing out on anything.

I have only 2 more classes to do this week and then CAMBODIA!!! Woohoo! I can't wait!

THANK YOU!!!

2007-01-07T20:53:00.001+08:00

Sorry for the belated response to the very excellent care packages! This whole earthquake business is really inconvenient with all of the Internet stuff that I HAVE to do. Well, not HAVE to do, but would really like to get done. Anyhow, I just want to thank Jerry for his awesome holiday/birthday packages that came just in time for Christmas! Most of the edible contents are already gone....

Also, a huge thank you to Matt's parents! We got an incredible Christmas box from them too! It's not the holidays without Christmas cookies/cake and delicious cheese and sausage (oh, you guys know our gastronomic preferences so well!)

I hope you all of my readers, old and new, had a very happy holiday are were able to partake in in holiday goodness no matter where you are our what you believe in.

Now, on to some other business...

What's your resolution?

Cooking with Chen

2007-01-01T17:46:00.000+08:00

Sounds like a made for TV cooking show, huh?

I hope all of you had a very happy New Year!

So, the Internet problem is still very much a problem and I am braving the Internet cafes once again. Filling my lungs with second hand smoke.

So, we had a pretty low key New Years this year. Matt and I both had to work. Night classes. Ugh. I really like my night class and it was definitely my favorite to teach, but on New Year's Eve? Well, we only had about 12 students total show up between the two of us so we combined classes and taught them a little about New Year's traditions in the US, sang Auld Lang Syne, and then I did a totally related ASL unit (was rolling my eyes while typing that because I was teaching Sign Language in an oral English class). So, a regular potpourri of lessons for the last class. My students were excited to see Matt in action though and his class pretty much couldn't care less too see me. But I'm used to that.

Um, yeah.

For the actual New Year's Day we went to our waiban, Chen's house to make dumplings. So, a bunch of us caught the bus to head out to the Chen pad for some serious jiaozi production. The bus dropped us off on a street somewhere in the vicinity of Chen's apartment. She drew us a map. But, unfortunately the map was basically useless. It is about on par with if I were to direct you to my apartment in Beijing and drew you a map of China with a dot, representing my house in the eastern part kinda near the water. Yeah, accurate it was not. Luckily we ran into someone Dr. Buck knew from the university who just happened to be heading out to Chen's for the jiaozi fiesta.

All of the filling had been pre-made, so our tasks was to put it into the wrappers. Chen demoed how to properly fill and seal the little wrappers and we all took it in and thought, "hey, that ain't hard!"

Round One (ding!): I put about a teaspoon into a wrapper and went to seal the edges - I managed to flute the edges all fancy like, but had to scrap some of the filling. Matt? Well, let's just say that he got a, "that's interesting" type comment from Chen followed by some chortling. Adam? Chen just looked at it and laughed. Dr. Buck? Let's just say that it was okay, but not quite up to Chinese snuff.

Round Two (ding!): I am able to fill a little faster and Chen compliments me on my dumpling form. Matt? Overfills and gets dumpling goo on the table. Adam? Chen laughs at his dumpling creatures. Dr. Buck? Did he compete in the second round?

Round Three (ding!): Chen announces that it looks as if I am the only one to pass dumpling 101. Matt hasn't given up, he is determined to learn how to do this. Adam is eating dumplings. Dr. Buck? Was this when he opened the wine?

Anyhow, it was fun! I think all of my years of mandu making has refined my mad dumpling wrapping skills. Yay me!

After a great dinner prepared by Chen, we all sat around and played cards. As many of you know, I hate games. Always have and probably, for the most part, always will. So, a nice friendly game of cards is like a razor blade to the eyeballs to me. So, the first game is a team game and my team did well, I think. The second game was called something like "pig" and was similar to hearts (or so I'm told). I didn't get any pigs which was good and Matt was the first to pig out which was bad. But what was funny was how Chen was playing. She was sitting next to Dr. Buck and was 'helping' him play cards. She would point out something and tell him to do this or that and then chuckle as she deposited a bunch of cards. Ah yes, our waiban was cheating up a storm and loving every minute of it!

We wound up hanging with Chen until about 11PM before we all piled in a cab and headed back to USTB. All in all a nice evening. Even if we did have to play cards.

What came first the chicken or the egg?

2006-12-28T23:45:00.000+08:00

Um...I had to record this the other day:

Cock, cock, cock, cock,
Oops! I laid an egg.

No context. This is it. Your guess is as good as mine!

BBC Ground Shaker

2006-12-28T18:47:00.000+08:00

So, the "official" party line is that the earthquake that recently occurred near Taiwan and has damaged the international internet lines which run under the ocean. So, my access to anything not eChina is severely limited or slow right now. Google is different, I don't exactly know how, but it just is.

The other theory floating on is that the BBC recently had a special about how people in China are getting around the other Great Wall of China (hint: the other wall isn't made of brick, but works to keep out the invading outside virtual forces). This BBC feature was quickly edited out of the feed to China and then the internet suddenly went down.

So, depending on what theory tickles you more, I won't have great access from anywhere between 2 days to 3 weeks.

I have a lot of posting to catch up on, so keep checking back and I hope I will be able to get some more up for you soon.

I was able to get some pictures up to my flickr site before the BBC-quake, so take a look at some of those while I sit, wait, and patiently look at my browser status bar cycle and cycle but not go anywhere.

Note: The posts I will be adding will be post-dated.

Want to Adopt from China? What's your BMI?

2006-12-28T11:43:00.000+08:00

BEIJING, Dec. 20 — China is planning to issue new, tighter restrictions on foreign adoptions of Chinese children, which would prohibit adoptions by parents who are unmarried, who are obese or who are older than 50, according to adoption agencies in the United States.

The new regulations, which have not yet been formally announced by the state-run China Center of Adoption Affairs, are to take effect on May 1, 2007, and seem certain to slow the rapid rise in applications by foreign parents to adopt Chinese babies.

"This is absolutely going to affect a percentage of our clientele," said Heather Terry, a spokesperson for the Great Wall of China Adoption Agency in Austin, Texas. "This will probably affect quite a lot of people in 2007."

Ms. Terry said that foreign adoption agencies learned of the new regulations at a Dec. 8 meeting in Beijing with officials from the adoption-affairs center. Chinese officials told the foreign agencies that applications had begun to exceed the number of available babies, and that the new rules were partly intended to address that imbalance.

Ms. Terry added that China also wanted to slow foreign adoptions because "they are opening up domestic adoptions now."

The adoption-affairs center declined requests in recent weeks by The New York Times for an interview on adoption policy. An unnamed official cited by the Associated Press confirmed that the government is considering new guidelines, but declined to discuss any specifics.

Even so, adoption agencies in the United States are already telling prospective parents about the rule changes or posting the guidelines on their websites. "C.C.A.A. has decided to both reduce the number of dossiers accepted by applying stricter standards to potential adoptive families and to increase the number of children available for adoption by improving the situation of children in China's orphanages," Jackie Harrah wrote in a letter posted on the website of Harrah's Adoption International Mission in Spring, Texas.

Adoption agencies were told that China intended to increase the supply of adoptable children by creating a new charity named Blue Skies, which would focus on improving health care for medically fragile infants or premature babies at orphanages. An initial goal of this charity would be to buy incubators for many of the country's orphanages, according to the Harrah's Adoption website.

Ms. Terry said that the most significant rule change is the new ban against single parents. Up to now, Ms. Terry said, China has allowed single parents to make up as many as 8 percent of all referrals; the new rules would eliminate that quota. The age restrictions also have been tightened; China now allows people up to 55 to be considered.

Some of the new rules focus on the fiscal, physical and psychological health of prospective parents. People who are taking medication for anxiety or depression can be disqualified under the new rules. Couples will be disqualified if either person has a body fat measurement exceeding 40 percent (30 percent is generally considered obese). And a prospective adoptive family's net worth must now exceed $80,000.

China will also disqualify families that already have more than four children in the home.

Ms. Terry said that her agency has already started applying the new guidelines. "We're no long accepting singles," she said. "That is the most significant change."

Single parents who are already involved in the application process and can complete and file their paperwork before May 1 can remain eligible for a Chinese child.

Ms. Terry said she believed that Chinese officials were trying to act in the best interests of the adopted children. "All the agencies worldwide have to abide by these guidelines now," she said.

...And to all a good night! Whew!

2006-12-26T21:57:00.000+08:00

USTB Christmas party - done!

Whew!

It was fun, but I'm glad it's over!

Sorry this post is coming so late, but it got a little lost on the way to posting.

Anyhow, we threw a Christmas party for the university! So I and super party planner, Naree set out to put together a westernish party for the students. I have posted up some pictures taken at the party and will eventually steal some from Naree.

I cut a ton of paper snowflakes for the party and made a bunch of other decorations for it too. Naree had a great student worker force churn out a bunch of stuff for the party too! It was a good time - had hot chocolate and activity stations. Even sang some carols - including a very festive version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Adam and Matt (I have video, but have promised not to post it).

We ran into a few snags, but nothing that we couldn't handle. Like, um, no tape in the multi-functional hall. Yeah, didn't really follow the rule exactly, but did less taping than we were planning to do - wound up taping huge sheets of paper together and taping/hanging those to the walls. Then all of the stuff was taped onto the paper.

So, I was in charge of the cutting tables. So for me that meant, snowflakes and stockings. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure that they grasped the outside edge vs inside the snowflake for cutting. Also, the idea of not cutting all the way through so you have something that will stay together. There was a lot of: Molly, Molly! Look at this! Then they open up the flake to have it fall to the ground in several pieces. Oh well, at least they had fun, but it eventually turned into a Molly, make me a snowflake booth.

Adam was DJ again and also MC - he's good at that stuff and doesn't fear the microphone like I do. Matt headed up the pin the nose on Rudolph station (the Chinese kids are such cheaters! Matt had to hold arms back to prevent the cheating. I have some video that I will post up when the internet is more reliable) and Naree cracked the whip over at the gingerbread - err - saltine cracker houses. The houses turned out cute, but quite different than the ones I remember making. Can you imagine eating a spring onion cracker house, complete with frosting and coffee/mint flavored candy. I saw a kid take a bite of that taste combo. He didn't go in for a second one.

Then the visit from the man of the hour. Santa! Naree's boyfriend, Alby was a great sport about donning the red suit. He came out Ho, ho, ho-ing to the delight of the crowd and filled all of their stockings hung and flung by the chimney with care. And even managed to pose for some pictures - shopping mall style next to one of the Christmas trees. Seriously, SantAlby was awesome!

Okay, so, I guess that is all for now. Pictures up on flickr, talk to you all later!

Fa-Ra-Ra and Sumpity, Sump, Sump

2006-12-26T21:41:00.000+08:00

I know that it isn't nice to make fun of my students' pronunciation problems, but I just can't help it! I have been teaching Christmas carols this week and, well, I have been taken down by fits of giggles in almost every class. I can't help it it's funny!

So, y'know in the movie "A Christmas Story" when the Chinese cooks are singing? Well, it was kinda like that. It was funny in the movie, but, like, thousands of times more funny to have a room of 40-60 kids doing it in unison in real life! The hilarity of it all never really got old for me.

The sounds that always seem to cause problems are: "th" and the "l" when it is embedded in a word (like the word "usually" - I spent 20 minutes drilling that one once). First we would go through vocab and then listen to the song, then go at it line by line. Often we would end the song all laughing at some of the pronunciation attempts it was good fun for all of us. You can just imagine the result of "Feliz Navidad"!

So, Christmas cheer definitely swept through my little area in China, but this year the halls were decked with balls of "hawry" and Frosty went Sumpity, sump, sump over the hills of snow!

Thank God It's...CHRISTMAS!!!

2006-12-26T21:40:00.000+08:00

Picture it. It's Christmas Day. The school is taking us out to dinner. They have been a little evasive as to where we are going to go. They cancel one of Matt's classes at the last moment so he is able to attend the special dinner. But where are we going?

Now mind you, my only other experience with Chinese dinners with administrators have not been the most enjoyable of experiences because of all of the drinking and drinking games, so you can understand my suspicions, even though this is Beijing. I mean, I still pause, cringe and do a cleansing breath every time the phone rings.

So, anyhow, we all loaded into a bus and take off. We drove past a Domino's Pizza (yeah, there's a Domino's Pizza in Beijing) and eventually we pulled into the Friendship Hotel parking lot. We heard our waiban's cheery, "We're here!" and we looked out to see a welcoming, familiar sign glowing in the darkness. Yup, our Christmas dinner would be at...TGI Friday's!!! Woohoo!!! We are all stunned. I want to cry a little bit, but I was just too shocked to muster up the tears. Friday's. Friday's! Did you hear me? FREAKIN' FRIDAY'S!!! Mmmmmmm....

Needless to say we were all really super excited about this special treat (well at least the Americans were, the British guy and the Japanese pair weren't as excited at this specimen of American chain cuisine). Walking into the restaurant was like leaving China for a little bit - that is if you don't really look at the other patrons or waitstaff.

Ahhh...GOOD FOOD!!! I had the BBQ ribs. Full rack, baby! I couldn't eat all of it so, I shared and had enough to take home a little sampler for lunch the next day. Also, appetizers. Oh, mozzarella sticks, potato skins, buffalo wings.... I don't think that the Chinese people were as impressed with the food, but we did make them order the comically large drinks. It was quite amusing to watch our waiban holding (with both hands) her very large Long Island Iced Tea.

Anyhow, the dinner was great and the atmosphere was definitely merry. It was probably the best present the university could have given us! Thank you USTB!

Xmas Booty

2006-12-26T21:39:00.000+08:00

No, this is not in reference to my derriere post holiday celebrations, but a post thanking my students (who will never read my blog - thank God!) for their thoughtfulness over the holidays. They were all really concerned about me having to be far away from my family over the "most important holiday in the whole wide Western world".

On Christmas morning I woke up early and groggily stumbled around the apartment before getting ready for my weekly Yan Qing gig and heard my cell phone text message alert go off. I checked it only to find that my students had sent me oodles and oodles of holiday wishes! The messages continued to pour in through out the day.

At Yan Qing, my English Teaching major class presented me with a wonderful, ginormous chinese knot for a gift and they had prepared a snippet of a Christmas song for me as well! Some of the other students gave me little presents as well, everything from tasty things to eat, to a group of carolers to a very, um, "unique" pair of earrings - they gave me the earrings stating that they knew that I liked jewelry and they didn't think that I had anything like this - I opened the package and was shocked at what I saw! A pair of large, thick hoop earrings with leopard skin print micro-fleece glued to the earrings. Quite right, I don't have anything in my jewelry collect quite like 'em. I'll take a picture sometime.

Anyhow, the outpouring of holiday wishes and gifts was truly heartwarming. My students definitely captured the nature of the holiday with their cheer, happiness, and love. What a nice way to celebrate Christmas and spread the Christmas spirit.

Compliments of YouTube!

2006-12-19T01:28:00.001+08:00

I just saw this on one of my friends' blogs and had to share!

Enjoy the delightful creepiness!

The Bacon Battle

2006-12-13T02:07:00.000+08:00

Some times I get caught into situations where I don't really know what the right response should be. For example, today I was doing a little shopping at the local Walmart today (exotic, huh?). I was just picking up a little cheese (woot!) and some other goods that I can't get at the local grocery stores. I was very, very lucky and got the last package of Hormel bacon (woot, woot!).

Okay, so here's the situation, I turned around to look at some other products and right when I turned my attention back to my cart I caught an elderly lady taking my precious bacon out of my cart and put it into her basket and walk away. I went up to her and said in Chinese, "Excuse me, that pork meat is mine". Blank look. I pointed at her basket and pantomimed that I saw her take it out of my cart. She brushed me off and continued to walk away from me. Ummm...yeah, that's my bacon, lady! So, I went up to her and took it back and walked away. The result? She followed me and when she caught up she spat out some angry sounding Chinese at me, reclaimed the bacon, and gave me a really dirty look and scurried away.

Uhhh...???

So...???

Uhhh...???

I was a little stunned by what had just happened. A little old lady stole my bacon, yelled at me and then ran away.

Hmmm...

So, I went home bacon less. And confused.

2006 Year of the Dog Indeed!

2006-12-12T14:16:00.000+08:00

Wow! One China, one child, one dog?

The dog has had a tough year in China this being the year of the dog and all.

Dog lovers growl as Beijing lauds canine curbs
Chinese officials defend forced removal of pets under 'one-dog' policy

BEIJING - Beijing showed off the achievements of its crackdown on pet dogs on Monday, in the face of criticisms that the city has been cruel in removing pets from owners and arbitrary in its application of the rules.

Since the campaign was launched in October, city officials have gone door-to-door looking for unregistered dogs, owners who contravene a “one-dog policy” and dogs that exceed a 14 inches height limit -- all offences that violate the city’s rules of pet ownership.

“Barking and other disturbances have become a serious problem we have to face,” Yu Hongyuan, an official with the Beijing canine management office, told a news conference.

“To alleviate the problems and make rabies prevention more effective, the municipal government has launched a campaign on becoming a good dog owner,” he said.

City officials unrepentant
At a pound in a Beijing suburb home to 600 dogs, canine victims of the campaign were on display, some barking wildly and others slumped passively in metal cages marked with tags that said “unregistered” or “exceeds height standard” as reasons for their impoundment.

But city officials were unrepentant, saying as dog ownership has surged among Beijing’s nouveau riche, so have complaints of biting and barking.

In the central district of Dongcheng, Wu Zhimin, the head of the local dog-raising administration, showed a thick file of dog registration forms as testament to the campaign’s success, each bearing a mug shot of Fido or Fifi.

The drive to reinforce regulations on dog ownership and register more of the city’s estimated 1 million dogs, has come under fire from animal rights groups and spurred a rare protest last month among the city’s dog lovers.

Animal rights groups say registering dogs and keeping their numbers under control makes sense, especially as the city tries to curb a rabies outbreak that has hit some rural areas, but they object to the heavy-handed way the rules are being implemented.

Groups suggest gradual implementation
“The regulations have been in place since 2003, and the government has to take some responsibility for the fact that they’ve been ignored,” said Jill Robinson, head of Animals Asia, a Hong Kong-based charity.

“There are pet shops all over the place, there are pet markets everywhere that are selling large-size dogs and no one has cracked down,” she said.

Instead of forcibly removing dogs that don’t comply with the rules from their owners, the government should allow them to live out their lives in a ’grandfather’ system and gradually implement the policies, she said.

Cradling “Baby” a white, fluffy pooch dressed in a knitted sweater to guard against Beijing’s winter chill, 47-year-old Sun Guiqin said she had no complaints about the rules.

“One is enough,” she said.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

Umm...hey! What's Up?

2006-12-12T01:43:00.000+08:00

Hello! Nothing too new or interesting going on. Yesterday I went to recording studio and stopped at a bank to try to close my Guyuan account and get the rest of my money out of the account. I wasn't really sure what to do, but I took a number and waited for a LONG time. Eventually I talked to one of the bank personnel there about my account and, not completely understanding what she was saying, I was escorted into a small room in the back of the bank and told to wait. Alone. By myself.

Soon three men with guns came into the room and closed the door behind them.

Uhhh...

...Hey - what's up (nervous laugh)?

Anyhow, eventually another person came in and let the armed guards pick up the money and hauled the cases out to the armored truck waited outside.

And I wasn't able to close my account or get me money.

Yup.

Another English Gem

2006-12-08T14:21:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone! Just a quickie before they do some work on our internet. Matt recently judged an English singing competition - I fled after a few songs (the high notes were a little painful for me). But at the end of the competition they gave him a little present. A nice little mug with English words! So for your enjoyment here is the text on the mug:

Let's sport!
Let' Perspire!
Go! go! go!
Take Exercise!
Cool! Cool! Cool!
We will be lustihood!

Later!

Listen with your ears, not your eyes

2006-12-05T23:22:00.000+08:00

Sorry blog readers, but I just have not been feeling much like posting these days. My life in Beijing isn't very exciting. I go teach. I go to the recording studio. Nothing much more than that.

Ummm...one of my night class students defected from my class because of my "Asian pronunciation" and went to Matt's class. He approached Matt about it and mentioned that he thought that there was some sort of thing on the genetic level that makes Asian people unable to pronounce English words properly. HA! I am tired of that thinking. Matt addressed that right away and told him that he was wrong and that he is listening with his eyes, not ears. Makes me feel better, but I still am just tired about the stereotyping. The student has since came back to my class, but it really just frustrates me, not being seen/called a "real American" or that I can't speak English as well as the while people.

In the meanwhile I am the #1 voice for English recordings in this area. All of those poor school children will have to make do with my poor English and my "Asian" pronunciation. Egads!

So, I guess that is all for right now. Hopefully I will have some more interesting things to post sometime. I will leave you with my favorite recorded dialogue line of the week:

Look! The Chinese child laborers are working very hard!

Daily Cravings - Food and Feelings

2006-12-05T22:40:00.000+08:00

My food diary - definitely not that dieting kind of diary!

I'm going to just add from the top now, so most recent "cravings" will be on the top, also only postings from 2006.

December 2006 - I have had some other packages and one person to person cheese delivery, but this was when my blog was being blocked. So, now that I have access I would like to thank Matt's parents for another wonderful package! Soooo many good things! But I just have 3 words for y'all - Butterscotch pudding galore! Thank you so much and just in time for the holidays (thanks for the cold medicine too, that will save us some potentially scary trips to the doctor!)

October 2006 - Another package!!! This one from my good friend, Jerry! THANK YOU!!! Okay, so being away from the States in the fall is hard because I miss out on all of the tasty pumpkin and apple delights. So, Mr. Govert sent me a whole package of tasty pumpkin treats just in time for my birthday. But not just pumpkin stuff, a whole lot of goodies such as: ginger snaps, goldfish cracker, sour patch kids and CHEESE! Thank you so much. I owe you when we are back stateside!

October 2006 - I didn't want this to get buried by my travel log. The log is now up, just have to keep scrolling down. I want to give an especially oooey-gooey thank you to a fellow cheese fan! I just got a fabulous chesehead care package from Gfarb and Mike (M-Dawg? Hmmm, have to work on his nick name). No, not a Wisconsin football reference - I'm a Minnesota fan! But whole box of the life blood. Cheese. Thank you both sooo much! Even though we are in Beijing and can now get a lot of western products, they sent us things that I haven't seen here! And things that I really get cravings for, i.e. pasta and cheese in various forms. Now, just for you - to the tune of "No Diggity", remember the roller rink in Beloit? "Thank you for your package, (Sarah Goldfarb), I wanna eat it up. An' I love all the products (cheesy goodness), and I'm drooling now. Way-o, way-o, way-o, way-ohhh...they sure look good! Way-o, way-o, way-o, way-ohhh.... Okay, so not so good my mind is toast right now. But, thank you sooo much, I can't tell you how much appreciate your package and enthusium for one of my favorite food items!

August 2006 - THANK YOU Anjali! Okay, for those of you who don't know her, she is one of the fantastic VIA vols in Nanjing (she also has a really interesting and entertaining blog - see link at right). She went back to the States during the last break and brought back some goodies for us from home - when I saw the Mexican Hot Chocolate, I think I spontaneously shed a tear of joy. I was a foodie at home, but here...well...let's just say that food has taken on a more significant role in my China life. Good thing we sprung for that gym membership!

May 29, 2006 - THANK YOU Ed and Chris! What a caboodle of tasty treats! We have already started to consume all of the treats inside. I actually hugged the box of Cracklin' Oat Bran for a little while longer than what is "normal/appropriate" when it comes to hugging cereal. Hmmm.... We're eyeing a box of mac and cheese for dinner tomorrow and Matt, well, let's say that he is very excited about the possibility of making pancakes. So, thank you, thank you, thank you! Goodbye potatoes!

May 15, 2006 - OHMYGOD! We just got a care package from another couple of Beloit buds! I can't even begin to tell you how much we appreciate it! Matt has made me hide the cherry sours as he can't control himself with those little tart but sweet delights. I can't wait to crack open the hummus! We just kept on pulling out treat after treat after treat from the box. Bri, keep rockin' in the free(er) world and Debz, well, you're just hands down awesome and I don't what I did to get such a great friend, but I count myself very lucky! PS - we already ate the Jambalaya and Red Beans & Rice with one of the sausages. Yummmm!!!!

May 11, 2006 - Today is rainy and cold. Nothing like tomato soup and grilled cheese, or at least the closest we can get to it. Actually, I write this because I am thinking about pizza. After our visit to Yinchuan, I wrote about our good and bad pizza experience. I was just reminiscing about the wonderful tomato and basil pizza I ate. Mmmmmm.... Man, we are going to get soooo fat when we are back! Will have to engage "Project: Iron Rice Bowl" (my diet fad vision) so we don't blimp up too much.

April 25, 2006 - We got a wonderful care package from one of my Beloiter friends. I truly have the most awesome friends! Ahhh...cheese, couscous, soup and oh my! That was just a few of the delights we found within. Also, kudos to Jerry on the crumpled up copy of The Onion for padding! We have already devoured that. Ooooh, so much fun to get that kind of mail! Usually it is just Beloit College annual fund requests - yeah, get back to me when I am making more than $200 a month. We found some good bread on the corner and today (Wed.), we had the bread with Jerry's hot pepper cheese, how delightful! As you may have guessed by the number of posts, I have a few days off as my kids are taking their mid-term exams. Then we begin our vacation - hopefully we will be heading off to the Tengger Desert for some dry, dirty fun! Oh, the big news for me in Guyuan, the grocery store started to sell Skittles. I will try to put up another video post today. Later!

March 31, 2006 - Last week, we, gulp, finished our last box of mac and cheese. Sob! Lately, we have been hitting our cheese products pretty hard. The discipline has just melted away (much like cheese, yum, gooey, melty cheese....) Cheese junkie. I have been asked for more care package ideas, so, I consult the spreadsheet (Matt calls it my sheet of gastronomic greed): Cherry candy (can't get it out here), Mac and Cheese (non-powder as we can't get butter here), Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal, vanilla extract (we just bought an oven and I can bake on a limited basis), bisquick, zebra cakes, and that dried tortellini stuffed with cheese. We thank you all for you very generous packages, we treasure each and every one! They help me diversify my 3 potato a day diet.

February 19, 2006 - We just got two wonderful care packages from Matt's mom! Thank you! Anyhow, some of my dear friends were looking to ship some stuff off to me, but did not know what to send. Here are some ideas: Parmesan cous cous, Twizzlers, Cinnamon Graham Crackers, Nerf Football, Cherry & Grapefruit Jelly Bellies, Post Selects Cranberry & Almond cereal. I have a nerdy spreadsheet going with all of the food Matt and I have been craving. So, if you ever need any ideas...! Our vacation was really good for eatin'! We got in quite a bit of Western food - Mexican even! But now we are back to our 3 staple dishes at our 4 staple restaurants. I can feel the food blahs already coming.

Poetry Contest

2006-11-29T00:55:00.000+08:00

I now know where all of the loser poems go from those poetry contests advertised in the back of magazines. They get sold to China for recording.

I barely could get though a poem about colors.

This is the line that left me in fits of giggles 5 times:

The color of the sun is yellow
On the telephone we all say "hello"

The whole poem was like that. Could not keep it together at all.

Oh well.

So, haven't heard from many of you for a long time. What's up?

Umm...yeah, I don't know either

2006-11-25T21:24:00.001+08:00

Watch the video

I was just watching the Karaoke scene in Lost in Translation and was inspired to post this gem up! I got it from an unnamed source, but I think many of the China vols out there will be able to guess who gave me this sweet little clip! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The OK Video

2006-11-25T21:05:00.001+08:00

Watch the video

You're welcome, Allister!

Mongolian Cultural Show

2006-11-24T23:42:00.001+08:00

Watch the video

Okay, I can finally get my video up on my blog! Hooray! So this is the cultural show that we went to in Mongolia. It was awesome. Listen to the throat singing - it just sounds so unreal! You can't believe that the sounds are coming out of the people and nt some sort of machine. Enjoy!

WHOOHOO!!!

2006-11-24T22:51:00.000+08:00

I have access to my bog again! Well, at least for the time being, until Ch!n@ decides to shut us all down again.

But unfortunately, now that I have full access, I don't have anything to say.

I have been making up some English listening practice worksheet for my students and have decided that "Every Breath You Take" is one of the creepiest songs ever written. Without the music, just looking at the lyrics, it might as well have been cut out ransom note style and left in that oh-so-obvious, "he broke into my apartment to leave this note" place. Stalker. Total stalker. I bet it was the bass player who wrote it - bass players are kinda the "wander-off, creepy" types - and Sting just saw it "around" and made it into a hit song. Good going! Way to freak out a nation.

Okay, enough on how The Police gave me the willies.

Hmmm...yesterday we all went out to Steak and Eggs for a Thanksgiving dinner. It was good. I didn't eat any of the turkey again this year, but I did get my share of mashed potatoes and stuffing. No pumpkin pie though :( It was uber-busy though! I don't remember when I saw soo many white people crammed into 3,000 square feet. Also, we discovered that the Chinese have appropriated Thanksgiving as a bunch of my students emailed, texted, yelled out, "THANK YOU, TEACHER" to/at me throughout the day. So, I have been told that it is a day where they say "thank you" to people they appreciate. Nice. I guess.

Yan Qing is going a lot better. I have been trying to hang out with the students a little more. I have some student lunches all lined up the coming weeks. Student-Teacher relations are defrosting. But, I still had to kick a kid out of class for howling, and well, he wouldn't stop.

Anyhow, I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving, so I will leave you with a very heart felt "gobble-gobble" and THANK YOU (ala my students).

Porn sparks panda baby boom in China - Research — and blue movies — attributed to record-high birth rate in 2006

2006-11-23T18:32:00.001+08:00

Uhhhh...enjoy! Pandas, pandas, pandas!

By Denis D. Gray

Updated: 9:59 p.m. ET Nov. 22, 2006

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - After years of painstaking research, scientists say they have unleashed a baby boom among one of the world's most beloved but endangered animals, China's giant panda.

A bit of panda porn has helped too, they say.

"It works," enthuses Zhang Zhihe, a leading Chinese expert, about showing uninitiated males DVDs of fellow pandas mating.

It is one of many techniques tried over the decades to get captive pandas — notoriously poor breeders — to do it, and do it right. The efforts to understand and simulate conditions for mating and raising cubs have paid off in China, the panda's native habitat. Now comes the next test: getting the magic to work outside China.

The big day will come in January, when Prasertsak Buntragulpoontawee hopes to bring off a successful mating between male Chuang Chuang and partner Lin Hui in this northern Thailand city.

The audio-visual approach "is the same idea as chimpanzees seeing people smoke and then copying it," says the Thai researcher.

Zhang, director of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, attributes this year's record high births not to any single breakthrough but to an accumulation of research on panda biology, nutrition and genetics while "trying to imitate nature better."

The result, by his count: In the first 10 months of this year 31 cubs were born in captivity in China, of which 28 survived. That's up from 12 births in 2005 and just nine in 2000. Of this year's births, 14 came through natural breeding, while artificial insemination or a combination of the two produced the rest.

No cubs were born among the roughly 20 pandas outside China, but sperm from Atlanta Zoo's Yang Yang yielded an offspring for Lun Lun in Chengdu, China, Zhang told a conference here of 140 panda experts.

JoGayle Howard, an animal reproduction specialist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., said the goal of raising the captive breeding population to 300 from the current 220 is rapidly being reached. This would prevent inbreeding, widen the genetic pool and enable more captive animals to re-enter the wild, where the panda population is estimated at 1,600 to 3,000.

Howard said the biggest challenges in panda breeding are an extremely high rate of incompatibility and the very narrow window of opportunity — females are ready to mate for as few as 48 hours a year.

"At first people thought that you just put two animals together and they would figure it out. But it didn't turn out that way," she said. "Now we know how to take care of the panda better. We've really made progress. But we're still learning a lot of even basic things."

Captive animals used to lack proper socialization; with no companions around, when the male and female met for breeding "they just freaked out and fought," Howard said. Now enclosures are bigger and contain more animals.

There's also a push to keep cubs with their mothers longer, for up to two years, to give them more natural sex education.

Scientists have also learned more about sex and aggression. In the wild, Howard explains, females in heat will climb a tree while suitors below fight for her. In captivity, with no male rivals around, pandas often take out their aggression on the female.

Adds Zhang: "In the wild they have their own choices when mating. But when we breed them in captivity it's like taking two human beings and forcing them to mate."

But despite the advances, there are still only about 15 captive male adults which breed naturally. Second best is artificial insemination, and after years of study frozen semen can now be shipped around the world and applied according to a comprehensive genetic database.

Prasertsak is prepared to use both methods as he readies his couple for mating at Chiang Mai Zoo, which has rented the animals from China for research and tourism purposes.

The pressure is on. Last year Lin Hui showed promising symptoms but they turned out to be a pseudo-pregnancy, not unusual among pandas.

Will the blue movies help?

Opinions differ on the visuals, but Zhang and Prasertsak agree on the sound track.

"It's the sounds of breeding that stimulate them," Zhang said. "Pandas are just like human beings. They understand everything."

Brain Tidbits

2006-11-22T21:43:00.001+08:00

...because that's all I have right now!

Okay, nothing new. Having problems with my cd burner stuff. ARGH!!! Computer problems! I have been busy recording and teaching. Classes have been going well, at least better than they had been going. Also, my Yan Qing kids seem to be warming up a little bit so it is becoming a little bit more fun.

Still open to back door ways around good ol' Uncle M@o, so if you have suggestions, let me know!

Also, I have come to the conclusion that sparrows basically look the same where ever you go. Or, at least, in the places that I have been to.

Besides that, nothing much going on. We are getting together with some of the other foreigners and having a Thanksgiving dinner here in Beijing out by the Embassy district. Gobble, gobble (except for me, as I don't like turkey).

I have been spending quite a lot of my free time down at the recording studio and I just recorded my most favorite dialogue EVER!!! It is too inappropriate to post, but if you're curious, drop me a line. Typos are funny! AND this particular one was for a national oral English competition (hee, hee).

Anyhow, sorry that I haven't been posting as much as I normally do. I totally blame it on having less free time because of my uber fame in the English recording circuit. Nah, just kidding.

I will try to post more regularly and find a new way to post up video...I'll work on it.

So, to all of you Stateside, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

What's that again?

2006-11-14T16:34:00.001+08:00

Okay, so today I went down to the Wudaokou area for look around at some of the shops and I went to my favorite import foods store, My Shop. They were playing some music and such on the cd player. The cd changed and all of a sudden I knew exactly what came next in the English dialogue! Wait, it sounded even more familar than that, it was...ME!!!

Strange!

The Unsinkable MB

Bowel Cleanse 2007

Radioactive

Productivity

The Other Americans

You're Right Al Franken!

Feeling crummy :(

Shame on you Denzel Washington!

Going Retro!

BOO!!!

Chinchilla Paging

Happy Birthday?

Dracunculus Medinensis

The World's Biggest Tea Party

Stealth Chinese

Chinchilla Fun

Filling my head with crap

I Suck.

China Moments

Car Sick :P

The Tale of the Least Offensive

Troubled Bridge Over Water

Catch Up

WDCD?

Staring at...err...Celebrating Diversity

Deja Vu

Q: What has 2 wings, 4 engines and 400+ happy people?

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Go Go Guyuan!

All Atwitter

Kisses in the wind

Goodbye.

Emotional Hotpot

Next Generation Facing Fatal Pressures

About Your Pearly Whites...

On Strike!

Golden Throat Lozenge

Just for giggles...

Do call me Shirley

More Blog Problems

elong ROCKS!!!

Return to the Motherland

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Offensive couch label traced to China

Un-Crappy

Introducing...the Apple iRack

Snorting up the white

Hopeless

Panda Sneeze

Say what?

Lines. It All Comes Down to Lines.

Tying up loose ends

Back off BSB!!!

Speaking to you from the future and past!

Getting back to it

Going back in time

The Trench

ARRRRGH!!!

Back to my BLT

Who would have thought...

Oops! We're in Macao...

Staring...Why are you looking at me?

Side Thought - Bringing Memories Home

GIBBONS!!!

Creepy Commies

Tidbits

Centuries Old Traditions

Miss Saigon

Farewell Cambodia!

Wonders

Running at about 40 Watts

Wat was that?

Outta Here!

Make your travel plans soon!

Toy Trucks, Plush Pigs, Pussycat Dolls?

Seriously, they should be extinct.

Non-Toxic, Whew!

THANK YOU!!!

Cooking with Chen

What came first the chicken or the egg?