PatEvoninChina

Do not read yet, much much more to come... blogger posted it to soon, come back in a few days!

2009-06-13T16:58:00.009+08:00

the blogger wars have been insane; i am trying to post this everyday, but i am losing the battle. I will keep trying, but it's getting to the point where it is not worth the effort. oh well, we will see

if anyone is checking this, i apologize. i have been having a few different computer problems and the tend to meet here on blogger! i will have this finished soon, i promise!

Please do not read yet, i am fighting with blogger.... I should be done with this by tommorrow afternoon...

Pigboy( one of my favorite students) you sassy thing, you....

Yes, it has been awhile since I have posted anything. There are a few guilty factors involved. First, The Chinese Government has blocked Blogger! I don't think I have talked about it that much for obvious reasons, but many of you probably know about The Great Firewall of China, which is the Goverments attempt to be able to filter what Chinese Internet users are viewing and perusing. When I first arrived here, I rarely ran into any blocked sites, but they are starting to get a little nuts. A important side note, the firewall has always been what i think has been best described as "creaky". Sometimes you can get to certain sites, sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can't access perfectly "legal" sites for a hour or two. I guess trying to provide service to a country with 1.3 billion people is a factor, there may simply be too many users. Also, I believe that while the goverment is scrambling to build up and maintain the Wall, a large number of it's citizens are quietly but continually chipping away at it; simular to what you see in Other countries with "illegal" downloads and PaySites. However, recently, the Wall has gotten stronger and more effective; I think that it will start to creak and chip away again. Anyhoo, they blocked You-tube, Blogger and many other sites. I was using some proxy servers for awhile, but they were only really good for sites where you just load and read things. Then, for a night, they blocked hotmail. I was livid; what damage could one out of many email providers do (turns out that the chinese goverment, like most people in the world, dislike Micrsoft!)? I had been looking for descent internet tunnels the entire time I have been here, but was unable to find one that worked right. Finally, last week, a freind of mine turned me onto a good one, and i can Blog again! I love living in China, but the interenet blocking thing not only is a giant pain in the ass, but also goes against pretty much everything I believe in. The official excuse seems to be to protect children from harmful things, which there are plenty of on the internet. Of course, this excuse is a time honored one when it comes to censorship. While it has some merit, the fact is that if you try hard enough, you still can find plenty of porn on the web, and other arguably malicious things! Since blogger is blocked, i feel I can speak my mind freely now. As I have stated before, daily life in China is surprisingly free; people seem to do what they want. There are strict laws for everything of course, but people seem to ignore the ones that don't make sense to them. Of course, there are other things in a big- picture viewpoint, but generally, it's fairly free here. I think that this rampage with the internet is a remnent of the previous China, certain element in power think backwards. But in my opinion, it is doomed. China is rushing foward with an American-based model of society, eventually, I feel, this will transfrom many elements of the culture. From what I have heard, things have changed drastically in the last ten years; The rapid assimulation, intiated by the Goverment, is moving faster than they can keep up. I think, I hope, that the changes for China have only begun; but only time will tell if I am right. Anyway, thanks to my tunnel, I can Blog, watch You-tube, and occasionally look at naked chinese ladies on the interweb! I hope that this blog being blocked means that I am safe from prying eyes: watch me log onto tommorrow and my computer blow up in my face!

Another reason that I have not blogged in awhile is that I have been lazy! The school year ends in June, and I am tired! This semester has been easier, I know what I am doing and am becoming much more adept at lesson planning, classroom control , yadda-blah, but teaching does tend to suck the soul right out of you. I am usually pretty tired after class; less than last year, but still tired. However, I think my stanima is growing, so hopefull I will be less lazy next semester. i think i have bloged fairly often this semester, anyway...

massiveammountofcrap

2009-05-14T19:31:00.022+08:00

Ok, it seems that I have a massive backload of pictures, so I will post many of these and hopefully include some actual text also... remember to click on the pictures if you want to see a full size version...

The school pictures are all from Shiyan school; a higher ranked middle school where I teach two entire grades 7 and 8 ( which we call junior 1 and 2). I am at this school all day both Wednesdays and Thursdays. I have been teaching the eighth grade since last term and I know them very well. I just started teaching the 7th grade at the beginning of the term: I adore these kids. I have noticed a marcked difference between the 7th and 8th grades, the seventh graders are still interested in english and still kind of innocent. The eight grades, while still very innocent compared to most of their American counterparts, are busy with trying to get good grades, playing grab ass with each other, and sometimes are difficult. Still, It's not too bad...

In China, the students clean the school, or at least parts of it...

Ok, i am obsessed with these things...

This is at a Hot Pot restaurant. Hot pot is kind of a communal soup. You order meat and vegetables and cook it the pot yourself. Its very good...

Cleaning outside of the bathroom. This eight grade boy once showed me a small knife he has; he's kind of nuts, but he likes me.

As you walk into the school...

This is outside of Hutan Primary School; I liked the buildings and the way the sky looked. This is literally about 500 feet from the Yellow Sea...

I had never seen a Merry-Go-Round like this. Of course, big kid Winston could not resist. Little hans and a girl are pushing him...

Hans and I were both a bit drunk that night; Winston was sober as always( doesn't drink ever)

At the bottom of this blurry picture, a chinese person is brushing their teeth. I thought that was interesting.

This is the most awesome globe I have ever seen. In the Shiyan school's meeting room. They put me into this massive room during lunch because all of the old teacher's, who are women, take naps in the English office and you can see up there skirts. Believe me, in this middle school, I am much better off in the meeting room...

This is printed on the wall of one of the teacher's offices in Hutan. Oddly, it's not the English office and none of the teachers in this office speak any English...

Just a cool ass thing that decorates a Shiyan stairway...

that pole thing. these are somewhat common in Dalian. I have no clue what they are there for or why they are like that....I wish I did....

In the back, notice the women with umbrella's. It was a hot, not at all cloudy therfore sunny day. Chinese women( as well as other Asian women i think) hate the sun! Paleness is considered more desirable then being darker, so you often see sun umbrella's and why they are almost fully clothed at the beach( drat!). I happen to like the color of Chinese girls: yipin is very dark and I think she's the most beautiful Chinese girl ever ( and I think many of them are beautiful). It's ironic, in America, most women throw themselves into the sun trying to get dark, in china, they try to be white. Oh, humans, you're all so delightfully fucked up...

A few 7th grade girls saying Ni hao...

eight grader named " pretty girl"! it's a long story...

The big boy in yellow is nicknamed " King Kong". He's huge, but very gentle and intelligent... Chinese boys are weird, some are very small and almost underdeveloped and some are bigger than most middle boy school boys in America. I have mentioned this, but many Chinese people are quite big, especially in the north.

Speaking of Big, eight grader nicknamed Big Boy. Most Classrooms, have these windows into the hall, i guess for airflow or to see into the classrooms. Big boy is a good kid...

These Fish have been living in this basin as long as i have been at this school.

A peek into a Chinese classroom. Although all of the students are not in this one in this picture, you can see how cramped it is...

hahah... two very funny students, Shenma ( Chinese for "what") and Strange Boy. Shenma is sweet, but has very little English skills. He used to always say Shenme to me, so that's how he got his nickname. Strange boy got his when i looked over and seen him playing with his nipples...

This 7th grade girl is super super super smart. She never opens her eyes all the way, but she is sweet and so very fucking smart.....

This seventh grader hugs me ever day and will not let go. I tried to get free of him last week and accidentally flipped him over onto his hip! He was laying on the floor groaning and teachers were walking by! luckily, I am sure they have done far worse!

I don't know why he was squatting there, but it made a good picture....

speaking of Squatting... A Chinese toilet for pooping. yeah.... I have used these a few times, it was not pretty. You have to squat over them, and It just doesn't work for me. Luckily, some places( such as my apartment) have western toilets....

cute 7th grader cleaning. I had to take this shot about 12 times because she kept running away...many of the girls are extremely shy...

One of my many " monkey's. This one is the smartest and one of the sweetest.

A group of not so shy 7th grade girls. the one with both arms up is Betty, who is very friendly... don't ever call her unfriendly, becuase she will get upset and smack you even if you are her teacher and her elder....

awesome shot of shiyan outside. that boy was just there; he got mad and left when he noticed I was taking pictures...

Shiyan Grade 8 class five. One of my favorite classes. the girl on the right is clever girl, next to her is hair. Big boy is behind them to the left. the small boy in the middle waving is tomato

squatter

a model of Shiyan school. They are still building the glass encasement on the actual school...

Class five again, the girl in row 2 is Turtle, very nice. Two rows behind her is potato...

Class five again. in row 2 the boy on the left is big lizard. the girl on the right is Nihongo, one of my few Japanese students. she has been to hawaii... fourth row in the middle is jessica, who is probably going to grow up to be one of the most beautiful women in china. Jessica is sweet, but a bit of a princess. next to her is Simon, who is a very nice boy the class likes to pick on is a good natured way. Simon is "dating" turtle from the above picture. Jessica came to the board one day and big lizard tripped her. What commenced after that was one of the worst beat downs I have ever seen! She had kicked him hard and smacked him in the head about 7 times before I could even react. He should have known better...

These stickers are all over the place in china. on the sidewalk, on walls, on polls, all over Winston's door. I am sure they advertise a variety of thing, but some of them are for fake receipts for tax purposes!

Interesting Chinese Fact. All Chinese schools are gated and guarded by actual policemen, not rent a cops. You have to have business to get in. Even parents are barred, unless they have permission, probably because Chinese parents are very interested in their children's education and would be a massive pain in the ass if they could just go in. still, very strange to a westener...

Ah! not super common, but still, everyonce in a while, you can see a street barber. I think it's intersting. Get a haircut in the street; really, who needs a shop

Finally, This video is of Hutan's school exercise time. They were practicing for a dance competetion. I am sure you will notice the song...

Crap, i have noticed I missed a few pictures that I wanted to post. so I will just post this as it is and then do another post in the next few days with a few more picutes and more text... ( edit, actually, i think that's good for now, i will post again next week...)

notafullpost, justsomepicturesandafewthings

2009-04-30T21:30:00.005+08:00

Some pictures that i forgot to post. most of you are probably getting sick of the same kids and people, but i am not...!

Happy Jingle bells...

These little girls are bad ass...

a cool walking bridge in progress. Dalian is a constantly growing city, with building always going on.

another badass jump roper

I did say he held his ass alot!

anyhoo, my next post will have some actual text and thoughts!

pat

MostlyPictures(Part II)

2009-04-27T22:04:00.011+08:00

This was taken at the English corner. I thought the balloon things were cool...

Winston's Bday! first row, me , W, Maria, 2nd- Abdul, Jonah, Miles, Bob. Bob is Mile's college friend from Erie Pa, who came over to visit for a week or so! He was a good guy. He is originally form johnston, Miles is from mon. city, so we had a western Pa thing going on... I think this is the first appearnce of miles in this blog...

Winson's cake. I was sort of pissed at Winston for not telling me about his birthday. He said he had issues with people giving him things!

The lovely Jonah, who was our hostess..

Some kind of watermelon animal!

Maria made W wear the hat, which made me very very happy!

More pictures from my primary school--Hutan

The scary little girl-- I don't know. The lady in the background is the teacher therewho is my "handler", Angela. Her english is exceptional and she is a really cool person. Many of the chinese english teachers have crappy english, but Angela's English is pretty wicked. Here she is jumping rope with a student. The teachers at hutan play with the kids. At my other schools, all middle schools, the teachers mostly berate and smack the kids...( a little bit of a overaggeration, but not much)

Kid's from one of my classes at Hutan-grade 6

Notice the boy cowering in a fetal postion. I showed him this picture; he turned red and said, " no , no no". Denial is cross cultural

This class was playing tug of war. this kid, thier anchor, would just fall and rub his ass alot, but it must of worked, becuase they won !

Another one of my classes. They were just throwing the balls up and catching them...

Two of my favorite kid's from that school. the one in blue I have named happy jingle bells. She is one of those chinese kid's that is always happy and smiling.

At this school, each class has it's own dance rountine. this one was pretty intricately choreographed.

more dancing...

Yoga like warms ups...

umm... i tried not to take that persoanlly!

The Teachers also exercisse...

tony, who i call tina, from the english corner

Fariy... She had just come back from an English competition. she competes at the national level, usually...

Little Bad's house when i was cat watching him...

A chinese making Ghost fires on Ghost night

More ghost fires...

Crap to make Ghost fires....

Like I said last post, not much to report. I still have a slight cold and am a bit groggy and lethargic. I have not been sick since last term( when i was sick most of the time). I am sure I will shake it. I will post something soon that has some substance to it...

Mostly pictures part 1( Bing Hai Road)

2009-04-27T21:30:00.005+08:00

I don't have alot to say; I have a minor cold due to it being so unseasonally ( at least, this is what i am told) for the last few weeks. So, I will post a few pictures that I have accumulated with some accompanying text....
This first part will focus on a second trip we took to Bing hai road along the coast. We went this time with Mr. hans to a more hardcore hiking version that was a bit more natural and beautiful.

I have not clue what this is, but it looks interesting

After 8 months, Dalian officially welcomes me!

Ashely and Winston and a giant pumpkin statue

Ashely is a newer teacher from Kansas. She's pretty cool and likes outdoorsy things.

Welcomed again!

Dalian seems to have many cool ass islands like this. I will go out to one one day...

A strange Chinese beach, I think a private one...

A lazy chinese dog...

The Chinese play cards everywhere; this is the rare, but badass, old lady version

Another Chinese thing you see often, bridal pictures around the Coast

Julie

Billy Goat Winston and His chinese counterpart

Climbing cliffs

Cool coast picture...

Winston never sits on the bus, so this is a rare shot

ALotofnothingaboutsome things

2009-04-15T22:19:00.005+08:00

My primary 6 students out for exercise time...

marching....

The famous ( and sometimes Infamous) April and I...

We did some cliff climbing with billy goat Winston

It was pretty dangerous, but beautiful and cool...

Abdul, myself, and Winson( in his 70's aspect)

Sarah and myself...

jessica( not mine), myself, and BGW

April, Shaft-Winston, Sara, John,Jessica, Myself,Jonah, Crystal, Michelle, and Abdul

Ok, so it's been about two weeks since my last post, which is about what I promised. Not an incredible amount of new things have happened, but we will see how this turns out.

The above pictures are from a trip we took to a famous road in Dalian ( the name escapes me right now). It stretches around the cities coast, which is a big part of the city. Much of Dalian is surrounded by the Yellow Sea. I don't see as much of the sea as i should, so this walk, while long, was refreshing. We have been doing more things like this with the Chinese staff lately ( such as K-TV), which is good, because I really like them. Jonah is the Office manger and besides Frank, the big boss. Although she is definitely a strong, aggressive, ambitious woman, I have honestly only really seen her as a tough but sweet girl. April, i have talked about a bit I think. April is a little eccentric even for a Chinese person; I think she is really amusing... Jessica and Sarah are new; They are interns that I believe will be hired by the company. Sarah is shy, but as you can see from the pictures, she has a spunky side. She seems to be warming up to me; it takes most chinese girls time to get used to me. They reserve themselves for a while, but when you get to know them, they are all very sweet, funny, and amusing. very silly and yet serious. Jessica is super intelligent yet a bit odd. I like her very much... John is the only man in the office and is also very gentle and nice. Joanna likes to chase him around with her pet hamster as he is afraid of it. I think john walks a thin line with surrounded by all of those strong Chinese women, who could gang up and destroy him in a second, but he does so with a gentlemanly grace. I worked with Michelle at sunshine school, she is very young and retains the simple purity of a child. Crystal is the organizer, a bit anal, but very nice. Crystal is also addicted to looking a pictures on the Internet of cats and dogs( April shares this affliction). Everyone in the office speaks English, at different ranges. John and Nancy (the accountant, who is also very sweet, not pictured as she is a bit older and has a family and other obligations( her son ben was a student of mine during the winter), have the smallest amount of English, but i feel i communicate with them just fine. Crystal and Michelle are at mid level, the speak pretty well, but sometimes there is some confusion. Sarah and Jessica seem to be at a very high level. April is also very high, but she will usually code switch( from chinese to english) during a sentence ( i believe this is more of a personal eccentricity then a flaw in her English). Jonah is at a very high level, having very good speaking and comprehension skills ( she seems to understand most of what i say and can make/ get fairly complex jokes in English, including meta level stuff( such as wordplay, grammar play and such).

This trip, Bing Hi road, was nice. Spring is coming ( although we had a odd snow squall the other morning that soon was replaced with warm weather, and the Chinese take advantage of nature; there were tons walking around the road, which is a accepted walking/ hiking spot. The coast is wonderful and we saw a small lighthouse and a windmill. Flowers are blooming and green is starting to explode on the coast. The girls are good companions and we had fun laughing at April, who for some reason was wearing her heavy winter coat and dress shoes( she is infamous for hiking/ climbing mountains attired in a fashion to attend a dinner party). April is also a snack addict and half her drawers at the office is full of Chinese snacks. She had a backpack full of them on the trip! She's a character. Jonah had seen a naked Chinese man on the beach( quite common actually, the women wear full garb and the men wear little speedo's which let their asses hang out--damn chinese beaches) and was obsessed with seeing another, but was disappointed. W and I had to leave early due to english corner, but are supposed to return with our friend Mr. Hans this Saturday. Hopefully, I will remember my camera this time....

Not alot new going on. I washed my cell phone, got a new one very cheap, thanks to maria. I like it; it's nicer than my old one. Essentially, i have been teaching and enjoying china. I think of all of the things that i see everyday, climbing beautiful cliffs over the yellow sea, walking around seeing the chinese being chinese, teaching funny and strange students. Not all that long ago, i spent my time in a bar, either working or drinking. Now i see and do so much I can barely process it all. It's amazing... Life changes, and you can change your life at will. Its not easy, but ruts can be escaped, i did it. I think you just have to devote yourself to something, even if it's temporally. For me it was school....

Tomorrow ( friday) is the anniversary of when I and Jessica began dating. Believe it or not, this is the longest relationship i have ever been in... She is the greatest girl i could hope for. I can't believe we have maintained the relationship over such distance, but we have. I think she is the one i was meant to find, when i was younger and searching and crying in my beer. I don't think i could ever be in a relationship with anyone else. She drives me crazy sometimes, but she is my great love.

Teaching is going well. I still suck, but i am getting better! I don't think a teacher is supposed to laugh so much in class! They are hilarious; hitting each other, making fun of each other. It's like teaching a class of fifty three stooges! They do pay attention and try( for the most part) but there system is set up to grind them out. They have tons of homework and go to school for around 10-11 hours a day! its stressful for them, they don't have time to be children, so i let them laugh and goof off ( a little) in my classes. The job market in china is very competitive, so parents and school push kids from a very early age. They work their asses off in middle school and then about a third of them will be cut and will not be able to go to high school! Those that are cut will go to a sort of trade school, but most of them will not have a very easy life. Those that go to high school then will get even more work and homework in the quest to get into a good university. Its a rough system, but due to the high population, there seems to be no alternative at this point. Personally, i think they are overdosed in schools, but that's their system. also, the schools value busy work and memorisation over creative thinking, so they need to start training them not only what to know, but how to think for themselves. I see alot of creative potential in many of my student's, but for the most part, that is ground out of them by the time they graduate high school. However, China is changing, and i think western ideas of education are slowly seeping in. i hope so....

I am trying to devote more time to learning Chinese. It;s going slowly, but i am making some process. Its a very intimidating language. Of course, there are the vaunted 4 tones. If you don't know what tones are, think of the different ways you can say a word, like hello. your voice might drop, raise, go up and down or hit a special pitch. In tonal languages, these intonations are part of the language. So the 1st tone sounds kind of like a music pitch, the second tone is rising, like a question, the third tone drops then rises, and the fourth tone just drops, like saying something when you are angry. Most vowels have tones, and a word such as shi might have the same sounds but different meanings due to the tones! It's fucking complicated and very hard to speak correctly. Plus, there is something strange about the vowels. they all seem to go back and higher then ours. Some of the consonants are weird, such as ts for t, and some confusing variations of s/sh. All in all, its a difficult language to speak. I have been learning some vocab, but its going slow. I haven't even attempted the writing system/characters, as they are super intricate. However, i will have another year, to learn, i would like to get to at least a remedial speaking level!

I completely forgot about Easter, as no one knows about it here! The children think the jesus easter story is a bit creepy! Personally, and i don't mean to offend anyone, I am glad to be away from all that religious and political crap that you have to deal with in the states. To be, its such a burden; I am not interested. I want to figure out the human condition. Yes, religion and politics are huge parts of that, but the way we deal with it in the states seem to just be stones. We get stuck on a perspective, we fight with those who don't agree with us, we nurse grudges against those people. We get stuck at that; we don't go further. We draw a line in the sand and take shots against those who don't agree with us. A big circle jerk of nothing. Its exhausting to me....

Here, i am learning to shut all of that crap out and try to realistically look at life and our various states and constructions. Essentially, believe what you want, but let me think how i want to think. regardless of what most people think, my thoughts and beliefs are valuable to me. However, i am more concerned with the truth then simply being right.
Anyhoo, i am sure if i return to America, i will have a fresh perspective and be able to see all of that with new eyes. I guess i just overdosed on it for the last 38 years. but i do love all Americans, all people, even the ones I hate...

That's it for now... I hope to write and post some pictures of our weekend next week.

RandomThings(Whattheylovehateanddon'tcareabout)

2009-03-31T20:55:00.018+08:00

some English Corner girls

my friend hunter

This little girl loves to put sticker on me(p32)

winston's new kitty is very spunky

Winston loves the Chinese and they love him...

blurry Dalian at night!

Maria is a hell of a singer...

Winsons new white child...

The Chinese love Ktv(karoke)

John, our computer guy at the office, the king of KTV and a hell a good guy...

most of the office girls-- michelle, sarah, jessica, april, and jonah

one of my schools, 42 ( home of Pigboy, who i would love to get a picture of, but he is too quick!)

yes, last sunday, the office had Ktv, which is Karoke. It's a bit different than what we do. Ktv is usually held in big buildings and you rent a private room for a good bit of time. The room is nice, comes with couches, a computer, and Karole equipment that you program yourself. The advantages are that you don't have to wait very long to sing, you don't have to listen to drunken idiots sing paradise by the dashboard light, girls just want to have fun or American pie ( unless you are, or are with, said drunken idiots), and you don't have to deal with dorky karaoke DJs. You can order snacks, food, drinks and whatnot( even girls in some more disreputable places, but not in the normal ones, i think). You have privacy, so if you are shy, that's cool. However, I kind of like getting drunk and making an ass out of my self singing nirvana, cheap trick, or Johnny cash in front of strangers. Also, while they do have some American/ English songs, their taste in music, in my mind is horrible. The Chinese are suckers for soft, sappy ballads, and that is pretty much what rules here<> It's pretty murderous to me, given my taste. Still, the chinese love it( which is sort of the accidental theme of this entry). The office people, all of who are very nice, got together and invited us teachers. we were there for about 4 hours, they stayed for about seven! They take Ktv very seriously and it is a huge activity in china, with many facilities abounding here.

This has nothing to do with China, but I think it's interesting:

"Recently the interwebs have been chatting about the incredible experience of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, an engineer who was in Hiroshima on business on August 6 and whose body was badly burned when the bomb exploded at 8:15 am. With the city in total chaos, he did the only thing he could think of and got on a train bound for his home in...Nagasaki, where the second atomic bombing took place three days later. "I thought the mushroom cloud was chasing me," he said. Yamaguchi is currently 93 years old, and his status as the only known double atomic bombing survivor was recently recognized by the Japanese government. I don't know whether to think of the guy as unlucky or lucky, but I'll raise a glass to him nevertheless."--Peter Payne, Owner of J-list, a company that imports cool Japanese merchandise--http://www.jlist.com/jlistmail_r.html

talk about one fucked up week! Mr. Payne sends out newsletters about being an American in Japan and i have been reading them forever. It's a cool look at another culture through the eyes of someone who was not born there. Kind of a inspiration, I guess. Anyhoo, That's an incredible story. Can you imagine when Yamaguchi-San realized that he was getting bombed a second time. And I get frustrated when I have bad days...

Speaking of Japan, a country I very much would like to visit while I am in Asia( or at home, for that matter), I should talk about the Chinese view point on Japan, which I believe I have not on this blog. Essentially, they don't like them. Well, many Chinese learn the Japanese language, watch Japanese movies and animes, and such, but there is still a lot of resentment towards them. The reason is because the two countries had been fighting here and there during the first third of the 20th century; However, Japan invaded china in the late 30's and were very brutal. The Chinese don't forget things like that, and many still harbor an intense resentment towards Japan and the Japanese, even though they make like some japanese things and have some Japanese friends. It's kind of a passive hatred, they don't do more than talk shit. But it's pretty common, I have had many Chinese tell me, in hushed tones, that they don't like the Japanese, even some children. While i can see the reason for this, I try to tell them that Japan is a new country, that was the past, and such. But I think it may take take quite awhile for them to get over this. I don't think it's dangerous, it's just that many have heard about the atrocities that Japan committed here during the war and it pisses them off. Still, I hope that this will fade away one day.

In America, when we think about China, we think about T2b8t (intentionally mispelled, but put an i and an e in there; i am being paranoid but whatever). Well, I am not going to go too much into that topic given where I live right now, but I have a few things that are interesting. The common conception, right or wrong, of the Chinese about t6b5t is that they really don't seem to care one way or another. Many feel, probably because they have been told that, T*b-t was a poor country and China is actually increasing the standard of living, which is probably true. They don't have access to the Western Media, who have a different view of this subject. What does piss off the Chinese politically is Taiwan, it seems. As you may know, when the revolution went down here, the then rulers high tailed it to Tawian. The Chinese consider Tawain to be part of China, the Tawianese and the West consider it to be a separate nation. well, it's a bit more complicated than that, if you are curious, go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawian. The point is that there are many chinese in Tawian and considerable bad blood. I think that the only thing that has kept tawian separate is western support. But the situation pisses of the chinese. I don't think they will do anything about it, they just don't like it. Despite the past, despite the western media, and despite T=b6t, I don't think that modern china is very aggressive. They have their things, but they seem more preoccupied with building up their own country. Bear in mind, i am not trying to, nor am in the position right now, to be political. I just saying some pretty obvious things that are part of living in this country. Personally, I don't like war or any sort of Invasion. I understand many Americans viewpoints. I also think that our own country has a history, and present, of getting involved in other countries, often violently. I would like to see that trend changed.

It's difficult for me sometimes to know that Americans have such a negative view of China. While I understand this, and I do; I think that China is changing and is more concerned with moving towards to the future. It seems to take the philosophy that change must be gradual. I also think that this is a matter of generations, the younger people think very differently than the older people. You can see it not only in clothes and such, but in general mannerisms. The older generation has been though a lot and you can see that on their faces. They also tend to have tunnel vision in many regards. the younger generation, while more open minded in many respects, is also relatively spoiled( for chinese standards). On the bus, looking at the people, its often like looking at one of those pictures of the different strata of the earth. From what I have heard, the general living conditions have changed drastically in the last ten years and seem to be in the trend of continually doing so. China has dropped the model of the soviet union and has picked up the model of the most successful country in the history of the world, the united states. While the process is very deliberate and slow, I think this country is moving more and more towards a society much like our own. One thing i do know, the Chinese people love America. They love English( preferably American), American movies, the NBA, and most want to visit or live in America someday. Most of you might hate China and distrust the Chinese, but the common people, the children, love you! They really do. They also think that we are all rich, smart, kind, intelligent, pretty, ect and live in a sort of paradise. I do my best to educate them to the truth! When they ask me what Americans think about China, it almost pains me to tell them that most Americans view China negatively. I do say that most Americans really don't know much at all about China, which is true. I just hope that our two countries, both of them full of greatness and also negativeness, can one day truly get along. I think the Chinese children, and hopefully the American children, may be a great hope in that regard. Regardless of any politics, the Chinese people are amazingly kind, curious, intelligent and thoughtful. Yes, not all of them are, but the majority seem to be. And they certainly have their flaws, just like we do. But they are generally good people. Ok, that's enough of that sort of thing, before i get myself into some kind of trouble...

Life is funny. I graduated college almost a year again, yet I am surrounded by grammar and such. That's to be expected, as I am teaching, but then there are my Chinese friends who live abroad to consider. Xiaoru, Yipin and others are always sending me papers and such to correct, as writing in English is difficult for any Chinese. Bear in mind that these people are all very intelligent; It's just the grammar system of English is so alien that most chinese, no matter how intelligent and educated, make some mistakes. The girls that I help have all gotten much better, Yipin and Xiaoru are both writing at a monstrous level right now and only make a few minor grammar mistakes. But i am still proofing papers! It's nice, because they say that i am the best, but its also ironic. Also, my tofu is a pure academic at heart, and is always sending me scholarly papers to read and research! Oh college, you hound me... But I guess that learning should not stop after school, and i plan to go back anyway. I was just so damn tired after graduating; I needed a break. But, i guess it is time to get back into making my mind better; god knows it can use it....

Anyway, School is going well. I hope to have some interesting thought and some stories on that matter for next weeks entry. remember, the Chinese love you!

HongKongpartIV(Conclusionandthefirstfewweeksofschool)

2009-03-24T21:25:00.009+08:00

(I checked the Internet and Hong Kong is listed usually as the sixth or seventh most expensive cities in the world, under Moscow, Tokyo, New York, Rome, and Seoul!)

So, my plan on Sunday was to do some touristy things and get prepared for the Monday, which was sure to be a busy eventful day. I had some breakfast and used the computer at the nearby Internet cafe. When I checked Facebook, Sara said that she was coming to Hong kong, and would meet me at the Metro(subway) at noon. It took a little time to locate the station, and I was not sure if she was going to be there or at the ferry station. I waited for her for awhile. it was pretty interesting just watching the people. The Hong Kong subway stations are very large, clean and are full of interesting people. Since its such an international city, and one of the most important financial centers in the world, you see all kinds people. Asians of all types, Americans, British, Europeans, ect. I watched them and listened to my mp3 player, which was playing the velvet underground, Brian eno, the kinks, Bowie, and assorted punk rock. Its always strange listening to that type of music here, as it seems out of place, but gives the environment an interesting perspective. speaking of which, i saw some interesting beggars. Dalian has beggars, but I have not seen as many as I would as in a large American city. There are two types, that I seem. One type will sit on the ground, there face down and averted in shame with a cup in front of them. Sometimes, it will be a mother with a small child, which is hard for me to pass up; usually, its a old person. Sometimes its a handicapped person, missing arms and legs. China must be hard on these people, as I don't think there are many programs and services to help them as in the US. The second type of Chinese beggar is much more annoying. These people, usually old ladies, are considerably more mobile. They smile alot, but once they lock into eye contact, they are almost impossible to shake. They don't run, but they have ways of getting to you. If they grab onto you, they will not let go and you may have to drag them down the street, all the while they are smiling and nodding there heads! Anyway, in Hong Kong, there were a few, but not a ton. The best by far was very cute old lady who had a old keyboard set up and looked like she was having the time of her life! She was wailing away like she was in Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but the music was complete rubbish and was pretty much the same discordant notes over and over! I adored her and gave her some change. Another guy was a monk, at least he was dressed as a monk but had jeans on under his robes, so he could have been a faker. I almost gave him some change, but i saw a guy who was a burn victim and figured he was probably more deserving than the possible ersatz monk.

So I was considering leaving the metro station when Sarah showed up. Sarah was a fellow linguistics major at Oswego and shared both of the rewards I received( in fairness, she is much smarter than I am). It was good to see her. I knew she was in China, but figured time and distance would get in the way of us seeing each other. Luckily, I got to see her. I have been lucky this way. I have seen Xiaoru twice, Yipin once for a whole week , and then Sarah. It's great to see so many people i knew in states! Anyway, I told Sarah i had some touristy plans and while she is not a touristy type, she went along. So we went first to Hong Kong park, which is a massive and very clean, well laid out park in the middle of the city. the park is nice, has a many cool exhibits such as lakes, very cool fountains, a aviary and such. Its one of the nicer free parks that i have ever been to. It also has some monuments in honor of those who served the medical community during the Sars crisis, which hit Hong Kong first, i think, and pretty hard. This was in its Tai chi garden, which is really cool in a minimalist sort of way. After this, I was planning on riding the peak tram, which takes you to the highest view in the city, but Sarah was not into heights, so we passed. We walked pass the Us consulate office; i figured I better memorize where it was in case the Chinese gave me any problems about my visa! After that, we went to the zoological Gardens, which was also free. It had some small animals, several types of monkeys, and an orangutan! It was also very nice and clean( and free!). We then went to Hollywood street, but I think we missed the good stuff, as it was all just expensive shops. In the back alleys, however, where very cool markets that sold cool traditional things like little paper dragons and old coins and such. We walked around the city for awhile and then went to eat at some Chinese place. Then we went on the fairy and i took Sarah to the subway station, which was good because i had to map out my exit route for the next day. I bumped around the city for awhile, stopped and had a few drinks( my subconscious directive, never fly without a hangover) and then went to bed.

On Monday, I woke up and walked to the Chinese Consulate. I was a little nervous, but figured that everything would work out just because everything had to this point. This whole trip, i remembered something from a comic book, the books of magic. John Constantine ( who was played by keannu reeves in the movie that i did not see yet) was talking about how you can travel the magic super highway, where things will just work out to get you where you are supposed to go, even if it seems illogical. It always feels that way when i travel, that i must trust in the journey and the destination will arrive on its own.Then I waited in line forever! the line was around the corner and moving super slow. It really sucked. I finally got in and went upstairs and waited again forever... Finally, i got called and picked up my visa. I was elated that I was accepted. It was only for 30 days( a tourist visa was the best that I could get), but it was extended this Friday to six months, so that's all good for now! The object of the trip was finally completed. I went downstairs, grabbed my bag, crossed the harbor on the fairway, and said good bye to Hong Kong island. Its a wonderful city that i hope to return to....

I then went to the Internet cafe, and emailed everyone saying journey completed and I would be heading to cross the border. I got a little lost, but found the subway station. I actually took the train to the wrong border station, but it worked out fine. I crossed with little trouble and called frank once my phone started working. He told me to take a cab to the airport, so i did. It was a long ( and expensive ride). Got to the airport and checked in, got right on the plane. We had a brief layover in hong jou, then I flew into Dalian airport around midnight. Took a cab home and unpacked. I had to start my first day of real teaching early in the morning, but felt good to be "home".

So that's the trip to Hong kong. It was kind of crazy, but ended up being wonderful and a great experience. I tried to put in as much as possible, but the experience was so intense, i am sure i did not do it justice. Hong kong is very beautiful and i would actually consider living there one day. It's hybridity of Eastern and Western was interesting and seemed to suit me fine.

So I come back, and of course, am rushed right back into teaching the very next day, which i was not really prepared for. I did mostly introductory lessons that first week. These few weeks have been a bit intense, coming back from a unplanned trip, dealing with Visa issues, trying to get back in the groove of teaching and also to improve as a teacher, dealing with technical problems and such.

The first week, i had to deal with alot of things. I had pretty much rushed out of my apartment, so i had to clean up and also through some food out that went bad. Also, my computer died the day before I left, and i had to take it down to the office for our resident tech guy, John, who is awesome,to fix. It turned out to be a broken hard drive, which needed to be replaced. So that cost some yuan, and I was without a computer for a few days. Once I got it back, windows had been reloaded, which meant I had to update and add a ton of crap that i lost. Not the best timing with that, and it took a while, but i got it back to where it should be. So, the first week or two back, I was pretty much rushing from one thing to another, trying to get 1000 things done at once. I hate being in that position, i find it frustrating. Yipin helped me calm down, but it sort of sucked.
That being said, i have enjoyed( mostly) returning to teaching. I am still very much a novice teacher, and it is frustrating in that I am continually learning and making mistakes and adjusting to the situation, but it is also fulfilling. I feel my lessons are getting much better though, although there is room for improvement. One strange and frustrating thing about Chinese students is that while they are very good behavior wise for most students, they can get really noisy. this is not good when you teaching language. So i have been trying to deal with that. for the most part, they are very good and attentive, but sometimes it gets too loud too teach and there is not much you can do about it. that is my current problem that i am working on. My lesson planning has improved and my attitude is getting better. Its hard to figure some things out because i have had not real training and for the most part am on my own. But, i think i will only continue to get better.
The past month has generally been nice and i have enjoyed it. English corner has been fun, i have hung out with Winston and things are going well with the Tofu. So I am finally caught up with my blog. I will now have a nice pace of about one entry a week( maybe two, if one is mostly pictures) and I have lots to talk about. This weekend, i should post one about our Chinese staff and teachers( with pictures) and a update of this week! My poor cell phone died an untimely death due to an unfortunate laundry accident. It was less than seven months old. so i am without a cell phone for a couple of weeks, but i will live. see you next post!

HongKongPartIII

2009-03-21T19:06:00.015+08:00

Wai Chi Ferry( 0ne of my favorite parts of the trip)

that Hong Kong money sure is pretty...

double decker bus( didn't ride one, unfortunately)

Cool, old ass Chinese boat( seen a good many of these, one almost rammed a ferry I was in!)

At night, Hong Kong is simply spectacular, like a city on another planet

busy Hong Kong night

the most beautiful city that i have ever visited..

{ as usual, click on these pictures for bigger, clearer, ect. These are not my pictures, so they are very good; you should click them! I did not have my camera yet when i was in Hong Kong, which was a shame, but thank god for the interweb, huh}

Hong Kong (Chinese: 香港), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,is a territory located in Southern China in East Asia, bordering the province of Guangdong to the north and facing the South China Sea to the east, west and south. It has a population of 7 million people but only 1,108 km2 of land, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Beginning as a trading port, Hong Kong became a dependent territory of the United Kingdom in 1842, and remained so until transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997. Along with Macau, Hong Kong is one of the two special administrative regions under the One Country, Two Systems policy.] As a result, Hong Kong is largely self-governing, it has its own currency, legal and political systems, a high degree of autonomy in all of its affairs, with the exception of foreign affairs and defence and is generally not considered a part of mainland China. Renowned for its expansive skyline and natural setting, Hong Kong is one of the world's leading financial capitals, a major business and cultural hub, and maintains a highly developed capitalist economy. Its identity as a cosmopolitan centre where east meets west is reflected in its cuisine, cinema, music and traditions, and although the population is predominantly Chinese, residents and expatriates of other ethnicities form a small but significant segment of society. ---Wiki, wiki wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong

So, if you read the last entry, you know I was dead tired and crashed in a hotel in Hong Kong. I woke up and realised that i was in one of the most famous, beautiful, and diverse cities in the world! I also woke up and realised that I needed to get my ass moving, as the plan was to get my visa and get back to China! I would have a few hours in Hong Kong, which seemed like enough considering that this was a surprise vacation. So I got my paperwork together, took a quick shower and headed out to get something to eat and to also exchange money. Although Frank had said that most places accepted Chinese RMB, the fact was that most places did not. So I hustled out of the hotel and onto the street. I ran into a booth right away that exchanged money; I knew i was taking a chance, but i needed to get going, so I exchanged most of my RMB for Hong Kong Dollars, which are quite flashy and pretty to look at. Luckily, I exchanged money several times in places like this, but did not run into any problems with counterfeiting, which is a concern in China. Anyhoo, I ran back to the hotel, got my bags together, and checked out. This hotel, the Metro, was pretty swanky, but kind of gilded; it looked fancy, but was sort of a dressed up version of a regular hotel: it really was not anything special and not worth the price. I got a discount for now using Hong Kong currency ( which wasn't much- the yuan and the HKDare fairly close in worth- but appreciated since the hotel was fairly expensive). I got out and got a cab, which was the plan as i did not know where i was going. Luckily, all of the cab drivers speak English, so he took me straight to the Consulate. Cabs, like everything in Hong Kong, are expensive, everything is about two to three times as much as they are in Dalian ( the cab ride would have been 8 in Dalian, it was about 22 in hong kong, coke is about 3 in Dalian, its about 9 in Hk). I get to the consulate, and I am not allowed to take luggage, you have to leave it outside unattended, which sucked because i had a bag. I left it there, went in ( no line this time), went through security, went upstairs, filled out some paperwork, and was quickly served. I also was quickly told that I could not get my Visa until Monday( this was Friday). Well, this was not really part of the plan, but what could i do? i left my visa there( i had to get a copy, as you need to show your visa to get a hotel and other things), and made a plan to go to the peninsula, as ed said he had found some cheaper hotels there and some internet cafes. I was a little worried about spending so much time in Hong Kong, but also excited, as i could really get to see and experience this city that I was quickly falling in love with. So i went up and luckily hit the Wa chi fairy station. After getting a token out of a machine, i rode the ferry across the Harbor. The harbor is pretty busy and has a ton of these old looking, but really fun ferry's. I even saw a Ocean party liner docked in the harbor as well as a ton of cool old school Chinese boats( see pictures for these and a picture of the Wai Chi Ferry). The view from the harbor is amazing, as you can see all of the skyscrapers and such. If you ever go to Hong Kong, you must ride the ferry, especially at night. I rode the thing probably about a total of ten times, and enjoyed it each time. You can sit down inside and just enjoy the ride and the view. It was kind of like a cool as amusement park ride, and relatively cheap( about 2 and a half HKD). Since Hong Kong has a few part, the two main ones being the peninsula( which juts down from the border) and the Island, where most of the cool things are and where I spent most of my time, going across the harbor is almost unavoidable. you can take a ferry, bus, or subway across, but the best way is the ferry, no doubt.

So anyway, I get off of the ferry and now in the Peninsula. Since my phone is out, i needed to contact my people in china somehow, so I look for a Internet cafe or a place to buy a phone card. I am immediately harassed by several Indian( Hindu ) tailor shop people. These guys are pretty aggressive, but I just politely told them to fuck off. I see another exchange place, this is a very busy area, and decide since i am staying until Monday, that I should exchange the rest of my money. while I am waiting, i see three American old ladies haggle with the Chinese woman over a suitcase. foreigners are very common in hong kong, I don't think I went more then 10 minutes at any time without seeing someone who was not chinese. I saw mostly British( they are almost a plague in Hk, for logical reasons; Hk is full of the loud honking accents of arrogant British businessmen; not as much honking from cars like in Dalian however) and many, many other types of people. Hong Kong is very multicultural compared to Dalian( which is more multi cultural then many, but not all, Chinese cities). So I exchange my money and also bought a phone card to call china( which i never did get to work). I ask the lady about Internet cafes, and she tells me there is one right upstairs! So i go through an arcade( which was much more bad ass then the ones in Dalian) and into a Internet cafe. I Imed ed, who immediately starts working on hotels( as the one I had stayed at was too expensive for three more nights). We talk for awhile and i get my plans straight, I will check into a hotel for three nights, enjoy Hong Kong, get my visa on Monday, cross the border, and then Call Frank, who will book my flight. I was supposed to teach on Monday, but its hard to teach when you are that far away! Ed talks to Frank, who says he will send more money if i need it for expenses ( which i did need due to HK being so fucking expensive; I really was very frugal there, but Its just a expensive city, compared to other Chinese cities). So I go back to the ferry station, tell the Indians to fuck off again, get on the ferry and go back to the Island. We had found a hotel that was less expensive online, so I tried to find it. The main part of the island is really not that big, but very easy to get lost in ( i am not sure, but I blame the British; they drive on the "wrong" side of the road, and I think that really fucked up my sense of direction--In mainland china, they drive on the "right" side of the road). I spent most of Friday and Saturday lost! But I did get to see the city, so i did not mind that much. it did suck when i was looking for the hotel, because I had my large bag with me. Finally, i just got into a cab and told them the name of the hotel, the south pacific. I got there, checked in for three days( they needed a huge deposit, which i guess is the norm, and checked into my room, on the 23rd floor. The view was crazy and kind of scary( i no likey heights sometimes), but cool. the room was nice enough and air conditioned. I forgot to mention that it was very cold in Dalian( just like at home), but it was in the 80's in Hong Kong. I had to redress when i got to Hong kong and when i got back to Dalain. I crashed awhile in the hotel room as i was very tired. Then i woke, found a map, and went out to see the city. I found a Internet Cafe very close to my hotel room, which was key. You could use the computer if you bought food, and the food was good! They had really good Hot Dogs and club sandwiches( neither of which I have found here; there are Chinese hot dog things, but they suck; and dairy queen hot dogs, which are passable, but taste pretty much like flavored plastic with synthetic ketchup and mustard spread on them) so i ate there often and used the Internet. I then left, to see the city and got very, very lost. I had a map, but i kept going the wrong way. I ended up walking around for most of the day and evening! But I got to see the city. At one point, no matter what i tried, i kept coming back to the same street.

Hong kong is very beautiful. It very busy, but not so crowded like i have heard about cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Its clean and pretty pedestrian friendly ( with many foot bridges and tunnels to cross the busy streets). It has very good public transportation, with a ton of buses, a very clean, safe and thorough subway system( Chinese cities are very safe compared to most other world, including US, cities; Hong Kong, although unusual, seemed to be the same in this regard), ferries out the ass, and an army of taxi's( a hallmark of Chinese cities, it seems). One noticeable difference is that it had many street lights and people seemed to obey traffic laws and cross the streets when they are supposed to( not really what they do in Dalian!). Hong Kong has amazing looking buildings, many cool shops, tons of many different types of restaurants and bars( Western, Chinese, Indian, Irish, blah, blah, blah). I really enjoyed just walking around, even if i was lost! It also has tons of free public park. Its pretty green for a city, and you can go to a zoological park or one of the many sports parks with basketball courts, tracks, and tennis courts. It really is a hybrid of China and the west. I fell in love with it and told Yipin that we would someday live there( she said yes!, but also seems to be in love with the Seoul airport because they gave her lots of free stuff( my tofu loves free things more than anything, I think!). Hong Kong is also the Entertainment capital of China, being the home of Jackie Chen and Bruce lee( although he was born in California, he got his movie start in hong kong). Most chinese movies are made there, as well as it is the center of the Chinese recording industry. Most people in Hong kong can speak English, but since it is in the south, the Chinese is Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese, but north people, who speak what we call mandarin, can't understand it, which means they have subtitles for many movies ( as well as the Japanese, Korean , and American movies, which are all very popular in China). I think i might have seen someone who was famous, I was walking around and seen this little young woman who was surrounded by cameras and very excited teenage chinese; but since i know no Chinese stars, I have no clue who they were. Anyway, I spent most of the day walking around the city(lost) and enjoyed myself. When i got to the hotel room, I was pretty fucking tired, so i read a little and passed out.

Saturday was pretty much the same. I ate at burger king, which i have not done since i was in America and i don't even like but ate there just because there are none in Dalian. they also have about a million seven elevens in Hk, and some even have slushies( which i adore). I got lost again for most of saturday, but seen much of the city. Hk has tons of attractions, from Disney hong kong to a ton of different types of museums( i think the Chinese space museum is right by the ferry dock on the penn.) There are tours to islands, temples and all kind of cultural things. I didn't do any of that, i just kind of walked around, which was cool enough for me. On saturday night, I mapped out a touristy plan for Sunday. it was late, but i walked over to hong kong park, which was free and had some cool attractions. then I went back "home". I walked around there for while, no longer getting lost( finally!). I walked past a bar district, which was full of open air british bars and chinese hooker bars, which seemed to be pretty dicey. Here i saw what i think was my first chinese transvestite; at first I thought she was a witch! I just kept walking past the drunken british bussiness men, the aggressive hookers, and the scary witch tranny as i find all three of these type of people to be annoying. When i went to the cafe for one final check of my email, I was on facebook and recived a message from my friend Sarah Catlain(i hope i spelled it right) from college( oswego). She is teaching English in the city across from Hong kong, and wanted to come over and see me. I said sure, so we sort of made plans on facebook( which is not easy, becuase its not in real time, but it worked out.) So i went back to the hotel, watched some tv in english( dirty jobs, i think), and then passed the fuck out...

I will wrap up the hong kong saga tommorrow or the next day and catch up with being back in

dalian and the first few weeks of teaching....

oh, and one more thing. it is illegal to spit in the street in Hong Kong. That sounds a little crazy, but in China, people are constantly( and i really mean it) making loud hocking noises and spitting. Its an epidemic! So that was nice..

HongKongpartII(thejourneyto)

2009-03-17T20:44:00.006+08:00

So, if you read the last post, you have all the details. I had a few drinks at Bo-Bo's, went home, packed enough for a night or two, about two bags( I always overpack!) Winston bought a nice nike bag over. I had a slight hangover. That's something strange about me, I have only flew a few times in my life, but I always have a hangover when i do... I am somewhat afraid of flying, and i guess i subconsciously need to get a bit drunk the night before to deal with it. Anyhoo, I rush out in the morning and head to the office. Ed is there; He is getting tons of good information for me, such as hotels, the address of the Chinese consulate in Hong Kong, locations of Internet cafes, the phone number of the U.S embassy and such. Even though frank assured me that everything would go according to plan,; well, we really weren't sure. I was in China illegally, the government is not known as the most flexible organisation in the world. It was entirely viable at some point that I could be detained. Plus, My phone would not work in Hong Kong; its a network thing, so we were preparing for that. Ed didn't even have to do any of this; he is just a very good guy and my trip would have probably been a huge fucking disaster if it wasn't for him. So anyhoo, we get as much information as possible and then April rushes me off to the airport. before she leaves, she gives me money from the company, as was the deal with frank. Frank also was very cool about this situation and could have been a big dick as some Chinese bosses can be, especially about money. but he was cool. So April insists on taking a bus, even though I would have paid for a cab, because she is "Chinese. The bus takes forever. April was with me in case I ran into any trouble at the airport. At the airport, I check in, pass security without a problem ( well, they took my lighter!), found my gate. Well, the plane was delayed a bit, and I waited about an hour to board. Then we were delayed on the plane for another 40 minutes; not sure why. I read a book of Chinese myths that i had; very brief but fairly interesting. I was a little squished in the seat; but generally good.Finally we took off and I was on my way to Shenghzen.
Th flight was fine; I love flying when i am up the air. I just hate it when I am on the ground.

The flight itself took about 4 hours ( my ass was killing me), but I arrive in shenghzen already behind the scheduled plan. However, I call frank and he tells me that everything will be fine. I get my luggage, and lo and behold, find two men holding a sign saying PATRIC EVON, so I assume that is me.... These two guys, two average looking Chinese working class dudes( who are a bit tough looking despite american stereotypes), don't speak a word of English, but I am used to it. I get a lighter at the airport, we all light up and are soon on our way to the Hong Kong Border, or so i assumed. We drive through heavy chinese traffic( which is fucking insane because there are so many cars and they really don't seem to obey too many traffic laws) for at least an hour. We are in the city of shenghzen at nightfall, and I am exhausted and ready to cross, find my hotel, and crash. Well, we finally stop, but where we stop looks like a shopping area, not a government type building. I tell myself that this is China, what the fuck do I know, but i have my doubts. The one dude leads me on while grabbing a bottle of wine out of the SUV we are in. I am now beggining to really wonder whats going on, but i go along because I have no choice. We go into a restaurant, and up a few floors to a private room. There are seven middle age tough looking chinese dudes in having dinner; My guy gives them a bottle of wine and runs off. They rush me to a seat at the massive table, pour me a glass of wine, give me a cigarette and all stare at me. I , of course, am completely baffled, but having been in China for a while and also being Pat Evon, go with it, as again, i have no choice. The whole scene did sort of remind me of my Decade days...

So, here I am, in a strange city surrounded by Chinese guys that I do not know and don't speak English( and bear in mind my chinese is pretty much nothing), which is not according to any fucking plan that I was told! I have to say, I have had many dinners in China, many high end, but this one was easily to most expensive. Tons of seafood, a huge private room with a Television and a sofa. The dudes kept pouring me wine and giving me cigarettes and talking to me in Chinese. I was sort of pissed at first, but then decided to go with it. The food was pretty exotic, lots of things with eyes and crap, but also obviously very expensive. They drank alot of wine, and the two oldest ones( who reminded me of American mafia types) had a pitcher of Baiju which they pretty much poured shots out of continually( they call baiju wine, but it is more akin to moonshine taste and strength wise) which was pretty fucking impressive. This went on for like a hour and a half! I have to say that despite the language barrier, these guys were amazingly nice to me. It was a really great dinner, but I was pretty confused. Finally, i call ed, ed calls Jonah, Jonah calls Frank, Frank calls Jonah, Jonah calls Ed, Ed calls me( china!). It turns out that this was planned, that I was to cross the border at 9:30! i think i may of slightly insulted my hosts by calling Frank, but I think I would have been more appreciative if someone had would have fucking told me what was going on! Anyhoo, soon after that, two of the guys usher me on with them and we get in a car and part way with the other Chinese greats. They were good guys, I hope they didn't think I was a dick... Anyhoo, So again, driving around the city. This city is more sprawling and less beautiful than Dalian, but to be fair, I did not see much of it. So after about 30 to 45 minutes of driving, we stop again. Well, actually the dude tries to park, but backs into a parked bus! Remember, these guys had a good bit of wine at dinner! He pulls up a bit, some Chinese guy comes out of nowhere and yells at him, he yells back, more yelling, than we pull into a area that i think is Customs and all seems to be forgotten! We go up to yet another middle age Chinese dude ( with a middle age Chinese lady and a younger dude). The driver runs off and I am left there as the other guy i came with speaks Chinese to the new people. Then, after awhile, the driver comes back with a load of cash( god knows this entire operation reeked of shadyness!), gives it to the new people, and my guys dive off. I think we are going into the building, but I am wrong yet again! We get into another SUV! The younger dude drives and doesn't say a word; the middle age dude and his wife talk. She is real rough and doesn't shut up. I think she was berating the middle age dude( I think she was his wife) but who knows. They speak some very basic English to me and we are off through the city again. At this point, I am like fuck it, enjoy the adventure. Being in China, sometimes you really have no choice but to go with the flow and enjoy things for what they are. It seems weird to Americans, but this attitude has often been absolutely fucking necessary. So we drive for about a half hour and arrive at a building that I pray is the border. It is...

Now, we get into the border, the dude leading me. He goes to a office and disappears. A official comes out with him and we go through customs. Then, they take me to a little closed off area,right in the middle of everything, and put me into a little glass room. It says further interrogation, and I worry, but I also have faith it will all work out. I sit there for about 20 minutes( they did give me hot tea in little plastic dixie cups) until a Chinese guy comes and makes me sign a shitload of forms. He informs me that I have violated my Visa and am being fined for 5000 yuan! I freak a little, but again, have faith in Frank( turns out that he did have it covered, the crafty devil). Then, I am free to go, i say goodbye to my dude and go through the border. I get outside and it's a bus tation. Our plans were for me to get out at a place where their would be a train station that would take me right into Hong Kong Island. Of course, Frank's people took me to the OTHER border( which ed and I did not know about). I recognized the name Wan Chai on one of the busses, and after calling Ed, I bought a ticket and got on. We drove for ten minutes and they let us all off! Now, i have now clue what to do but to follow everyone. It turns out, we are at the official Hong Kong border. I get through customs easily( thank you, American passport) an get on another bus. I hope to god that it takes me to where I am supposed to go, because I really have no clue. So we drive for about another 40-60 minutes. finally, we get into the city. I have no clue where the fuck I am. The bus makes a few stops and after awhile, I decide to get off. I get off an look around. It turns out, that I am on hennessy (yes) avenue, right where I wanted to be! This was blind luck! I walk around for awhile and I find one of the hotels that Ed and I had looked at. It looks very upscale, but its the only one that I know of. Its after midnight, the money changing places are all closed( and there are a shitload of them in Hong Kong) so I only have Yaun, and I am beyond exhausted. I take a room ( it was fairly expensive) check into my room, take my first bath in a bout a year( i do shower everyday), and then pass the fuck out...

Tomorrow( or in a few days): Hong kong, i fucking promise...

HongKongpartI(actuallyaprelude)

2009-03-16T20:50:00.006+08:00

So, I left off with when my Chinese boss, Frank, called me during the week before we were to start school. I was pretty much planning on resting up during a quiet week and preparing myself to re-enter the whole teaching thing. Well, out of the blue, W. and I were on our way to McDonald's for dinner actually, I get a phone call. Frank, who has never called me is on the other end and saying that he has bad news. I was thinking that I got some sort of crappy school thing or something that would, at most, be an annoying inconvenience. Well, I should have known better. Frank is not the kind of boss to call you at 7pm for something that isn't dire. Well, It turned out that April, who is responsible for our Visas, as well as our daily living arrangements, was cleaning out her files and noticed that my Visa was Expired!!! This is pretty big fucking news! It turns out that there was some sort of mix up: another teacher, who was staying for six months somehow got the Visa that I was supposed to get, for a year. The shitty part is that the visa had been expired for a month before anyone had noticed it! This is bad. I could have been arrested by the cops or God knows what by the Chinese government( I think the worse thing that could have happened is that I would have been deported, but still...). This was a mistake that should not have happened. Someone should have noticed it. However, one can make the argument that i should have noticed it on my visa; in fact, i sort of did. However, I must admit that all of this paperwork crap and government policy shit is mystifying to me. If you ask the office about it, they sort of tell you it's taken care of and you just go about your business of trying to adapt to foreign culture, learn how to teach and so on. But, lesson learned! If you are living in another country, know the Visa policies, the procedures, and how yours fits into that. If people pooh pooh you when you ask them questions, fucking make them explain it to you clearly! Anyhoo, the blame game is unimportant. Mistakes happen and everything worked out in the end( well, I hope it did!) April is a girl I find charming and simple mistakes like this are easy to come by. However, I hope that everyone involved learned an important lesson.

Back to Frank! So, he is telling me that I am illegal and trying to explain the situation. I am shocked, to say the least. I am walking down Ba Yi lu and all of a sudden, I am not sure what I am thinking or feeling. Frank is telling me that I have to go to Hong Kong, which is legally sort of out of the country ( it's pretty complicated, but you need a visa to enter hong kong from "mainland" china, even the Chinese do!). So essentially, I have to leave the country, get a new visa, and then reenter the country in time to teach the following Monday! This is quite different from my plans of sitting around the house, working on this blog and fighting with my girlfriend on the Im! So Frank is trying to calm me down and tells me to come to the office. I have no choice but to say yes; so Winston and I change our plans and get a bus. I call the girl and tell her, and she is much calmer than i am... so that helps. W. and I take the bus, and he is trying to calm me down. Winston is one of those people who will always, always see the bright side of anything. If he went to hell ( which would never happen), He would probably say, well at least it's warm and i know alot of people here! he tells me i finally get to travel and see one of the most famous cities in the world. So, i start to get excited, but I still want to keep my anger. I am worried about money, my safety, and the logistics of it. I am not the best at getting around and I am horrible with time schedules, paperwork, and other official things. Plus, while I am very competent in Dalian, that is because i had people like Ed and April to help me during those difficult first couple of weeks when you don't know anything and have no base knowledge of any thing to build upon. So, at this point, I am excited and terrified at the same time. We get to the office and April is there. She looks like a dog that someone beat... and I feel bad. I wanted to keep my anger, because I needed the company to take responsibility for this and not try to place the blame and responsibility on me ( not an uncommon Chinese trick), but I also have made many stupid little mistakes and do not want her to get in any real trouble. So, anyway, frank takes me to a Korean Sushi place and tells me his plan. The plan is that I will fly out the next (Thursday) morning and arrive in shenghzen ( the neighboring "Chinese" city) in the afternoon, from there, a Friend of Franks, who knows no English, would pick me up and take me to the border and get me threw. I would be on my own from there, but the consolation is that most people in Hong Kong know English. I would find a hotel that evening, rest up, go to the Chinese consulate in the morning, recross the border and fly back Friday night. All of this sounded unrealistic to me, but I know shit about any of this , so i agree. Plus I have little choice. I am illegal in China. My choice is to go to Hong Kong or wait until the government notices and does what they do... So I talk to Ed, who has been to hong kong under similar circumstances, and offers alot of advice. I make sure that frank knows that I am upset, but I pretty much accept the situation and try to gear up for a crazy couple of days. My mind is full of every possible little thing that can go wrong, but, as I said, I have little choice and try to remain positive. So I go down to Bo- Bo's, a little bar in the area, have a few drinks, regroup and then head home. I pack a little and pass out, both eager and terrified of what the next day may bring!
Well, this is actually just the prelude, but I will get into the rest of it tomorrow or Wednesday. i am tired from teaching. Be sure to check back soon, as this was a pretty interesting journey!

[interlude--picturesfromEnglishCorner]

2009-03-15T21:13:00.013+08:00

{ click on the photos to see much bigger, clearer, and more detailed version. trust me, its much better }

As we do every Sunday, today Winston and I went to the English Corner. Since I have talked about it quite a bit on here, I thought It would be good to show some photos. Since my Tofu sent me a old camera, I will be posting more pictures on this thing. I am too tired to get into hong kong, but I will in the next few days. The Chinese come here to practice their english and meet people from other cultures. Most of them speak very good English. Here's a good look at some very cool, intelligent Chinese people that I call friends. Hong Kong is next

This is W and Bruno. Bruno actually looks like a Bruno, but is a very nice, intellectually curious man.

This Three year old could say her English name and some short basic sentences ( in English)! Sometimes, the small ones are drawn to me. I don't know why!

This man Jeff is an amazingly kind person who has helped me out with some things. He is a proffessor of Chinese. The boy is LJ, a regular of mine.

Three of My girls ( I can't remember her name but she is very nice, Fairy, and Aimee). I am always surrounded by girls this age, which for the life of me I can't figure out why!

A cool building near Zhongshan square, where we hold the corne

Bulinda( that's how she insists it's spelled--sometimes she's Heidi). This girl is very dramatic and a unique personality...She is also very funny.

Another very small child who could speak some English

The crowds can get quite big sometimes. Can you find Winston?( hint, hes the black guy with the wild 'Fro)

Frank, who has very cool ass gloves!

Mr. Hans and his son, Little Hans. Mr. Hans is one of the coolest, most intelligent men I have ever met. His son is also very smart and nice.

This girl has great english also...

Some of my kids who flock around me at the corner...

Grandma and Aimee. Grandma is sort of the Grandma of the entire corner, she looks out for everyone, especially us American ( she sewed up a hole in my hoody today). She doesn't speak English, but I can usually communicate with her. She is tough as nails but very, very kind.

Micheal, a very kind and good friend of ours who had his first hamburger with W, Miles, and I!

Another shot of Fairy...

Yeah, Belinda is spunky!

Winton 's adorable and nice girlfriend, Maria

The indomitable Bulinda again

Julie, one of my regulars, a 2nd grader who always asks me " do you like banana?" The answer is always yes...

Calmperiodbeforethe"typhoon"

2009-02-24T18:20:00.012+08:00

[ note--- I began to write this about 3 and a half weeks ago, the day before I was informed that I would have to go to Hong Kong due to Visa Issues. So I will just post this, and in the next few days catch up with Hong kong and the last few weeks. Just bear in mine that i had no clue what was coming my way when i wrote this. Life is like that...]

Ok, after last weeks five long entries, I will cut down to once or twice a week, a pace which I hopefully will keep up after school starts. Speaking of which, I start back next week on Monday. I am a little nervous, teaching a classroom full of students a language that is foreign to them( and you know very little of their language) can be a bit intimidating. And also, dealing with such things like behaviours, lesson plans, and sometimes homework is difficult enough without the cultural barrier... Also, we teach 26 classes a week, and it really be a bit of a grind. That being said, I like to think of last semester as my student teaching period. The is semester will also be much about learning, but at least I know what I will be getting myself into. I felt sort of pushed in without much support last time, this time; I know how to handle certain situations and am better equipped to do what i think is best for the kids. That being said, teaching is a constant learning experience. I do think it's a great way to get to know a foreign culture, you are part of the society, You learn many of its rules, and you get a good feeling for what the people are like. We are supposed to go get our books and schedules on Thursday, so I can see what i have to plan for. I will continue with my Public school classes, I assume, but I will move from the Private school. That is fine with me, I work better with the younger children and most (although not all) of the Private school kids are difficult to teach and have more behaviour problems ( most of them are spoiled). This means I Will have to re-introduce myself to over half of my classes and that will be both fun and challenging. However, I think i have the public system down somewhat, so I think it will be a easier and more fruitful semester than the last. Yipin also has given me a ton of material related to teaching that I think will help me improve my approach and philosophy. She's a diligent and selfless little researcher!

On Sunday, i did what i did almost every sunday, I went to English corner. I still enjoy this chance to interact with the Chinese very much. Since its been pretty cold here( think what most of the northeast is like and lesson it a little bit-- well, we have had very little snow), we have been conducting the corner in the food court of a huge shopping center called "the New World"."Chinese shopping centers are very similar to those in the US, except some different things. At least I think so, I have at least one American friend who thinks they are very different, but i relay don't see many differences (except they have Chinese targeted products and they are filled with Chinese people, of course!) One thing that is apparent in China, they love brand names. You see Nike , Puma, adidas, everywhere. Of course, there are also many counterfeits everywhere, but some of the counterfeits are so well made that they are as good as the originals.! Anyhoo, I like the New World, but i miss the open air venue of Jongshan Square. Only the hard core English Corner types know about the New world, so you get to know them better. But you miss the random and more varied element that tends to crop in the park, you never know what is going to happen. Hopefully, we can move back there soon.

Since this is my last full week off for a while, I have tried to get out a little more and see this city! On Monday, Winston and I met our former fellow teacher ( and also fellow Mon-Valley Native, if you can believe that, he is from Monongahela Pa!) Miles. Miles has recently changed companies, but we still hang out with him periodically. We did some shopping around downtown Dalian: Winston drug me through what seemed every sports store in China looking for sweat pants. I bought a Cheap MP3 player which will hopefully make my bus rides more bearable. We also went to a arcade in Victory mall. We then headed up to San Ba square to a restaurant which we like very much; Winston Swears they have the best Kung pow chicken in china.

On Tuesday, we took the Light rail train to its last stop. This is something that Winston has been wanting to do and I figured what the hell. So we got on at Downtown, which was crowded. The amazing part of riding the light rail is that you see how big this city is. We rode for almost an hour and still where technically in Dalian. Chinese cities, due to the massive population, are very large( bear in mind that Dalian is also considered a small city here!) All along the light rail track, you can see places where they are building new buildings. In some places, you can actually watch new communities being built and then populated. This city is still growing at a amazing rate. Also you can see some very old buildings and communities and you still see people digging for crabs or washing their clothes in a pond. China really is a mixture of Modern and Traditional at this point. You can see ancient fishing boats made of wood, but cell phones, Ipods and up to date cars are also everywhere. It gives you the impression that china is not without time, but encompasses all times. Anyhoo, we rode the light rail to its last stop. Out there was a very cool looking amusement part and a pretty cool beach. I love the Ocean and love living somewhere so close to the ocean. This beach had very interesting cliffs and rocks and such, and even a little sort of island that you can walk out on( although , when we tried, we got shooed away from some douchebag that I think was trying to harvest clams). Anyway, We stayed out there for awhile, then hopped back on the lightrail to go back home. It was a good day, I like when china presents more of its varied elements to me. I think i dig the fact that china is Moderen, "primitive", ancient, and advanced all at the same time. Let me tell you something; Americans who read a few things on china really have no clue what it is like. Part of its charm is that its a place full or parodoxes. For any one element, there is a conflicting one, and they form a small link in a huge chain of interdependent element. I don't think I will fully be able to understand the complete picture, but I do know you have to be here to have even a inkling of what its really like.

[ then Wednesday, My boss called at at around 7pm and told me I had to fly to hong kong the next day... we will pick up right at this point during the next entry, which should be up in the next day or few]

TheBalladofCrazyLiu

2009-02-21T19:31:00.005+08:00

[thankfully I have not photos of crazy liu, as he is not appealing to the eyes]

So... I have been posting tons of stuff to make up for the fact that I did not post for a long time. There are a total of five new entries up, so check them out if you haven't already. And If you are new to this blog, make sure to go back and read the long winded, hard to follow, and mostly inane stuff that I have posted since late August. It turns out that I have another week off ( I am fine with money; I make enough to get by during the break), so I am looking forward to another week of just getting caught up with shit and ready for the coming semester. After this post, I will post once or twice a week. A word of warning, this post is a bit darker then the majority of them.

My experiences in China would not be complete without some Crazy liu stories. We met liu a few months ago while waiting for the bus. He just came up and started talking; his English isn't that bad, but has holes in it. Now, from the moment I met Liu, i had a funny vibe. Given my past, and the sort of characters that I have met in my life, I seem to have developed a "spider sense" when someone may be not good to hang around with. But in China, a foreign culture with people who act in ways you may not fully understand, its hard to know when to follow that sort of impulse. However , i have learned that lesson. Anyway, Liu was very friendly but there did seem to be something off about him,, nothing i could really put my finger on. The fact that two Chinese people came up to us while we talking to him should have been a clue! ?That doesn't happen often! They just came up out of the blue, a middle age teacher and a younger student guy, looked at Liu sideways, and left when we said we ok.But if your American, its very normal for someone to just talking to you on the street. They might be curious or just want to practice their English. The vast majority of them have turned out to be very nice people; well , all but one. Anyhoo, Liu got on the bus we were getting on, the dreaded 501 that I hate so much, and i kind of got sick of talking to him ( he really doesn't listen to everything you say and talks over you, and then says," I don't know your words"while you are still trying to explain something to him). I mentioned to winston that i got a weird vibe off of liu, but Winston's strength and weakness is that he tries to see the good in everyone. i even named liu "crazy liu"" right off, becuase he seemed different than the other chinese, which turned out to be foreshadowig. I now know to trust my "spider sense". I guess I gave Liu my phone number ( this is not uncommon, i have given my phone number to tons of Chinese, most who have never called me), and that was that.

Now, in the following , I am going to get the actual events and days and such confused, I am sure, but the gist of what happened is true. About a week later, liu called me and said he wanted to go to the English corner. I said sure. It turns out he live about two blocks away from me! So we made plans to go, but when the time comes, he doesn't not show up. A few days later, he calls and says he wants to take Winston and me to dinner. Again, this is not uncommon; I have had many dinners with Chinese people who want to befriend and talk to me. So we go to a local place on Ba Yi Lu, cheap but good. Liu orders a good amount of food for W. and I but does not eat. He drinks. i also have a few beers. liu stats to act strange after one beer, which we thought was funny. He starts singing ballads; one of the funniest things about the chinese is that they really love soft rock. So you get a guy who thinks he is manly, but he will be singing richard marx or something like that. Liu kept singing "can you feel the love tonight" the way a redneck will sing Tuesday's gone or some college kid will sing dave matthews. Anyway, he really didn't act like a normal chinese person. Yeah, getting drunk fast is normal, and singing is a bit accepted, but Liu just seemed to stand out. Some real manly middle age guys actually told him to pipe down with the singing (it was starting to get annoying). After about three beers, he was pretty drunk. He was pretend fondling winston as a joke( which was funny), he called Winston a boy because he does not drink and smoke( which actually happens alot; the chinese love winston, but many of them make it their mission to get him to drink). He won't though, and I admire his sticking to his values)he offered to have sex with me for 100 yuan ( a joke, i was hoping!), and told us about his life and such. Essentially, he reminded me of alot of people i knew back home. He feels that he does not fit in with the chinese. He is generally creative and funny. he is smart(BUT NOT AS SMART AS HE THINKS HE IS) but not disciplined enough to get fully educated. He is supposed to be a wiz at chinese( think like english as a subject and not a language) and japanese, but struggles with english. He went to university but dropped out. In short, he was not that different than i was at his age( 24). And he could be really fucking funny. He had a girlfriend, but he said he didn't like her because she was fat and ugly... but she was the only girl who liked him. In other words, he was a lost soul, and since i have been one myself and am fond of many such people, we did bond.
Any after that night, Liu started calling alot. he would usually just want to hang out, but then it would turn into drinking. I was pretty burned out from teaching and maybe the stress of adjusting to a new life, so i would usually go along with him. He lost his job after that night at the restaurant due to his boss getting sick of him being drunk and or hung over. I would resist him in the beginning, but began to hang out wit him more and more. Since he had lost his job, i would offer to pay for dinner and drinks usually. We would go to very small places that had food and beer and usually are very cheap. Although bars are very common here, most chinese prefer to go to restaurant , drink while eating, and then stay and get loaded! It is not uncommon to be in a restaurant and have a table of about four Chinese men that have about 20 to 30 bottles sitting on their table. Winston says that he is always seeing groups of them stumbling out of places in to cabs. its a pretty common thing. And, while i plan to address this in a later post, our image of the average chinese man is wrong. The average middle age dude is fairly big physically, tough looking, and loves to drink and be manly for the ladies! Anyhoo, liu did teach me that its better to drink at restaurants then at bars.
At first, he would put up a fuss about me paying, but as time went on, he began to get braver. It would start out with going to place and saying that he had no money, then he would add things onto the bill without asking me or winston for money. I would get pissed off and bitch at him, and he would say it was a mistake or some shit, but then he would do it again the next time. a few time, i got stuck with his bill from previous occasions. At this point, He was seriously pissing me off. We had been warned about chinese users , but i still feel that liu generally is a good person, but he has serious problems. I began to get the feeling that you get when someone is about to go down real hard, and many of you know enough people that have to understand what i mean. I think i kept hanging around liu becuase, even though he was using me and I knew it, he reminded me so much of myself at certain points in my life. He has a good soul, but no idea how to live. The difference between us is that when i go down, i try my best not to take anyone with me. Liu, on the other hand, will grab as many hands as he can and hold on as he sinks down.

There were many little fucked up instances in a short period of time that i don''t want to get into, but i knew i was going to have to cut him off at some point. he just didn't get that he was going down a bad path. I think having American friends who he thought were rich made him cocky. He was on the path down before he met us, but he got worse as he hung around us. He had many Enemies in the neighborhood ( one of the DvD street vendors hated him becuase he borrowed porn that he never returned!) because he had fucked over someone with money or such. He is a very nice, charming guy, but he doesn't have certain values when it comes to fucking someone over. It was all small shit, but it was alot of small shit. Anyway, He was was always trying to get me to drink and started to ask both of us for money. We met his parents, who are very poor and live in a very small apartment. My apartment is about twice the size of theirs and much nicer. They all sleep in one room, liu sleeps essentially on what is a very big shelf. His parents are very nice and have had hard lives. Liu, i am sure, does not make their life easier. Liu was also obsessed with women and sex. He knew every place that had prostitutes in china and changed my view of this place considerably. Prostitution is highly illegal here, but is also part of the culture. There are many places that you walk past that you would never think had them if you didn't not know, but they could be right next to a legitimate business. Its sort of interwoven with the regular society, if you are not in that world, you just walk right past it. But you can find it everywhere. I had no clue of this until i met liu.

Well this had proven to be liu's downfall. I had decided to cut him off but was having trouble doing so. i didn't not want to get into that dark world. i was curious about it, but had had my fill of dark worlds in pgh. I prefer normal china... Plus, as i said, liu gave me that feeling that you get when someone you know is using heavy drugs; they are going to go down and hard. I told Winston this, but hes so damned nice, he didn't believe me. the drinking and other things had caused serious problems with Yipin that i have already talked about. At the end, i was just yelling at liu and trying to tell him to straighten up and he would agree and then ignore me. Liu has the problem that alot of people do; he just assumes that he is smarter than everyone else. The chinese all think that they are very clever, and they are. Many of them are wicked crafty and cunning. liu really wasn't; he thought he was manipulating us, but we knew he was doing it the entire time. We just let him because we could see his good aspects. However, i was getting very sick of him.

He invited us to a restaurant to meet his friend andy. Andy is a good guy and I still see him occasionally. Liu was a complete ass; very drunk, obnoxious. I yelled at him and felt bad about it afterwards. I decided to come home and have a few drinks and invited liu. this was very stupid. Liu was so drunk, he spilled coke everywhere. he kept saying "i like the coca cola."i was sort of drunk myself, and i think i hit him a few times because he was so fucked up and insisted on sneaking coke and rum and then spilling it everywhere. eventually, he passed out on my floor. The next day, i woke up and he was at my computer, listening to chinese music and eating tons of my food. I had already decided to cut him off for good, so I threw him out of my house physically! He called my many times that day, but i told him to fuck off. He called winston. I told winston to hang up on him, but winston is too nice. Anyway, Yipin doesn't believe me, but I was done with that fucker from that point on.

So the next morning, Winston calls me. He said that liu had called him and was in a bathouse in ba yi lu. he owed them 25 yuan and they would not let him out until he left. I told winston to let him rot, but winston went down anyway. I told wisnton that he had only insured that liu would do the same thing again. Anyway, the next day, Winson left with his girlfriend maria to go travelling. I started tutoring that morning. On the way to work, i got two phone calls from liu, i just answered fuck off and hung up! then Winston call me while Ed and I were having breakfast. he was on the train and liu had called him from a bathouse again; most bathouses are legitimate places that are enjoyed by all of the chinese, but many of them offer prostitutes. again, its that shadow world that exists in the open. It's not there if you don't want it to be. Liu said that he owed 1200 yuan! In nearly spit out my orange juice. I think that the bathhouse girls usually charge about 200 yaun and i still have no clue what the hell liu had done to ring up such a high bill! i don't think Iwant to know! I told winston that their was no way in hell i was going to help liu and he should just not think about it and enjoy his vacation. It turns out that Liu did call wisnton again and asked him to get off the train and transfer money into his account! Maria pretty much told winston no, which is good, because i think he might have done it. Liu called me thourghout the day and i told him several times to fuck off. around the evening he called again, and I listened to him. He said that they had beat him up ,and that they were threatening his life. I almost caved but then told him that i could not help him. I was worried for him, but had a feeling he was bluffing in some manner. He said he had a credit card at home and would pay me back but of course that was bullshit. Anyway, I woke up the next morning and he called again. He again begged for help; again i told him that i could not. So he hung up. a few hours later, he called and said that he called his dad and he came and got liu. He could have done that the entire time, but he knew he would be in serious shit with his family.He was trying to be liu, do what he wanted without having to pay for it. So he was in not real danger, he just didn't want to make that phone call to his parents. His dad took him to a mental hospital directly and he was there for a month. He called while yipin was visiting and of course, she went mental on me, understandably. i have told her that i am done with him, but she is worried about me. nothing to worry about, lesson learned. The funny thing is that he has not called since that weekend. I think that he got out of the hospital, went straight back to his old ways, got into some sort of absurd mess again and ended up in jail or the mental hospital again. I just can't see him not calling me and winston so abruptly. Winston thinks that he is just laying low, trying to get back on track. time will tell who is right, but i know that i am!

So ends the ballad of Cray liu. its not a particuarly happy chapter in my journey, but its real life. I learned alot, especially about not slipping back into the darkness. Liu had his good points. He was a user, but if he had money, he would help out his friends. He was very funny. hearing someone say "i like Satan, Satan is good"in a very thick chinese accent is hilarious. But he , like many people i have know, could not stop the bad shit in him from overcoming him. I am lucky, i went there and came back stronger. this time I went to the border of that world, but stopped before the point of no return. It was good in the way that i feel that i have finally conquered my attraction to that world. maybe liu was neccessary in my process of self transfomation, the path of drunken dishwasher to academic that I have been on for the better part of this decade. And before any of yuu write; don't worry, i am fine. I was never in any real danger as long as i stopped it before it got to far. and while i came close, i did. It really was an educational experience. But to be honest, I prefer my normal chinese life. Being a teacher, talking to hard working chinese who actually know how to behave in public. I guess i owe liu if only for showing me that I like living in the light much better than the shadows....
please forgive my mad metaphors!
anyway, next entry, various observations. much more upbeat and postive, i hope! things are great here; don't worry about me!

AVisitFromTheTofu

2009-02-19T21:17:00.009+08:00

Ok, this is the fourth entry this week, so I hope that satisfies all of you that have been bitching at me for not posting. I will probably post one more this week( featuring some other interesting things that happened over the break. maybe the crazy lio stories) then, if I go back to work next week( still not sure if i am , that's China ), I will probably post about once or twice a week.

So another significant event that recently occured was the visit from Jessica. This should be put in context. Around the beginning of Jan, our relationship hit some very serious troubles. This was due to distance and not seeing each other, but also largely because I am an ass. For reasons that I am unsure of, i began to slip into some old behaviour: drinking to much, not doing anything productive, hanging around unsavory characters (crazy lio) and doing stupid things. Not to the extent that i once did, but still, i was just starting to head in that direction. This sort of thing caused some very serious problems, ones that i am not going to detail, but lets just say that she was essentially right and i was essentially wrong. These problems, compounded with long term issues such as my age and place in the world( which would not be very attractive to her parents-- approval from the parents is a very serious issue for most Chinese people, even one as independent and free thinking as Yipin)led to what i most did not want to happen. Essentially, we broke up. I of course, was completely devastated but had no one but myself to blame. Of course, i could not give up on her, even if i understood and respected her position; we maintained communication. I have never loved anyone as much as i love her, and this was a difficult time for me. However, in a way, it was a positive thing. I realized that i was slipping down a old path that i did not want to follow. If i don't push my self toward some goal, i tend to slide backwards. so now, i am trying to set small goals for myself so i can keep moving forward.

Well, anyway, towards the end of January, i started to have a strange feeling. Even though it seemed very unlikely, i began to suspect that she was planning to visit me. She was still somewhat cold to me, but still actively communicating to me everyday. She asked me for my house address, which she does not need to mail things to me as I receive my mail through the office. Yipin is also famous for "surprising", which is the term that she uses for when she shows up when i don't expect her and am the least prepared for her visit I kept on having this nagging feeling that she was coming; I even began to clean my apartment so that she would not bitch at me for it being dirty! Well, it turns out that she was planning on surprising me, but had to call me a few days before to help her with a traveling problem. That was good, as it gave me time to fully prepare for her visit.

Now, before i get into the visit, i know this is very strange. We broke up and then she comes from New Zealand to visit me. Yes, we are a strange couple! Even now, she says that we broken up. However, that seems to be a classification, i am not concerned with it. We still talk to each other everyday, and are a couple in all ways except her classification. I am happy with how are relation hip actually is, not what we call it. right now, despite her name for it, we are doing probably better than we have ever done. Having a Chinese girlfriend is a strange experience!

So anyway, lets leave all of that crap behind. While she was here, we acted as boyfriend and girlfriend. We were together the entire time( i had the week off, thankfully),we did everything together, we fought about once a day, but we made up everyday also! She drove me nuts, but it was my best week in China so far! It was so great to have my chinese girlfriend in China. She showed me many things( even though Dalian is not her city, she knows infinitely more about anywhere is China than I do) and it was a fun and enriching experience. Anyway, so what did we do when she visited. well:

Monday-- She flew in from New Zealand and W. and I went to the airport to pick her up. Me being me, i was afraid that I would not recognize her( i am really paranoid in strange ways) and she would belt me one! But of course I did. I was so happy to see her , and she was as beautiful as ever. so Monday, we pretty much got settled in. She took over the apartment essentially, even moving around where i had kept my food and trash buckets! It's strange to have a person living with you when you are used to being alone for 39 years( well, you know what i mean) but i liked it. We both have some adjusting to do in that area, but all in all, I really loved having her in the apartment. Most of the changes that she made were good and I kept them. Not all, but most. The place is a bit more homey and comfortable now. Anyhoo, we went grocery shopping at Youhome, and she showed me new foods that i could buy. She also showed me places to get things cheaper, which is cool. She bought these little snacks, made of duck liver. They smell like hell but are actually very good( like beef jerky) if you chew on them for awhile. Many Chinese snacks are like that. Yeah, they have candy and cookies and such( usually not as sweet though, but some are) but the also like to snack on some things we would consider weird. Yipin is continually eating some sort of fish jerky. We have been offered things that seemed to be candy but turned out to be some sort of weird fruit, vegetable, or seafood ( think squid candy) product. Anyhoo, then we had dinner with Winston near my apartment. Yipin loves seafood, and Dalain has much, so she ordered some of that kind of thing and we also got Kung Pow chicken for Winston( he eats it every time we go out). Then we came home. Yipin was pretty tired due to New Zealand being 5 hours ahead of China.

Tuesday--- Tuesday was our first full day together. We went to downtown Dalain. Under the main part of the city is a huge underground mall, Victory Square-- every big public place is usually translated has Square, which seems to imply park or plaza. it has about 6 floors that are all each very massive. it has many different types of stores and shops, but seems to cater to younger women, as many malls do. Its a pretty impressive place; i get lost there very often! It has exits all over downtown, so i often come out and wonder where the hell I am! We had a pretty good time there. After we ate, she wanted to see a movie, so we went to a close by theatre. We couldn't find an English showing, so we just went to a Chinese movie that she wanted to see. Even though it was all in Chinese, it was a zany comedy-- which generally make use of familiar plots, expressions and film language, so i understood and enjoyed it. It was sort of a romantic comedy, but the comedy was more important than the romance and the female lead was a real bitch so it was enjoyable to me! It was pretty good. The theatre was smaller than American ones, the room was small and the seats were like padded booths made for two people. It was much more comfortable than an American theatre, the seat had lots of room, didn't kill your ass and didn't put your neighbor right touching next to you. This is kind of strange to me because almost everything else in china crowds many people into a small place right on top of each other, buses, schools, ect. However, I don't know if it was just this one theatre that is like that or all of them. However, it was a pleasant change of pace. After the movie, we went shopping at another grocery store and then came home and went to bad, as the girl was starting to get crabby.

Wed-- She decided that we should check out the marine park at Tiger Beach. We had a really good time there, as you can see from the picture posted and linked to below. W. went with us and he is a really good person to take places to. He enjoys everything and has a positive attitude about everything( which can counter my sometimes negative attitude!) Since it was winter and during the holiday season, we got in for about half price, and all of it was worth it! The park is next to the sea, has alot of land and exhibits, and is very modern and well kept. All of the animals seemed to be well taken care of. They had alot of animals; many types of fish, sharks and marine mammals. There was a dolphin show and a bird park also. It was really great. The funniest part , i think, was when we went in, we saw this little beat up looking dog. Well, whenever we went outside, and we were inside alot, we would see him cruising along. He seemed to be on his own holiday, enjoying the park( although he went into the seal house and the chinese dudes chased him out, maybe because he didn't have a ticket!). When we left, we saw him walking towards the gates; his day was also over. W had diner at a place that W. and i call the spot, its cheap and everyone knows us there. Yipin was freaked out when the entire staff came and watched us eat, but i told her that they always do that. It happens when you are an American in China sometimes( although not all that often). When we went home, My landlord was there fixing the toilet. Yipin and her had spoke together on the phone before and Cindy made plans to take show us the city the next evening. I have a really nice landlord, which i am told is uncommon.

Thur-- We had some errands to run, as yipin has been accepted to a post graduate school in Australia( ranked 54th in the world!) and is scrambling to get her Visa situation settled. She is working very hard and i hope that it works out for her. We screwed around downtown again, visiting victory and other shopping areas. We went to one of those very Asian photo booths and took pictures. We went to a very high end mall, new mart and a korean place( that we almost got ripped off at, but luckily did not buy anything). We got into a fight at new mart because lio called ( more about that some other time) and then went home. Cindy, the landlord came at six and we went to a more high end area of the city and saw a nice park and a higher end mall. Cindy bought dinner for us as the chinese like to do. I had curry and winston had kung pow chicken! It was a nice day. I help cindy with her English, but she is really shy about speaking it so Yipin mostly translated. Winston always fights with the Chinese about paying, but i don't like to insult anybody's customs!

Friday: during the day we just walked around the neighborhood. we had a stupid fight about crabs( the food) and then went out with ed and sarah. We had hot pots, which is where they give you a little boling pot of soup and then you add whatever food you like and cook it. It was very good. Winston had Kung Pow chicken. Ed and Sarah are really great people and Yipin got along with them fine.

Saturday: I was exhausted. the plan was to head out to big black mountain because they have temples and such out there. Dalain is pretty modern and I wanted to see something that was connected to ancient china. As detailed in the photobucket pictures, Winston had other ideas, make me climb a huge ass mountain which was difficult and beyond exhausting and almost got thrown off the mountain several times! However, i am very glad i did it, it was an amazing experience. The temples where beautiful they are part of the mountain. While i am not into any religion, you can really see the beauty of creation there... To think the ammount of human toil that went into it is amazing. It was wonderful. After ward we went back ( a long walk, a bus, lightrail, bus) and went to resturant near my house, Yipin had seafood, Winston had Kung pow chicken....

Sunday: Her plane was scheduled to leave at 1 or so, we left at 10 for the airport. She had some trouble with customs( she always, always overpacks), but then got on the airplane. Afterwards, I tool a bus to the english corner and she called me to tell me she got to her parents home fine( they live in Tian Jin, which is only about a hour away by air). When i got home, the apt. seemed empty and quiet. Its strange how someone can transform a place in such a short time. I miss her still; she is a great girl. She is intelligent , loving, stubborn, open minded, .... i can never explain her well. you just have to meet her , and even then, there's always more to learn. mytrying to dexcribe her is like going into a huge mulit floor builindg and trying to explain it room by room. she is simply the greatest person i have ever met. It was a wonderful week

Anyhoo, one more entry this week, maybe, and then hopefully one or two a week afterwards.

ChineseNewYear--BlowingShitUp!!!

2009-02-16T16:31:00.017+08:00

This is the year of the OX

a traditional Nian, bringer of bad luck and the kind of guy that usually pisses on your toilet seat

a non-traditional, but awesome, representation of the dreaded Nian..

" Last year, my wife left me, i lost my job, my prostate fell out, and some bastard pissed all over my toilet seat last new years eve! I'm not taking any chances this year; I bought 200 boxes of firesworks and 50 fire cracker chains. I am blowing shit up... ! Fuck you, Nian and bad luck!!!!

Happy new year--good luck, come in here! These things are pretty much on every door you can imagine...

{note-i have posted three new posts this week, so check out all three if you have not yet!]

"Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is often called the Lunar New Year, especially by people in mainland China and Taiwan. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first month (Chinese: 正月; pinyin: zhēng yuè) in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th; this day is called Lantern Festival. Chinese New Year's Eve is known as Chúxī. It literally means "Year-pass Eve".
According to tales and legends, the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called the Nian or "Year" in Chinese. Nian would come on the first day of New Year to devour livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children. To protect themselves, the villagers would put food in front of their doors at the beginning of every year. It was believed that after the Nian ate the food they prepared, it wouldn’t attack any more people. One time, people saw that the Nian was scared away by a little child wearing red. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the color red. Hence, every time when the New Year was about to come, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, the Nian never came to the village again. The Nian was eventually captured by Hongjun Laozu, an ancient Taoist monk. The Nian became Hongjun Laozu's mount.
The period around Chinese New Year is also the time of the largest human migration, when migrant workers in China, as well as overseas Chinese around the world travel home to have reunion dinners with their families on Chinese New Year's eve. More interurban trips are taken in mainland China in this 40-day period than the total population of China. This period is called Chunyun (春運 or 春运).
On the days before the New Year celebration Chinese families give their home a thorough cleaning. There is a Cantonese saying "Wash away the dirt on ninyabaat" (年廿八，洗邋遢), but the practice is not usually restricted on nin'ya'baat (年廿八, the 28th day of month 12). It is believed the cleaning sweeps away the bad luck of the preceding year and makes their homes ready for good luck. Brooms and dust pans are put away on the first day so that luck cannot be swept away. Some people give their homes, doors and window-frames a new coat of red paint. Homes are often decorated with paper cutouts of Chinese auspicious phrases and couplets. Purchasing new clothing, shoes and receiving a hair-cut also symbolize a fresh start
The biggest event of any Chinese New Year's Eve is the dinner every family will have. A dish consisting of fish will appear on the tables of Chinese families. It is for display for the New Year's Eve dinner. This meal is comparable to Christmas dinner in the West. In northern China, it is customary to make dumplings (jiaozi 饺子) after dinner and have it around midnight. Dumplings symbolize wealth because their shape is like a Chinese tael. By contrast, in the South, it is customary to make a new year cake (Niangao, 年糕) after dinner and send pieces of it as gifts to relatives and friends in the coming days of the new year. Niangao literally means increasingly prosperous year in year out. After the dinner, some families go to local temples, hours before the new year begins to pray for a prosperous new year; however in modern practice, many households hold parties and even hold a countdown to the new lunar year. Beginning in the 1980s, the CCTV New Year's Gala was broadcast four hours before the start of the New Year.

Bamboo stems filled with gunpowder that were burnt to create small explosions were once used in ancient China to drive away evil spirits. In modern times, this method has eventually evolved into the use of firecrackers during the festive season. Firecrackers are usually strung on a long fused string so it can be hung down. Each firecracker is rolled up in red papers, as red is auspicious, with gunpowder in its core. Once ignited, the firecracker lets out a loud popping noise and, as they are usually strung together by the hundreds, the firecrackers are known for their deafening explosions that are thought to scare away evil spirits. See also Myths above. The burning of firecrackers also signifies a joyful time of year and has become an integral aspect of Chinese New Year celebrations.[6]" Wiki wiki wiki...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

So thats alot of information! Chinese New Year is a huge deal here; as big as Christmas is back home. It lasts forever and the Chinese really go all out. This year is the Year of the Ox( fairy's year!); last year was the year of the pig! You can see little oxxes ( stuffed animals, pictures) pretty much everywhere. I thought the Myth of the Nian was pretty intersting; especially when you consider that Nian mean year. Yes, the Chinese travel all over the damn place during this time of year; the busses, trains and planes are packed! I actually did the spring cleaning thing: for new years, I had extra time, and Yipin was coming so i had to clean as anti being bitched at insurance! It took about three days! The guy who lived here before me must have never cleaned, so i kept finding grime and crap on everything. It was exhausting!
Yeah, the color Red is big here! People whose zodiac sign is ox are supposed to wear red pretty much all year( i don't think that they do). Also, it is important to change your hair style and wear new clothes on the new year( W. said that he went down to the office when they all came back from holiday and all the girls had new hair styles!) Its a great time to be in China; I hope to come and visit every Chinese New Year!

So School ended in late Dec/ early Jan and i was exhausted. I had never tuaght before and to say it was a learning expereince is a understatement. Still, i learned alot and was a better teacher by the end of it, but I was very tired... I have been off since the first week of Jan., but not totally. The company has given me tutoring jobs; just a few kids who i taught in the YouHome building, which is about 10 minutes from my apartment. So it's been alot of work, break, work, break.... But i finally feel relaxed and normal. This time has given my the chance to see much more of the city and just take it easy. I am off this week; i start again next week or the week after that( the company is not that great with giving you time to prepare, but i am pretty much ready at this point) the spring semester. I feel that i will be a much better teacher and will be able to handle new challenges.

So, while many people have chosen to travel( which is a great thing to do and i plan on doing it before i leave), I chose to stay in Dalian. This was not only due to economic reasons and the desire to rest, but also to see this city. Dalian is really a wonderful city and i love it more everyday. Becuase I was not travelling, I was alone for most of it( winston has been travelling to inner Monglolia to see his wonderful girlfriend Maria). I had heard of spring festival but was not sure what to expect. The week before it really started was a little spring festival<>. On that day, i noticed alot of candy being sold on the street. This, i was told, was candy for the ancestors and would give you good luck( luck is a big thing in this culture). By night, however, the candy was gone, and was replaced with big tables selling fireworks. For about 3 weeks, there were tons of fireworks "shops"everywhere. you think rednecks like fireworks, they have nothing on the Chinese. Everyone buys them and sets them off. They set them off from their apartment windows, on the street, from roofs, everywhere. Its complete anarchy. it also dangerous, but luckily I did not witness anyone getting hurt. I am sure people do. They were lighting off fireworks all night. I thought it was pretty awesome; little did i know what was to come. So it died down a little bit that week. People were getting ready for the Holiday; buying food or leaving for wherever home was. Fairy had invited me to her house for New Years eve; I wanted to see how the Chinese actually celebrated. So the big day came; and there where a good bit of fireworks going off. Fairy is the 11 year old english prodigy who i made friends with from the English corner. I went to her house; her family was very nice to me ( many Chinese are honored to have an American guess; they make you feel like a rock star. I was honored to be their guest.)
Fairy's family didn't speak much english( here father did speak a little, but only after he was fairly drunk). Fairy acted as an iterpreter and did a very good job. She is so young but her english is excellent. Her fathers parents( traditionally, the fothre's paretents are the ones you are closer with, but there are many exsceptions to this in modern China) were there also. they offered me tea and soon we had dinner. Dinner was crazy;they had all kinds of food, mostly sea food. Fairy's family is fairly well off; they have an extemely nice apartment. It was only the 2nd time that i had been in a chinese living place; I had been in crazy lio's families house. they are poor and live in very very small aprtment. they are good people; despite lio being a shit head-- but thats a story for another time). Anyhoo, the dinner was great. many chinese dishes, lobster, snails( yes i ate them, not bad), sea cucumber( a rare and exspensive delicecy here, but meh... and crab legs. The father was intent on getting me to drink and i ended up drinking beer and Baiju( chinese "wine"but more like moonshine in taste!) We went out to the patio type area and drank and smoked. He did speak some english, but mostly we kind of fumbled through converstaion. Outside the chinese where really starting to get into it and we saw many great firworks. He shot some bottle rockets out of the window, which is not uncommon here! It was a pretty good time. then the mother, who is very cute and quiet started to make dumplings, which is traditonal new years food. The father had a bit too much to drink and passed out; Fairy was Pissed, but i guess this is another new years tradition! We watched a bit of the New years teleiviosn broadcast, which is also a tradtion, albiet a more modern one. It was ok, i cod follow much of it, but was lost sometimes. Then around 10, i started getting tired. Itold fairy i was going home, she was a bit upset. it turns out that the chinese stay up all night on this night, but she had not told me. I felt bad for dissapointig her, but i was very tired, having spring cleaned that day. So i felt bad, but left. it was still a very cool experience.

The cab ride on the way home was exciting, as the chinese were blowing shit up! Everywhere we went, there were fireworks in the sky and chains blowing up on the sidewalks! it was one of the coolest cab rides i have ever had. We get back to Ba yi lu and shit was going nuts. I waited until about 11: 30 and then went out to check things out. it was spectacular. people were lighting ghost fires, chains going off everywhere, and boxes and bottle rockets everywere. They buy these boxes and you just light them and run! they can set off a display that rivals anything we have in america! They don't usually have all the shapes and fancy effects, but just gorgeous standard high in the sky fireworks( well sometimes they pop off a few feet over your head!); about ten boxes rivals the displays you see in most american small towns during the 4th of july. It was kind of like being in a war zone! at midnight, the entire sky was full of color; the ground was thick with smoke. I stayed in a one block radious and seen the greatest firework display i have ever seen in my life! The chinese just come out of woodwork with boxes and chains( which are really loud and bright and cool). I saw them light them on the yellow line of Ba Yi lu with traffic going right next to about ten shooting boxes. You really have to see it to believe it! It was one of the best experiences of my life! I watched it until about 1:30 and then somehow passed out, despite the fact the the city was blowing up outside my window. The fireworks continued, at a lesser level, pretty much for two weeks, until lantern festival. And then that night, they were pretty intense again, with fireworks going off everywhere and people lighting some in the middle of the street. The tradition is that the fireworks scare off bad luck and the Nian, and the chinese do not fuck around when it comes to bad luck! Picture a city bigger than Pittsburgh where everyone is lighting off boxes that contain form 10 to 30 big blooms! its simply amazing. thats what it was like during the big nights.

All in all, the Spring festival was amazing and alone was worth coming to china. I enjoyed every asspect of it. During this time, Yipin came to visit. that will be the subject of my next post, which should be up in a day or two so check back soon!

Finallysomephotos

2009-02-15T22:44:00.005+08:00

Hello Everyone,

You know the drill. Sorry i have not posted...blah blah blah... been busy... blah... goats and sheep...blah

Lots going on lately. lots

But its late and i am exhuasted. The big thing is that I have pictures up on the internet. Jessica visited last week, and i finally had use of a bad ass camera! I went a little crazy with the pictures, actually. But, people have asked about photos; i know its better to see some of the things i am talking about...

My photobucket page is here; the general albulm has some old crap in it. For those of you who don't know how to access the albulms from the home page, I have provided links for each individual one that you can access from here... but scroll down here first to see how to get to the new pictures...

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v494/anjelfk/

I divided up the pictures that i took last week and commented on some of them. Each first photo in each album essentially gives a brief overview of the album, so make sure to click on the first photo and read the comments. Many photos have titles and comments, read them if you wish. The album below contians pictures from when we climbed a chinese mountain, big black mountain(translated). Very cool pictures; many of nature and mountains and such.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v494/anjelfk/Big%20Black%20Mountain%20China%20Feb%202009/

The next album is just pictures of Dalin. these can give you and idea of what its like in a modern chinese city.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v494/anjelfk/General%20Dalian%20China%202008/

WE went to this kick ass marine park. lots of pictures of fish and such things.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v494/anjelfk/Marine%20Park%20Dalian%20China%202009/

Some people are curious about my street and apartment. here are photos of that!

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v494/anjelfk/My%20apartment%20and%20street%20Ba%20yi%20lu%20Feb%202009%20China/

Finally, i wanted pictures of something unique to most of you. In big black mountain, there are many temples. its really very cool and very chinese( well, there are other historical influences, but you know what i mean". This place is incredible and i hope that i did it justice.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v494/anjelfk/TEmples%20on%20Big%20Black%20Chjna%20Feb%202009/?start=0

I know that there are alot of photos and you might not have time to check them out. i understand. these are all just here if you want to see them...

I am def. going to write in this more this week. i have to talk about jessica's visit, chinese new years and much more. so please check back in a few days....

Patrick

EmailfromJessica

2009-02-11T19:58:00.013+08:00

Even the cold blooded love Winston!

"Dalian is famous for its seafood"and we had enough of it!

Kum pow Chicken.......

[remember that you can click on individual pictures to see them in a much larger and clearer form]

Yes, it's been awhile. Trying to catch up. So much has been going on... Chinese New Year( Fucking awesome), Climbing a huge ass chinese mountain, Jessica visitied, plus much more. I am still trying to get cuaght up on other things, but jessica sent a group email out about her trip to visit me and i thought it would be a good idea to print it out to give her perspective on her trip here( I will write more about my perspective of it. I still love being here by the way. anyhoo, here she is ( please note. jessica is chinese. while her English is very good, there are a few things that she might say that might sound strange to us. Her command of the language is excellent, but still, there are nauances in English that might be missed. She says that we made fun of winston all of the time, but that comes out harsh. we made jokes, but they were nice jokes, we love him! She says he speaks very slow and its hilarious, well, the chinese are very blunt, she is not moking him, just making an observation. she says I have a big nose and talk super loud-- well , she means that! she is a sweet kid; it takes some exposure to the chinese for americans to understand their bluntness is not meant to hurt our feelings. oh, and she is wrong, W loves chinese buses. my hatred of them is legendary, however...):

Hello!!!~~
everyone:

Hope you all well!!

This is Jessica. I'm currently in China for visiting. Before arrived at home I went to visit a friend in Dalian. I met Patrick in US when I was studying in Oswego. He's in linguistic major graduated last year and decided to go to China to teach. He labels himself as a writer, but the last time he updated his blog was in November, 2008 which was long time ago !! anyway, He ended up in Dalian. So, I visited him on the way back home. Dalian is in up north of china, and it's about 50 mins by plane from my hometown.

Blow is a brief description of the trip. the things I remembered and found interesting and worth to jot down and to share with.

It begins with the weather.................~~~~~

China is colder than NZ ! Not too cold per Se, it is actually very warm this year. Normally it would be around 0 degree at this time of the year, but yesterday it was so warm as 12 degree!!

I arrived at home on Sunday the 8th, since been going here and there since then. My parents picked me up from the airport so it was a lot easier for me instead of taking public transport for myself with two luggage. It would be a nightmare. The airport is in the middle of TangGu (district where I live) and TianJin (city where airbus goes).There's no direct bus, and so i would have to transfer in TianJin. TJ is further away from TG than from the airport. Anyway, sitting in a car is more comfy and quicker than bus!

I went to visit both my grandparents and uncles and aunts and cusions and a niece. In total, it's 9.5+13.5=23 people. the .5s are one is still not born yet, and the other is the dog my grandma has. It's a big surprise for them as none of them i came back. My parents knew it on the day the 8th before I departed from Dalian.

The trip to Dalian was great. I met some new people, patrick's friends who also are from US and teach Eng here. Sara and Ed are a couple who have been in China longer and speak good amount of Mandarin. They are fun people to be with and have good heart. Winston is the one we hang out a lot with. They live pretty much next door to each other. Patrick calls him the black jesus! because he's black and is extremely nice. He's liked by everyone, even by fish which is cold blooded! The story behind this was that we went to a theme park together, there is a aquarium where people can pay for feeding gold fish by holding food in a palm and putting the fist into water. And fish smells the food and swim to you to kiss you. So, me and winston did it together as it was a big fish tank. The thing was that most of the fish swam to Winston and didn't come to me, considering we had same amount of food and was doing exactly the same thing!! It was very funny that there was hardly any fish near me and lots of fish near winston! We concluded that He's even attractive to the cold blooded!! It was very fun!

Another highlight was the food. We had tight budget but we had many interesting stuff. cheap ones and good too. At one breakfast, we had deep fried noodle which was very crispy and won ton which was tasty, and a couple of pancakes like mooncake, if you know what mooncakes are, that has filling in the middle.

Dalian is on the coast, and so has rich resource and easy access to seafood. There are good and fresh seafood! People like to cook seafood when it's still alive to keep the freshness. Unlike NZ, fish are eaten as whole, including bones and head. In fact, everything except guts. Hundreds of kinds of fish. I also had steamed crabs and seafood with shells. And I had this seafood that looks like hedgehog which has lots of protective coverings all around. It's a red round thing as big as palm. People halve it and eat the soft thing inside raw. It's like fish egg. I had it cooked as I was concerned with the freshness of it. It's soft texture.

Dalian is a relatively clean and nice city but dry. There is this famous square next to the ocean is modern and beautifully constructed for Creation purpose used to be a garbage field where the city garbage were uploaded there. But then, the city council cleared all the garbage and expanded the land by filling the ocean. Now, it's the financial center and tourism site. impressive!

People I came cross in Dalian are honest and friendly. Patrick's landlord cindy is a lovely woman. I talked to her a few times when I was in New Zealand to help Pat translating. She knew I came, and took us out to see the night of Dalian and shouted us for dinner. Winston were with us too. There are other people I met randomly were nice to us too.

We made fun of Winston all the time! He speaks slowly and has a distinctive and hilarious accent. He's from Arizona. He found a dish in China which he eats everyday. He's in mad love with this dish (and as well as his gf! )! Every time we went out to order, he didn't need to look at the menu (besides the fact he can't read in Chinese), he just ordered this dish. We happened once had to look for a restaurant that has this dish in their menu before decided to dine there! The dish is a simple dish which I believe is from Muslim ethnicity, Com Pond chicken (Gong Bao Ji Ding). We haven't yet figure out why Winston only likes this dish! but, we will!! And, we believe that in near future, he will publish a book, the name of the book will be "Winston and Com Pond Chicken in China"!!! And he's going to open a Com Pond Chicken restaurant in America or club!! Dont' forget to support him!!

We were starred at by people very often when in public. Winston is pretty black so he's easily spotted different. Patrick is very tall and has a big nose and white skin and always speaks super loudly is also easy to notice. He also looks scary to some people (I get used to it already!! haha..). and Me as being a perfectly normal Chinese from appearance becomes 'abnormal' as I speak fluent English with these two folks comfortably. I enjoy the privilege. I'm a good interpreter. I provided comprehensive service as a interpreter! I have good grasp of both cultures which was very handy.

Oh, another interesting thing was that Patrick and Winston absolutely dislike the crowded buses in Dalian. Unfortunately, the buses in Dalian are always packed with people. Because it's very convenient and cheap. I think W and P don't get used to such close physical intimacy with people. People on bus are too aggressive for them. They get pushed away in discomfortable positions, and they don't push back just because they don't. They sometimes wait for a few buses pass before got on because they don't want to be pushed. For me, the bus isn't too crowded, but for them it is. It is true that America doesn't have 13 billion people live next to one another. I understand. But it's funny.

There are also many funny things happened during the trip, but i wanted to stop here.

all the best and love from J~

Halloweeeeeennpartduex----

2008-11-22T22:08:00.000+08:00

a note: i know my grammar and spellling suck on this thing, basically becuase i am lazy. I can wrtie like a motherfucker, but I don't have the time or patience to self edit. plus, i think its kind of charming. of course, some people won't get this, but the great thing about being me is that i don't have to give a crap. this is my little corner of the internet and i think the way i write this is pretty honest and representative of me.... If one doubts my abilty to write, consider that I never recieved anything except A's on my college papers( with the excpetion of a few Bruce papers, which involved techinical linguistic shit that i fucked up) anyway, being defensive, but the entry is pretty light toned, so read on, mistakes and all...Ok, so my Halloween week at school was pretty interesting. I did some cultural crap about the history of the holiday and told the story of Jack O'lantern. We then pretended that they were going to go trick or treating, and what costumes they would wear and such. I showed them a book with pictures of kid's dressing up. I think it blew their minds! They have nothing like that. Some girls screamed at the pictures; Chinese girls can be quite dramatic! Then i made them leave the class and knock on the door. and say trick or treat. Each of my students got one piece of candy, which added up to a hell of a lot of candy ( i have around 700students!). Some of their "costumes"where inventive: Toilets, the universe, and me! most were cats and other animals. but it was fun and i can say that i let around 700 Chinese kids celebrate Halloween, something they may never do again in their lives. not that it makes me a saint or anything, but it was fun. of course, now, the little bastards expect candy every week! I will write more about this later, but i am starting to get very attached to my students. They are not always good for me, but they have such personalities! I just feel such a bond with all of them, i am not sure why... My primaries and some of my 11th graders even dressed up. the sixth graders are poor and made little paper masks( although one kid wrapped toilet paper around himself and could barely walk!). it was fun. Two of my favorite students at sunshine, Rachel and Cecila, wore plastic mask. As a whole, the Chinese don't really know what Halloween is, so their wasn't many things around. The younger generation is taught english, so they have a bit more of a clue. Our culture is slowly seeping into theirs, but it will probably take a while to make a huge impact( although many of my kids LOVE the NBA and know more about it than i do).Halloween itself was fun. Since their is a small amount of foreigners in Dalian( most who drink like fish, it seems), a couple of the bars had Halloween parties. I wore a cheap mask ( which fucking broke about five minutes in). The Bar was JD's and it was mostly full of Chinese, some who wore masks and costumes, which was nice. They had a open bar deal, which was quite cheap( 30 rmb, which is almost nothing in American) and we actually had a few bottles. Needless to say, We got very fucking drunk, but it was fun. At the clubs, i always see two of my sunshine students, Russian girls. One is one of my best students! The Russians are a bit darker than the Chinese students, smart, interesting, but somewhat more... I am not sure of the right term. they certainly like to drink. There is no drinking age in China, so They can get into clubs and such... Thats another thing, in the clubs, i have no clue how old some of the Chinese are! Unitl a certain age, its very hard to tell! Anyway, Halloween night was drunken but fun...
My birthday was on November 3rd. I received many greetings and such electronically and they were very appreciated! I turned 39, a weird stupid age ( like all of them) which just seems to be the retarded herald of 40, but i can still cling to my thirties. I don't feel almost 40, and my natural immaturity keeps my seemingly young. It just seems like everything has happened so fast. But I thought about my past, quite a bit of it dubious and infamous, and contrary to prior confessions, i don't regret a god damned thing. I did say and so some stupid things that i probably shouldn't , but i also did quite alot of good things. I think i have lived alot, and have much more to live. I always felt things would change quite a bit around 40, and that seems to be true. The main thing, to me, is that I am living life; I am dong things and trying to take advantage of this unique experience. And a bonus, the way i live my life pretty much pisses all the right people off! I received a nice pen from Fairy and a cake from one of my teachers, Mrs. Su. It was a quiet birthday, but it was nice. I talked to jessica; my only regret about that day was not spending it with her. Its hard to be away from everyone that you love, but it would be foolish to not take advantage of the fact that i am in china and enjoy my birthday just simply being here...
The next day was election day. I am pretty apolitical right now and generally feel that entire system needs to be restructuring. too much corruption, too much bullshit. That being said, I felt that out of the choices, America made the right one. Only time will tell, but hopefully things will improve. at the very least, America has broken out of its tradition of only electing old white men. I hope that Obama will be a good president. America is a great country with many great people, it doesn't deserve to go out being bled dry by greedy old men who already have more than they can deal with. Of course, there is no guarantee that will not still happen, but we can hope. Overall, I thought it was a positive thing. I did not vote, which i usually do not. Americans always say that if you don't vote you can't bitch. the great thing about being an American is that you can bitch whenever you want, and i will probably not break that tradition....
that next Sunday, i did a lot of little things around the apartment and then went to English corner. It was cold in Dalian! You would think coming from snow,ice, freezing oswego that i would be pretty immune to the cold, but no..... In china, the government controls the heat, which is a very strange concept for us Americans. on Nov. 15th, they turned on the gas to everyone and have heat now. but at that time it wasbearable but cold in my apartment. its a strange thing, but it was only for a small period... anyhoo, English corner was fun, but cold. Fairy was there, being fairy. I seem to have attracted a following of kids, mostly girls. the adults can't really get to talk to me because the kids dominate the show. but the adults talk to the other English teachers, so i guess i am the kid guy, which is really ok with me, they are interesting and fun. Some talk very much, some just stand there, afraid to talk, some stick their tongues out at me or try to steal my stuff( as a joke). the we encountered Grandma, which is the subject of the next entry!

Intermission---mydaytoday...Letter to Steve

2008-11-12T19:39:00.006+08:00

( i wish i could add music to this thing, Intermission always makes think of some old lady kind of serenly jamming on an organ( intsrumnet, for my chinese and also my more perverted friends)

This is part of an email i wrote to my brother today. It contains much interesting( i think) information and i thought that if i added some stuff, it would make a good post. The rest of the Halloween stuff and such is coming, some of it is already written, but i noticed that i was turning what should have been a short, almost business like email into a post, so I went with it. My bother helped me out a little bit on may way over here, so I westerned unioned him some money. Others helped me out, and as soon as i am able, i will also pay them back.... anyway, i just thought someone might like to read it( except for the semi-political rant, a bad habit of mine that i think is just part of being an American.... god or whatever help me)

Steve ( iam turning this into a blog entry, besides the more sensitive personal crap, like your pimply ass and such)

today, April and i went to the post office. What a cluster fuck that was. The Chinese really fuck anything up that is even slightly bureaucratic in nature? forms over forms, poor April and i spend about 2 hours in that place( hell maybe about an hour and a half). it didn't help that we seemed to come at time when a ton of people who fucked shit up where ahead of us( MY CURSE IN ANY COUNTRY). Wherever i go, i tend to get behind the guy who has a super-complicated order or is just a douche, or the lady who fights with the sales clerk over the price of lettuce( surprisingly, this has actually happened in both China and America). And the Chinese, god bless their hearts, suck at lines. I don't know why, but they will just jump ahead of people and crowd around the window or whatever. Even though they are generally better behaved at the grocery store, i have had people just cut in front of me, or try to angle their carts in some obvious but strange angle ( which is also how they drive, as I have mentioned). Anyhoo, poor April got jumped ( line jumped that is, you pervert ) at least once. and the chinese do love to debate with company's. I think it may because haggling is part of the culture, and still is fairly huge, but you don't haggle with big companies such as western union, Mcdonalds and such. In most official type stores, you can't haggle, as in the grocery stores, malls( well most of them), restaurants, and most stores, but on the street and in booths ( and certain types of stores, less official i guess) you can and it is expected. The thing i have learned about the Chinese is that they don't just jack up the price, they really jack of the price! I also think that us foreigners get a special anti-discount because they think that all Americans are rich ( which is of course not true) and that all foreigners are clueless about their prices ( which is unfortunately very true of some of us!) So you may haggle with them and get them to cut it down by half, but find out later that you still payed 3 or four times the price a normal Chinese person would. And the Chinese are born with the ability to find a good deal, they thrive on it. It one of their strengths and weaknesses; sometimes they just seem very smart and frugal, other times, they seem damned cheap and stingy. Of course, it is probably ingrained in them due to the massive population, limited resources, historical poverty and having lived through some very though times. Even though China is ( or at least was) a socialist society, as Jessica has said ( to paraphrase my love), "in china, you watch your money, work hard, and don't waste things because if you get in trouble, no one will help you." the Government does help them out sometimes, but it seems to be fairly limited. In America, despite all of the shit people say, we are lucky that there are safety nets ( well, with some holes in them).Back to the point! Which at this point, i must admit that i have completly forget.

Oh, so anyway, after forever, everything cleared up and we got your money out. Since everything was in Chinese, i hope that their were no massive fuck ups. i hope you got the agreed upon am ount and that you receive it. All in all it was another strange, but thought provoking experience in China...

love,
you smarter, handsomer brother,

Patrick

ok, next up, Halloween part II( yes, i know, i am pat evon right)

FromHalloweenuntilnow part I

2008-11-09T19:53:00.013+08:00

hello!
I have been pretty busy, but i think the main reason that i have not written on this thing that much is because I have really hit a big adjustment period. Teaching, the language, the culture, all of it can be a bit overwhelming. i still love it here, but i think i just hit a period where i needed to be.. somewhat inert, to catch up with everything. Anyway, i hope to get alot more done starting this week, including blogging at least once or a few times a week. The school week does kick my ass, but I can find some time to get things done if i put effort into it. Life requires effort.

So, lots of little things have happened, but the biggest things have been in the last two weeks or so! Halloween weekend was interesting. The Wednesday before Halloween is a "ghost day"in China. there is some debate about this actually. Some Chinese say there is only one ghost day, which is the traditional festival on the 15Th day of the seventh month. Some say there are only two; some say four. It seems that this interpretation problem may be due to different traditions; I am not sure. What I do know is that the Chinese were building little bonfires on sides of the road all over the place this night. needless to say, It looked cool as hell! I noticed that the street vendorswere selling this gold stuff and fake money, but i was not sure what it was. I thought it might be for a festival or some ritual , but in China, one never knows what the hell is going on. Later, I was with Winston, and we say the fires. At first we thought it might me burning off produce leaves ( since fall really hit, big old dump trucks full of some sort of lettuce and cabbage have been everywhere,; it seems they just sell them off the truck and the Chinese FUCKING love it!) but then i began to make the connection with the unusual stuff I was being sold earl er. We ran into a student of Winston and his father and Winston tried to ask them what was going on. The kid was just a student, so he really could not explain what was going on, but luckily, there was a guy with very good English burning some crap next to us. He was happy to explain that ghost days occur once every three months, and they burned fake money and clothes to appease the ancestors, who would in turn give them good luck. I have looked this up and it seems to be a very ancient ritual. The idea is that the heavens and earth line up at this time so that there can be some kind of communication between the realms of the dead and the living. I guess the smoke is reformed in the heavens. of course, like anything religious, there seem to be many different takes on what is going on. It seemed weird to me that this was happening to two days before Halloween. I had prepared a lesson for Halloween( more on this later in the week and had reviewed the history of Halloween. Of course , some things struck me. The fact that in ancient Samhain( Halloween) food was given to appease the dead spirits, who cam back this night. And one can think of the Egyptians. The concept of bridging the realms seem to be a human and ancient one. Maybe it is something us. Or perhaps, all of these rituals come from one very ancient, pre history ritual. who knows? But it is also interesting to notice that in the east, the dead are fairly benevolent, while in the west they are feared. It very interesting to think about.

Another point of interest is the fact that the Chinese seem to be reclaiming their past. not to be political, but it is no secret that the after revolution government discouraged ( and perhaps that is being diplomatic) any sort of religion or ritual. Now, i don't know for sure, but it seems that the government seems to be mellowing out a bit, the people are naturally reclaiming some of their rituals. While some may argue that this is bad, that humans should move away from religion and ritual ( and i generally agree) it also seems that these rituals are very much part of human, maybe on a subconscious level. In the west, we generally do not believe in evil spirits coming back ( well, many do, but culturally I would say not at this point) but we still keep the rituals associated with it, ie Halloween. I think, and of course this is mere conjecture, that maybe as the Chinese move forward, part of that process is to reclaim the past. Generally, i think this sort of thing is silly, but i think that if kept in check, it may be a good thing. ritual without religion is pretty harmless. but it has a way of getting out of control. only time will tell, i guess. Personally, one of the things i like about the Chinese is that they are generally atheists.

so, anyway, coming soon the rest of this crap....

messagetokarrieaboutcomingtochina

2008-10-25T09:39:00.003+08:00

My friend karry (whose name i am mispelling in a variety of ways) is interested in coming to China, so i sent her this message. I figured that it would be a good thing to post here as it contains general information concerening my life here and the company and teaching.
sorry for not posting for a while. i hope to put up a post soon explaining my life here right now, which while good, is very busy and tiring...
here's the message to kerri---
OK, i hope that i remember everything. warning, i may post most of this on my blog, as it is good information.first, I think the most difficult part of all of this was getting here. If you are in contact with the company, they will tell you what you need. Personally, considering your grades and your major, i am 100 percent sure that they will accept you with no problem. They will have an application which i think has a short essay, but its no problem. I think they ask for two letters of recommendation. I would use Bruce and Jean and accentuate your TESOL training and such, but of course ,that is up to you. I am sure they will accept you. The difficult part is getting here. You have to be able to pay for your airfare here ( they will reimburse most , if not all of this of, it at the end of your contract). They told me to bring at least 500 to live on, but i would bring as much as you can; things are cheap in china, but it adds up and its nice to have the extra money. Plus it may be a month and a half before you get paid. Also, it would be wise to keep a bank account open in the states with American money in it, for expenses you have to pay in the states( i did not do this of course). When you arrive in the China, you may have the option at the airport to convert money. I would convert as much as possible ( i only converted 100 dollars and it was a pain in the ass). American money is really not used here at all.( many Chinese are gleeful about the dropping dollar and the rising yuan!) The Atms will accept major debit cards, but you will get the money in Chinese.
Another major concern is the visa and such. They will ask you for alot of paper work as the process goes on, such as health things and such. If you have a doctor, get them to send your records, but they Will give you a exam while you are here that is very basic and Will cover visa requirements. Try to get your visa as soon as possible, but even if it is at the last moment, as mine was, there should be no problem. its a bit of a pain in the ass, but should clear. keep your recipts, as the company will reimburse this later. Aslo, if you have any fight resceduling due to weather or the company, keep reciepts of that. Anyhoo, the government shouldn't give you much problem about your visa. if you can't get to the embassy in New York, you can usean interent company, i found Visa Express to be very reliable. But remember, China wants Native English teachers! Any questions, if you do this; make sure to stay in contact with me and i will tell you my opinion.Now, the question is, do you want to come here?Well, i love china!
its not always easy, some days its extremely frustrating, but others are amazing. I don''t know if you took Chinese, but if you did, that would be a plus. I don't know any Chinese and i get along ok, although occasionaly it is an issue'( as when i got in a cab and ended up an hour away from where i wanted to go!). if i was you, try to insist early on that you stay in Dalian, not hou jou (sp). Believer me, you are a lot better off here! trust me on this one. its an amazing experience, being here. like i said, it has its frustrations, but it beats oswego!
Good points-- the company pays your rent. getting to school is easy because of china's cheap buses( although they are crowded). The people are generally very friendly and there is much to do and see in the city. much cheap shopping. great food ( although some of it is scary). you get your own apartment. its great experience for TESOL teaching and is relatively easy to do( esp . with your training). there are many things that is great about being here.Things you should know about. Dalian is very modern and in some ways its like living in America, but there are many differences also( besides all of the Chinese people!) The language thing can be a barrier, although the company is pretty good with helping us do things. Your apartment will be set up for you, as well as bills and utilities. If you have a mobile phone, bring it as well as a laptop( you really want to have a computer here). Things are done different, and many things will be confusing. However, the company does do its best to help us./ the teaching training is minimal, but that should be OK with you. If i am here, i can be a help in many ways.another thing to consider is that the teaching schedule is intense. I teach 27 classes a week( usually with an average of 50 students) and up to 800 students. Most of our classes are supplemental, we are to provide a fun and unique enviroment for our students to speak and hear English. also while the pay is ok, considering the hours and such, it could be a bit more, but that is business i guess. Everything in china costs money, although everything is much cheaper than in the us. If you come here, plan on working alot, but also it being a interesting experience. The school system is different than the us. and may take some while to understand. however, i think that you will enjoy it if you come here. If you any any questions or anything at anytime about anything, please contact me. also, if anyone else expresses interest, tell them to contact me. ok, there is all i can think of for now. contact ed. ed is very honest, responsible, and speaks english! remember to mention that you are my friend. also mention that you are a tesol major and any other relevant educational experience. i hope it works out for you. stay in contact!pat

oh, the pay is not bad, it could be better. The best way to look at it is that you are being payed to stay a year in a country that you probably could not afford to visit long on your own, thats my viewpoint. the experience is the real pay ( as cheesy as that sounds). also there are many adjustments to living in a foreign culture. be prepared to have an adventure. expect the unexpected and be open to things that you might not be in the us and you will be fine...

Mydayandsomethoughtsonteaching

2008-10-06T20:45:00.006+08:00

Today was the first day back to school after a over a week break. The school that I taught at today was one that I had not been to in 3 weeks or so due to the holiday and also they were out on military exercises ( all public schools do this it seems, i am not sure what it entails although the kids seem to like it). It is also one of my favorite schools in that all of the kids are well behaved and enthusiastic. I had fun. I am very new to teaching, had no education on how to teach, and was only trained for a few hours on how. Sometimes it can be intimidating and frustrating; however, it can also be very illuminating and fun. As Winston says, "I get paid to play with kids all day; its the easiest job i have ever had ( I am actually paraphrasing him here)" Exactly. I look at this way, i spent somewhere around ten years working in bars and such, busting my ass and getting no respect. This is great compared to it. I do teach alot: i have 27 classes and teach around 300 kids. This seems like alot and it is; it can be very draining. But I actually work around 23-24 hours a week ( although the lesson planning can be time consuming), there is not physical labor, i get to talk alot, and i usually laugh my ass of at the kids. I teach a few different level. the youngest are primary 6; i just started with these kids and they seem cute and enthusiastic, but they're English level is very low. I was told that they have moved from the country because their parents have found shitty jobs in the city; they are poor. However, they seem great. I also teach middle school 7 (the school i taught today). These kids are better at English, although their levels very greatly. These kids are fairly shy. I teach grade 8 in another school,; they are less shy, higher level, and somewhat harder to control. They are also pretty funny sometime. I have been doing a waste basketball game with the younger kids and one kid( who speaks alot, but it s usually in Chinese to me!) was really into it. He got to shoot early( they had to construct a sentence in English using already, just or yet) and i had moved on... I get back to his area, and he is sitting in the next seat( behind his) with a jacket and sunglasses on; He was in disguise to shoot again! I told him to get back to his seat, but it was pretty funny. Another funny phenomena about the students at this age. It is not unusual for a boy to say something stupid and get whacked hard in the head by some girl sitting next to him. I have seen it many, many times. I have seen boys get smacked so hard that spit comes out of their mouth! But they seem to like it. I think it may be some form of flirting, and i generally ignore it because it doesn't seem harmful and i doubt that i could stop it. also, it amuses the hell out of me!
I also teach at a very expensive private school--the sunshine( ashsun) school. These kids are rich, lazier (generally), and have worse attitudes than the public school kids. I teach seniors ( grade 11 and 12). I have 12 classes a week here, and it takes much more lesson planning and real teaching. My 11th graders are difficult, although i have been making progress. The 12th graders are better; they are lazy but we get along. I like this school and most of the kids; But i have to really teach here and they can be more challenging( some are jerks). However, I am getting better at this, I believe. In the public schools, I only see them once a week and the classes are huge( 35-56 kids a class). My job there is to play games and get the kids to speak. Chinese schools are strict and brutal; the kids are expected to work very hard. All of the American teachers try to show the kids that English can be fun. At Sunshine, my job is to actually teach the little jerks! I like both types, but the younger kids are easier...

Today was good, though. A few stories. One, i made what i thought was a great discovery. In Dalian, you see motorcycle (real motorcycles, not with the carts) guys on their bikes just hanging out on the sidewalks. They are usually very friendly. I often thought about what they might be doing; I assumed that they were just hanging out, looking cool, maybe trying to pick up chicks. Well, they might be doing that as lo, but today at lunch, I walked down the massive hill to go to the store. I saw students riding up the hill on on the back of motorcycles( the kids wear uniforms with their schools on them, so their is no mistaking them). It turns out, the motorcycle dudes hang out at the bottom of hills and will ride you up them for 2 yaun ( very cheap). I thought that this was pretty cool; those hills suck. I may just have to take advantage of this! People in China are very good at thinking of ways to make money, although, i think this way is pretty fun and awesome.

I was wrapping up class today and went to get my phone. It was in my hoody pocket and when I grabbed my Hoody, it slid out into a full bucket of water. Chinese classrooms always have containers of water everywhere ( wash the board and such-- also, kids in china actually have to wash down their classrooms and halls, sometimes on their knees, sweeping and washing down stairs, everything. Could you imagine if they tried that in America!) and I have had run ins with these things before, ball in water, foot in water, spilling water. I grabbed my phone a few seconds in, but it was already sinking! The kids let out a collective sucking air sound that echoed the panic i felt. I picked it up and continued with class. It acted a bit goofy for a hour, but it has been working fine since then! I still have it under watch, but it seems good.And it was a cheap ass phone ( about 50 american)! so that could have been very bad.

Well, that's enough for today. I will continue with teaching soon. And hopefully, I will tell my best story so far, Granny panty's!

Fairy

2008-10-05T22:08:00.006+08:00

you can click on any of the images on this blog to get a better view. These one's were taken by Winston.

The Little girl in the pictures is Fairy ( her self given English name). Fairy was the first person to talk to me at the English corner. We have sort of bonded since then. Fairy has about the best English I have ever heard from a Chinese person and she is 11! She also speaks Japanese! She plays four instruments. She has just returned from Beijing where she competed in a English competition and came in 2nd place in her age group ( out of the whole country!) She is not my student, but we talk every sunday at the corner( i did help her tidy up her speach for the competition, but she had very few errors). I am very fond of her and amazed at intelligence! She is also very much a regular kid. Sometimes, at the corner ( which is really zhong shan square), Chinese people think that she is not chinese because she speaks English so well.

It's starting to get cold here, so the English corner was a bit lame today. However, i had fun as always. Two weeks ago, i was still sweating, and now my hoody is kind of not enough for the weather.

Good bus example today. I got on the five after the English corner. Downtown has the stop where the five ends/begins and is one of the few places where the Chinese line up. So i get in line, which is massive. I dread this ride because the five tends to be extra crowded. Two fives come and I think that it won't be that bad. There is a Small metal frame that forms the Que line. Now, for some reason, many chinese won't break that line. They will break any other line, usually. They will jump in front of you at McDonald's. They will break traffic. but many of them will not break a line that has the metal que thing. If they do, they will only do it when the line stops( the non- que breakers will stop when the seats are full, which is ridiculous to me because they will pack a totally full bus any other time. So i get on the first bus, and get one of the last seats, although there was some lady racing on my hip trying to push me out of the way to get a seat, she got one, i don't know why they do that--old ladies and men really like to push people out of the way here. So the querers stop soon, and then people who don't care about the line will come on. Well, i was pretty lucky to get a seat. The next bus won't board until the first one leaves. Well, people just kept coming on. It was crazy; about the fullest bus I have ever been on; not a inch of wasted space, people pressed up against the door. The thing that i found insane is that was a totally empty bus behind us that would board as soon as ours left! I don't understand why all those people did not just wait! The only thing i can think of is that they are just very impatient. Oh well, Chinese buses...

Back to school tommorrow. Will write about teaching soon

Randomresponcestonothing

2008-10-04T20:51:00.003+08:00

not starting the teaching thing yet; its very complicated and long. Just a short entry with random shit and some follow ups to the previous blogs.

Jessica- i really didn't talk about her that all much in her own entry! It difficult to write about some things. I just guess i feel so strongly about her, its hard to put into words. It all comes out as cliche's. However, i think she is amazing. Independent, driven, intellgient, warm. Everyting i could ever ask for. iwrote a poem and a story about her. maybe i should post a link. they come closer to saying anything about her than i would here

Amercia- I probably need to clarify some things about my feelings for my own country. Also very complicated and i would be a fool so say that fully understood my own feelings about it. I don't hate amercia; I love it. Its a great country to be from and a good country to live in. Many, many things about the us is amazing. But there are aspects of it I just can't stand. Right now, i hate many of the politcal elements of the country. I hate the bullying of the bush administration. I hate the celebrity obssesed culture that brainfucks the masses. I hate, hate, hate, the endless, empty, rolling binary switch debates of Republican/ Democrat, Conservative/liberal, blah/blah. fucking solves nothing, people get mad and everyone misses the point. Politics are important, but the whole country seems to to busy arguing and not paying attention to whats going on, sulking and being bitter becuase everyone else seems to not understand that they're viewpoint is right. The fact is no politcial idea or system is ever going to be enough. I, myself, am trying to see life as it is, understand humans and how they work. to me, this is the only way to make things better. to me, getting behind ideas and groups and expecting them to solve problems like some sort of machine is beyond naive. Look at the world and yourself and people around you. stop classifying things simply. for gods sake, don't listen to anyone, anyone who has some poliitcal state. Free yourself from this mind fuck and realise your place in this world. Its not about money, or theory, or freedom, or any of that. It is about everything. If you seperate any element from the whole, your understanding is going to be imcoomplete and your thoery will fail. plus, try to seperate your personal prejudeaces and hopes from your theory, which is impossible. when people talk politics, i learn more about who they are then any system. to me, these systems are mind death; many others see them as the height of intelligince. anyway, thats just my opinion.

but i love america; i am just bored of most americans right now. I feel i need to get away; get my head clear of all the fucing yelling. just live. I know that the chinese are far from perfect, they are human. But its something different, they are a different part of the riddle that is humanity. I could give a fuck less about politics, but humans, thats a wonderful subject to study... I feel like i am learning agian, and really seeing things for the first time. For me, this was the best thing at the best time. I need a time out from amercia, and china is a great place to do that. However, I wil probably return to america is a deeper understand and different appreciation form it. But i doubt i will ever swallow any of the political bullhsit. any of it. that's just who i am.

Anyway, more about China in the next few day. Hopefully about teaching.

Jessica

2008-10-03T09:43:00.011+08:00

Ok, this blog is dedicated to a major part of life that is rarely mentioned on this blog: my significant other, Jessica. Jessica and I have been dating since April 17th this year, which is not a long time. However, I feel closer to her than anyone I have ever dated. Yipin( her Chinese given name: the Chinese put there family names first, then there given name: in China, I would be Evon Pat) is of course Chinese. I met her before I came to China, although I was well underway with the decision and the processes to come here. She is a very important part of my experience here, even though she is not here right now.

I met her at Oswego last spring semester. I had been friends with a few Chinese students before that. I found the Chinese fascinating, especially the girls. Nothing against Chinese men, who are interesting in there own right, but Chinese girls are wonderful. I just find all of them to be smart, resourceful, gentle, mostly kind, and adorable. Despite my age, after a semester or two, I had many friends at Oz( Oswego). Although the average college student holds no interest in me, individually, there were many interesting, open minded kids. But, I found the Chinese to be more interesting. They were hard- working ( as I was), funny, and different. It's hard to explain, but I felt they had more in common with me than the youth of my own culture. Maybe its the "mystique" , maybe I am just bored with Americans, who really end up seeming to be mostly the same after while( not everyone, just many). My best friends at college was Chinese( well, and Marc huass), Xiaoru Lin ( Lin Xiaoru), who is actually from Dalian!

One of the reasons that i decided to go back to college in the first place was due to an overwhelming desire to get out of the United States for awhile. It was not a wholly political decisions, although the last eight years have been painful as I watched my country become many things that I feared that It would. The general mood in America has been upsetting for me( and for those Americans who want to throw names and shit around, everything that i have predicted since the beginning of this mess has come true. Every single thing! So I was open minded, i considered your view, and it was proven wrong. Better to trust my own instincts. so fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!). But it wasn't just that. America goes in cycles; things will probably change in another direction soon. Politics are stupid,life is what matters. I was also 33-34 years old and had pretty much lived in the same area of the world, seeing the same things, surrounded by the same people. Ever since I was little, I had wanted to travel. At this point in my life, which had just come from a very bleak, hopeless, period of my life where i had really given up on many of my dreams. When I decided to go back to school, it was with the goal in mind to go to another country. Once school was starting to wind down, I started looking for opportunities to travel. I was thinking about Japan for a long time but then I read the email for the program that i am currently participating in. Something about it stood out to me, and My Chinese friends encouraged me to come here. So I started the process and it worked out. Again the political reasons where there, but far from the most important. While I was and continue to be disgusted by the present political status in the states, i would not have left solely for that reason. I had more personal compelling reason to want to be part of the world.

When I met Jessica, I was still waiting to hear from the Company. She was another Chinese girl out of many, but she wasn't. I quickly became interested in her, but I resisted this also. I was 14 years older and from a different country. Jessica's story also complicates things. She is from China, near Beijing, but had spent the last six years studying in New Zealand, and was only in America for a semester as an exchange student. She was returning to NZ to pursue her post graduate work. I was maybe going to China. I pretty much decided to ignore my attraction to her, as there seemed to be no real future for us. Well, that didn't work; after a few strange steps, we became a couple. We also decided to keep the relationship going. None of these decisions where easy and we have struggled and considered each. But what can you do when you have finally meet the one person who seems to fully understand and appreciate you. We try to take one day at a time. Neither of us are stupid; we know that the odds are against us. But it all seems to work, in some clumsly, chaotic way. Order beyond order; sense beyond sense- not at all common or cheap.

I often wonder what people who know me think of the relationship. Do they think that I am some overaged pervert taking advantage of some innocent young Chinese girl? Well, maybe that does happen, but the chinese are very savy; I don't think they get taken advantage of for long. Is it becuase I am american? No, Jessica has no real goal to live in the states. Jessica has a degree in psychology( and is working on her masters), speaks two languages fluently and is learning a third ( Japanese), has traveled and lived in many areas of the world, and one of the most intelligent and aware people that i know. We just connect; it's hard to describe.

I don't know what else to say. I wanted to talk about her, but its complicated and personal. Let me just say that she is the most amazing girl that i have ever met. She understands me better than anyone ever has, she is smart, funny, complicated, kind, and honest. I talk to her everyday and everyday i fall more in love with her. I hope that one day, we can actually be together. She is the most amazing person on this planet and I am lucky that she pays attention me.

It's weird having a Chinese girlfriend who is not in China when you are. but this experience has helped me understand her better, and being with her has let me understand China better. I feel that i am an amazing journey that will take me to undreamed of places, and I feel that Yipin is a large part of it.

Next, I will begin to talk about teaching and school, although that may take many entries to fully explain...

TwoBigThings--crossingthestreetandbuses

2008-10-01T12:03:00.014+08:00

Have not blogged in a while, lots of things have been going on. However, things should be a little quieter and i should be posting quite a bit for awhile...

I will abandon the chronology sort of because i have been here for over a month and there are many things that I want to talk about that i have not. However, I retain the right to go back to the chronology if i feel like it, because that is how I roll(!)...

Two of the biggest things for me that are involved in living here are the buses and crossing the street. I have to do both of them quite often and both of these activities make quite an impact on me.

Oh crap, before I start into that, this week in another holiday-- National day. I think the actually day was yesterday, but school is out for a week! National day is like our July 4th, but somewhat of a bigger deal. I think it celebrates the revolution.

Anyway, i have mentioned crossing the street before, but it bears repeating. Traffic is somewhat the same in China, except that is also completely different! They drive on the same side of the road as us and the basic system is pretty much the same. They have traffic lights, although they are more sparse than at home, except for downtown. The essential difference is one of basic approach or mentality. Ed has said, and i have stolen this off of him, that he could not tell if the Chinese are the best drivers in the world or the worst. Jessica thinks that they are the best, and i am inclined, with some reservations, to agree with her. When crossing the street in most places, there are no stop signs ( that i have noticed anyway) and few traffic lights. The streets are almost always very busy with both pedestrians and cars. Many of the cars are taxi cabs, which are fairly cheap and widely used. There are also many buses on the street. I have no clue to how many buses there are in Dalian, but its quite a lot! There are also many other types of vehicles, from older cars to very nice, expensive, newer ones. There are some bicycles and many motorcycles. Some of the motorcycles have carts on the back of them ( as do some of the bikes) in which the driver may pile junk, cardboard, a person, or god knows what. Anyway, the common element to all of these vehicles is that there are very many of them and they all drive with what seems at first to the American eye with complete abandon! They hate to stop. They will weave in and out of traffic like nobodies business. They will pull out, over and, whatever in a moments notice. The main rule seems to be to get where you are going to as soon as possible and don't hurt anyone. They also drive on the sidewalk sometime, or skirt around the edge of the road. Its complete madness. Since the cars rarely stop, you kind of have to walk out in the middle of traffic most of the time. It was very hard for me to get used to. I actually have alot of admiration for the Chinese Driver, but i have more for the Chinese pedestrian! When i first came here, i would ( and occasionally still do) be left of the sidewalk for a very long time, waiting for a hole in the traffic (also i may step out and almost get lowed by some old guy in a dirty suit on a bike. Don't laugh; it happens almost everyday!) The Chinese don''t. they may wait for little while, but they know that if they wait too long, they will be there for fucking ever. So i will wait, and tons of Chinese will cross the street, Little girls, old ladies, people with dogs without a leash ( another interesting topic- Chinese pets) all probably laughing at the super tall American who is afraid to cross the street. They will dart between cars, walk slowly as a cab or a bus barrels upon them, or stand on the yellow line as traffic zooms on both sides of them. I am getting better at crossing the street, although i am still very far from a native in this respect. It appears they don't get hit very often.The key to all of this, as i suggested before, is the Chinese mentality, I think. They don't stop. But there are very few accidents. I think the Chinese,being 1.3 billion people strong, are used to crowds. In a population this big, you better get used to it. but they are more aware of other people. bus or cab may push towards you, but they will not hit you. they seem to have an almost magical awareness of what is going on around them. I see situations everyday that would be a horrendous accident if that situation occurred in the states. However, in China, they seem to be able to avoid this. They do drive a good bit slower in general, but not super slow. I really think that its part of the Chinese way of being, and I plan of fully figuring this out. In the meantime, I will probably continue to reflect on this phenomena.

One thing to remember , while this may seem to be a mess to us. it is perfectly normal to them. Another thing that i like is that they don't seem to get mad that often. In the States, especially in traffic, people seem to be very eager to get pissed off. The Chinese seems to just accept the traffic as a matter of course and don't take it personally. they will honk, but it does not seem to be very aggressive. Its more of a Hey i a here, be aware so you don't get hurt, kind of honking. That being said, they love to honk and i don't really know why they do it sometimes. I have said that if someone created some magic device that is disabled horns, it would be a national tragedy. Middle aged men would just walk out of there cars, crying. they really like honking here.as i type this, i hear a strange chorus on honking coming from ba yi lu.

Another related element of life here is the Buses. the public transportation system here is very large and popular. maybe too popular. While there is indeed a very large amount of traffic by cars and cabs. there seems to be a trillion buses running at most time( they do stop running around 9:30 at night). Now, i have to ride buses almost everyday; a day consisting of only two bus rides is rare. There are many positives to riding the bus here. They go everywhere, it seems. Many have Televisions in them( although in Chinese, which is fair enough). They are pretty clean. They are cheap, costing one Yuan( right now, 100 American dollars equals 607 Yuan, although the dollar is of course falling- thanks to bush, the fuck). But there is one element that makes me sometimes dread the bus. Its better to tell this in story form I think. So let's say that I am going to the office. I go out of my apartment and walk down a small hill. I stand at the banks of the road, Ba yi lu, and try to cross the street. as stated before, this can take anywhere from a minute to ten, depending of traffic, my mood and other elements. so i cross the street, usually a bit ruffled because it took long and some old guy on a bike almost hit me. I walk down the street, past people selling things on rugs, tons of different stores and markets. the markets may sell food, produce, fruit or seafood. The seafood markets stink but they are worth checking out. Many different types of fish, clams, live and dead crabs, live eels. Anyway, so I go to get on the 501 bus. the 501 goes to the company's office, and many different places. I may be getting on the 5 which goes to the heart of downtown. the 501 is smaller than most buses, although for the love of god, i don't know why, as it is very popular. So anytime you are waiting for a bus, people are coming to the stop. you may only wait for a few minutes, but if there is only you and some Chinese waiting at first, it will usually be a mob before the bus comes. they literally come from out of nowhere, but they don't stop coming. When the bus comes, there is usually no line( there are ques in certain spots, which the Chinese follow very orderly, but generally the idea of a ordered line is not a Chinese thing). so everyone rushes onto the buses. It is not rude to push here. The culture simply does not value personal space as much as ours do. you can't get mad because they are not doing anything wrong, they are doing what is natural in their culture. so you get on the bus and stand. you may be able to find a seat, but it is rare. The bus will fill up many times until there is literally no wasted space. I have seen people crammed up against the door and spill out when the door opens. Now this is not all of the time, but quite often. Its a very good way to get intimate with the Chinese. When i first came here, I would be wearing nice clothes to go to the office, it was like 90 degrees and i was in a bus filled with Chinese. Chinese in your armpit. You may have certain areas pushed against you will onto the butt of of an old lady, or an old man! I swear to god, people probably get preagent on the buses without any intention by either party! They also will push to get on and off. Old ladies will throw elbows and hip check better than old skinhead punks and hockey players! Again, it is just part of the culture, it is nothing personal. Pick pocketing is a concern, although someone could probably steal my liver or pancreas and i wouldn't even notice. crowded is an overstatement. Again, with such a massive population, the Chinese are used to this. There is very rarely any anger or frustration, except for possibly a foreigner (me!). it does sound like hell, and often is, but it is also a very Chinese experience and part of the overall being in china thing. There are days where i really hate it. But now that the weather has cooled down a bit, I am usually ok as long as i don''t have some 40 year old Chinese dude pressed on my nipples!

One story about the buses( out of many). I was on a crowded bus last week. I was standing next to a man who was holding the bar( holding the bar is very essential if you don't want to end up on your ass, as the buses make many sharp turns and sudden stops). In fact, everyone was holding the bars. The man had a very young baby under his arm, up to his shoulder. The baby was very young, no more than a year old, and very cute. The funny thing is that the baby, through no prompting, held onto the bar the entire time. I am not sure if it was a natural Chinese reflex or just imitation, but it was very cute. The man and I seemed to be the only ones on the very crowded bus who noticed, and we exchanged laughter and smiles. That damned baby held onto the bar for the entire trip. Things like that make the buses worthwhile, in my opinion!

My next entry will be a little more personal and probably get me into trouble. It will be somewhat about my girlfriend, Jessica- who is very Chinese, and also about my appreciation for Chinese girls in general. But i have noticed that i have not mentioned Jessica very much, and she is a huge part of my life and one of the best parts of it. although she is not in china right now, she is a large part of the experience. anyway, more on her later.

Chronology III: MyChineseApartment...

2008-09-23T20:19:00.014+08:00

Once again, Gentle Reader, please forgive your foppish author for his negligence, he should be flogged at dawn with the braided whiskers of a thousand cranky old men as the maidens churn butter and the drunkards stumble home after a full days work! Being in China, constantly learning, Teaching; all of it is very draining. Good, but draining. However, I have a long stretch of days coming off and should be able to catch up soon. I am tempted to record here my dream from last night, but lets just say that it was very strange: I was in a mall and I caught a case of the 24 hour vampire flew from Dan Conner( John Goodman) and we just sat down and played cards as we knew it was going to hit soon. There was a homeless guy laying next to us and i said "buddy, you might want to find somewhere to sleep because in a hour or so, this is not going to be the best place to nap..." It was actually weirder than that, but that was the most coherent part!

So onto the Chronology... My Chinese apartment. Ed and I checked the apartment and everything was good except there was no water going to my toilet or bathroom sink (turned out the water was not turned on to the toilet, still not sure what is up with the sink , but it does not matter for reason that will soon be clear). I have been lucky in that i have had very few problems with my apartment, as other teachers have had problems with water and other things. I like my apartment. It is on Ba yi Lu (8.1 road), a very booming city street/ neighborhood. I live a block from the main street, and mostly everything i want is with a short walk: tons of stores, restaurants, the bus line, markets, supermarkets, Internet cafes. The rest of the city is a short bus ride or cab ride away, such as the main office of the company, the massive downtown area, my schools, etc. As mentioned before, Dalian is very urban and modern, it has Zoos, more shopping and restaurants than you can imagine, malls, bookstores, beaches, museums, an amusement park and more... A thousand different types of clubs and bars, from local to German, American, Irish and more( and don't forget the hooker bars!). Dives and upscale. There are many public parks. Vendors everywhere, selling fruit, belts, magazines, maps, spoons, you name it!( probably the only thing you can't buy in this city is a gun!) I have missed living in a city and this is a city! My urban nature is very happy here. It's not the china that you probably imagine, its like living in Pittsburgh but its much bigger and everyone is Chinese and has slightly better accents! Not to say that its exactly like an American city, but its much closer than you probably think. Well, more on the city later...

My apartment. It looks like an apartment in the states. Its in a big block looking building surrounded by other big, block looking buildings. I am lucky enough( well in many ways) to live on the first floor. My door is like the door to safe ( there is even a combo lock that i never use!); It has seven dead bolts and is solid steal. China has a theft problem, but i don't worry about my apartment, no one is getting thought that door. I have two big windows, but the bar cages outside of them are impenetrable. Its a little like a jail cell in that manner, but I would rather not worry about some Chinese guy taking my crap and selling it on some rug on the sidewalk. I can hear the noises from the street which makes the city boy in me very happy; I find it relaxing. people do walk pass my windows chanting all of the time, they are looking for work( fixing things) selling things or asking for recycles( the garbage collection system in china is very...different). Sometimes i want to throw stuff at them, but for the most part they just add local color. My apartment has a medium sized dining room/ living room area, which has a big table, a fridge, a water cooler( you don't drink the faucet water in china) and a small stool. Its not really big enough for anything else, but it is roomy the way that it is. There is a sliding blue glass door to the kitchen, which has cabinets, a sink and not much else. again, roomy enough for my purposes. There seem to be not many stoves in china. I have one gas burner connected to a gas hookup like in Chemistry class and a wok( i bought a Pot to boil dumplings and will by a pan soon).
I have a electric kettle to boil water to drink and make soup ( the Raman in china is fantastic and comes in a variety of flavors). The Kitchen is meager by U.S standards, but enough for me. The Fridge, in the dining room, is small, but serves my purposes. The bathroom in also connected to the dining room. I thought this was the strangest part. There is a small washing machine ( no hot water for the washing machine and no dryer-- I have a clothes rack and also uses the large cage bars on the windows to hang clothes). the bathroom is small but not as small as some in the US. there is a sink that does not work. next to sink is the shower ( no tub). this was the wierdest part to me: the shower is just a handheld shower connected to a hot water tank right under the ceiling. No glass, no curtain, you just stand next to window( you can't see in) and spray essentially in the middle of the room. This is pretty different than what we are used to, but it works. there is a drain between the sink and the toilet, and the water goes in there. This is pretty standard in china. So you take a shower in the middle of the bathroom. You get used to it. My water pressure is good and the hot water heater is good. You have to watch your TP from getting wet but the system works! The drain does stink a bit, it always smells a little sewery, but i am used to it by now. For China, this is a pretty nice apartment , and i am pretty happy with it. the Bedroom is big, with a king size bed, a wardrobe, two drawers table thingies and a dresser kind of thing. oh and a televising and a phone. The Internet was not connected when i first got here, so more on that later. I don't watch TV much, although it is amusing and all Chinese( although you can pay for HBO and some American channels) as i have been reading, writing and doing school stuff much more. The mattress is very Chinese (hard as a rock, they believe that it is better for you) and takes some getting used to, which i have. There is not curtain in the kitchen and since i have to walk ther to get to bathroom and sometimes the bedroom curtains, I have probably given the neighbors a free show that they wish that they haven't seen!

All in all, its a bit different, but i love my little apartment. My landlord and neighbors don't bother me( a plus), its in a busy part of the city, and i am alone... which i have wanted for a very long time now. Oh, the company pays the rent! I have to pay electric, gas, water, cable, phone, Internet and gas, which are not much when compared to bills in America. Like i said, i am happy here....
so i will continue with the chronology soon, and hopefully get to some funny stories...

Chronology part II: titanium cupie dolls in a moving scene and the motto of this blog- anything can change at any time!

2008-09-19T19:10:00.009+08:00

So, i am sorry if i have not been posting much. This week was a bit rough. I am still working out the kinks of teaching, and i have been very tired. Today marks my first month in China. It is very hard to grasp that, as time has gone so fast, and i still have very much to learn! This week has not been the greatest week for me, as it is very hot and muggy, and i am still trying to learn how to be a teacher. I have also had some minor personal problems. but everything is OK... However, you will have dips in mood and luck, that is life anywhere. I still love china!

So the long awaited continuation of the Chronology. I stopped with the arriving in Dalian. When i arrived, i was put into a crowded hallway that was essentially a shoot( in the cattle sense, not the wrestling sense!). I was a little shocked at the amount of people. This was my first taste of the fact that everything in Dalian is usually crowded as hell; you get used to it. Then i got my luggage, in which people would just push you out of the way. I thought that this was isolated, but it is another part of china. I will probably discuss this further very soon. I was extremely tired from the long plane ride. At the gate waiting for me was Ed and April. Ed is an American teacher from Indiana. In his twenties, but very level headed and cool. He is an interesting mix; He loves to drink, and is very laid back, but still is very responsible and gets things done. He works for the company as the Human resource director or some such thing. He teaches also, but he helps us with many things that are part of getting used to being in china. I have ( and still do) call) called Ed with the most ridiculous questions and he never gets annoyed. April is Chinese and also does similar things. The Chinese staff are all very hard working and help us out alot. They work very long days and often weekends and are payed relatively little. They are all very nice and helpful. They all speak some English, and some speak very well... although language can be a problem sometimes. However, they have to look after eight teachers here, plus others in other cities and also various other programs that the company runs. They do an amazing job. April does alot to make sure that we are legal, happy and safe, as do all of the others in the company. I really like April, btw, but i think she is taking some time warming up to me, which is the usual case.... Ed and i get along really well, i think.

Anyhoo, so they have a sign for me, which is good because it was just starting to dawn on me that i was in a foriegn city and would have no way to know what to do if i could not find them. They were waiting for another teacher, Stephanie, who did not show up, her plane was detoured due to a hurricane somewhere in Asia and she ended up staying in a hotel in Seol or Hong Kong, i forget which. we waited for her for awhile and then figured out that she was not coming. We left the airport when Jonah showed up. Jonah is the boss of this branch of the company( There's a head boss, Frank, but i rarely see him) and she is a true entity. A Chinese fashionista, a very hard working business woman, and a strong Chinese woman, she is like an American businessmen put in the body of a Chinese playboy bunny! Amazingly pretty, sexy and charming, she has also focused that Chinese will and ability to get things done, in other words, while she is nice and looks like a doll, she is not the lady to fuck with! That is kind of a vague cliche, but its the closest i can come at this point. We leave the airport and cross the street. Now, this does not seem like an important event, but it was! They just walked between moving cars while I waited for cars to stop. Cars in china rarely stop. I have a whole entry that I want to devote to this one subject. Eventually, Ed helped me cross the street and we got into the car. I don't remember much of the details because i was getting sleepy again. I remember going through the city like it was a series of tunnels. I tried to get an overall impression of it but i could not. Ed said many important things, but most of them did not register really. We got to my apartment. Oh, it should be stated that until i talked to ed I was under the impression that i was going to be sent to another city. My first choice was Dalian, simply because Xiarou had talked it up so much, and i was sad to simply be training there. Well, the first lesson that i learned in China is that anything can change at any moment. I was told that I was going to stay in Dalian and that i had an apartment waiting me. I was very happy about that. When we got to the apartment, I took my bags in. I will continue this tomorrow....

Weekend:ClubLove,oldmanassonthebeach,englishcorner,andGermanyinChinese

2008-09-16T21:45:00.013+08:00

(disclaimer-- all the pictures used on this site where ripped off from google images as I was too dumb to invest in a camera. well, hopefully soon... You can click on them to get a better view)

My three day weekend was pretty eventful. Today was tied up in teaching and trying to figure out how to use a international phone card( i did not succeed). The corporate bureaucracy in china can get a bit brutal. That being said, this weekend was good...

I have already described the concert for Mid Autumn festival on Saturday. On Sunday, I went to English Corner as I always do. English Corner is held in Zoogshan Square, which is the pictured in the last two images ( the buildings around the park are pretty cool too). I have not mentioned muchabout the city, as was pointed out by my father, but i plan to. For now, It's a very modern city with much to do. Its similar to an American City, but with a Chinese flavor. As I said, more to come about Dalian( which leads me to a digression: there is so much to write about that I am waiting for the right time to do so). Anyhoo, Zoogshan park is small, but very nice and clean. The center part is kind of a raised circle which they let kids roller blade on! Ironically enough, you are not allowed on the grass! The park is in the center of the city and is very popular: The Chinese take full advantage of their many parks. On Sundays, this park hosts English Corner, which is very informal( meaning if you want to participate, you just show up and start talking). English speakers( unfortunately, not very many lately) come and the Chinese who can speak English talk to them. For the Chinese, it's a chance to practice their English and meet someone from a ëxotic"country ( and some of their ideas about America are pretty interesting). For myself, it's a vital activity that allows me to actually converse and form bonds with the people from the city that i live in. English speaking does not happen very much outside of school and the Corner, so this is a chance for me get to know the people that I am surrounded by. While Chinese children must learn English in school, and they start very young, its still not commonly spoken in the city. So i get some attention and also get to not feel like a complete idiot who cannot speak with anyone. And I love the people at the Corner dearly. The Chinese are a very friendly, curious, interesting people. As soon as I show up, I am mobbed by people who surround me and ask questions. And they Ask about everything: America, Politics, Economics, My personal life, am I married, Movies, books,drugs, race relations, language, Education... everything. They are very polite, but they áre not afraid to ask a question! One of my favorites is a ten year old named Fairy, who speaks nearly native level English and is very cute and precocious( she always brings me a gift) Fairy speaks Chinese of course, English, and some Japanese( she calls me Sensei sometimes!) The children are very cute. Everyone wants to ask questions. English is considered a very valuable skill in China, so they like to practice. I will undoubtedly talk more about the Corner in this blog, but that's enough background for now.

While I was at the corner, a teacher who is my handler in one of my schools( makes sure that I don't get lost, find classes, ect.) came to take me dinner as per our previously discussed plans. Her Husband, her son ( the biggest five year old that i have ever seen) and her took me to a Chinese Version of a German Beerhall! I truly wish that I had pictures of the chinese waiter boys in linderhosen! They( the teacher and her husband) were so very nice and insisted on treating me. The place was a buffet and must have been expensive because I ate so much food( and especially German style meat) that i nearly puked! It was huge and the linderhosen boys kept coming and cutting off different meats with giant ass knifes of of these big racks. Waitresses dressed kind of like Amish women brought us big mugs of dark beer brewed on site! It was a very cool place and the teacher( ms. Su) and her husband were very kind and generous. Her husband works for a company that builds ships and was a very interesting guy.

So i met Winston at the corner again and talked to some more Chinese. We eventually met Ryan and Miles( incidentally, Miles is from Monongahela Pa, right down the road where i grew up and went to a Chinese night club, Club Love.A club is a club, and i usually loathe them, but it had that relaxed Chinese vibe( the clubbers, not the staff. the Chinese take making money extremely seriously and business like). Full of pretty girls, i had a few drinks and left, as I am in love with a Chinese girl already and don't think that I can handle more than one( joking, Yipin!). There were breakdancers and club dancers. it was fun. they dropped confetti from the ceiling, played American hip hoppish type music and it was a fun time. Again, not really my scene, but still cool. Many Russians, and there seems to be a instant dislike between Russians and Americans in china. I don't know why, and it's unfortunate because they seem to outnumber us by like a hundred or so to one! There are many Russians in Dalian, and very few Americans.

The next day, Winston and I went to the beach, which is like five minutes away from my apartment! it was nice and the pictures above where taken at the same beach we were at. I love to see the Chinese having fun and they were. The only thing bad about the beach was that there were hardly any girls in bathing suits. Unfortunately for Winston and me, there was an army of older Chinese guys in Speedos. I have seen too many wrinkled old Chinese male asses! There are cliffs you can walk on, and the islands in the picture are beautiful. The water was clean and the beach, while rocky was nice. We had a good time. Winston almost got picked up by Fat Middle aged Russian lady, but managed to escape( ladies love Him, Chinese too).

Well, that is all for now. So much to write about. I will continue this soon...

MooncakesandtraditionalMusic

2008-09-13T23:00:00.007+08:00

Today marks the beginning of The Mid-Autumn Festival. It's a big deal here in China. I have lifted this from my Chinese friend Susan Guan's Facebook page because she explains it much better than i could:

The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節, zhōng qiū jié), also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular East Asian celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty.[dubious – discuss] In Malaysia and Singapore, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival. The Chinese Lantern Festival is held on the 15th day of the first lunar month.The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

Eating moon cakes outside under the moon Putting pomelo rinds on one's head Carrying brightly lit lanterns Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e Planting Mid-Autumn trees Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members Lighting lanterns on towers Fire Dragon Dances Shops selling mooncakes, before the festival, often display pictures of Chang'e floating to the moon.

Thanks to Susan for that. Due to the Holiday, I am off on Monday (no school), YaY!

Tonight, as part of the celebration, the Dalian Government invited many of us foreign experts""( teachers and businessmen) to a concert featuring the Dalian Philharmonic. The Orchestra used traditional Chinese instruments. It was a nice sampling of Chinese culture; they did classics and also sampled some Chinese Opera. It was a entertaining and illuminating experience. The mayor of the city was there. so i kind of felt a little like a bigshot. but the best part was the music, which was pretty good. very different. I am starting to like some Chinese music, although most of the American influenced pop sucks, if you ask me.

A big part of this festival are moon cakes. moon cakes are very ornate looking, but can be filled with many thing ( Jessica likes egg yokes and egg whites, i have heard of meat ones, Winston had an apple one that he did not like). The Chinese seem to love these things; most westerners don't . However, they are a big part of this culturally significant holiday.

ok, hopefully tommorrow i will continue with the chonology, but it's also English Corner day, so I will probably talk about that...

A fellow teacher, Ryan, sent me the following link. It's Japanese, but still very simular and awesome. check it out:

http://www.videofantastica.com/view_video/31903/

iforgotaboutthebadmitton(sp)andthekindnessofthechinese

2008-09-12T22:09:00.006+08:00

In my list of strange things that the Chinese (and there is more of this to come), I forgot about the national obsession with badmitton( sp?). the game like tennis. You see it everywhere, they even do these jazzercise exercises with the raquets. You really haven't lived untill you have seen 40 older chinese all in synch with raquets. It's pretty awesome. I have seen them playing the game in classrooms, in front of stores, on the street, pretty much everywhere. They seldom use nets, if ever. They love it!

Youhome is a giant supermarket by where I live( ba yi lu- 8 1 street). Youhome has two floors, the first floor is like a k-mart or something, the second is all grocery. You can take your cart up to the second floor by escalator( it's flat, no steps, just an inclined ramp). Youhome has alot of stuff. They have American style stuff like cookies and chips( although the potato chips in China come in all kind of crazy flavors- steak, baked potato, tommatoo, duck, you name it). they have big ass catfish in tanks, they have roasted chicken, chicken heads, chicken feet, you name it chicken. One thing about chinese stores, is that they have maybe 2 or three girls in any given section to help you make your selection. Usually, they just point you to the thing that the store wants to sell the mos,. but Youhome is a bit different. Today, Winston and I were there and we got alot of assitance. Many, but not all, Chinese women like to take care of Americans like we were children, especially Winston, who is an African American with corn rows and is the nicest, sweetest guy that I have ever met. There is not any discernable racism against african americans in China becuase there are hardly ever any African Americans in China! If i am a novelty ( and i am) in China, Winston is doubly so. They love his hair and his freindliness( although he has had Chinese argue with him that he is not from America- they think all Americans are rich White people- they told him he was from Africa or Brazil). Anyway, at Youhome, we were looking at yogurt, which is a love I share with the Chinese. So many types of Yogurt, FLavors, pouches, liquid, big containers, small containers, ect. WEll, there was a really cheap deal, and the women at the ailse just looked at us and said no. now, you might think that they were trying to get us to buy a more expensive brand, but i know that they weren't . The brand that i got was slightly more expensive, but not much more. That yogurt was probably bad, and they were looking out for us. Chinese grocery stores are not above selling bad yogurt, which is probably why it was such a good deal. Later, i was looking at dumplings. I picked out a bag that looked good. A youhome worker came over and stopped me. I thought, jesus, she's not going to let me get this( becuase they can be a pain in the ass sometimes) and she reached over and grabbed another bag that had a give away bad ass apron tied to it. I explained ( without language) that i did not want that flavor, so she took off the apron from the bag it was on and tied it to my bag! then i had to buy a pot to cook my dumplings in. A youhome lady came over and inspected the box, making sure that the pot was in the box. you might think that this is store policy, but i don't think it is. poeple who run businesses in China will do anything to make a buck. they will oversell, rip you off, sell you bad products, whatever. You have to be careful. but the youhome ladies will help a brother out, becuase in their eyes, we americans are like children.
The women at the office i work at are like that, but they will kill you with kindness. So are many of the older teachers; i have to tell them that i am ok eating with chopsticks, no, i don't need special western food, please let me wash my tray like every other teacher, no, i don't need you to walk me to the bus becuase i am 38 years old. A few times, some street vendor has tried to rip off one of us americans( it's ok, becuase all americans are rich beyond belief, they think) and some lady will pop up out of nowhere and give them hell and take us away! The Chinese lady is a great thing (however, if the lady is a vendor, the situation is quite different). In general, the chinese are a very kind, gentle people. That being said, there are many who will rip you off or steal from you. Violent crime is almost non-existent, but thievery very, very common. But, i have encountered many kind Chinese who counter the thieves in my eyes.

Ok, so tommorrow will be part two of the long promised chronology....

PrisonBreak,KFCandspiderman

2008-09-12T07:47:00.005+08:00

ok, later tonight i will continue with my chronological telling of my adventures in China. By the way, today marks my third week in China! I have a three day weekend coming up due to Mid Aumtumn festival. This Holiday seems to be distinguished by the giving of what they call Mooncakes, which are little pastries that have a variety of fillings in them, from apple to egg yoke to meat. The Chinese will eat anything: neck, feet, ears and eyes, chicken heads,brains. Most of what I have seen is pretty good though, vegatables and regular meat.

The Chinese are crazy about the american show Prison Break, although I am not sure why. I think that it has been translated and imported on DVD. All of my students ask me about it, and of course they think I look like one of the guys, a Villian of course ( paradoxically enough, they also think that fellow teacher Ed looks like the same guy- Ed is much better looking then I am!). I have never seen the show, to me its just another american show. but they love it. They also love KFC. KFC is everythwhere here. The menu is pretty much the same, except they have one item that is essentially tofu and chicken on a stick. They also love Mcdonalds.

I finished up the name excercise at the public schools yesterday. The only good name was Spiderman. I think that this kid may be the real thing. He knew that Spiderman's real name is Peter Parker ( although one could argue that the real spiderman would never give out his secreat identity- although he sort of did in the comics recently, only to have it "taken back")! They are very sweet kids.

As I said, I will later continue with my telling of my adventures. Also, pretty soon, I would like to talk about Prostitutes! I am trying to keep this thing up to date, but my work schedule is very full. I teach at threee different schools, I have 26 classes a week and around 265 students! So forgive me if i a tuckered out sometimes. also, there is a comment application on this blog. please leave comments if you wish, i will be very excited to read them!

Patrick

Teacher'sDay

2008-09-10T19:45:00.004+08:00

Today was Teacher's Day in China. In the States, becuase I am 12 hours ahead of all of you, it was my mother's birthday(59). Yay to her! later she would give birth to Steve, but many artiists peak with their first work!

Teacher's day was nice and unexpected. I did know about it, but i did not really know that it would be so nice. Although i had to go in early and cram 5 classes into the morning, I had the afternoon off. The kid's were wonderful and i got some gifts: flowers, fruits, a big ass chocolate bar, and some really good green tea. It was nice. My afternoon off was spent going and getting resident/visa things done. The buerocracy is neverending and brutal, but that's the price of living in China, i guess. I just hope it calms down soon....

I will write more about teaching soon, but for today's lesson we did names. They could use their
Chinese names or English names if they had them. it was actually pretty funny. Many gave their chinese names( I used a small dialouge), but some had English names. The were pretty common for the most part, Tony, Sunny, Alice, David, Jessica, Sarah. Normal names. But some have pretty funny, strange names. I guess they gave them to their selves. I had already met a Fairie at the English Corner( more on that later). I have student''s named (English, not their normal chinese name) Joker(girl), M.C cruiser, Prince, Romeo, Happy, Melon (boy, and i could not stop laughing at his name), Monkey, and some other good ones i forgot. One kid was named David, but I couldn't understand what he was saying and i thought he was saying "stabby",which i thought was a pretty good name...

I will continue the chronological telling of my first weeks in china soon. i am pretty tired right now

OvertheTopoftheWorld

2008-09-09T20:31:00.003+08:00

Again, I apologize for not posting. things have been crazy. So, while I am two and a half weeks behind, I will try to start from the beggining. There is so much that i will leave out alot, but hopefully i can fill those holes as I go. I will now update fairly regulary, especially now, so please check this somewhat regulary.

so, about three weeks ago, oswego. I was having trouble getting my Visa, my airline tickets, you name it. It looked very unlikely that I would make it to China at all... Everything came together at the last moment, but it was a very nerve wracking experience. I ordered my Visa from the internet, and had to overnight Fed Ex it to and back from Houston, Tx. By the way, the service I used was Visa Express, which did a really good job. Use them if you need a Visa like right now and can't get to an embassy. Anyway, while all of this was going on, I had to move out of Mackin Hall. I had to make the risky desicion of junking/giving away most of my stuff, as I couldn't take it to China. so I did, one thing that is good about me is that while I do love my material possesions, i have no problem dropping them if i have to. The only thing i truly regret is the books. So anyway, I had no where to live, technically. Tse mei offerered to let me stay in Hart Hall with her, which was incredibly kind. I was worried becuase the school can be dicks about people staying there who are not paying, but everything worked out great. By the way, Tse mei is one of the greatest, kindest, wise, aware girls that I know and any one who gives her any crap is an asshole and needs to be beat. I am very lucky in that i have such great friends and family members who have helped me over the years. without them, i wouldn''t be alive, much less in
China. I am truly lucky in that regard....

So after reiciving the Visa, Steve and I got the plane tickets( he did the work, i suck at things like that). That also felt like it was going to fall through, but it worked out. So, Travis and Joe picked up tse mie and I ( she was going to the train station for a trip) and took us to syracuse. We dropped off awesome little tse mei and headed to the airport. I was nervous about pretty much everyting: security, dying, was my luggage going to make it through. Travis dropped me off. Travis is another person who is beyond awesome and i love him to death( not in a sexual way, that is a complete rumor!). I have not flown since before 911, and i was pretty nervous. I just always assume that organisations full of official type people will not let me do things. WEll, thing went pretty well. checkin, luggage, security all went off without a hitch. Not to much later, I was on a plane to Newark, Nj. it was a very quick flight and I enjoyed looking down on the distant, tiny new york state. I enjoyed my time in Oswego, but I would like to give a big fuck off to Ny state and its expensive prices. Dear New York, I can buy cigs here for about 50 cents american, ten times less than what it costs in you!

anyhoo, I want to mentiion that due to me being me, i truly don't think that i should have made it here. In Niel Gaimen's the book of magic, John Constantine tells tim about the magic side highway or something like that for traveling. While i try not to be a fatalist, I beleive that I was riding that sideway or whatever. the idea is that if your meant to go, things will work out even though they shouldn't. i blelieve, or at least part of me believes, that i was meant to come to china.

Anyhoo, small layover in Newark, and then onto the big plane. Very nice, full of Chinese mainly. It was a thirteen hour flight! I did not sleep at all. I had a window seat and a nice Chinese couple next to me. For the length of the flight, I did not sleep! I watched the screen which indicated the path of the flight; I was approximatley aware of when we left the US. It was a strange feeling becuase i knew i ouwld not be back for at least a year. maybe longer. maybe never. i don't know. But it was wierd. So then we flew over Canada. Oh yeah, the surprising thing to me was that we did not fly east or west, but north, pretty much in a straight line. so we flew up to the northpole, and even though our direction did not change, we then flew South. we flew twelve hours into the Future and then flew halfway in one direction and then half way to opposite. Unless you believe the earth is flat. anyhoo, The barren parts of Canada were interesting, lots of large lakes. But the Northren parts of greenland and the North Pole are indescribable! Huge, monolithic rocks with no green or covered in snow. It looks like something out of Lovecraft. Looking down on this, I was truly without words, its the strangest feeling, its like another world. although the stewardesses kept telling us to keep our windows shut becuase people were sleeping. It was the fucking daytime and we are over places people probably have never walked on at all. But petty creature comforts are certainly more important! people can screw anything up. but it was still amazing.

by the way, i read Lolita on the flight. amazing book. extemely disturbing, but also very funny. Nabokov was a master of language, amazing little details. i have read it before, and enjoyed it even more this time. well, it did sicken me in places, but i am glad that i finished it! Read it!

We flew over the North Pole and I did not see Santa or any of that. just alot of Ice. lots. Then we few over Siberia and down into China. China has amazing mountians from the Air, they look like wrinkly old men. When we flew into Bejieng, which is bordered by Mountains, we flew into a amazing cloud of Smog. Bejing is huge and is hard to describe. I will save my impression of Urban China for another post. So we get off at bejing and i have to check out and then check in again. The aiport is huge and this is where language starts to become a bit of a barrier. many people spoke english in the airport, but some did not . this is where i began to feel like a dumb english speaking person, which still happens here sometimes. I need to learn Mandarin! anyway, Five hours in bejing. seen some olympians. Got on a plane to Dalian.

This is where the trip started to get to me. I had not slept since Travis had picked us up. I had been up at least 24 four hours. I kept nodding off on the flight. the wierdest part of that was that even though everyone was speaking Mandarin, when i started to nod off, I could hear them speak english. My mind was trying to convert their speech. this still happens sometimes when i am not paying attentiion. So, i kept nodding off. ithink everyone around me probably thought i was some american drug addict. you know, all americans are drug addicts or crinimals or cops according to the movies, or they are in romantic comedies, which is probably the real reason most of the world hates us( the chinese do not hate us, btw, but more on that later). anyway, in dalian. everyting still running smooth. Ed, and american who works for the company and April, chinese< pick me up. there is a little confusion, but they take me to my chinese apartement.

I think that is more then enough for now! more on my first days soon....

ContactInformation

2008-09-09T16:08:00.002+08:00

This is my contact information. The Mailing adress is for the office of the company I work for, which is the best way for me to reiceve anything:
Patrick Evon
Room 1108
ShengShi Mansion No. 35
Luxun Road
Zhongshan District
Dalian City
Liaoning Province
Post Code: 116001, P.R. China
My home phone (from the states):86-411-39658971
My cell( i think that the international code is the same(86-411)-15942801120

patience

2008-09-07T10:38:00.001+08:00

if anyone is following this blog, i am sorry that i have not posted much. It took a while to get the internet in my apartment... by that time, i have been busy adjusting to china or teaching ( usually both). i will start updating regulary in the next few days, i hope!