Jet Lag Blows

Ugh.  So I thought after sleeping all day Tuesday that I was done with jet lag.  Hah.  So much for that bright idea.  Crashed at 5pm Wednesday… would’ve slept right through into the middle of the night if I hadn’t had to go pick up my cat from Jess.  Woke up at 9:30pm, grudgingly, to do that.  Then back to sleep at 1pm, then back up awake at 4am, bright-eyed and cheery.  Then last night, crashed at 6:30pm… managed to hold off sleeping until 7:30pm… up and wide awake again at 4:30am.  Hopefully I will be back to normal by tomorrow.  End result, still no photos… been sleeping all the damn time.

Back home, safe and sound

Wow… what a trip back home.  On the road for 33 hours give or take.  That was one long-ass trip.  We started the trip at 6am China time, and driving to the airport was weird, lots of random “oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-I’m-leaving” thoughts.  Also, a very odd (for America thing I noticed.  The median of the highway had shrubbery planted.  And I don’t mean big-ass shrubbery, I mean an endless row of pairs of small shrubbery, all relatively neatly trimmed.  First of all, there is no way on god’s earth you’d ever see that in the states, because the man power needed to plan two small bushes side-by-side, then move two feet to the right, repeat, move two feet to the right, repeate… for miles on end… it would never happen.  And then to have them trimmed?  Ridiculous.  But I guess that’s what you get when you have a population of 1.3 billion.  Lots of cheap manpower.

So minor crisis at the first airport… the domestic flight to Beijing had an overall weight limit of 20 kilos…. and my luggage weighed in combined at 50… and they only allowed us to pay the overage in yuan… and there was no bank where I could pull money using my American debit card.  Thank god the girls school where we had done our Saturday teaching had decided to pay us for our time… Jeff (the teacher I was traveling with) and I had enough extra money on us to cover the charges.  If they hadn’t paid us, it would have been a big big mess.

Trip to Beijing went smoothly… but their were some major rain-storms in Beijing that held us up there for a couple of hours.  Once the plane took off for Chicago, everything was fine, I managed to quasi-sleep/doze for 8 or 9 hours out of the 13 hour flight, which was great… but we missed our connecting flight in Chicago because of the delays.  So… we spent an extra hour and half in Chicago waiting for the next flight to NY… which means we didn’t hit NYC until midnight.  Jeff lives in NYC, so that wasn’t so bad for him, but I still had to get back to Philly.  Fortunately, my friend Marisa was still able to pick me up at the later hour, and we made it back to Philly around 2:30am.  Thanks Mis!  You’re the best!  Taking the train home at that hour would have SUCKED.

So anyway… home at 2:30am Monday night/Tuesday morning… didn’t get to bed until 5am… unpacking a little bit… checking e-mail… I was kinda wired.  Slept right through until 7pm on Tuesday… woke up for 3 hours… grabbed some dinner on the Oregon Street diner (which by the way, at $10 was equivalent to 80 yuan… frickin’ expensive! at least in terms of China)… then back to sleep at 10:30pm… and up again at 2:30am this morning.  All in all, actually not so bad… I’m feeling pretty rested at this point, and made good use of the time early this morning un-packing and doing some laundry.  Going to try and get into work early so I can hopefully leave a little early and take care of a some of the errands that I had lined up for yesterday (Tuesday), which of course I slept through entirely.

Now that I’m not sleep-deprived, I should have some time tonight to get photos up.  I will keep everyone posted.  I’m planning on keeping the blog going for now for anyone interested in continuing to read, we’ll see if I have enough interesting things to say about life in Philly to make it worthwhile.  Laterz y’all.

Last Day

Couldn’t have asked for a better last day in China.  We got up at 5:30am this morning so we could leave at 6am for a white-water river rafting trip.  It was awesome.  Three hours away by bus, but I slept most of the way, so no sweat.  The river was awesome, so much fun, we were on the water for almost two hours.  Great stuff.  Two-person boats, so it was just me and Lulu, and we had a blast.  Turns out as we found out quite painfully (for Lulu), I needed to be in front when we went over any kind of falls… the one time we went over with me in the back and her in the front, the boat nearly flipped due to the weight differential, and I fell out, smacking Lulu in the mouth in the process (whether with my foot or the paddle, we are not sure).  We recovered nicely though, and had a grand time.

The trip back was quite interesting… almost everyone else dozed off, but I was awake, and got to see all the crazy-ass things the bus driver was doing.  First of all, the first 45 minutes back was on this crazy little one-lane dirt road (and when I say dirt road, I don’t mean USA dirt road, I mean narrow, bumpy, pot-hole filled crazy ass country road).  One way road, right?  TWO WAY TRAFFIC.  Not busy two way traffic, but two way traffic nonetheless.  That shit was wacked, yo.  Our bus driver did not back down.  It was a minor miracle that no one went off the road.  As it was, on the way there, the bus driver got in an argument with a guy on a motorcycle cuz the motorcycle guy claimed the bus hit him, and the bus driver claimed he just fell over.  Very interesting stuff.  Anyway… the rest of the drive back was still eventful, once we hit pavement, because the road was a divided highway… which doesn’t mean much to the crazier drivers because they pass everyone on the left constantly.  Yep, Mr. Bus Driver was one of those crazy drivers, and I swear, we spent almost as much time driving on the wrong side of the road passing people as we did on our side of the road.  Did I mention that on the way there we almost beheaded some cows?  Yep, that’s right, on one of the small-ass roads, there was a truck of cows going slowly along, and of course we had to pass them.  And there heads were sticking out of the side of the truck.  That was damn ass close.  I actually managed to get a picture of the truck of cows (a novelty in and of itself), so look for pics sometime in the next day or so once I’m home safe and sound.

It was a great trip… then back in the city, one last hair wash/head masssag/shoulder and arm massage, which was really nice after all the paddling and poling on the river.  Then dinner, some ping-poing, goodbyes… packing… more goodbyes… more packing… and now it’s 2:45am, and I’m done packing.  Whoo-ahh.  Getting up at 5am to shower and leave by 6am… then 36 hours of travel.  It’s going to be phenomenal.

I will keep posting to the blog for the next several days at least, detailing travel, and then with lots and lots of pics, so keep checking in, there’s more to come.

Peace out people, time to catch a couple of zzz’s before the craziness begins.

Shopping & Farewell Dinner

Today was quite the interesting day.  Started off at 6:20am this morning when I realized I had a major problem.  MAJOR problem.  Last night, after I wrote the brain-dead boring post, we went out to grab some food.  Now, this was not necessarily the smartest thing in the world to do, since the only thing open here in Yueyang at that time of night is the road-side stands… and the food there is definitely less than the best, definitely less than safe.  The place we ended up at seemed pretty reputable though, so we figured we were safe.  Well, let me tell you… SOMETHING that we ate did not agree with my stomache.  AT ALL.  The food wasn’t bad, because a couple other people ate the same thing I did (we share all the dishes here, so we were all eating out of the same platters).  But man oh man… that stuff ran through me like a pack of hungry dogs chasing a pound of bacon.  Whew.  So, after emptying my insides in a quite pleasant fashion for an hour and half… then getting some kick-ass Chinese medicine that helped immensley, I started my day.  The reason this is all relevant and worth telling (besides being highly informative about certain aspects of Chinese culture)… is that for lunch I was definitely making a bee-line for KFC, which struck me as highly ironic.  Here, when I wanted something to settle my stomache, KFC was the best solid western food I could get.  At home, if I had an upset stomache, KFC or any fast food restauarnt would be the last place on earth I’d go.  Kinda ironic.

Anyway… the day was interesting… I was going shopping for antiques for my dad, and one of my student’s, Lisa, took me to the best antique shops in the city with her dad, since he was in to antiques.  Sadly, all the stuff that I liked was, of course, the most expensive stuff they had, and I wasn’t prepared to shell out 3,000 yuan (approx. $350) for a vase or a painting.  So… while the antique shops were interesting, no antiques.  (Not to worry dad, I had a couple of other things in mind anyway, and I think you’ll be very pleased with what I purchased for you — just make sure to leave them to me in the will please).

So… nothing much happening at the antique shops, so made my way to the art/art supply store to make the majority of my purchases.  There was one embroidery/painting that I wanted, but the picture in the frame was way to big to carry in a suitcase.   They told me they wouldn’t take it out of the frame and give me as small discount (since I wasn’t buying the frame).  Now, I happen to know that one of the other teachers had done this exact same thing at this exact same store three days earlier.  They were trying to feed us some bullshit about how they weren’t going to be able to re-use the frame since they wouldn’t have anything that size (ignoring the fact that they had like 5 or 6 other paintings almost the exact same size on display on the walls).  So, I said no dice and we left.  When we came back two hours later, because I was going to suck it up and buy the painting anyway, one of the shop-keepers came running out the door before we could even turn off the street to go in and said they’d take it out of the frame for me.  Hah.  Score one for the foreigners.   We get overcharged for everything here since the Chinese people figure we have money.  Bargaining can be fun, especially when you win. =)

Anyway…  it turned out to be a good day shopping… Lisa (my student) was very cool and had some great suggestions, and of course was a huge help as my tranlsator.  Then back to school, where we did a fun team-building activity at my suggestion (basically, getting all the teachers together to write a short message from each person to the rest, but in a fun and creative format… stole the idea from my RA days).  Then off to our farewell dinner.  Hard to believe it was our farewell dinner.  The month has just FLOWN by.  Dinner was great… everyone made lots of toasts and thank you speeches, as is the tradition here.  The headmaster (Mr. Chin) gave the three of us who are living tomorrow and Monday really nice Chinese tea sets (which was perfect, because the three of us all really liked the tea he made each morning).  And then home to play a little ping-pong and chill out.

Now it is far past my bedtime… hitting midnight, and I have to be at the school at 6am tomorrow morning for white-water-river rafting.  What a great way to end the trip, it should be fun.  Photos are so not getting put online while I’m here, but that’s ok, I’ll take some time in the couple days after I get back to put them up and send them out.

Peace out everybody.

Last Day of School & Parents Night

Yesterday and today were pretty uneventful.  Learned to play Canasta last night which was fun, good game.  Nothing majorly exciting at school.  And then today was the last day of school.  Classes were pretty chilled, and then we had parents night tonight.  Ohh… before parents night, we (all the teachers at our school) got kick-ass foot massages, much better than the other night.  That was pretty pcool.  Anyway… then on to parents night… it was fun… had a few parent-conferences… then spent a lot of time writing little messages to students in their notebooks… then dancing… we had a good time.  Hard to believe time here is almost over.  Tired and brain-dead right now, must sleep.  Will write something more interesting tomorrow.

Badminton & a fight at the grocery store

So, nothing majorly exciting happened at school today, but we did have a rocking time playing badminton after school got out.  Pat, Dan and I headed over to a sports club, and for $6, we got to play badminton for an hour and a half.  And for all you folks out there who are laughing at the fact that we played badminton, the Chinese people here (as opposed to us Americans) are damn good.  It was actually really cool… it would be fun to be able to do something like this in the states, but that’ll never happen… we’d get charged like $50 for half an hour of court time or something.  Nothing like an hour and a half of exercise in the heat (open windows in the indoor gymnasium (sp?))… we were drenched in sweat, and that was on a cool day (the weather has been great the past couple of days, no stifling heat and humidity).  The shower I took after I got home was awesome…. best shower ever.

The only other interesting thing during the evening was the fight at the grocery store.  We had stopped by to grab some munchies, and these two women got into this huge yelling and screaming match, which devolved into pushing and hitting, which devolved into hair pulling and rolling on the floor.  Quite the spectacle… not what you usually see in the states.  We just get robberies for the most part, not fights.  Guess that’s what happens when the neighborhood grocery store really is the neighborhood grocery store and you have lots of people spending lots of time together.  Interesting, to say the least.

Other than that, just spend a lot of time correcting papers and chatting with Wendy and Jeff.  Now time for bed… only two days of classes left.

Massage, massage and more massage

So yesterday was a little crazy.  In addition to the blind-man massage that I usually get at the hospital after work… I ended up getting two more massages after dinner… for a total of three massages… lasting around four hours total.  I will probably never be that massaged again in my life, at least not stateside, far too expensive.

So… the blind-man massage was as per usual (we paid for 10 sessions each at $3 a session…).  Then after dinner, Lulu wanted to go get her hair washed (which includes a head, arm and shoulder massage), so I figured, hey, why not, for $2.50, I might as well get as many massages as I can while they are still cheap.  So went and got our hair washed and our arms/shoulders/head massaged… and it was damn good… better than any of the previous times.  I actually fell asleep in the chair while the woman was massinging my head, and I’ve never fallen asleep in the middle of a massage before.  Anyway… so Lulu and I were both feeling pretty good after we got out of the salon… and we both said at just about the same time… “we should get a foot massage.”   The background to that being, we were walking by another salon where our friends (the other teachers) had previously gotten foot massages.  So we said, “sure, why the hell not”, and went in and got the foot massages.  Which, little did we know, included brief arm and back massages as well.  So we got the whole nine yards… twice for Lulu, three times for me (ncluding blind-man).

And the massage wasn’t even the best part.  During the foot massage, the masseus (sp?) working on Lulu said something in Chinese that Lulu didn’t understand, so she tried to look it up in her pocket dictionary.  We couldn’t find the word, and the masseus then took the dictionary and tried to look it up herself.  This woman (Chinese woman in her early twenties) would not put the damn dictionary down.  She kept trying to look stuff up, for over 10 minutes, no exaggeration.  It began to crack me and Lulu up.  Here we were, sitting in these fancy chairs, our feet washed, my masseus (god I know that is spelled wrong but I’m just too lazy to look it up, even though it is annoying to look at spelled wrong) working away on me, and Lulu’s masseus thumbing through the dictionary.  We started laughing, and then it was all over, because the masseus’s started laughing too, and then it was just contagious.  Tears were rolling down everyone’s eyes… it was hysterical.  And I know this is one of those stories where you had to be there to really get it, I’m sure you’re all like “ok, that’s nice”… but it was really the highlight of the evening… I haven’t laughed that hard since I can remember.  We never did find out what the word was that the woman said.

Today was pretty chilled out, blind man massage at the hospital after school, dinner, then a trip to the optometrist (sp?).  I got my eyes tested, frames and lenses, all for $40.  Not bad at all.  Damn-spankin’ good actually.  Now I can just get prescription sunglasses when I get back to the states and be all set.

The last few days here are going to be busy.  We have parents night on Friday night, good-bye dinner for me, Stan and Jeff on Saturday night (the three of us are leaving to go back to the states on Monday), then the white-water river rafting trip all day Sunday… then get in the car 5am on Monday to fly home.  It’s going to go far too fast, same as the rest of this month.  I can’t believe I’m going to be heading home shortly… the time has just flown by.

All right, time to catch some winks.  I’m giving up on trying to get the photos up before I leave.  If I have two hours free sometime, I’ll do it, but there’s a lot to do and not much time, so I’m guessing it’ll have to wait until I get back to the US.  They will all go up though, tha’ts for sure, I’ve got some great pics.

Hope everyone is well!

‘Night.

-Seth

Chilled Out Sunday – Watermelon vs. Ice Cream

Had a very chilled out Sunday, which was nice.  Woke up this morning, paid bills, had lunch… then went and got a rockin hair wash/massage (not sure why these are connected here, but apparently people go to get their hair washed/styled at the saloon, and you get a head/neck/arm massage at the same time).  The woman who was washing my hair/massaging me did this awesome thing were she started by squeezing my fingers, moved up my hand, squeezed my thumb, and then moved “everything” (blood? energy?) up from my hand into my forearm and held it there, on a pressure point.  I completely couldn’t move my hand… it was weird, but so fricking relaxing afterwards.  She released the pressure point after about 30 seconds, then feeling gradually came back.  Really good stuff.

Then off to shopping for a bit… bought a couple of shirts at Parksons (apparently the Saks Fifth Avenue of Yueyang… high class for our city), then off to a nice, relaxing walk in the state park.  Then dinner (dumplings again, yum), bad ice cream and then home.  I’ve officially given up on getting real ice cream here in China, for whatever reason, it just hasn’t taken off.  Watermelon is the desert of choice… the ice cream we’ve had (two different occasions) has been delivered on a bed of watermelon both times.  Guess the moral of the story is, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.  If you’re looking for desert in China (at least in the remote parts of China), get watermelon, not ice cream.

Pretty chilled out day, which I needed, we’ve been so frickin’ busy it was good to get some down time.  The walk in the park was nice, I took some photos of the scenery… which… damnit… I’m going to try and get up online tomorrow *sigh*.  I have this bad feeling that photos might not get online until i get back home, but we’ll see.  We’ll go with optimism over realism for now.  Anyway, the photos do the park more justice than I can with words.  I can write “the bamboo was beautiful”, and “the view from the top of the temple was very green and scenic”, but this is definitely one of those times where communicating via picture is a far better medium.  Alright, time to lesson prep, want the last week of lessons to go well.

Chicken Head and Duck Head — Yum!!

So… nothing major from the rest of the school week, except for Friday after school.  Friday after school we had a Coffee House at our school (there is two schools the American teachers are teaching at… Golden Goose, our school… and the main school).  So… we spent a bunch of time prepping in the afternoon, setting up all the furniture, speakers, etc.  The coffee house itself was great… some of the teachers did a hilarious lip-synch to the backstreet boys, some good improv (impressions), and some good poetry reading (gotta love Shel Silverstein).  I chipped in with a brief rendition of “‘Tis a Gift To Be Simple”… gotta love those Unitarian roots.  Anyway… it was a good time, but made for a long-ass day.  We left for school at 8:45am, and we were still there cleaning up at 8:45pm.  And good lord, did that room get hot.  We had two air conditioners running (they have full-size stand-alone models here, I’ll have to take a picture of one), but with 60+ people in the room, it got HOT, fast.  And when I say hot, I don’t mean USA kind of hot.  I mean dripping sweat, your clothes are literally wet you’re soaked kind of hot.

Anyway, overall very good stuff, and lots of fun (we were rocking out to tunes from someones i-pod at the end), but TIRING.  Then this morning four of us got hit up again to go fufill our obligation of teaching at the girls school (for further clarification on why we have to teach at the girl’s school on Saturday’s, see my previous blog post entitled “Everything is Cheap Here”).  Dragging my ass up for 7:30am departure was painful, but fortunately the four hours there went by quickly, and now that is done, no more teaching the girls school for me (thank god), the rest of the teachers just have to finish up next week and then we’re all done.

Nonetheless, it made for a long day.  If I didn’t only have a week left, I probably would have just chilled out this afternoon, due to the fact that we were going out to dinner tonight for the headmaster’s birthday, but need to be trying to fit everything in… so… we went and checked out the major bookstore here in the city… the art supply store (which has some beautiful paintings), and Parkson’s, the major department store.  Then on to dinner, and then karaoke.  So out allllll day after a long day Friday. Ooff… there is very little down time here, that is definitely one thing I miss about the states.  But I will be back far too quickly, and then have plenty of down time and no China time, so making the best of it.

Ohh!!  How could I forget.  Attached to Parkson’s is a KFC.  Oh. My. God.  I had a chicken sandwhich, french fries and a pepsi, and let me tell you, that was the best damn thing I’ve eaten in a long time.  Not that the Chinese food we eat isn’t wonderful… it’s great… and we’ve been out to some amazing restuarants, but all the meat we’ve gotten has been in little tiny pieces, and I never quite seem to be able to get my fill.  Not sure if this small pieces of meat thing is indicative of  all food here, since the food that is ordered for us is heavily swayed by the large number of vegetarians in the teacher group, but good lord was it beautiful to have a nice solid chunk of protein, on real bread (yes, I did in fact call a KFC white bread bun real bread), with fries and a coke.  Sooooo nice.  My stomache was happy happy, let me tell you (in fact I just did).

So… that’s been the past few days in a nutshell.  Continuing to go to blind-man massage, which was great, really helped relax my back after basketball (my shoulders were killing me the next day… they’re not used to getting exercise… I guess that’s what I get for getting all my stateside exercise via roller-blading).  School has been school… we’re off Charlotte’s Web, the kids thought it was boring… so we switched to this book called “Time Cat”, which is about this cat who can visit different time periods and takes his owner… which is turning out to be too difficutl for the kids because there is all these time period specific words that the kids don’t know and will probably never need to know again (we’ve hit ancient Egpyt and Ancient Rome in the story so far… trying to explain a headdress in simple English words… legion, centurion, clay tablet… it sounds easy enough, but try explaining what clay is… it’s not that easy).  Anyway… we’re going to switch to something else on Monday, different time periods are too hard.

Random fun story from dinner:  we get whole animals here… we had duck at dinner tonight at the headmaster’s birthday dinner thing… and the whole duck came out (in pieces).  So of course, after heading the chicken’s head at dinner earlier in the week, the headmaster (Mr. Chin) was looking forward to the duck’s head this evening.  No kidding, the duck’s head… including the bill, the eyes, the brain… whole nine yards.  The best part was, after eating the brain and scooping out all other edible parts, he lit up a cigarette and used the skull as an ashtray… nothing like eating your brain and then using the skull to ash in… now that’s throwing it down.  Score:  Mr. Chin 1 — Dead Duck 0.

Traffic continues to be crazy, especially taking cabs.  The cab ride to dinner was a little scary for a couple of reasons.  1) There was a major gas leak in the car somewhere, it REEKED of gas.  2)  Drivers are crazy over here, but this cabbie was a little psycho.  We spent a good deal of the time driving on the wrong side of the road, I shit you not.  We also completely ran a red light.  Running a red light here is not as scary as running one in the states, since people generally drive slower here (they have to, given how little regard they have for the rest of the rules), but still fucking scary, let me tell you.  Craziness.  Fun, but crazy.  I’m sure you’re loving to hear all this mom — don’t worry, I won’t get killed.

Still no photos, still haven’t managed to find time, but nothing is planned for tomorrow, so should have time then (I know, I know, I keep saying that… there’s always something to do here though… sorting through photos is just not a priority).

Alright, I think that’s all for now.  We’re taking a white-water river rafting trip on the 30th, the day before I leave, which should be awesome, I’m really looking forward to it.  Other than that… day off tomorrow… full week of school… then Saturday, white-water river rafting Sunday, then I’m outta here.  I can’t believe the time has gone by so quickly.  Kinda crazy.

Peace out for now, y’all.

-Seth

Basketball, but no credit cards

Allright, time for a quick blog entry.  Nothing major happened the past couple of days, except we’ve been busy teaching (and playing basketball), so I haven’t had time to play with photos and get more up online.  I have 200 pics to sort through and pick 30 or 40 to upload, so it’s not a 10-minute thing.

Classes yesterday were pretty chill, same with classes today.  Plodding through reading, writing/grammer, natural speech and the elective I’m teaching, American Culture.  I actually got completely caught up last night with my grading/paper correcting, which is good.  Some of these kids are pretty amazing, it’s great.

The big event of the past 24-hours was the students vs. teachers basketball game we played this afternoon.  They challenged us yesterday, and today was the only day everybody’s calendars matched up, so we played this afternoon.  The hoops are a little lower here (here meaning the development we live in… I can’t speak as to nation-wide).  They’re at about 8 feet or so… which made it a little difficult.  The game was three-on-three half-court, so me and the two other teachers thought it would be a good idea to practice on the lower hoops before the game.  Only minor problem with that is that the only opportunity to practice before the game was at 6:30am this morning.  Most of you know me well enough to know that 6:30am is NOT Seth’s favorite time of day.  But I did in fact manage to hall my ass out there at 6:30 to practice… bundles of joy and fun, let me tell you.  Good that we practiced though, cuz we definitely were missing more shots than we made, even lay-ups.

So, game on at 4pm today.  Now, due to the fact that the kids play basketball almost every day and are in far better shape than us teachers, and since they are used to playing in the heat and humidity, pretty much everyone was of the opinion that the students were going to kick the teachers asses, but lo and behold, we actually put up a good showing and won three out of four games.  And hey, we only lost the last game because we were so f-ing beat.  I am ready for bed, let me tell you.  Being soaked in sweat is fun.  Game was also a little rough-and-tumble.  My height was a big advantage, but it also meant that elbows and fore-arms were at face level when fighting for rebounds, and I took one good elbow to the nose and several other smacks to the face.  Nothing 600 milligrams of Advil can’t cure, fortunately.

Big news from China, eh?  We played basketball. =).  Anyway, have a few action photos of basketball, plus many others, which will hopefully get up there tomorrow.

Random observation: everything is in cash over here.  Just came to my consious attention when we were in line at the grocery store today and I had a minute to think.  I have cash on me at all times here… in the States, I rarely have cash, pay for almost everything with my debit card.  Interesting difference… no one pays for anything with credit cards or debit cards here, everything so far has been cash only.

Peace out.

-Seth