Traffic is F*cking Crazy, plus other good stories

All right, so, traffic is fucking crazy over here, if I haven’t already mentioned it.  The roads are all really wide, and people will just turn and cut across multiple lanes of traffic as it if were nothing (very few traffic lights, only at truly large intersections).  No joke, there is no putting on your turn signal and waiting, people just cut right in front.  Oncoming traffic blows their horns at you like crazy of course, but that is par for the course of here.  Why, you ask?  Because they don’t follow half the “rules of the road.”  The double yellow lines over here?  Don’t mean much.  If you think someone is going to slow, there is no problem here with just cutting over into the right-most left hand (traffic going opposite direction) lane.  Oncoming traffic?  They’d better slow down or move into one of the other lanes.  It’s frickin crazy, and a little scary until you get used to it.  We played chicken with a taxicab the other day.  We were turning left, he was turning right from the opposite direction, and neither the person driving our car nor the cab was willing to yield to the other… we came down close to hitting each other.  Kinda fun though when you get used to it, and damn convenient.  Need to pull a U-turn?  No problem, just pull one as soon as you’ve decided you need to make one, and oncoming traffic be damned.  Unfortunately I don’t actually get to drive ove here (it would be fun!), I just get to observe.

On to the news from the weekend.  Nothing exciting from Friday night, just a bunch of Americans playing poker in China, go figure.  Saturday we went to Yueyang Tower, which is supposedly the third most famous tower in all of China.  Don’t exactly have much detail as to why that is, since there was absolutely nothing written in English in any of the tourist shops, but I did get some great photos, which should be showing up in this space very soon.

Saturday night was ping-pong again, which while not exactly exploring Chinese culture that much, since I was playing against Americans, is still a very Chinese thing to do (as per one of my previous posts about the fact that they televise matches over here).

Sunday we went to an island, which we shall call Monkey Island for lack of a better name (it has a proper Chinese name of course, but I don’t remember what it is, and it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone reading this anyway).  And it’s really not a big knock on me that I don’t remember the Chinese name, because everyone here was calling it Monkey Island too, so I only heard the proper name once or twice.

Right, so… Monkey Island.  It’s called Monkey Island because… <drum roll> the island has a section devoted to monkeys (surprise).  There’s actually a lot of other fun stuff on the island… some temples, a couple of nice lakes (got to go rowing in a boat on one of the lakes), the monkey section… and I think that’s about it.  Oh yeah, and a big drum you can bang on and mechanical bull riding.  A somewhat eclectic group of activities indeed.

I passed on playing the really big drum and riding the mechanical bull because I managed to get a pretty decent sunburn.  It was a cloudy day, and we all figured we’d be fine, but me and Jeff (one of the other teachers) still managed to get burned pretty good (and yes Mom, I know, you always told me, the UV radiation still gets through on cloudy days, so you should still wear sun screen even if the sun’s not out.  I didn’t listen, and I paid the price).  Fortunately, the Chinese have some kick-ass medicine that I got last night that’s almost compeltely ameliorated the effects of the sun-burn, so that’s pretty cool.  Anyway… it was a great trip.  I’m writing this all backwards of course, but one of the best parts was the bus ride to the island (there is a very narrow man-made connecting roadway).  So, as stated, the roadway is very narrow, and is of course surrounded on both sides by water, since Monkey Island is well, an island.  We’ve had a lot of rain in the past week or so… and damn was the water high, running over the sides of the road in some places.  That in and of itself was a little scary… we were driving in water in a couple of places… but the best part was the car coming in the opposite direction.  This is a one-lane little narrow road.  We were like “oh shit, what’re we going to do?”  And of course, neither the car nor the bus slowed down.  We have no fricking idea how they managed it, but the car and bus passed each other and neither of us went off the road into the water.  It was a little crazy.  I have a feeling this is one of those stories where you had to be there to really get it… *shrug*, oh well, it’s in here anyway, it was fun… got the adrenaline going for sure.

So… all day trip the island plus sunstroke means we’re done for the day, right?  Nope… it was Pat’s birthday (another teacher) on Sunday as well, so we had a birthday dinner for him when we got back, which turned into a birthday dance (there about 20 Chinese students invited, ranging in age from 11 to 18).  Now that was quite the evening, let me tell you.  There was a water fight, a cake and frosting fight, as well as two hours of dancing.  The cake and water fights were fun, but the dancing was the killer part.  Have I mentioned that the heat and humidity here is killer?  We had one little AC unit for the whole party room/hall, and with thirty people dancing, it did jack-shit.  I don’t I’ve ever sweated so much in my whole life… everyone was literally dripping.  It was fun… but god, after the day out in the sun, we were all completely exhausted by the time 9:30 rolled around.  Great day, but extremely tiring.

Which brings us to today.  Chilled out day at school… none of the teachers were very well prepared of course… no real chance to lesson plan last night because we were so wiped out, and most of us had a hard time getting up early this morning.  I did go to my third session of “blind-people massage” this afternoon after classes, which is cool.  It’s a very different, rigorous kind of massage… not the relaxing Western kind… and wow… a little intense and slightly painful at moments, but damn are you relaxed afterwards.  Good stuff people, good stuff.

Alright… time to go correct papers, I’ve been putting it off for far too long.  Hope everyone is doing well!

-Seth