My Current Life

I haven't forgotten about my blog entirely, even though it has been severely neglected. I intend to finish writing about my time in China, but I feel compelled to write about my life as it is currently.

Upon return, the logistics of my life fell into place very quickly. I spent about a week at home before I found a job and cheap place to live. Both of these things came by way of Grace and her relations. Her brother, Jack, was working at a fondue restaurant in Buckhead (one of the nicest neighborhoods in Atlanta), Dante's Down the Hatch, and they were hiring. Also, one of his roommates had graduated from Georgia Tech in December and was looking to move back home to save money. Grace and I moved in with Jack and his three other roommates, John, David, and Casey (female). John and David were old friends from their hometown, and John and Casey both worked at Dante's.

It was very difficult transition into this life at first. Up until this point, I had defined everything about how Grace and I were living; now, I had jumped into her world. For the first week, I was very uncomfortable. It was much harder coming home than going to China. I was living a life that was not my own. I was living and working with her friends. The staff at Dante's was also a very tight-knit group. I was the new kid and the outsider in both phases of life.

However, after that first week of feeling awkward, everything has been very pleasant. Jack and John quickly accepted me as a friend, not just Grace's boyfriend, and the people at Dante's (or 'trons' as we are referred to) were all very warm and welcoming. It was no long before this life began to feel like my own rather than someone else's.

The working I'm doing is certainly less than stimulating. I've been working as a dishwasher and a seater for over two months now. The way the restaurant works is that everyone must start at the bottom regardless of previous service industry experience. Everyone who works there has been a seater and a dishwasher, then a busser, and then a waiter. Several trons have stayed around long enough to become management. I think it is a pretty good system. Everyone working there has empathy for those on the bottom but not necessarily sympathy having been in that position before.

Surprisingly, I've only resented working there once. During my first night working in the 'dish pit', I loathed that I was smart, educated, and capable and that I was scrubbing pots as my job. Since then, I've gotten over myself and enjoyed working at Dante's. I'm finding out that the work I do is not so important, but work environment is very important. Despite doing manual labor, I never dread going into work because the atmosphere is relaxed and the people there are fun to be around. I think this is a change I've undergone in the last couple of years. I really didn't enjoy my last manual labor job, landscaping, at all. Also, I've always considered myself somewhat undisciplined and lazy, but I'm finding out that I'm a much better worker than most. However, I don't think its a good idea to start comparing myself to the people around me rather than what I think I'm capable of.

Even though the task is menial, I have found ways to make my work as a dishwasher mentally stimulating. I'm always looking for ways to get my job done more efficiently, making my time doing dishes a critical thinking activity. It is not a particularly hard exercise in logic, but it at least keeps my mind occupied.

Dante's is filled with characters. There are plenty of trons that have been around for years; some because they are too incompetent to do other jobs, others because they just enjoy working there more than the other jobs they've done. Most of my time is spent with the people at the bottom as well, one of whom being Ronnie, a career dishwasher in his fifties. Everyone feels a certain ambivalence towards him. He is fifty-four years old dishwasher with no hope of advancement or higher pay and makes everyone's time in the kitchen more interesting and humorous with a steady stream of trash talking. He also gets drunk on occasion and comes into work completely incompetent. I think everyone likes him better until you face the consequences of his alcoholism by being overwhelmed with dishes all night as was the case with myself.

Dante considers himself a worldly person, so he tries to hire an internationally diverse staff. I've been spending a lot of time with is a Russian named Maxim. He is here on a student visa but is working two jobs instead of being in school right now. Like many Russians his age, he as left the country to avoid compulsory military service and possible deployment to Chechnya. He is saving a ridiculous amount of money to be able to afford tuition as an international student. His command of English is pretty strong outside of the use of the verb "to be", but he still has a set of stock phrases that compose about 50% of his speech such as, "Be nice," "You mean," "This is bullshit, man," and "You Americans! You teach me to curse!" He too is a teacher of profanity, and I am also trying to learn Russian from him aside from things that would get me beaten if I actually said them to a Russian. There is also another foreign tron, Greg. He is Polish, works two jobs, and is going to school. The two of them talk about girls that come into the restaurant as walking green cards. I really admire both of them for working as much as they do.

Dante's himself may be the biggest character of them all. He was a member of the first Navy SEAL team, and is now in his seventies. He has had the restaurant since 1969, and it has made him absurdly wealthy. He as traveled everywhere by train and lives in a train car. He certainly loves his restaurant aside from just being a means for him to make money; it also provides him people sitting at tables every night that he can corner and talk to. He is notorious for either rejecting or being unaware of political correctness. He also has stock phrases that he uses on customers. For example, when customers lean over the rail to look at his pet crocodiles in the restaurant, he always says, "Don't fall in; there's too much paperwork." He has several stock phrases that he uses with married couples. "I see you've brought you daughter with you," and "I see you've married up," are his favorites.

John told me this story about Dante. One night, a married couple came into the restaurant; the husband was black and the wife was white. He says to the husband, "I see you've married up." Needless to say, they were both appalled. When their waiter came back to the table, they demanded to see a manager about this old man who came up to them and made a racial slur. They demanded to see the owner! They didn't stay for the rest of the meal when that found out that that was the owner.

Over the past two weeks, I've been training to become a busser. This is a big promotion in terms of pay; the bussers at Dante's make as much as the servers. The busser do have longer hours, more physical demand, and the danger of fire and boiling oil for the same pay as servers (I spent last Saturday night in the emergency room with John after some boiling oil sloshed onto his hand), but after getting paid barely over minimum wage as a dishwasher or seater, the money you can take home in one night busing is very appealing. The demand of the job leads to looking at the clock much less while at work, so I'm looking forward to busing regularly. I am so eager to start busing that I have forgone my days off over the last week to continue my training and am on the tenth day of a fifteen consecutive day working streak. It has paid off though because I have three busing shifts on my schedule for next week.

Since Dante's is only open for dinner, I have had time to look for more career oriented jobs. The search was not good. Given my degree with a double major in Philosophy and Religion, the only business jobs were available to me were jobs in sales. I was called in for interviews for selling stocks, insurance to old people, employees to companies, and mortgages. For most of the jobs, I got out of the hiring process before decisions had been made whether they would hire me or not. The one job I actually would have taken was the job selling mortgages, and I didn't get the job.

Disappointed with the opportunities available to me, I have decided to go back to school. I've applied to start going to Georgia State University as early as this summer with the intention of getting a Masters of International Business. I think it is a good plan for me because one of my main fears of going to law school was being tied to a certain area, and studying international business will create more opportunities to work abroad. I'm also going to take my time and take all the class I didn't take because I was trying to graduate. Maybe I'll fill in a couple holes in my philosophical education, take some art or music classes, or learn astrology and palm reading. I'm really excited about having a second college experience with all the knowledge of how to have fun with it I gained the first time around.

It seems strange to me that I still should be in China right now. That life seems more foreign to me right now than it did before I went. I will certainly conclude my tales of travel in China in the next week or two.

Guilin and Yangshuo

When we arrived in Guilin, we quickly and easily checked into our hostel. Our train arrived at nine and we were out strolling around the city by ten. We were immediately impressed with Guilin. The city is full of water. There are three rivers flowing past karst peaks. All the streets are tree-lined, and everything was still nice and green. It was a little cloudy and blustery, but it was still beautiful.

First we went to Solitary Beauty Peak. It is a karst mountain in the middle of town with a small complex surrounding it. Apparently, Sun Yatsen took residency there at some point. Grace questioned the fifty yuan entrance fee, and ultimately, she turned out to be right to be skeptical of it's worth. We climbed the stairs to the peak for a nice view, and a tour guide let us in the cave under the mountain.

We spent the afternoon strolling around the rivers and lakes. My stomach had been a little upset since the morning, so we decided to take a nap to see if that would help. It did, and we enjoyed some pizza for dinner. Afterwards we watched the fountain, lights, and music show out on the lake. It was something the Chinese could have made horribly cheesy, but they didn't. We sat by the lake for awhile and enjoyed ourselves.

In the night, my upset stomach culminated in me throwing up. It was relieving because I felt better immediately afterwards.

The next morning, Grace and I went to the police station to get her visa extended. We rented bikes to cover more distance during the day. The rental cost only twenty yuan and there was no deposit, but they told us that if we lost them they would cost five hundred yuan a piece. We got the the police station at nine and they told us that the visa office was in a meeting. After over an hour passed, there was no sign of the visa staff and people were piling us for visa services. We decided to go do something and come back after lunch.

We went to nearby Seven Star Park. The seven peaks in the park are supposed to look like the big dipper. It was the best park I've been to in China. Cheesy music was noticeably missing; the scenery was great. Grace and I wondered off the path and ended up climbing up one of the peaks. It wasn't very difficult, but after we took a look at the hill from a distance, we were more impressed with ourselves. The view from on top was nice, but it was still as cloudy and hazy as the day before. We blazed our own path up, but we saw the way others normally came when we reached the top. We took their less grueling path back down.

We still had some time to kill before the police station reopened after lunch. We had lunch and wandered until it was time to get back to the police station. We walked out of the gate to the part and I pointed to the place where our bikes were locked. There were no bikes. We ran over. Our lock was cleanly cut and placed in the basket of a bike that was locked to the same pole ours was.

There was actually deliberation on where to put our bikes when we arrived. Most bikes were parked in this one area but not locked to anything. We chose to put our bikes on a light pole near the street. There were many people walking by and many cars going past. We locked both our bikes together through the wheels and then locked then to the pole. Only my lock that went around both bikes and the pole was cut, so someone took the two bikes and put them in a truck. Luckily, we were already on our way to the police station.

When we got to the police station, we were served promptly. Grace handled her visa paperwork, and I was told that we had to go to a different police station to report our stolen bikes. Grace had to get a photo and copies of her visa made to finish processing it, so we decided to finish that first.

We were referred to a photo shop out of the station on our right, and directions from locals lead us back and forth down the street for what seemed like hours. When we finally arrived at the photo shop, we were told that we would have to wait till four to get our pictures. Our bikes were stolen between 10:00 and 2:30, so I assumed that the police's chances of recovering the bikes were significantly dropping. We debated whether or not to report the bikes, the Lonely Planet said that the police sometimes recover stolen articles. Four o'clock turned into five o'clock four our pictures. However, waiting the extra time led to a new shift at the visa office and new time to return for Grace's new visa. Originally, we had been told it would be ready in a week, next Monday, but the new officer told us it would be ready on Friday.

We then trudged onward to the police station. I managed to get across what was stolen, when, and where, but communication was difficult. I was really pleased with the demeanor of the police; they were very patient with us and pleasant. The told us to go back to our hostel and have them translate for us.

When we returned to the hostel, we had them call the police. After having them translate some things, they wanted me to show them where exactly the bicycles were stolen. I took a cab with one of the hostel workers and showed them where the bikes were, and we went to a different police station. The police officer there said that they would start looking for the bikes the next day after they had the receipts from the bikes. The employee encouraged me by saying that the police had recovered two stolen bikes for their hostel before. Regardless, I had to go to an ATM and fork over one thousand yuan. The bikes weren't Beijing clunkers, but they certainly make a substantial profit on them.

The next morning we got our things together and left for Yangshuo. The bus only took an hour, but in that time Grace's stomach got upset. We checked into our new hostel. Down one thousand yuan, we opted for the ten yuan beds for our stay. The roof is slanted; I can't stand up all the way; there is no heat; and the music was blaring in our rooms from the clubs on the street last night. You get what you pay for, but I still slept fine.

Yangshuo is even more impressive than Guilin. The rock faces are sharper and the village runs right up next to the peaks. The town is catered to backpackers, so I've enjoyed lasagna, blueberry cheesecake, and banana pancakes since I've been here.

After wandering around town for awhile on arrival, Grace leaned over a rail by the river and threw up. Mostly since we've been here we've only walked around town and ate. Last night a fellow traveler advertised five yuan beer from the second floor of a restaurant. We went up and chatted with them for a while, and they saw some people with whom they had taken a tour earlier in the week. They turned out to be two brothers who were photographers for National Geographic who had been working in a story in Hong Kong about shark fin soup. We reveled over them having everyone's dream job. They were actually born and raised in Bermuda, but had take residency in Colorado during their adolescence. Our conversation was cut short by Grace becoming sick again, and we returned to her rail for a more violent vomiting session. We went ahead and went to bed. Grace threw up two more in our bathroom during the night.

Today, Grace's condition has only improved slightly. She's stopped throwing up, but she is still pretty incapacitated. We took a long walk this morning, but we returned not long afterwards so Grace could take a nap. I took one with her to keep her company. We hoped to get two days of bike riding in before we returned to Guilin, but I'm still hopeful that Grace will improve over the day and we'll get a full day of something in tomorrow. We are carrying some good medicine and we upped the strength of her medicine from over the counter to prescription.

Crystal's Village

Here is the second installment of my journal entries. Make sure to check out the corresponding album on my picture site to see what everything looked like.


I just woke up from my first night on the hard sleeper car on the train. It was such a treat; I could barely stop smiling. It was so comfortable; I didn't have to push through people to go to the bathroom or get hot water for my noodles. Getting there required a bit of persuasion though.

We decided to try to catch the train to Guilin from Luohe, but there were only standing tickets for the next three days. There was no bus to get us there either. Grace wanted to go back to Zhenghou to see if we could catch a train or a bus to Guilin from there. I pushed her to buy the standing ticket for the eight teen hour ride and promised her that if we could upgrade to the hard sleeper, we would. I just wanted to keep moving in the right direction even at the expense of comfort. If we had went to Zhengzhou there was no assurance that we could get to Guilin that day and waiting in Zhengzhou for a seat would have been extremely boring.

Grace reluctantly agreed to buy the standing ticket. Crystal helped us buy some stools as insurance and sent us with a note to explain that we wanted to upgrade our tickets.

We sat in the train station waiting for our train, and a couple of minutes before the train was supposed to arrive, a train station attendant came out and told everyone waiting for the train something. Everyone lined up and started walking away from the waiting area; we had no clue what was said, so we just followed the line.

The line went out of the train station and toward another entrance. The attendant that lead the line waited at the entrance and collected ten yuan from everyone walking in. Completely clueless about what was happening, I told the attendant that I wanted to buy a ticket for the hard sleeper. She was confused, understandably given what was actually happening, but she did let us in for free. We were lead into the first-class waiting room, and after chatting with some other attendants, I found out that our train had been delayed thirty minutes. While waiting, we got to watch the end of the Nuggets-Cavs game on the biggest TV I've seen in China.

When our train arrived, we handed our note to someone working on the train; I said we wanted harder sleeper tickets, and we were whisked away to the sleeper car. We upgraded our tickets with no problems.

I'm really glad that everything worked out on the first occasion because if it hadn't, Grace's trust in my asking to take small risks would have lessened for the rest of the trip. As it is , I have this as evidence that everything will turn out fine.


We arrived in Zhengzhou on Thursday morning at 7:30. We took some time to freshen up and eat some breakfast at a nearby McDonald's. With the help of Crystal's directions, we were on a bus bound for the seat of his county, Wuyang, by nine o'clock.

Before we even got off the bus in Wuyang, we spotted Crystal. He took us to the beauty salon that his three older sisters run. We sat our bags down and went to lunch with two of them.

After lunch, we took a minibus to the village where Crystal grew up, Zhanggudong, His parents still live there, and we went to their house right away. All the houses in the village had high concrete or brick walls around them. There was a little, open concrete area before the house where Crystal's family kept chickens, a goat, and some vegetables. They also had a well, clotheslines running criss-cross from the walls with two dead chickens hanging there, and a tiny brown dog named Bao Bao. The entire house and roof was made from concrete. There were stairs leading to the flat roof running along the side of their house. In addition to his parents being there, his grandmother came from a couple houses down to greet us.

We spent the afternoon strolling through the village. The trees were bare and gray, but the fields encircling the village were green with sprouting wheat. People popped out of their houses to look at us as we walked by. Crystal met everyone by asking if they had eaten yet. I asked him why he greeted everyone this way, and he told me it is a polite greeting. Dried corn stalks were plied everywhere; they burned them instead of wood to keep warm since the trees in the area are sparse.

We wandered past a small stream and then a larger river that had slowly cut through the plain. As the sun set, the view embodied the romanticized image of village life. Green fields, trees, and the setting sun were reflected off the tranquil stream. Crystal pointed to a mountain in the distance and said that the cave inside the mountain was a beautiful palace. There he became blood-brothers with one of the monks.

Crystal told us stories about what he called the best time in his life, his childhood. He showed us the places where he swam in the summers and killed frogs with blow guns to enjoy as a snack.

He also showed us how the village had changed since he left. He said that along the river there were large trees that he played in with his friends, but now the river was devoid of trees. They were cut down so someone could dredge sand from the river and sell it.

We learned a little more about Crystal's life along that walk. He went to elementary school in a nearby village until age twelve. For middle and high school, he went to public boarding schools in Wuyang, so at twelve, he was out of the house and essentially living on his own. He said he was happy to leave his home for school. One time, he told me a story about being robbed at knife point while he stayed at school over the weekend in high school; the story never quite made sense to me until he told me that he went to boarding school. Apparently, this boarding school system is pretty common for villages in China.

We returned to his parents home for dinner. It was pretty rough for Grace and I. There was a mushroom and pepper dish, carrots that tasted like baijiu, mushroom soup, and big, fluffy rolls. Neither Grace nor I are fond of mushrooms at all, and the preparation of these rendered them very chewy. I enjoyed the broth of the soup and ate whatever they insisted I eat, but I didn't make it half way through my soup. Grace could only stomach the bread. We felt bad because most people in the village were standing outside with bowls of rice porridge, so it was obvious that this was a special meal. I told Grace to eat a couple times through my teeth, but neither of us could do justice to the meal.

The weather had been very pleasant, especially compared to Harbin, but when the sun went down, it became frigid. I wasn't prepared with my Harbin clothing, so I was frozen. I was far colder there, thousands of miles south of Harbin. Grace had more clothes than I, so she wasn't bad off. Before we could go to bed, we had to wash our feet; I wasn't too happy about taking my shoes and socks off. I didn't pay attention to the sleeping arrangements for Crystal and his parents that night, but Grace and I were put in a bed that was simply wooden crates pushed together with a comforter on top. I left on all of my clothes and crawled under the blankets, and when Grace got under the covers, I tried my best to steal all her heat.

The next morning, we woke up late by the village's standards. Breakfast was ready within minutes. We had Chinese breakfast burritos. There were standard flour tortillas with egg, green pepper, and dried, roasted duck. The left over mushrooms and carrots were brought back out, but they didn't make it into our first burritos. When they fixed my second burrito for me, it included the undesirable dishes, but I enjoyed breakfast anyway.

We went over to Crystal's grandmother's house after breakfast. Her house had brick walls, and the interior was wall papered with newspapers; The roof was made from woven sticks. In her courtyard area, crops were growing. She was glad to see us and pulled out her one frame of pictures to show us. It was a collage of dirt and water damaged pictures of her family. Sifting through the pictures, we got the story of part of their family tree.

Crystal's great-grandfather was a member of Shang Kaishek's army. There were five officers from their village in the army including Crystal's great-grandfather. After the Communists took over, the other four officers and their families fled to Taiwan; Crystal's great grandfather decided to stay in mainland China. He thought what he did was right and that the new government would respect his decision to stay. Communist troops came to the village and executed him. Supposedly, the other four families are very in Taiwan now. Crystal's great-grandmother died giving birth to his grandfather, but his great-grandfather remarried. His grandfather's stepmother also died young. His grandparents had three children: Crystal's father and his two aunts. His grandfather died when Crystal was four. He only remembers crying at his funeral.

I asked Crystal if older people in the village didn't like Chairman Mao because people in the village fought for the Nationalists. He said that some of them didn't. I asked what Crystal thought of Chairman Mao. He told me that Mao was the right person to lead the war but wasn't the right person to run the country, and the country would have been better off without the Cultural Revolution. I said that I couldn't understand Chinese people's admiration for Mao considering what happened during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. I commented that the type of government Mao fought against is how the Chinese government is run today. Crystal said that many injustices happen because there is no separation of the government, courts, and police. I asked why he chose to join the Communist Party since he had these criticisms of the government. He said joining the Party would be good for his future.

It was still very cold that morning, and sitting in the cold, shaded house didn't help things. Crystal offered to show us his elementary school, and we were eager to get moving and get our blood flowing. His grandmother asked for us to stay and offered to start a fire, but we declined.

On the way over to the next village to see Crystal's elementary school, some people had started a fire with corn stalks in the middle of the road. During the winter, there is no work to be done in the fields, so people just hang out and chat. Goats were grazing and standing on top of the dirt mound tombs in the fields. I ran around trying to pet the goats for a little while, but found out that they weren't like the one's in the petting zoo. They evaded me, and we continued on to the next village.

Along the way, Crystal said that mice would tear up the roots and eat the crops, so they want to get rid of them. When he and his friends were younger, they would catch mice and put beans in their butt to kill them. This would make them go crazy and kill all the other mice. Then the bean would grow and kill the mouse. Furthermore, he claimed that the mice holes in the field were very nice homes and complete with a bedroom, living room, and kitchen.

The next village over look almost exactly the same as Crystal's. We just strolled right into school and had a look around. Class was still in session, and we peaked in to the detriment of classroom productivity. The school was built like a small motel. The two stories of classrooms opened to outdoor hallways. Crystal said that when he was in school, kids from different villages would fight each other. During school they would climb the trees in the courtyard of the school and read books. The teacher would slice watermelon and throw it to them in the tree.

A student popped out of one of the upstairs classrooms to ring the bell, and all the classes filed into the courtyard. Grace and I were surrounded by little eyes that had almost certainly never seen a white person before. I tried to chat with some of them, but they were too shy for that. A circle formed around me, and brave students dashed across through the circle as close as they could to me without being in danger of being eaten by the giant, white monster. I played along and lunged into the circle; smiling and screaming students scattered in a way that was not unlike chasing the goats. I captured one of the littlest ones and threw him over my shoulder. After a good spinning, he was released. The bell rang again, and the students filed back into their classes.

We returned to Crystal's home for lunch. The two dead chickens that were hanging on the clothesline when we arrived had made their way into a stew with chopped carrots and what Crystal called white carrots. No part of the chicken was spared, so the stew was complete with bones, organs, two heads, and four feet. It was a test to guess what part of the chicken you were eating. It was a good stew and was my favorite meal that we had in the village.

We packed up our bags and started making our way back to town. Walking along to the bus stop, people peeked out of their houses to get one last look at us. Crystal decided that it would be better for us to take a motor tricycles into town rather than wait for the bus.

When we returned to town, we had discovered it was a market day. The city was swollen with people and stands selling everything from food and clothing to appliances and mopeds. We put our bags back into the beauty salon, and set out into town in search of train or bus tickets to Guilin for the next day.

One the way to the office that sold train tickets, we observed a curious event. A man was sitting on the back of a pickup truck and speaking on a microphone over the two large speakers that were behind him. In front of him, there were a few unopened boxes stacked on top of each other. People were crowded all around the truck holding up bills in their hands in denominations all the way to one hundred. After working the crowd, he opened the boxes and revealed the mystery product, shampoo. He began exchanging the shampoo for one hundred yuan bills that were raised in the air. More people came up and gave him money. This shampoo didn't look very special. It was average in size and plainly packaged in a dull orange bottle. There wasn't even English on the bottles. I asked Crystal what he was saying to get the people to buy the shampoo, but he couldn't explain.

A trip to the train office revealed that there were no seat on the train from Luohe to Guilin the next day. The following trip to the bus station informed us that there was no direct route from Wuyang to Guilin. When we got back to the beauty salon, a customer there told us that there was a bus from Luohe to Guilin and called someone to confirm it.

Grace was offered a free facial from one of Crystal's sisters. I later found out that this treatment consisted of putting different lotions on her face and getting her head and shoulders rubbed and beaten. In the meantime, Crystal said that since there were not enough places for us to sleep, the had gotten us a hotel room. I objected to them paying for it, but they refused to take my money. Crystal and I moved our bags over to the hotel, and Grace's facial was finished when we returned. We went out to dinner and went to bed.

In the morning, we took baths at a bath house near our hotel. Afterwards, we hopped on a bus to Luohe to seek onward transportation.

Begining of the Travel Posts: On the Train

As always, I apologize for the delay in putting up this post. There has been a drastic change in my situation that has hindered my writing. I have returned to America. I have been in the Atlanta area for over two weeks now and have established myself with a place to live and a job. I'm living in Decatur and last night was my first night working at Dante's Down the Hatch in Lenox.

I'm still going to provide the narrative that lead to this conclusion of my story in China. However, I plan on doing it in intervals. I've put off writing these series of posts for a while, but hopefully over the course of the next week I should have them finished.

I think its appropriate to provide some background into what I was thinking going into the trip. My plan upon returning to China had been to go law school. With application deadlines fast approaching before I left to travel, I decided not to apply. Three years of law school would leave me with a massive debt and preparation for a job that I wasn't sure that I wanted to do. Even if I went to law school, I could eventually change careers, but realistically only after paying my debt. By that time, my twenties would have evaporated. Law school was only the link between point A, having majored in philosophy and religion, and point B, having a job, but I came to the conclusion that there were other fields where I could find employment with having to incur the bind of law school debt.

With that decision made, Grace and I were planning on returning to Atlanta after leaving China. Since Grace's mother works for Emory University, she could go there for free, and I could try to find a job in Atlanta. On the other hand, Atlanta had never been a place I considered living by my own volition, so we agreed that after she finished her degree in two years, everything would be back on the table in terms of where in the world we went and what we did. This new plan also left questions as to what exactly I would do for a career, and for the most part, these questions linger.

That should be ample background into the way I was thinking at the time. Over the course of the trip, I wrote a couple journal entries. These provide obvious divisions for my posts. Whenever I read my own writing after it has sat for some time, it makes me feel like a pretentious asshole (maybe I am), and in reading back through my journal, I want to change some things. But, I really don't think changing the writing gives an accurate picture of what or how I was thinking thinking at the time, so I've left the journal entries in tact except for the spelling and grammar mistakes I can catch. So without further ado, my first journal entry.

The twenty-two hour train stretch on the hard seats is almost over. We are an hour and a half away from Zhengzhou. We got up this morning with the sun, got on a train, watched it set in these seats, and we'll see it rise again as we arrive.

Everything has went fairly smoothly on the train thus far. We were a little more rushed than I would have liked getting to our train this morning, but it was fine. I've been awake for the vast majority of the trip with the exception of two cat naps. Grace and I have mostly entertained ourselves with books and conversation. With our trusty Lonely Plant in hand, we concretized our plans a bit more. We set our sites and the amount of time we'll spend at each sites. The trip is supposed to be relaxed, fluid, and adventurous, and a firm schedule detracts from that feeling. However, some of our most exciting sites are at the end of our route, and we want to make sure that those places get sufficient time.

The proposed itinerary goes as follows: arrival at Crystal's farm sometime this afternoon; a full day there; on to Guilin in the morning pending train tickets (it should be one of our longest train ride on the trip to get to Guilin); three days in Guilin with the hopes of getting Grace's visa extended in that time; three days in Yangshuo; back through Guilin to peruse the minority villages around Sanjiang and Longsheng in northeastern Guangxi province and Kaili in eastern Guizhou province for a week; three days in Anshan to see Zhijin cave and Huangshuo Falls if we so choose; a day in Xingyi to traverse a gorge in the area; maybe a day in Kunming; south to Xishuangbanna for a week; back north to Dali for three days; three days in Lijiang; three days to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge; three days to conclude our trip in Zhongdian and Tibetan area of Yunnan province. With this itinerary, I have a feeling we'll lose our two days allotted to get home and end up flying back to Harbin.

Grace and I took turns reading the first chapter of Stephan Hawking's A Brief History of Time and discussed. I spent most of my time sifting through the Lonely Planet reading about potential destinations for our next trip.

Traveling is a bizarre phenomenon. Here I am on the verge of the most exciting experience of my life, and I'm becoming enchanted with the places I'll go on my next trip. Traveling is generally though of as a higher pleasure, but I'm not sure if it is any different that run of the mill materialism. Travelers are out to collect experiences like most people are out to collect cars, houses, TVs, and furniture to fill their world. Both ways of life are expensive. I don't think it is appropriate to characterize traveling as a 'higher pleasure' in relation to a more materialistic life. Some argue that traveling is broadening; it makes you challenge your assumptions about how you own life must be lived. That may be true, but those are the byproducts rather than the goals of travel. Those who travel seek pleasure in travel just as those who buy things seek pleasure in that which they buy. I imagine those who travel solely for personal improvement are few in number. And my excitement about a trip further in the future on the eve on one trip shows that traveling can be just as consuming as materialism. Just as there is always something else you could buy; there is another cool place to go to that you haven't seen.

With that said, this trip equals the pinnacle of excitement I've felt in my life. I can't wait to get off the train and get things started.

Grace and I set timetables for events on the train to keep things moving. Lunch at one; dinner at seven; wine at nine. Instead of just waiting to get there, it gives you smaller, more manageable waits.

Wine or beer on the train is one of the best ways to pass the time... usually. This ride, the wine backfired on us a little. We had purchased two big bottles of Grand Dragon wine a while back knowing that they would be consumed eventually, but before we left, only one had been used. Grace suggested that we bring it along; I agreed even though I really wanted to just buy beer on the train.

We started drink probably around ten, and lively conversation ensued. Grace talked about the dynamics of Covington life. She also cursed herself by noting that she hadn't gotten sick from drinking since she arrived in China and she was proud of herself. Discussion eventually followed about my relationship with my brother. Things got a little heated as I perceived her to be lecturing me on how to approach my relationship with him. I shook my head, and she told me that that was how she was going to approach her relationship with my brother. I shook my head and disapproved citing my brother's character as the reason her methods wouldn't work with him. Things got hostile, and I realized how drunk she was and told her the conversation was over.

After about five minutes, Grace also realized how drunk she was. The train started spinning, and her stomach started turning. I encouraged her to go to the bathroom, but she wasn't feeling up to wading through the people standing in our car. A little while later, she demanded the plastic bags holding our snacks. She sat her head down on the table holding the bag and started throwing up. Although I wish I had been more helpful, I drank enough to make me tired and dosed on and off throughout her sickness. She would tap me when she wanted something; I would oblige her and fall back asleep. This went on for about an hour.

In the end, there was some vomit in the bag, but there was a trail draped down Grace's clothes starting at her chest and ending between her legs. Either the bag was dripping, or she was missing the bag, or both, but the floor is now sticky with dried vomit. The bag is also still sitting tied at our feet. Our bags for our food are gone, but we have room for it all in our little backpack. However, the backpack got a little damp in the process as well.

We are the only white people in the car, as is usually the case. We draw a lot of interest in the hard seater cars because the people that sit here have less money and therefore generally less exposure to foreigners. Just me sitting here writing in English at six in the morning draws a lot of attention. The guy that is sitting next to me has been looking over my shoulder while I write. He has a standing ticket, but he is sitting on his suitcase in the aisle. He has cleared his throat and spit on the ground, rubbing the mucus into the carpet about fifteen times now. People have certainly gone out of there way to look at my notebook as they pass.

It is now are estimated time of arrival, but we are now just stopping at our next to last stop. I think we'll have an extra half an hour to an hour left. Then we have to transfer to a bus to get to Crystal's village. That should take another three hours or so, but we'll certainly have to wait for the bus a little while. At first, I thought the trip to Crystal's would be a nice midpoint on the way south, but I'm coming to think that despite it being more or less on our route, it is a tangent from more interesting areas. I'm still very excited about seeing Chinese farm life, but I'm skeptical that the time couldn't be spent more enjoyably elsewhere.

That is all for my first journal entry. I'll try to put the next one up tomorrow. I've posted all the pictures from the trip on my picture site, but I would recommend waiting to read about them before you look. I also put up the pictures from the trip with my family to Beijing on there; go ahead and take a look. I know its a bad time to post this because it's UGA Spring Break, but hopefully by the time everyone gets back to school there will be plenty of material for procrastinating from school work. Feel free to contact me through more traditional means now, as I still have the same cellphone number.

Beijing with the Family and Preparations for Backpacking

It has been over three weeks since I last posted, and it was on the eve of our trip to Beijing to meet my family. We spent a week there and the trip was great. We went to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, the Lama Temple, and the Great Wall. I wasn't really expecting much from the Great Wall, but it was my favorite part of the trip. The hype given to tourist sites is usually proportional to level of disappointment you feel when you go to the site. However, the Great Wall at Mutianyu was notable exception. The engineering and logistics of building something so expansive on such rugged terrain is incredibly impressive. The wall itself was left unrestored making the experience feel more authentic. The landscape was also picturesque. There was not so much tourist hype in Mutianyu; however, we did take the ski lift to the top to walk around and took the Alpine Slide down. Although the Alpine Slide was not the most ancient of all things at the Great Wall, it was one of everyone's favorite moments on the trip.

We also made quite a few purchases at the Silk Market, and I got to put my bargaining skills on display on behalf of my family. Whenever someone would try to buy something, I represented them. After I would set my price, the vendors would give up trying to negotiate with me and look to my other family members, but we held strong. We usually got the price I set after waiting a while. My brother, Sean, and I also purchased quite a few DVDs. It was a nice and laid-back week. We saw everything we set out to see and did it at a gentle pace. Grace and I even got to enjoy foods that we deemed Western luxuries at least once a day.

I was a little worried before the trip because China can be a stressful place. Vacationing can be even more stressful than just living in China because you are completing more monetary transactions, and as a foreigner, every transaction brings the risk of being ripped off. Furthermore, my family has not become accustomed to these things like I have. They are not used to haggling for everything; they are not used to thing of how much money things are worth in Chinese terms. Despite these concerns, things went much better than I could have hoped for, but that is not to say that there were not bumpy spots in the trip.

One event that really stood out in my mind was buying Cokes on the way to the Temple of Heaven. My dad and my brother both bought Cokes. The price on all soft drinks was clearly labeled three yuan. My father brought the two drinks up to the counter, handed the lady working there a ten, and got two yuan change. After we got out the store, I asked my dad how much he paid. He said eight yuan. It is one thing to overcharge when prices aren't labeled. Prices are hardly ever labeled, and that leaves it to the person working to determine the price given what you look like and how much Chinese you speak. It is something completely different when you overcharge someone when the price is labeled. I went back in and demanded two yuan. Two yuan is worth a quarter. I said that two Cokes should cost six yuan and pointed to the price tag. She got up from behind the counter, walked the the price tag, and said, “This says that Sprite is three yuan. You bought Coke. That is four yuan” I replied, “All soft drinks are the same; I don't care. Give me two kuai.” She angrily sat back down and went through her cash drawer looking for two one yuan bills. She was speaking with a cranky tone the whole time she was shuffling through bills, and I couldn't understand what she was saying. When she gave me the money, I walked out and glanced back to say, “You're trash.” She cleverly replied, “You're trash.” I gave the money back to my father and told everyone what had transpired.

When my mother was talking to me about the trip, she brought up this event. She said that I may not think I'm changing, but to her, this event was conclusive evidence that China is making me a different person. Certainly China has made me more assertive and at times hostile and confrontational, but I'm not sure if its personal. Everyone is looking out for themselves even if that comes at someone's expense, but it is not because they personally dislike that person in any way. That is just the rules to a game everyone plays. Its not nice or fun, but I don't think anyone is offended by it except for foreigners who operate under a different set of rules. At first China made me more of an angry person, but now I think I understand how things work a little better and have adjusted. Hopefully, I can turn off some of these changes when I go home, but I like being more assertive. I think that when I go home I can be assertive without engaging in Chinese behavior that we would consider rude.

Another rough spot came when I tried to change the date Grace and I's train tickets using the consignor at our hotel. I bought our train tickets back to Harbin right when we arrived in Beijing, but after spending a couple days there, I figured that I could adjust my teaching schedule in Harbin and stay another day to see my family off. I contacted my students, and they were more than happy to have their final moved back a day. After breakfast one morning, my dad and I went to the consignor's desk to see if they could change the tickets for us. The person working said that they could, but there would be a twenty percent service charge and a charge to pay for the taxi to send one of the employees to the train station. We said that it would be fine. He made a couple phone calls, and then he said that he would have to talk to his “captain” to see if he could go. His captain arrives and tells us that the service charge is thirty percent, the tickets are sold out, there are not enough people working the desk to send someone to the train station, and it would be too expensive for us to use their service. We say that its fine; we can go to the train station ourselves and take care of it. We go back up to our room to grab our jackets and go out front to catch a cab. When we get out front, the porter tells us to come back in and go to the consignor's desk. The captain is still there, and he tells us we owe him money. We owe him a “cancellation fee” as well as the thirty percent service charge. In total we owe him ninety yuan. We are completely confused because this is the same person who tried to talk us out of using their services and now he wants us to pay. It is also ridiculous to to charge a service charge when you don't provide a service. He said that they already sent a person from a travel agency by cab to the train station, and we have to pay of that, and a service charge, and a cancellation fee. We debated, but we had reached the limits of the captain's English abilities. He looked exasperated trying to express himself in a language he didn't really command. Rather than waste anymore of our time, Dad payed the ninety yuan. I was glad he was there because that is a lot of money to me and not so much when you are paying with dollars. I never would have paid that; I would have just walked out and took my chances. We went to the train station, and I changed out the tickets myself in about fifteen minutes.

Not much has happened in the two weeks since we have been back. Its cold enough to keep you inside most of the day, and it has made me a little stir crazy at times. I administered my last two finals and submitted my grades. One student called me after I submitted my grades and asked me to give her a high mark, but there was nothing I could do to change her grade which is probably a good thing for her. One evening, Grace and I cooked hamburgers and French fries to thank all our Chinese friends for helping us get through the semester.

The main tasks for these past two weeks were preparing for traveling and getting Grace registered for her Chinese class. They may seem independent, but the two tasks went hand-in-hand. Grace came to China on a ninety day tourist visa; she arrived on November first, so her visa is expiring at the end of the month. Since she planned to study Chinese at nearby Harbin Engineering University, I figured we could pay for the class and have her visa changed to a student visa as soon as possible. We could not travel without Grace having a valid visa because they would check her visa at every hostel we went to, and she could get in trouble with the police or worse, deported. We were planning on leaving Harbin with Crystal and spending a couple days with him on his farm near Zhengzhou. We had given him money to buy tickets to ride home with him on Sunday, but when we found out from HEU that it would take two weeks for Grace to get her new visa, we told him to return our tickets and planned to meet him at his home later.

On Saturday night, Crystal came over to return our money from our returned tickets. We were all supposed to leave on Sunday, so I asked him, "So are you excited about going home tomorrow?" He looked at me with the deer in the headlights look that he often gives me when I ask him a question in English, so I rephrased my question, "You are going home tomorrow. Are you excited?" The deer in the headlights look was not lifted.

He said to me, "I have also returned my ticket."

"What?!?"

Grace, needing a Chinglish translation, says to me, "What did he say?"

"He returned his ticket for tomorrow with ours."

"Oh no..."

So we had intended for Crystal to go on home, and we would meet him there later. Using the word "our" was a little too inclusive for him. We felt horrible but also flattered that he was willing to wait two weeks to go home for us, but when we found out that he returned his ticket, we reformulated our plans on the spot. We decided we would all get tickets the next morning for the next train to his hometown. Grace could extend her tourist visa anywhere along the way. There were three tickets available for Wednesday and one student ticket available for Monday, so Grace and I gave Crystal the choice of leaving Monday or waiting to travel with us on Wednesday. He decided that he wanted to leave on Monday morning, so all-in-all he only missed a couple hours at home. We discovered that the second city on our trip, Guilin, is known for its speedy extensions of tourist visas, so we intend to extend Grace's there. We paid for her class, but we will get her student visa when we return to Harbin.

Another interesting experience this week was when Grace got the pictures made for her student card. When I first arrived in Harbin, Diana took me to a photo shop in someone's house to make pictures for my foreign expert card and to give to the police. I took Grace there to get her pictures made because that was the only place I knew of. The apartment is on the fourth floor of an apartment building near our room. The woman who takes the pictures is quite the artist, and her apartment its filled with her own photographs, paintings, and unique furniture. My favorite part of her place is something like a hippie door drape, but instead of beads, she had small, laminated photographs with holes punched in them strung from the door frame with key chains. Grace got her official pictures made. She chose the blue background for her picture which meant that the photographer's friend stood up behind Grace and held a blue blanket. While we were waiting for pictures to print, the photographer handed us two Bibles. Stunned, we said thank you and started thumbing through. She said to us, “No thank me; thank God.” When she perceived we were bored with the Bibles, she put a video of the life of Jesus on her computer for us to watch. When we were leaving, she lent us the video which we politely accepted and invited us to church. She invited me to go to church with her the first time I came to get my pictures made, but I deferred the invitation to a later time when I could understand Chinese. This time, I agreed that when we came back to return the video, we would set a time to go. I'm just curious to see what the Chinese Christian church is like.

People are very open about being Christians here. One of my engineering students always wears a cross pin. Two other students in that class have also answered all my questions about how they became Christians and what denomination they are. They'll talk freely about their religion if you ask them, but if you try to talk about their boyfriend or girlfriend, its another story.

Tomorrow morning at eight, Grace and I board our train bound for Zhengzhou. We have five to six weeks to travel, or we have until or money runs out, whatever comes first. Zhengzhou is our only destination in Henan Province, and we plan on leaving there only after a couple days to spend the vast majority of the time in southern provinces of Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan. There we should have great weather and see diverse geography and minority villages. This will be my last post until March when we return. I plan on spending some time writing along the way, but I'll only have the opportunity to stop and type it up once we get back. We'll be stopping in at internet cafes along the way, so I will still be able to read and reply to e-mails. There are no pictures from the Beijing trip on my picture site yet because an earthquake in Taiwan has really limited the internet in mainland China. I can't get them to upload yet, but I think everything should be functional when I return. Expect a nice long post and lots of pictures in early March.

On a side note, I thought I was losing a lot of my readership over the past month. In December, the visits to my blog dropped pretty drastically. However, since school has resumed, visits have resumed normal levels. I guess my writing is being used as a tool for procrastination, and thats fine by me. I'd love it if you would send me an e-mail; stay in touch.

Mongolian Dentistry and a Harbin Christmas

Early last week, one of Grace's teeth started to hurt. It was one of her wisdom teeth. When I looked in her mouth, I saw that it had already pushed through the gums, but there wasn't nearly enough room for it. It was coming through the tissue that connects the jaw to the head. We decided to wait a couple days to see what would happen, and after cruising through a couple days on painkillers, we knew she had to have it pulled.

Eve, a student that comes and sits in on one of my classes, has lived in this area her whole life, so we asked her for a recommendation on where to have it removed. She had her wisdom teeth removed at a hospital near by, and everything seemed to have went smoothly. Since Eve's command of English is pretty strong, we asked her to accompany us to the hospital. The hospital was within walking distance, and the dentistry ward was on the third floor. Eve started walking into rooms in the area and talking to the dentists and their assistants. We took a peek into the rooms as well. They appeared to have standard dental equipment; there was the standard chair next to the little sink, adjustable over-head light, and tray with normal tools. The only difference was that there were more than one set of equipment in each room. They came in set of two and four chairs. Grace commented that it was like going to the dentist at the nail salon; the dentists could catch up on the latest gossip while they worked on your teeth. Eve eventually found someone who appeared to be the head of the department. He had Grace get an x-ray of her tooth.

Paying for medical care is really different in China. All the prices are listed, so you know what you'll pay beforehand. Unlike most other financial transactions in China, you can't haggle for price on medical care. However, you can go to another hospital and shop around for a better price. Insurance isn't necessary, and from what I gather, very, very few people have it. I had to go to the cashier, pay for the x-ray, and bring back the receipt before they would take Grace's x-ray. Grace's tooth was growing in sideways, so they said it wouldn't be the easiest to take out but it wouldn't be particularly difficult either. When we went, it was four o'clock on a Friday, so they told us to come back Sunday morning. We ended up missing that suggested appointment time. Grace had to submit her last final and teach two classes on Sunday, and she wisely decided that neither of those would be enjoyable or even possible after having her tooth removed.

On Monday, I taught two classes. Usually, I don't teach on Mondays, but I had rescheduled these classes because I was not going to be in Harbin when they next met. Next week, I'm meeting my family in Beijing for New Years, so I'm going to miss some of my regularly scheduled classes. I gave both these classes their final on Wednesday, so on Monday, I gave them the opportunity to ask questions and take a practice final to see how I would grade. I gave them the same final as I gave to my other tour management classes. They got into pairs and did a dialogue, and after speaking for a while, I would jump in and start talking to them about whatever topic they had chosen. The first class was a little more nervous about everything, so they asked more questions and did sample dialogue. The second class didn't care at all, so I let them go on their way. A character you may remember from my fashion post is in this class, Sino. We got to chatting a little bit during class, and he and Mark decided to stick around after class to talk some more. It was certainly one of the most interesting conversations I've had with a Chinese person. He talked with me about things you are certainly not allowed to talk about it China and explicitly voiced criticisms of Chinese society and policy. I don't think its wise to put on the internet what he said given how the government monitors the internet, but I assure you that I learned some really exciting things.

The next morning, Grace was ready to get her tooth pulled. We called Eve to see if she could take us back to the dentist, but she had class that morning. Grace didn't want to sit around and think about it all day, so I call Sino to see if he could serve as our translator. He readily agreed, and we were on our way.

When we got to the hospital, the dentists recognized us and asked why we didn't come in on Sunday. I told them that Grace had to teach. Sino started asking them about the price of having her tooth pulled. They said it would cost one hundred and twenty to pull the tooth and another eight for the medicine. Sino said that it was too expensive and advised that we go to another hospital. Since the cost wasn't really an object, we decided to stay and get the tooth pulled there. Eve had recommended the place, and we wanted to make sure Grace got the best service available rather than the cheapest. I paid in advance while Grace was taken into one of the rooms. She was put into one of the smaller rooms with two chairs, but the other chair was unoccupied. While Sino and I were outside, one of the other dentist started talking to Sino. I had talked with this dentist in a mixture of English and Chinese the first time we came to the hospital. She was asking Sino if I could tutor her son, and she was willing to offer over two hundred yuan a hour. Since this is more than I make at my school, I gave her my phone number, but I haven't heard from her yet.

I went in to see Grace and see how she was doing. Nothing had started; the dentist was filling a needle to numb Grace's mouth. Hoping to see some skilled dentistry in action, I asked if I could watch. I'm China after all, and I want to take advantage of it; I doubt a dentist would let me watch something like that in America. The dentist let Sino and I stay in the room. She quickly stuck the needle into Grace's gums without any ado, so she didn't get so anxious about it. In about a minute, Grace was tapping around her mouth and giggling because she couldn't feel it at all. The dentist pulled out some sort of drill and start slicing through Grace's gums. Grace started making some moaning noises, but it was over quickly. Then the dentist grabbed what looked like a miniature crowbar, reached into Grace's mouth, and started prying her tooth out. Grace was kicking her feet and moaning loudly as if to say “Stop! Stop!”; the dentist grunted back at her meaning, “Just hold still and be quiet; I'll be done in a second.” The dentist jerked back and slapped a bloody, pink mass on the tray with her tools. Assuming the tooth was somewhere inside there, I started telling Grace, “Its alright; its over.” The dentist had Grace open her mouth again and went back in with the crowbar. In an attempt to stay as still as she could, Grace squirmed and writhed in pain. The dentist triumphantly pulled out the tooth and threw in in the sink. Grace spit out a mouthful of blood. We immediately started wondering what that first mass was that she pulled out and started asking, “Did she pull out two teeth?” Sino asked the dentist, and she said she only pulled out one tooth.

We sat out in the hall for a couple minutes to make sure Grace didn't continue to bleed. She was exhausted; I was exhausted just from watching someone get violated like that. Sino said it looked like the dentist was in a hurry because there were more people waiting. The numbness in Grace's gums started to fade and gave way to pain. We waited a couple minutes, and the dentist cleared us to go. We went to a drug store on the way back to get an antibiotic and a painkiller. Grace collapsed on the bed right went we got back home. She started spitting out more and more blood, so we got a little nervous. Finally, I called Sino back and asked him if he would go back with us to the hospital. When we talked to the dentist again, she just put in new gauze and told us that the bleeding was good. It would bleed out all the bad things. I thought that “bleeding” went out of practice a long time ago, but apparently not.

We went back home, and Grace jacked herself up on enough painkillers to go to sleep. She napped until late in the evening. While she was asleep, I did some research on the internet and learned about what should have been done. Grace had a horizontal impaction, and the dentist should have cut the tooth in half and pulled it out of a smaller hole instead of just ripping the tooth out through the gums. I also froze some bags of ice, so she could numb her face when she woke up. After sleeping so long, she still didn't feel any better. We ate a little, watched a movie, and went to sleep for the night.

She felt much better when we woke up the next morning. I got a flashlight and took a look in her mouth. It looked like everything had healed substantially, but there was a small black hole where her jaw is attached. We think that the hole is opened up from where the hunk of gums was ripped out. The hole is still there, but Grace feels fine now. The moral of this story is to get your wisdom teeth removed before you come to China. We have resolved that if anything else requires major medical attention while we are here, we are going to the American hospital in Beijing.

On Wednesday, I gave finals to two of my classes. Sam, a friend of Sino, said to me when I came into class, “I heard your girlfriend met a Mongolian dentist.” I expressed my surprise at learn that the dentist was Mongolian, but he explained to me that calling a dentist Mongolian is an insult. He said that in Mongolia, dentist do more work on animals than on people, so they aren't very skilled. In administering those two exams, I have six hours left of work until March 1^st. I'm settling in nicely for this two and a half month vacation.

We had a very nice Christmas here. It started with a Christmas party in my Engineering class. I came in a makeshift Santa costume that my class loved. I had my UGA sweatshirt stuffed with some pillows, a toilet paper beard, and a red Santa hat. I told them a little about Christmas and Santa Claus, but as I was speaking, my toilet paper mustache kept falling into my mouth. We sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and played the same game with presents as we had played when Sinterklaas came to Harbin. Grace and I spiked the presents with some “sanitary napkins”. Given that Chinese people my age are still in adolescent in maturity, they responded just the way we hoped they would. They liked the game and were very competitive, so the party went well.

With the red hats we purchased for the Christmas party, Grace and I intentionally deceived Chinese people about American Christmas traditions. We wore these hats everywhere from Friday until Christmas. We wore these hats like it was our religious duty. We drew more giggles and hellos than usual this week, and we occasionally got Merry Christmas or Shendan kuaile. Hopefully, people in Harbin will come to expect Americans to wears these hats for future Christmases.

Grace and I feasted on delicacies inaccessible to the average Chinese person for Christmas. Grace's family always makes peanut butter balls and a tuna tree for Christmas. A peanut butter ball is a mixture of peanut butter and sugar rolled into a ball and dipped into melted chocolate. A tuna tree is can tuna mixed with cream cheese and a bit of onion molded into the shape of a Christmas tree and served with crackers. Both were extremely delicious. On the Saturday before Christmas, Stephan and Sven came over, and we shared some of our peanut butter balls with them along with some chili. Grace and I went to the nicest restaurant in town for our Christmas Eve dinner, Pizza Hut. We were greeted by a man in a suit; there was a twenty minute wait (waiting for restaurants in nearly unheard of in China), so he took our phone number to call us when our table was ready. We were starving, so we ate an ice cream cone and French fries at McDonald's in the mean time. When our table became available, we sat down and ordered a supreme pizza. It was wonderful, and it doubled the amount of cheese I've eaten since I've been in China. It was also the most expensive meal I've had here. Christmas morning, we opened presents and ate the tuna tree and some granola. Grace gave me a soccer ball and two ping-pong paddles, and I gave her more rare foods: chocolate icing, whipping cream, cupcakes, and dark chocolate. We indulged ourselves in some luxurious foods with Christmas as the excuse.

In the afternoon on Christmas Day, we met with Sven, Stephan, and Leke (our Nigerian friend who studies at HIT) to go to the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival. The Snow and Ice Festival is the only reason that any tourists come to Harbin. In the afternoon and into the night, we went and saw the snow sculptures at Sun Island Park. This year they made the world's longest snow sculpture. A Canadian team came and helped with it, so it has a Canadian theme. Half of the sculpture is of indigenous Canadians (i.e. Indians), and the other half is Niagara Falls. The Niagara Falls part of the sculpture wasn't quite finished, so we got to see them working on that. Some of the smaller sculptures were also pretty impressive. Later that night, we went to the Ice World. The Ice World is a collection of buildings made from blocks of ice that are cut from the Songhua River and illuminated with neon lights. The theme this year seemed to be religious structures. We all enjoyed it, and Grace and I particularly enjoyed the ice slides. They were fun, but lame Chinese people were going too slowly on them and held us up.

There are many pictures on my picture site from all our Christmas activities if you're interested in taking a look. I hope you and your's had a very Merry Christmas.

Your next skiing vacation may (or may not) be in China

This past weekend, Grace, Marc, Stephan, Sven, and I went to Yabuli to go skiing. Yabuli, according to Lonely Planet, is the biggest and best equipped skiing area in China. It is not far from Harbin; it took three hours by train to get there. We left Friday evening to go ski on Saturday and Sunday. The train ride in itself was pleasant. A tradition is beginning to be developed when traveling on train. For the trip to Beijing, I brought a bottle of wine named "Grand Dragon". Grand Dragon cost a little over ten yuan (about a dollar twenty-five) for a liter and a half bottle. It tastes like grape juice with some alcohol in it. Stephan brought a left-over bottle from the Sinterklaas party for the ride to Yabuli. Grand Dragon, or just "the dragon" as it is affectionately called, certainly makes the train far more enjoyable. Come to think of it, Grand Dragon is present for most all of our gatherings.

We arrived in Yabuli a little after eight at night. Yabuli is fueled by tourists coming for skiing, so outside the train station, there were around ten minibus taxis waiting for trains to arrive. We were recommended a cheap hotel by a fellow teacher and student in Harbin. Since Sven has the best Chinese among us, he was the chief negotiator for our taxi to the hotel. We haggled for a while. Sven was trying to get the price of the taxi down to thirty yuan for all of us. By the time we agreed to take a cab for forty, all the Chinese tourist had long since agreed on prices, and we were the only ones left in the parking lot.

We piled into the little van with all of our stuff. We drove a little ways, and then the lady that was negotiating for our driver insisted that we pay fifteen yuan a person. We were not pleased that she recanted the price we had agreed upon, so we told them to stop the car and got out right there. We were still in the town, and when we got out, more little buses crowded around us and began haggling for our patronage. Stephan slid away from the small mob that was encircling us and bought us some beef on a stick for a snack. This mob became so aggressive that Marc began a counter-attack. He got up in the drivers' faces instead of the other way around and began speaking English to them very quickly. He just spoke nonsense to them like, "Hi, how are you? What are you doing? Oh really, that's interesting. What's your name?" This really intimidated the drivers much to our delight. I encouraged him to switch from English to Dutch. It became clear to us that this situation was not going to yield a price that was desirable, so we just walked away.

We were prepared to just wander the town until we found something suitable in terms of a taxi or hotel when we stumbled upon a toy store that looked like it was closing. With no real plan and nothing better to do, we knocked on the door, and the owner eagerly opened the door for us. We came in a perused the place for a while. Sven explained our situation to the owner who promptly called one of his friends. Grace and I made friends with his two daughters. They were sleeping in a room adjacent to the store, and the commotion of our entry woke them up. I chatted with them for a few seconds, and Grace took a picture with them. The store was filled with the typical set of Chinese toys, dollar store junk and toy guns. There was also an assortment of model America arms such as jets and battleships.

The owner's friend arrived with his taxi. At the same time, another taxi driver that had annoyed us earlier came into the store. Marc resumed his foreign language tactic, and I lined everyone up for a picture with the driver. This frustrated him enough to where he left the store. Sven was able to successfully get the price of a ride with the owner's friend down to thirty yuan. We bid farewell to our friends in the toy store and left for our hotel.

Along the way, our taxi driver proved himself to be a very friendly guy. I sat in the front and chatted with him as best I could. Then he shared with us the English words he had learned. It was so cold that night that all the windows were frozen over. The driver would scrape the ice off of the windshield and his side window with a plastic card, and the windows would freeze back up in thirty seconds. Sven asked him how cold was that night; the driver said negative twenty degrees Celsius.

We drove by a hotel, and apparently, one of the driver's friends was waiting outside trying to flag people down to go to his hotel. The driver stopped, and I was thinking, "This is no good. He is going to leave us here with his friend, and we're going to have to pay whatever they demand for a hotel.” The driver rolled down the window and started talking to the guy. Our driver asked how much it was for a night, and the guy outside the hotel said over two hundred. Our driver told him that it was too much and kept driving us to the hotel we requested. I was shocked. It was the first time a Chinese stranger in tourist spot looked out for us.

We arrived at our hotel at what seemed like midnight. Our hotel was far away from any bright lights, and there was enough cloud cover to block the starlight. We went inside and looked around the hotel for a minute. The entire place was probably seven rooms. There was a kitchen, a bathroom without a shower, a little dining room with a TV, and four rooms for guests. These rooms were luxuriously furnished with only a raised platform with warm coils under it called a kang. These took up the entire floor of the room.

We chose a room. There were two rooms available. One was larger with many windows, but the windows made it pretty cold. The other room was about the size of a tent, but it didn't have any windows. Our neighbors were eating and drinking very loudly next to us. They sat next to a table with short legs on top of their kang. They warmly invited Sven in for a beer shot, and Sven obliged them. We began bargaining for the price of the room. The price started at two hundred but almost immediately dropped to one hundred and fifty. Our driver once again swooped in on our behalf and told us in front of the lady running the hotel that he could take us to a place where we could stay for twenty yuan a person. Once again, I was shocked. The price promptly went to one hundred. At this point, our crew smelt blood and went in for the kill. We demanded eighty for the night. Sven calmly pleaded our case while some of us jumped up and down in the room chanting, “Eighty! Eighty! Eighty!” Our techniques ultimately proved fruitless; we settled for one hundred. Impressed with our driver, we paid him and got his phone number, so we could call him for a ride back to the train station.

That night we ate at our hotel. One of the workers there told us he would take us to the slopes for free in the morning. We snuggled up with the blankets the hotel provided for us on our kang and went to sleep. There was much debate about who got to sleep where because everyone wanted to sleep next to me. I think we all slept pretty well that night. Marc turned around and slept with his head at everyone's feet. I only woke up once or twice. I only woke up because when I went to roll over in my sleep, my back hit the cold wall.

We got a later start than expected the next morning. We got a mediocre breakfast from our hotel and piled in a van. The guy that told us the previous night that he would drive us to the slopes in the morning told us over breakfast that that day skiing would cost four hundred and ten yuan. Marc had done quite a bit of research before the trip, and he had talked to the people who run the slopes in Yabuli. Initially, they told Marc that there was a package for rental, a day of skiing, and a night in their three star hotel for two hundred and eighty per person. Later in the week, Marc talked to them again, and they told him that their promotion had ended and it would cost over three hundred for a day of skiing.

The hotel employee drove us to the lift, and we wandered off. We looked around for a little while and just played in the snow. There was only one lift going to the peak and four slopes coming out to the left of the peak. The mountains were slightly more impressive than those of Wudalian Chi, but not by much. The mountains and the skiing facilities were small even by North Carolina skiing standards. Still, it was very pretty and nice to be out of the city. The fresh air was refreshing. While we were goofing off, a friend called Marc. Luciano, a Brazilian friend from our soccer team, was meeting us in Yabuli to come ski. He took an early train and arrived at the three star hotel owned by the same company that owns the slopes. He told us that the package for two eighty was still available. We told the guy from our hotel that was trying to rip us off goodbye and took a bus owned by the other hotel, the Windmill Inn, down the mountain to talk with their management.

When we arrived at the other hotel, Luciano and the managers of the hotel were waiting for us. One of the managers confirmed what we had expected; the guy from our hotel was trying to screw us. We agreed to take their promotional offer, but we asked to have the day of skiing split over two days since it was already getting close to noon. Sven and I rode over to the hotel where we stayed the night before to pick up our bags. One of the vans from the Windmill Inn gave us a free ride. Sven went in to handle paying our outstanding bill from dinner and breakfast, and I started grabbing our bags. After I came outside with our bags, our ride had left. I guess there was some kind of misunderstanding. I called Marc and had him send another van over. Sven settled the price for the meals, and it ended up being fifteen yuan more expensive than the room. We loaded up the van and bid adieu to our cozy, little kang.

Sven and I returned to our new hotel just as money started changing hands. We were told that we had to put down a thousand yuan deposit on the room and a two hundred deposit per person for skis. Grace, Sven, and I all had to rent ski pants, so I inquired about those. They were fifty yuan a day to rent, but we had to put down a three hundred yuan deposit per pair of pants. Our deposits totaled nearly three thousand yuan. For the rest of the trip we joked about the absurdity of the deposits. We would ask each other if we had paid the deposit for the plates at breakfast or for the mountain while we were skiing. We signed away the rights to each of our first-born children, and then, we were allowed to go to our rooms. Our rooms were certainly the nicest place I could have hoped to have stayed in China. It was a completely standard hotel room, and our rooms even had a little, electric heater that was made to look like a fireplace. There were two beds in each room, and no one had to share!

Finally, we were prepared to go skiing. We geared up and waited outside the front of the hotel for the next bus running to the slopes. Our hotel was in the central hotel area for skiing in Yabuli called Windmill Village. All the little hotels had Chinese conceived windmills. They did not make the Dutch feel at home. Even though this was the biggest part of the skiing area, it still seemed bare. Just before noon, a bus came and took us to the lift. We were fitted up with skis and snowboards, and we were ready to go. Even though I normally snowboard, I chose to ski. Grace had never skied before, and I had only been skiing once. I thought that it would be more fun for me to do something I wasn't that good at if I had to hang out with Grace while she was learning. The bunny slope would be more fun that way.

Marc spent a winter in Austria working as a ski instructor. He gave Grace some tips and exercises, and she looked pretty comfortable right away. We watched her for a while and then decided to make one run while she did the exercises Marc gave her. We took the lift up the mountain. Instead of just having a bar that pulled over the chair lift, there was a retractable bubble to help block the wind. It was so cold that it was almost necessary. We made it to the top and snapped some pictures. I selected a blue route for my first trip down. We started out, and it was great. I felt more confident and comfortable than could have expected. I made it half way down the mountain smoothly when we can to another part of the lift. You could get back on the lift and forgo the second half of the run. I opted to cruise right by. There was a slight incline to the next run, so I picked up speed to make it over. Just past the peak of the incline, I hit powder. The tips of my skis went under the snow, and I busted face-first into the snow. It wasn't particularly painful, but when Marc came up over the hill, he had a good laugh at me sprawled out in the snow with my face heavily powdered. At this point I was thinking that I was pleased with my performance thus far, and a fall had to be expected some where along my first run.

From there on out, things got much rougher. I began to fall at least every fifty feet. The slope was really narrow, fairly steep, and had about four feet of powder. In those conditions, I was not good enough to either snow plow or cut back and forth. It made me feel like less of a goof that Marc also fell once or twice, but surely, I was a goof. On my fourth or fifth fall, I was picking up speed, and my knee hit a big rock. I left out a few choice words. I took a couple minutes to gather myself, and got back up. After taking another couple falls, I decided just to go straight down. I think I just got too intimidated at that point to ski with any confidence. I let my legs go loose to absorb the bumps and just zoomed straight down. The plan proved to be effective. I made it down the rest of the slope, which at this point was a conglomeration of snow and grass, without falling.

We reached Grace at the bottom after what had felt like two hours. Marc and Grace admired the amount of ice I had on my face after my many falls. Marc said I looked like a yeti. Grace showed off her new skills. She was beginning to turn and could slow herself down and stop. However, one of her exhibitions didn't go as well. She lost her balance, fell on her side, and rolled to her back. Her skis stayed attached the whole time, so they flailed about while she rolled over. Again, observing someone else fall made me feel better about myself. This time it wasn't so much about someone falling; it was about how it looked like the stereotypical, awkward, beginner skier fall. I needed some comic relief. All-in-all, I was impressed with how well she picked up the basic principles of skiing.

All three of us took the lift back up. On the top of the mountain, there was a bunny slope with a rope lift. Marc led Grace down and gave her instruction; I attempted to regain my confidence. Marc went down again, and I stayed with Grace for another run. After we finished the run, Grace said her hands and toes were freezing. We had gone to buy gloves for this trip earlier in the week, and much debate centered on what kind of gloves we should buy. Contrary to my nature in terms of shopping, I pushed for better, more expensive gloves, but Grace didn't care for the way they fit. We ended up buying cheap gloves because we didn't want to make an investment in something we may not use again while we're here. Her gloves had gotten a little damp, and the fingers on them froze. Her hands had to be frost-bitten. There was a little restaurant at the top of the mountain, and we retreated there to warm up.

We entered and found that Stephan and Sven were also taking a break. They were displeased with the quality of the slopes. The black slopes were too icy and too difficult for Stephan. However, there were not really any other runs to chose from that were more appropriate to his level. Luciano was not far behind us, and he had the same complaint as Stephan. Luciano had only learned how to snowboard the year before, so the slopes were not enjoyable. He decided that he would not stay the night and went back to Harbin that night. Finally, Marc trickled in a little later also dissatisfied with the iciness his latest run. We all hung out for a while and eventually decided to get back out there. When I went to get back up, me knee had gone stiff. I reached down, and it had already started swelling. Grace and I went back out to the bunny slope, but we only made one more run. My knee was uncomfortable, and my gloves started freezing this time. We went back into the restaurant and played rummy with the cards our hotel had given us for about an hour. Then we took the lift back down the mountain, and our crew returned to the hotel.

When we got back, Marc and Sven went to go look for a place to eat dinner; the rest of us stayed at the hotel to clean up and change clothes. The bathroom in our hotel had a bathtub, and I was really excited about taking a nice, hot bath. I turned on the water, but there was nothing but cold water. A minute later, Stephan called and asked if we had hot water. Given that I was half-naked already in anticipation of a bath, Grace went down to the front desk, and with a combination of hand signals and broken Chinese, she finally got to speak with someone who could tell her in English that there was only hot water between six and eleven at night and six to nine in the morning. In the meantime, Marc and Sven found a restaurant that they deemed acceptable, so they called us to come meet them. I had to settle for just a change of clothes.

Dinner that night was at another hotel that was a little like the one in which we stayed the previous night except this on was larger and nicer. Sven and Marc had already been seated in a room with a kang. There was a short table with little plastic stools on the kang. The floor was lined with a Hawaiian vinyl print, and there were newspapers that served as wallpaper. The plastic stool I sat on was not strong enough to hold my big American butt, so it cracked underneath me. The food and beer were probably the cheapest in the town, and the food was really good. We hadn't eaten much since we got Yabuli, so we ravaged our meal. With our bellies full, we just laid down on the floor in our room and relaxed.

On the way out, Stephan bought a big box of fireworks for twenty yuan. When we went outside, we crossed a bridge, and Stephan set the fireworks off right there. He certainly found quite a value; there were four or five big, multi-colored fireworks that shot out staggered over a twenty second span. We were all surprised about what came out of the box. On the walk back to our hotel, there was an old train turned into a restaurant. We went in to have a look, and bought some coffee. It was a neat little place, but it was overpriced. We didn't stay long.

Grace got in the shower when we got back. While she showered, I laid down on the bed to wait for my turn and was asleep in a few minutes. The next morning, Grace and I woke up to a knock on the door from Marc for breakfast. We went to the hotel restaurant, but their breakfast buffet had already ended. We ended up ordering off the menu, but by the time we were done, the hot water was shut off again. I was a little desperate for a bath at this point. I took a water jug used to boil water for tea from each of our rooms and began to fill up the tub with hot water one liter at a time. I put a little cold water into the tub just so there would be enough water to bath, and after about twelve liters came to a boil, I decided that the water was warm enough. The lukewarm bath didn't satisfy the desire for the hot bath that I had hoped for.

Grace, Stephan, and I decided not to ski again that day. Stephan took a bad fall the day before as well. He was wearing a backpack, and when he fell, he crushed a stainless steel water bottle and broke his camera. While Marc and Sven went skiing, we found the hotel's bowling alley. There were four lanes, and they probably hadn't been waxed since they were built. The shoes I rented were torn in the back. Things were really slow there. While we bowled, three employees attended to us. A bartender, a employee who was writing our scores, and another employee who was just hanging around sat at the lane next to ours. The lady who was keeping our scores didn't know how to score spares and strikes, so I tried to teach here. It was probably the most challenging Chinese experience I've had thus far. She didn't understand, but I think the bartender figured it out. I found it strange that this woman's job was to keep score, and no one taught her how to do it.

After we finished a very expensive game of bowling, we decided to walk around. It was warmer, so it was difficult to find the right amount of clothes for the temperature. When we were walking, we would be too hot, but if we just stopped to look at something, we would be too cold. Somewhere along the way I took off my hat and dropped it. I never found it, but luckily I brough a spare on the trip. On our walk, we found a frozen pond, a dam, and one of the beginner slopes. It was a clear day, and the views were really nice. We walked up the mountain to the lift and had a cup of coffee there. Stephan called Marc to see when they were leaving, and we decided to go ahead a start checkout. We went back, put all the bags in one room, and checked out of the other two. We called the taxi driver from our first day to come pick us up, and he beat Marc and Sven to the hotel. Marc and Sven got back; we got back all our deposits, loaded the taxi, and headed back for the train station.

Our driver took us by a supermarket that he said would be the cheapest in town, and we stocked up for the train ride. Then when we got to the station, he came in and helped us buy our tickets. We tried to offer him an extra ten yuan for the ride and his help but he wouldn't take it. If any of you ever find yourself going to Yabuli, I can get you the number of a good taxi driver. One the train we had our dinner, and we bought some peanuts to use as poker chips. Several older Chinese guys gathered around to watch us play. The ride back went as quickly as the rest of the weekend.

When we went to Wudalian Chi, Sven, Marc, and I hatched a plan to try to visit some companies in China and develop some connections. Luciano works for a Brazilian airplane company called Embraer, and Marc arranged with Luciano a trip for some of us to go to their factory here in Harbin. On Monday, we got the opportunity to pay them a visit. The CEO of Harbin Embraer gave us a presentation and answered questions. Then, Luciano gave us a tour of the factory floor. I had a lot of misconceptions about how an airplane factory would look. I assumed that the company would make their own materials and assemble them, but they simply assemble parts manufactured by other companies. There were no heavy machines to assemble the planes; the floor was very open and clean, and it was really quiet. Since the plane is essentially put together by hand, it seems like there would be a lot of room for human error, but I was assured many precautions are taken to eliminate human error. In fact, Luciano's job is to preform exhaustive quality checks on the planes during each step of assembly. I asked him how labor laws differ between Brazil and China, and he said that they are completely different worlds. He said that people just walk around on top of the planes here, and if they did that in Brazil, that employee and his supervisor would be fired on the spot. He also noted that the attitude of the workers on the floor is totally different in China. There is no questioning of authority; employees just do what they're told. It was a really interesting trip, but unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any pictures for ourselves. However, one of the employees took some pictures for us, so hopefully, I'll have them soon.

Eve (if you don't recall, Eve is a student that invited me to her home for dinner) is the president of the English Social Club on campus, and she invited Grace and I to come to one of their meetings. On Tuesday, we were special guests at one of their meetings. First, we introduced ourselves and fielded questions. We lead a couple classic American games. Grace taught them a game I had never played before called “Captain's Coming.” It is a lot like Simon Says, and they all enjoyed it. We played telephone as well. I started and said, “Hello Mother, I love you very much,” to keep it simple for them. It came out as, “I don't know the name of the foreign girl that I love.” Chinese students are easily amused, so they got a big kick out of that. The games that Eve led were like charades and Taboo. For the Taboo game, a student would be given a word in Chinese, and Grace and I would have to guess the word in English from their descriptions in English. For the final round of the game, they made us describe English words in Chinese. It was difficult for me, but Grace found a more efficient method. She would say this or that in Chinese and point; it worked really well.

Eve and her boyfriend, whom she cleverly gave the English name Adam, invited us to dinner on Thursday to thank us for attending the meeting. We went to a good restaurant and had a porktastic feast. My favorite part was being given these round, paper-thin, translucent pieces of bread that resembled tortillas. We wrapped one pork dish inside of them and had Chinese fajitas; it maybe my new favorite Chinese dish. Over the course of dinner, Grace and I were asked about our pets. I told them I have two cats at home; Grace said she has a dog. Eve replied, “My mother would never let us have a pet because she was worried that they would drop... (ah, how do you say) drop mao.” Grace and I started cracking up. She asked us what mao means in English, and I told her poop. After giggling for a while longer, I had a realization. I asked, “Is mao the same mao as maoyi (wool sweater).” She said yes and rained on our parade; she meant shedding. Nevertheless, I still like the expression “drop mao” better than “take a poop.” I'm only going to call it mao from now on.

This week we are losing two more of our foreign friends. Sara returned to Portugal on Sunday morning, and Marc leaves Harbin on Monday. Marc is going to Beijing to get his visa for studying there next semester. His girlfriend will arrive on Thursday in Beijing, and they will travel around the country. Then he gets to go back home for Spring Festival to go skiing in Switzerland and celebrate Carnival. He'll come back to Beijing in March to study for another semester at Qinghua University. I'm very jealous of his plans. On Saturday, we had dinner and went out to send them off. After dinner, only the same crew that went skiing was left. We roamed the streets looking for a different bar than normal, but it was the coldest night of the year thus far. It hit negative nine that night, so walking turned to running to say warm. We assumed military cadence and started shouting revolutionary phrases. When we got tired, we found a pool hall and arcade, so we played pool and a Dance Dance Revolution-like game until it was time for Stephan to DJ. We went to Box, danced to Stephan's choice of music, and had a late a wonderful evening.

I have put up many pictures from recent events up on my picture site, so take a look. I should have captions on the new pictures shortly. I really hope to hear from all of you soon.