Matt's Myth

Arise!

2010-09-09T03:06:00.003-04:00

What's this?! Matt's Myth continues with a strange new adventure in a very cold place ...

This is The End.

2009-02-17T00:00:00.003-05:00

I always did like the way Nicki made such a ... succinct (shall we say) exit. And here I am, dragging out my goodbyes and my final tenuous tethers to China, to my time there and this long discursive digest of what it meant and continues to mean. It's time to put this chapter behind me for good; if not China entirely, then China circa 2006-2008. This isn't so much closing the book as it is more like shuttering this volume, placing it back on the shelf, and reaching for a new one. One that I am writing now, one that may or may not be accompanied by a self-obsessed blog.

So: Nicki left before me, just days before in fact; I left Jilin with James and Jim similarly eager to leave, while Kevin remains there, at least until summer; and Aaron is in Zhanjiang, preparing to assume a bigger role in Maryknoll. Congratulations are in order, because I can't think of a better person for that job, other than the man currently doing it.

Today, and I hope until the day I die, memories from China and my travels in Asia randomly bubble up to the surface, a smile blooming on my face as they break through the surface of my conscious mind, like spotting an elusive whale or a rare fish brilliantly leaping out of the murky calm, dazzling you with profound happiness and awe. I can hardly believe all that I saw and did and experienced during those two years, the stories I have to share and the memories I will forever treasure, and I am grateful to so many people that helped me along the way. And I've gotta say that I'm really grateful that I had the foresight and stubbornness and sheer will to take that first step and get on the plane. It was a move that felt half brilliant and half insane, and it's up to you to decide which.

I would like to thank you, reader, and readers past and present, for taking the time to humor me by reading these posts that I spent far too much time polishing. This blog was never more than a butcher shop of vanity, but while keeping the folks at home informed about what was happening to me on the other side of the planet, I hope I was able to offer some insight, however brief, of worlds some may never see.

In a final self-referential nod, I really do think I said it best when I first left Zhanjiang, when I first tried to put this past into words: you too, dear reader, can do this. You can teach, you can travel, you can make your life the meaningful and fulfilling adventure you always hoped it would be. And you should do it, too; you should kick your own ass to do it.

Well ... I'm back. That's it! Thanks for reading! And who knows what will come next? It's a magical world, Hobbes 'ol buddy ... let's go exploring!

Cool Things Happen (and Matt is Very Late)

2009-01-29T13:18:00.003-05:00

2009 is damn near a month old and I haven't even talked about one of the coolest things to happen in 2008: Jim Hartzel and Cecilia Baldino went to Marriage Camp, and came back Jim and Cecilia Hartzel.

The event was December 20, and in the words of many, "it was awesome." An unexpected delay in Jim's friends from Minnesota resulted in me being able to actually join them all down in Atlantic City for Jim's pseudo-bachelor party. With the term at Del Tech over and a little scheduling kung fu, I found myself scrambling to put Jim and C’s gift together and get on the road before I missed the debauchery.

Of course, I use debauchery loosely and "pseudo" freely, because Jim’s too much of a good guy to do that tragically generic bachelor-party-and-strippers thing. Not that there weren’t strippers—on the contrary, there were, Atlantic City’s finest and/or most conveniently located—just that Jim was off losing money in the casino, being what I’ve heard people say is a “good person.” It was his drunken celebratory-cigar-chomping friends, humble narrator included, that did the mental jujitsu of justifying the obligatory bachelor party trip to the strip club, sans bachelor.

But before the casino and before dinner at Hooters and before the gambling and the late-night decadence, we met in our hotel rooms, sipping Fitz’s Homemade Margaritas. You can make them at home, too: all you need is green Hawaiian Punch, whatever alcohol is handy, and a very loose definition of the word “margarita.”

Fitz and Billy get the night started right.

The secret ingredient is alcohol.

Good to not-be-in-China for this!

Barkeep! Give me your finest in ghetto margaritas!

Fitz pours a classy beer.

This is as bad as it got. Honestly.

Oh yes.

I found myself stumbling into my hotel room and collapsing in a bed, I think it was mine, around five in the morning; and through some power that I'm almost (but not quite) ready to attribute to some supremely powerful deity, I woke up to my 8:30 wake-up call and got Twan, Minnesota Buddy #1 (Bubba, he said was his name, but you and I know that that’s a lie), and myself off on the road before nine. Twan had to get up to the hotel in King of Prussia, PA early; he had to get there in time to meet up with Jim, go back to Jersey to get Assorted Wedding Stuff (AWS); and I was just the man to get him there. I was really into Wilco at the time and remember playing the hell out of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. Twan did not care for it.

So it was a slow night of talking and reminiscing, sipping slow drinks in the lobby bar while spending some good quality time with my old college buddies. It sounds weird and something a guy in his forties would say, but I hadn’t much of these guys since college, what with China and all, and it was good to reconnect. The next morning, the weather frozen and bleakly cold, we made our way over to Villanova for the wedding.

Fitz and his girlfriend Sara Beth. She takes good care of him, and you can barely notice the Downs.

My pictures from the ceremony are crap. This'll have to do. Can't say I've seen too many brides in my day, but damn if Cecilia didn't look absolutely stunning.

At the reception ... something tells me we're going to, yes, here it comes, wedding montage, GO!

What lovely ladies you have there Jim!

Look who kinda cleans up nice!

Don't know why, it was a total accident ... but I love this shot.

Mac and Steph, me and Keiff ... practically a double date.

Dancin'!

So ... so not suave.

Ladies and gentlemen, the class of 2006.

Ladies and gentlemen, a bunch of bums from Minnesota or Montana or something.

More dancin'!

Mr. and Mrs. Hartzel, newly minted and gettin' down.

The wedding, in short, was great. Awesome. Amazing. All those words that you hear used to describe things like nachos or a movie you liked a lot, but their true meaning is really reserved for moments like this: when friends come together, strike up old conversations, hang out for the first time in months or years and act and feel like they never missed a beat, all in the name of seeing two friends come together in this marriage that just felt so right, so predetermined, a story ending the only way it could. It was great to see my old friends, great to laugh with them and talk with them, and it was great to see Jim and Cecilia become Mr. and Mrs. Hartzel surrounded by them. I felt the ripples of this wedding begin all the way in China, from when Jim and I drove up to Boston on a rainy summer weekend in '07 and he told me he was buying the ring and planning the question ... and to see it done at last ...

... the end.

The End of the Year

2008-12-30T18:44:00.002-05:00

2008 has been a long year. I suspect I won't be the only one happy to see it go, and yet, 2008 has help some wonderful memories.

This year began for me ... well, let's see. My earliest memories of this year are of Harbin, China, and its Tiger Park and Ice Festival. I remember bundling up in every piece of clothing I had, in our Soviet-era hotel which felt like there was a blast furnace in every room, and stepping outside into the coldest weather I had ever experienced. An entire city made of ice, and not a single drop of melt from those sculptures.

And then ... whew. Too many places to count. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, southern Yunan province, traveling with Sarah and meeting up with Jim and Kat in Ayuthya and James and Caroline in Luang Prabang ... wonderful memories of those first months of 2008.

And then came my return to Jilin: teaching again, Chinese lessons and tutors, dinner with friends, reading The Baroque Cycle and writing lessons and watching downloaded episodes of The Wire and trying to figure out some kind of plan for life after China. Those months from March to June are a freakish ball of memories, a rolling katamari of moments and people and smells and meals. In the end, I left Jilin with little in the way of a clear plan, but taking my leave of China was welcome. And sometimes I miss it so much.

Of course, summer in Europe. This post would be far too long if I dwelt on that here. But seeing Europe with fresh, world-weary eyes made it all the more spectacular.

It's amazing how many times I've tried to take mental snapshots, moments where I've said to myself, stern and with force, "remember this!" Memories of importance, of trivialities, of times good and bad and scary, and each time I steel myself to take something in, capture it forever in my head, and yet here I sit, ready and willing to bring back a handful of awesome memories, most but a whisper in my mind, a suggestion of what was and what I wanted to keep. So it goes, I suppose. There's a certain sadness to it, that when all else fades--the photos, the souvenirs, the novelty t-shirts--all you're left with is memories. And when those are lost ...

And the final months of this year have been spent here, back in America, back home, working some strange hours at strange jobs, a soft-peddled struggle for some kind of next step. Christmas has been a kind of mental endzone for me for a while, a moment to look forward to, and now its come and gone, and I realize ... well, it's just a day. It's a special day, sure, but not that special, and whatever it meant to me to be here at home for that day, well, its time to find something else to live for, man. Time to find something more fulfilling and challenging and worthy to live for.

I asked a guy I work with what his New Years resolution was going to be, if any. He said he doesn't do resolutions, but each year, he dedicates himself to living for something. Last year, he said, he dedicated his life to living for laughter; it work? I asked, and he said with a smile, Yeah. I laughed a lot.

In 2009, I want to live for improvement. I want to improve my health, and hopefully, improve that waistline as well. I want to improve my Chinese. I want to improve my creativity. I want to improve my cooking. And I want to improve my future. Too many things to name, and I prefer the holistic, everything-is-connected approach anyway.

So here's to improvement. May 2009 be the most improved year ever!

Thanksgiving is Awesome

2008-11-27T22:24:00.002-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Today my family hosted the "Smith" side of the Smith-Curran marriage which has spawned me and my kin. We had a large group of sixteen, and I eagerly helped prepare the meal.

First off, the turkey:

From Thanksgiving

Oh yes. Brined for about an hour per pound, in this case, sixteen hours the night before. The brine was 3/4 cup of salt and 1/2 cup of sugar for every gallon of water. After the brine I rinsed the turkey thoroughly and applied the rub: 1/3 cup fresh-ground peppercorns, 1/3 cup salt/seasoned salt, and about 1/6 cup garlic salt/powder. I rubbed the mix all over (hence the name), and brought it over here ...

From Thanksgiving

... to the steaming vat of waiting peanut oil. You can see the thermometer telling us the oil was far too hot to cook with, almost 500 degrees (Fahrenheit, my international friends; about 260C). We cooled it off to about 400F, and when we put the turkey in it dropped within the range of 300-350F (165C).

From Thanksgiving

Let's go to work.

From Thanksgiving

This ridiculously elaborate way of getting the turkey into the boiling-hot oil was all in the name of safety. I think next time I can just slowly drop it in there on my own.

The trick is to drop it in slowly, because the 350F oil does not take kindly to a 42F turkey intruder. It was a slow dip in, out, in, out, in-out-in-out-in, like some kind of deadly hot fondue.

Almost there ...

Ooh, that oil is angry.

OK, it's in. About three minutes of cooktime per pound, we've got about sixteen pounds, so I'll check back in fifty minutes, give or take. In the meantime, let's check out the spread ...

Very nice.

My brother is weird.

Joy! Is the turkey ready?

How's it look, dad? Almost there.

Ah, siblings. It's good to be home for Thanksgiving. Good to be not-in-China.

Obligatory artsy cranberries and coke shot.

Looks like it's ready.

Wow. That is one delicious-looking turkey. Just seeing that makes me want to fry another one.

Yum.

And Duke gives his cautious approval.

In addition to the turkey, I made some damn good cornbread, and a giant bowl of wild-mushroom stuffing made with an olive oil and rosemary loaf. It was a great spread, and everyone loved the turkey: the skin was so crispy and delicious, and the meat stayed so moist and flavorful, the way I had always dreamed a turkey would taste. In case of a frying mishap, we prepared another turkey in the oven (well, hey, sixteen people, one turkey wasn't gonna cut it anyway ...), and it couldn't hold a candle to the fryer: it was dry, less flavorful, just kind of a dumbed-down turkey. I don't know if it was the brine, the fry, or a combination of the two, but I will never roast a turkey again.

Despite all I've bitched about being back in Delaware, it was good to be home for Thanksgiving, and not do it over Skype. Peering into that vat of oil today, checking the temperature and adjusting the turkey as it fried, I got (yet another) flashback of China, of my first dim sum in Hong Kong and Macau's meat markets, of rooftop hangouts in Zhanjiang and dumplings in Jilin. And as awesome as those moments were, as impossible as they seem now sitting here, a lifetime away, and as much as I may miss them or even be happy they're behind me, it's good to be here at home, having lived a bit, now cooling my heels, and waiting to live some more.

Building the World

2008-11-17T21:54:00.003-05:00

I saw Charlie Kaufman's new film Synecdoche, New York the other day, at the Ritz East in Philly. I had some company, too.

The film was a hilariously funny, wildly comedic soiree, all wrapped around a story tinged with a profound melancholy. These feelings, I felt, alternated between the genuine and the overblown. You may have seen this neurotic, gloomy, hypochondrial protagonist before; he's in Kaufman's other films, he's a favorite of Alexander Payne, Wes Anderson, and assorted others working in New Wave Quirk: a decidedly unlikeable, alienated (and alienating) lead character writ large for the sake of comedy. What "Synecdoche" does well is mix this impossibly self-absorbed and sad man with a surreal universe that seems to confirm every dreary thought and anxiety he's ever had, and delights in kicking him when he's already way, way down. If you're not laughing well before our main character is so sick he has to lube up his eyes to cry, this movie probably isn't for you.

I find the comedy--the dark, bizarre, surreal, uncomfortable, wry, ironic, and various-other-adjectives comedy--to be the real reason to see the film. But that overdone melancholy I was speaking of before is, well, overdone, and while taking something real and blowing it up to huge proportions to convey it in a film you can actually sit through is probably a necessary conceit for cinema (but I digress ...), every moment of poignancy the film conjures is overshadowed by the inevitable joke that follows. Hilarious jokes, mind you, but jokes that completely undercut the drama. It's hard to take any dramatic turn the films makes too seriously when it undermines itself with more comedy; how can the death of these characters you've never vested in register if you're laughing at the absurdity of their death on screen? Kaufman has juggled these ideas well enough in the past: his films have always been funny, but they also told a story with humanity and genuine connection that elevated the movie beyond simple comedy, that worked in concert with the laughs to create true poignancy for characters we cared for. But despite Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance, despite a great cast that effortlessly tackles some truly odd acting duties, and despite a story that is only half-told (and then only mostly-well), the film ultimately just can't figure out how to say whatever it is it wants to say. The story rapidly unravels in a messy and noticeably serious final twenty minutes that simply can't prop up the weight of the world that the film has made.

But that world that the film has constructed was a hell of a lot of fun to visit. Despite its flaws, and despite a story that doesn't make it to the finish line, it's definitely worth seeing. I saw it with an audience that had everyone laughing at different moments, which is a pretty interesting thing to experience; there were a few times when I was laughing entirely on my own.

Building the world is something I've been thinking a lot about recently. What kind of world we build for ourselves. Jim and Cecilia are getting married next month, for god's sake, and Matt and T are not too long after that: the whole world of jobs, careers, eventual families, back to school, progress from all directions. The future is bearing down, my friends, and it has appallingly bad breath. I saw Synecdoche with some friends, but also someone new. I had a good time, I enjoyed talking with her, it seemed to be all laughs and smiles making our way around the block for a drink and a snack before going into the theater. She had wonderful eyes, I remember that, a clear marble blue that never seemed to blink, never looked away, ravenous beautiful eyes that took everything in. The film ended, and in the lobby we decided what to do next ... and she had things to do. Generic, exculpable things. And it was in that moment, when those words hit my ears, I felt the weight of exhaustion that coffee and excitement and optimism had only barely held at bay. Because I knew exactly what those things were, those things that have been there these long 24 years, and my voice quivered for just a second (no one noticed, I think), my eyes closing too long in a protracted blink, a slight sorrowful nod as I instantly knew, yet again: this is how my world is made. Slow polite banter as we walked down the street, my car right, her place left, brief and noncommittal goodbyes, and I walked to my car alone.

Zhanjiang Propaganda

2008-11-09T20:05:00.003-05:00

It's very bizarre to see a place where I lived and worked for a year propagandized, but I'd be lying if I said these videos didn't make me a little nostalgic for good 'ol Zhanjiang.

Here's one video for Zhanjiang. And here's another for the college where I worked.

Both those videos are brought to you by YouKu, the Chinese answer to YouTube. (And that's YouKu, pronounced, "yo coo," yo as in yo-yo and coo as in the sound a pigeon makes. Or, in the parlance of our times, "You were in China? Yo, that's coo'!) YouKu's great because the Chinese, in their effortless disregard for intellectual property rights, allow all sorts of things on there: full movies, entire seasons of popular TV shows, and all sorts of other copyrighted goodies that will get you punted off the YouTubes. So visit YouKu and have a look around ... don't worry if you can't understand a damn thing, just type English into the search box, assume roughly the same methods that are at work on YouTube, and go to town.

Well, as I was confident would happen, we now have a President Obama, and I am pleased. All I can say now, is: Mr. Obama, do not fuck this up. Too many people have put too much faith in you and your promises to be let down by politics as usual. Now get to work, and let me know when the first subpoenas are filed against Cheney and company.

I realize I've missed a lot of things that have gone on in my life since I've returned home, and I hope in November I can blog a little more regularly, or find a nice pasture to take this blog out to before I shoot it in the head and put it down for good. I don't have any pictures of lobster with James and Sarah and Mike "Maryland" Khan, and I don't have much else to say that I'd want to write in a little snippet here. So for now here are a few pictures of us at Lawler's place a few weeks back, the first time in a long time I'd seen some of these jokers.

Free Coffee for Voters

2008-11-03T13:16:00.002-05:00

Bring in proof that you voted (I assume this proof varies from state to state) to Starbucks tomorrow and get a free cup of coffee! Spread the word, avid readers! And for those of you that check this thing once a month or so: Ha! Missed out. For Aaron: sorry buddy, doubt they have a 星巴克 in Zhanjiang yet.

I am excited for this election to end, and not only because it has dominated the news here and around the world. And since I know the media has been waiting for it: I'm excited for Obama to win. I'm excited for someone genuine, intelligent, and truly compassionate to lead this country, someone who is not only smart enough to write a book but intelligent enough to make bring his message to such a broad spectrum of people. I'm excited for leadership that doesn't rely on a coterie of sycophants, liars, and self-interested agenda-driven assholes to prop up a hypocritical born-again buffoon. I'm grimly pleased to see the career politician, the man who sacrificed his good name and all he stood for in his desperate grab of the highest office, be rebuked by a war-weary and unhappy populace that sees right through him; somewhere, someone is parsing a variation of that "absolute power corrupts ..." quote. I'm excited for Biden, despite his war hawk leanings and tendency to speak faster than he can think, to bring experience and restraint to a wildly overblown vice presidency. And I'm excited for that epically stupid, fatuous woman, that embarrassment to her party and her gender, to get kicked back to judging beauty pageants in her frozen sunless corner of the country.

So, in case you couldn't tell: Obama '08! He's got a tall order to fill, and if wins and doesn't make some drastic changes, we'll be down to our last best hope: revolution.

Don't forget about the free coffee!

It's Getting Darker

2008-11-02T20:02:00.004-05:00

I'm amazed that autumn, this beautiful autumn I've seen from Delaware to Massachusetts, has consistently evaded the lens of my camera. September to November, up and down the coast, I haven't taken a single photo of the gorgeous scenery that has literally taken my breath away a few times this fall. One of the downsides to being back home: everything is so normal, so familiar, and so I don't take my camera with me everywhere I go anymore, and thus I find myself in November without a single shot of the autumn leaves I so longed for in Zhanjiang and Jilin.

I feel kind of paralyzed lately. If not paralyzed, then orbiting, in stasis, without the momentum to break free of the gravity well, like a character in Dubliners. I don't like living here in DE, at home (despite its obvious financial and automotive upsides), and yet I am finding it incredibly hard to motivate myself to change my circumstances. I don't especially enjoy my job at Starbucks, and while I do enjoy my job at Del Tech, neither are fulfilling in the way I want a jot to be. So the impetus should be on me to get my ass in gear, find a compelling job, move out and get going. But where? Doing what? How? These questions are oppressively unanswerable, and so I push them to the back of my mental desk, and come around to them every now and then, only to feel overwhelmed by them again, and so I push them away, again.

And so I feel like I'm becoming agoraphobic or something: I'm staying at home and reading on nights when a normal virile twenty-four-year-old lad is out and about meeting attractive young women. I'm bored, and yet I just don't want to do anything, meet anyone, or anything. And so I visit OKCupid.com, and I get ignored there about as consistently as I do in real life. My Chinese has gone right down the shitter. I need a change, I need a new environment, probably something urban and north. I have a few ideas, some of them longshots and/or crazy, and if they don't work, I don't know what the hell I am gonna do.

Thoughts

2008-10-08T23:38:00.003-04:00

I found myself thinking a lot about Hong Kong today.

A light drizzle started to come down as I was at work, and it reminded me of walking through the streets of Hong Kong at various times over the past two years. My very first night in Hong Kong, jet-lagged and sleep deprived and a twitching bundle of nerves, navigating the all-too-new maze of streets and bus routes with Nicki and Mike and James, fearing we'd never go home, sweaty and exhausted and quite literally about to cry. My time there over Chinese New Year, in the refuge of the Maryknoll house, watching movies from a staggering priestly library, eating tacos and cheese for the first time in months near the SoHo escalators, a calm before the storm of backpacking, before losing myself in Cambodia or Thailand or Malaysia for weeks at a time. My brief returns after those travels, so invigorating and renewing before returning to the mainland, of this past February when I met up with Kevin, James, Jim, and Sarah and we talked through the night. And my last night, sleeping with the screen door open as the sounds of Stanley bay whispered a lazy lullaby, my last day in Hong Kong spent walking around the now-familiar city with Kevin Clancy, with over $1700USD in Euros in my pocket, crossing the streets with those bells that urge you forward, looking around and knowing that this was goodbye for a long time, walking from the bank to the train station in the light summer drizzle of that strange island, saying goodbye and taking that airport express rapidly out of town for a slow goodbye, looking back at this amazing wonderful city as I sped through Kowloon, to the airport and away.

September: One More for the Road

2008-09-30T23:35:00.004-04:00

Last weekend I drove up to Lancaster, PA to see They Might Be Giants. I've enjoyed TMBG quite a bit; not as hardcore as my brother or some friends who seem to know the track list of every album and the lyrics to all the songs, but enough to want to cough up thirty bucks to seem them in concert. And see them I did, in an ultimately annoyingly small venue that attracted a wide range of listeners, from kids coming with their parents (and maybe even grandparents) to drunk obnoxious idiots who did their most violent thrashing and moshing in the quiet moments between the opening act and that headliner. It takes a special kind of idiot to mosh without music, but in their special mission, they achieved great success.

The opening act was Les Chauds Lapins (forgive the link to MySpace), a niche opener if I ever heard one. A duet, a guy and a girl, both playing banjos (and, eventually, an antique-looking acoustic guitar), performing almost exclusively French pop songs from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. I thoroughly enjoyed their show, the music was great, the French was lovely, and I found their vocalist incredibly cute, especially when she sang raunchy French lyrics. Reactions ranged from distracted apathy to simmering rage. I'm sure there were some who enjoyed them as much as I did.

At last, two hours after the show was supposed to begin, TMBG took the stage, promising to play one song from each of their albums. Since one of their first songs was from the one album of theirs that I actually know well, I almost immediately struck out for sing-a-longs. Peppered amid obscure fan favorites were a smattering of songs I recognized, but the good thing about TMBG is that every song was good, every song they played would be something I'd listen to on the album a bunch of times, and the concert only made me want to listen to their music more. They came back for not one, but two encores, and closed with the ever-popular Birdhouse in Your Soul and a long schizophrenic "song" that is really dozens of song-ideas mashed together. So, like quirky French opener and obnoxious musicless moshers, another resounding success for the evening.

Only downer was dinner at Fudruckers. I'll never make that mistake again. Another long-cherished childhood memory shattered.

So that was Friday night. Saturday night, something special happened: a performer actually came to Delaware. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, one of my favorite comedians came and played the Grand Opera House here in lil' ol' Wilmington, DE.

His name is Patton Oswalt, and he is one of the funniest men alive.

What I like about Oswalt ("Patton" to his friends) is that he seems to never repeat material. I've followed his comedy only through his standup (oh yeah, and Ratatouille), from the Comedians of Comedy and his albums, and now live, and he never seems to regurgitate jokes. So many comedians play from a tight script, and while Patton obviously has "bits" (forgive the show-biz talk, I mean jokes), he always seems to pack them in fresh, natural dialogue that doesn't feel rehearsed, like some wellspring of new material.

I showed up to the opera house alone, determined to make the Patton's visit to Delaware worth it, and I laughed my ass off. His opener was a guy from Philly (whose name I have forgotten) who was quite funny in a morbidly sad, passionately angry Bill Hicks kinda way. Once Patton took stage, the comedy came on like a caffeine buzz, just this inner energy that grew and grew, and I was that jackass who clapped when a bit finished and most people were too aghast to clap, who clapped when he tore Palin a new asshole and refused to care about the sparse applause. (Strange that so many in the crowd were as old as my parents ... did they know who was playing, or did they just have season tickets to the Opera House?) Patton was sick as a dog and damn near choked on (I can only assume) phlegm during an impromptu Tom Waits impression. His number one fear was, you guessed it, dying in Delaware.

Stephenson, PostSecret, and Greece

2008-09-26T14:10:00.002-04:00

Right before I left for the stupendous Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand-Laos-Southern-China SuperTrip of last January/February, I was in Hong Kong, and I stopped by my favorite bookstore, flOw ("the organic bookstore") to see what they had in the way of road reading. I found a breezy 300-page paperback called Quicksilver by an author I had read and enjoyed in college, Neal Stephenson. I had read Snow Crash, a cyberpunk postmodern mish-mash of cyberspace, Mesopotamian language-virii, country-owning corporations and mobsters, and pizza delivery. I saw that "Quicksilver" was part one of "the Baroque Cycle," and I figured I'd be digging in to a neat little trilogy. Despite its glacial pace, deliberate anachronisms, and choking on an overabundance of history, economics, science, and math, I enjoyed it. I found part two of this cycle (King of the Vagabonds) in Bangkok, and so, having made my way back to Hong Kong two months and 600 pages later, I stopped back in at flOw looking for the third and final chapter.

I found book three, all right. Only problem: it was book three of Volume One, and sitting there in front of me at flOw was books four and five (Volume Two) and books six, seven, and eight (Volume Three). I walked out of the store with over 3,000 pages to read. And I actually read 'em, geek that I am, and enjoyed them, something I can only imagine a small, small number of people would ever actually attempt, let alone accomplish. I've since picked up another Stephenson novel, Cryptonomicon, which is another thousand-plus page endeavor that links a Marine fighting in World War 2 and a genius mathematician cryptographer working in some fictional wasteland of an island in England cracking German codes with a internet-savvy capitalist in the early 2000's laying fiber-optic cable in the Philippines. Where will the stories intersect? Why does this guy need a thousand pages to tell a story? I don't know, but I'm enjoying it. Oh yeah, his new book came out in early September, and yeah, you guessed it: damn near 1,000 pages. Again.

What else? Last week I went to visit Deirdre at West Chester, and we went to see Frank of PostSecret fame. What is PostSecret? Well, click that link and see. He talked about PostSecret as a "community art project," its origins, and all that he's seen and done because of it. Very interesting concept, mildly interesting speaker, incredibly interesting show. At the end of the show, Frank set up two microphones, and invited people to come and share their secrets. It's truly saddening that so many people came to the mic and shared secrets of pain, isolation, suicide, and depression. If this small sample of West Chester had so many sad and unhappy people, what does that say about our country as a whole? I didn't get up to share anything, neither did Deirdre, and after the show we went in the lobby and read the post cards WCU students had sent in during the last few weeks. Walking back to Deirdre's apartment, I shared my secret: in Cambodia, in 2007, I was traveling alone, and I was in Siem Reap, this small tourist town just outside the Angkor temples. There was literally nothing to do in town but see the temples by day and party at night, and being there alone was an incredibly lonely, isolating experience. Well before I even know PostSecret existed, I took out a postcard, wrote a sad lonely little message for whomever, and left it there at a restaurant table. I guess the secret is that I feel that alone pretty frequently.

And one more, how's about some pictures? This time I want to share Athens with you.

There she is ... the Parthenon, the crown jewel of the Athenian Acropolis.

Listening to our guide.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus from afar.

The Acropolis.

I fell in love with this Cyclades woman, this strange sleek white statue from ancient Greece.

Temple of Zeus up close.

Hmm. That's it? So many great memories of Athens, from gyros to heroes, I can't believe I don't have more to share. Well, I do, but ...

I'll share some pics of the Greek islands next time. Now, off to see They Might Be Giants!

Charge of the Ad-Hocracy

2008-09-24T23:37:00.002-04:00

Unlike certain songs by certain bands whose days are somewhat verdant, I did not wish to sleep my way through September. And yet here I am, waking as September ends, settled in to some kind of life here in Delaware, fresh-faced and newly 24, resisting the urge to burn it all to the ground and run for the nearest plane headed for a foreign country. September has been a month of adjustments.

I turned 24 to little internal fanfare. I went to bed Thursday and realized, oh yeah, tomorrow is my birthday. And I woke up the next day, and it felt like just another day, which I guess is how Mature Adult People deal with birthdays. I guess I wanted that first birthday back home to be really special, to have more meaning than it should, but it didn't, and as an aspiring MAP, I should get used to that. I went to lunch with mom at a great little gourmet cafe in Newark, dinner with dad and friends at a dive bar with a roast beef sandwich I'd been lusting over for a few years, came home, cut the cake, and that was that. Nothing special, no fireworks, and yet it was really exactly what I wanted: a birthday with friends and family right there next to me.

Monday I begin my work as an ~~employee~~, ahem, a partner, at Starbucks. Now some of you may remember me having not-so-nice-things to say about corporate coffee and all that, but three things: a) I need a job with money and medical, which Starbucks offers to even part-timers, 2) Starbucks is actually much more progressive than I originally thought, and d) consistency isn't one of my strong points. I got the green apron, the stupid hat, and next week, I'll be behind the counter. And people say English majors can't find good work!

I've also been slowly going through the process of realizing a long-in-gestation goal. And I say realizing because, well, I think I'm finally coming 'round to seeing it as something I actually want to do, and not just something I'm shrugging my way toward. That goal: becoming a sub, becoming a teacher, and possibly going back to school for a full-time big boy career in education. Delaware has a good program in place to fast-track my teaching degree, and I could get a masters at Delaware for a fraction of the price I'd pay pretty much anywhere else. But we'll see; part of my still wants to do something surprising and scary for a year or two, maybe move to Peru to teach and learn Spanish or something, something that trumps China, something where I can be on the stage of life, shuffle the China experience behind me, and confidently say to the crowd, "And now for something completely different." But barring any more forays into the big beautiful world outside of America, that goal is otherwise moving, however glacially, forward.

And on top of that, I still haven't shared all my photos from Europe. Much like my journaling during the trip, Italy is such a bundle of awesome that it takes time to digest. So here we go: Venice! Florence! Rome!

Venice ... that floating city, that island-state, that strange canal-laden ad-hocracy of pre-modern urban design. So blisteringly Italian, and yet so uniquely Venetian. While it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the maze of alleyways and canals that cut through the city like veins, you ultimately leave Venice with too many pictures of lonely waterways and astounding architecture, which is not a bad thing to have a lot of.

Florence was perhaps my favorite city from my first tour of Europe back in 'aught 'aught (that's 2000 to you folks). I returned to Florence seven years later to see my friend David, and he hadn't changed a bit! We also sampled some of the best gelatto Italy had to offer; may I recommend the chocolate?

Rome ... Rome was my favorite city of the trip, a living breathing pollution-spewing awe-shattering city pulsing with history and life ... Rome. I've been to Beijing, I've been to DC and Bangkok and London and Paris ... something about Rome, I could live there.

Enjoy the slideshows; click 'em for more pictures. Maybe I'll get another blog in soon; I'll try to share all the awesome I saw in Greece.

Déjà Villanova (or: Jim and Law go to Labor Day Camp)

2008-09-06T21:10:00.002-04:00

The much anticipated follow-up to last year's summer camp is here! Jim and Law go to Labor Day Camp!

I spent Labor Day weekend living like I did in college: sitting inside on beautiful days playing video games, eating garbage, and drinking what polite company would call "to excess." This time was spent with my good friends (Matt) Lawler, Jim (Hartzel), C(ecilia Bladino) and Keiff ("Keith" Benedict). Last summer Jim and I drove up to Boston to see Lawler, and on the ride home, Jim told me he was this close to buying the ring, and that he already had a plan for how to propose to C, on their third anniversary on the exact spot they first started dating. Fast forward one year, the wedding is in December, and I'm wishing them congratulations in person for the first time as they approach the one-year anniversary of their engagement. It's certainly been a year.

Yeah. It was that kind of weekend.

How does the camera know how to adjust accordingly for all that beer?

Singin'.

Oh yeah.

Happy Birthday, Jim.

My name is Matthew Lawler, and I approve of this cake carving.

Adorable.

Out and about in New Hope.

Jim enjoys looking weird.

Oh dear ...

Congrats you crazy kids.

European Extravaganza!

2008-09-02T12:46:00.002-04:00

My brother the auteur has put together a little video of our trip through Europe this summer. It's a lot of random clips from various cities, all set to a decidedly indie soundtrack. Needless to say, I'm a big fan! I know I have yet to put up all my photos from Europe, but I'll get to it eventually. If you like this vid, be sure to check out a similar video Patrick did of our trip through China!

Wow. It's September already. The first September I've spent in the US in two years. I feel like I should be struggling through class in some obscure Chinese city somewhere.

A story about China

2008-08-29T13:50:00.001-04:00

Wrote this for Maryknoll's website. Thought I'd share.

The first day was hot. A new and tropical heat, heat that I had never experienced before, that I could feel rising even as I walked through the tree-shaded campus that first morning: my first day of class as a teacher in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, China. It was September in this sleepy southwestern corner of the Middle Kingdom, and if the broiling heat of the morning didn’t make me sweat, being on the precipice of the great big unknown that waited in the classroom certainly did. Walking through the door for the first time hushed the forty-odd students into a kind of awed silence: because it was the first class of the first day of the new term, yes, but also because this strange young foreigner, stiffly overdressed in the mounting morning heat, a young man who couldn’t help but look out into the classroom and smile like a little boy, had just walked into their lives. The bell rang, everyone was quiet, still, staring intently; just what was he going to do?

I had agonized over that very question the month, week, day, night before. The orientation Maryknoll had provided in Hong Kong was a good start, but Thesis Writing? Literature? There were few answers as to how I should approach these subjects in an ESL environment. Would their English be good enough to read Shakespeare? Had they ever written a thesis before? Standing there in front of my first class, wanting desperately to do the right thing, to act like a real teacher, I did what novice teachers had done before me on their nervous first day: I spoke, rigidly, seriously, about the coming term, about my expectations, how we would use our text, the consequences of not following the rules. I finished with a brittle warning: “If you don’t write in your journal, you’re going to fail. If you don’t participate, you’re going to fail. If you don’t do your work, you’re going to fail.” There, I thought self-importantly at the end of that first class: that’s being a serious teacher.

As the week went on, and I saw my well-rehearsed bluster fall on ever more shocked and uncomprehending faces, I realized how spectacularly I had failed on that first day. Later that week, tucked under my apartment door, I found a note from Blue (or Kellen, as an exacting fellow teacher would insist), one of the students from that very first day of class. Written in the gorgeous penmanship typical of most of my students, she requested two things: that I smile more, and that I talk slower. Asking me to smile was really a prelude to asking me to speak more slowly, but the subtle advice to smile, to create an environment that would encourage my students, was just as necessary. My students needed to be comfortable with me before they could begin learning, before they could have the confidence to engage their first foreign teacher with their timid English. I needed a different approach. By the end of the week, I had thrown out my speech, sworn off the swagger, and simply talked. And they, in turn, began to talk back, asking about my family, about my university, about my jobs and friends and life “back home” on the other side of the world.

The class was Thesis Writing, and my students were seniors, English majors, mostly my age if not older. The course was ostensibly meant to instruct them on how to write their senior thesis, a daunting twenty-thousand word research paper that every senior had to write and present before a small group of teachers in order to graduate. Like so many things in China, however, what was meant to happen and what actually happened soon parted ways. Our textbook was a pencil-thin pamphlet, a science textbook full of hypothesis, not thesis statements, a book about reviewing the literature, rather than researching literature. It was totally unfit for the class and for the work the students had to do. I asked my waiban, the liaison between the school and the foreign teachers, for specifications for the theses, but beyond the strict, oft-emphasized word count, my questions were deflected or ignored. The school, it seemed, had as little clue of what I was supposed to do in class as I did.

So the weeks were spent reviewing the foundations of basic writing, while also practicing note-taking, citation, crafting a thesis and shaping an argument on the page. For practice, the class chose different sides of an argument and wrote short essays persuading their classmates. Headline-making news about the environment or globalization didn’t seem to stir them, but the Olympics or the age-old debate of “should boys be allowed to visit the girl’s dormitory” was met with vigor. Their writing was beginning to improve, and we were starting to have fun with our in-class writing: the Crocodile Hunter, Calvin and Hobbes, and the Simpsons all became fodder for essays. With the end of the term looming, I felt that I had found a balance between that first day’s severity and the need for accessibility.
And then, a month before the end of the term, the school invited a former student to lecture the entire senior class on the “proper” format for the thesis. One afternoon, one lecture, hundreds of students stuffed into a sweatbox of an auditorium, an entire semester of practice and preparation, all tossed aside. My students were told to disregard everything from class, to follow the lecturer’s thesis format above all else. I was angry, confused at the pointlessness of it all, that everything we had practiced all term was just thrown away, all without any input from or explanation given to me.

But remember: smile more. Clearly, thesis writing, as far as the school was concerned, had been taken care of. So I decided I would occupy the class with something else; again, I needed a different approach. In the face of administrative apathy, I could experiment, make the class my own. And in doing this, in turning the class into something more than what even I had hoped it would be during those first nervous days, I began to feel like my work, my being there, actually made a difference. A lesson on résumé writing mushroomed into weeks of excited class time as my seniors, all on the verge of entering China’s brutally competitive job market, wrote and refined their CVs. Small groups of students personally asked for help with their theses, and together, inside the classroom and out, we crafted strong, persuasive essays that ultimately earned them high marks. And I began frequently meeting with students, individually or in small groups, to review homework, do writing drills, or just practice their speaking. Students like Kaly, who met with me after class every week to review the essays she was practicing for the IELTS exam, with the hope of eventually studying abroad in the UK. We honed her essays to a keen edge, and after scoring higher than she had hoped on the exam, I helped her prepare her admissions essays and run mock interviews. I had the pleasure of visiting Kaly this summer, on my way home from China; she took a bus from her campus in Warwick to meet me in London.

China, what it does to you and the success you have there, isn’t easily measured. The strange alchemy of China is that hours in class can boil away and disappear into the ether, while a short chat after class, lunch with a small group, or an hour’s talk with a single student can offer that flash, that connection between people that bridges culture and language. These moments were the most rewarding for me in China, and the truth is, they often happened outside of class. I was blessed to be a single teacher, engaging my (relatively) small group of students with ideas and topics beyond the narrow focus of the prescribed course, and the great thing was that these connections and friendships continued outside of the classroom, cooking dumplings in my apartment or reviewing essays after class, offering my students something truly valuable: a window, a forum, exposure to a new voice from half a world away.

I left Zhanjiang in the late June heat, a familiar summer heat that had somehow returned without ever really going away; a heat I now knew. I am convinced that I learned more from my students than they could possibly have learned from me. We struggled through a single scene of Hamlet, a whole chapter of Gatsby, and the theses were at last delivered. Some students loved the literature, many were apathetic; some improved their writing, others never showed up for class. My final days in Zhanjiang were spent cleaning my apartment, giving away all the things you accumulate over a year that you can’t take with you. And when the morning came to say goodbye, I was surrounded by students, friends, that had engaged me beyond the class, in that strange nebulous area of life not mentioned in any job description or orientation. Maryknoll sent me to China to teach, and teach I did; but they also sent me to China to live, and as I said goodbye to my students and friends, reflecting on all that my students and experiences had taught me, I knew that I had lived, too.

Watching My China on TV

2008-08-08T20:47:00.002-04:00

"Live blogging" isn't really my style, because I'm not very witty and can only appear clever after much contemplation and editing. But I'm sitting here watching the opening ceremony to the Olympics (and it's really a shame I couldn't watch it live this morning, stupid networks), and while I know I'm watching a spectacle that cost millions (if not billions) to produce, and is being simultaneously watched by millions more, it feels like I'm watching something far more personal. This is China on TV, this is Beijing, these are clips of Guilin and Shanghai and all the other places I have been and seen and come to know. And it makes me feel ...

... oddly nostalgic. Because I've been to Beijing and I've seen the city and the sights that are so arresting in their Olympic splendor, and seeing Beijing just reminds me of a two-year past I've just put behind me, and the mixed feelings that go with that.

... somewhat resentful. Because I spent two years there, dammit, and this should somehow be exclusively special, but it's not.

... dubiously authoritative. Because I can talk about Beijing a bit, and I can read the (really simple) characters, and I can tell you (regurgitate) a lot about China. But I know that in some ways I have seen more than one needs to see, more than I may want to have seen, of China; and in other ways, I know I have really only scratched the surface.

... overall, pleased. Because the opening ceremony was cool to see, and it reminded me of the best parts of China: optimistic, 热闹 (renao, "hot and noisy," busy and full of life and fun), grand and over-awing but also quietly clever, endlessly complex and fascinating and baffling in its incongruities and quirks and immensity.

我想中国.

I Want to be Your Bartender

2008-08-08T09:45:00.000-04:00

I want to be your bartender. I want to flash that wry smile as you wearily enter my fine bar, sopping up your sudsy wordless salutation as I calmly, methodically clean pint glasses. I want to talk about the weekend, talk politics, before slowly, inexorably shifting to drinks, to your drink, your beer, because that’s why you come here after all, best damn beer selection this side (whatever side) of the Mississippi. Make no goddamn mistake. I’d curse freely, cheerfully, because I’m a bar tender, understand, and you’d sheepishly smile, all blushing manners giving way to a refreshing smile that drinks it all in: bar, bartender, beer. Because you’re here for a beer, god damn it, and I’m just the man to give it to you; me being a bartender is incidental. What’ll it be, my eyes ask knowingly across the deep nutty mahogany of my countertop, well-oiled and dark, something sprawling and handmade, like something out of an Irish novel. You glance eagerly at the taps, the vast forest of small handles, and I begin to talk, gruffly, dryly, about the selection; what’s new since you were in here last, what I think you’d like, making my way all sales pitch and showmanship until I arrive at the tap I’d knew I’d be pouring the second you walked in the door. I begin pouring before I say a word, before you can ask what it is or even think about protesting, and it slides golden and amber and just-cold-enough into the glass. I let it cook a while, a nice foamy head forming as I peel off a slim smile at your lip-licking mug (mug, damn it, because I tend bar). The head settles, I pull the tap once more and dump a final splash of ale into the glass, and you lick your lips and smell the hops, and that’s all part of the job. I put it down in front of you carefully, the small quiet ceremony you’ve come to know, a glowing monolith to beer that you silently look down upon, awe-struck and eager, muttering a quiet prayer or short nod of thanks as you gingerly wrap your fingers around the glass, lift, and lay lip to my beer. My beer, damn it. Because I’m your bartender.

Blast from Winter's Past

2008-08-02T19:24:00.002-04:00

Harbin! 哈尔滨! That frozen little half-Russian popsicle in the most northern part of northeast China. And what's so great about Harbin? Why, their amazing "Ice Festival" of course! The 哈尔滨冰雪大世界, Haerbin Bingxue Dashijie, "Harbin Frozen Ice World," a rose by any other name! It was a larger-than-life collection of sights and slides, all made out of ice, all perfectly preserved in the coldest weather I have ever personally experienced. Jim, Kevin, and I met up with James and his mom, to see this giant sprawling temple to winter, and we also enjoyed the sights around Harbin (like the Siberian Tiger Park, where we did our part to feed the residents). Enjoy the video, a little look back at winter's (and my China's) past.

I L♥VErmont

2008-07-30T23:53:00.002-04:00

I suppose its hard to go from living and traveling in China and all over Europe to a homecoming back to America, and then come lounge for a week in Vermont. I mean, when is lounging for a week at a lakeside cabin ever a problem? But the problem, if you can call it that, is one of just feeling restless. I was country-hopping, hell, continent-hopping, a month ago, and now, staying in one place with such an empty schedule feels ... wrong?

Enjoy it, you dumb bastard, because the real world is coming to scissor-kick you in the face: insurance, job hunting, The Future comin' right at ya. A week of lazy nothing may feel slow and quaint right now, but you'll be yearning for it soon enough.

So what the hell am I going to do now? Sort things out. Work on my Chinese. Get ready in the short term to teach, in some capacity, in Delaware and/or Philadelphia. Train for a 5K, then a 10K, and then ... something more. Write: short stories, fiction, scripts. Find not just a job, but a career: something I can believe in, something I can enjoy, but something that can maybe make the world even the tiniest bit better. Attempt to, as a friend and others wiser than myself have said before, become the change I want to see in the world.

We'll see. It won't come over night. It'll probably take a long time, actually; and I'm prepared for some compromises along the way. But I'm hopeful (or maybe just naive) enough to at least try.

Queen's Guard Mounting

2008-07-21T12:55:00.002-04:00

My video of the Queen's Guard Mounting (known as the "Changing of the Guard") from St. James's Palace in London. I (we) followed the guards as they assembled, were inspected, and then finally marched to Buckingham Palace. The tradition! The colors! The Britishness! As good as a banger and mash in your tea and crumpets, cor blimey innit? Brilliant.

Please ignore the witch-cackle in the beginning of the video ... no idea where that came from.

Deirdre's Birthday in Paris

2008-07-20T18:01:00.001-04:00

Deirdre's birthday at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Matt Karpinski Sexy Time Lap Fun

2008-07-20T13:09:00.002-04:00

Matthew Karpinski is available for bachelorette parties and/or suppressing prison riots.

Europe!

2008-07-17T02:55:00.003-04:00

It certainly has been a long time. This forced march through Europe has been spectacular, along with a very long list of other adjectives I can't be bothered to fish out, and here I sit, a month (!) later in a cafe on Crete, Greek coffee and conversation swirling through the air, in front of two computers you have to feed one-Euro coins in to like a Donkey Kong machine, realizing I forgot my USB cable for my camera (which means no new pictures ... good lord, I haven't even done Amsterdam, Munich, anything in Austria or Italy or Greece ...), tired and with a headcold and unable to stop swaying from the motion of the sea we've been sailing on, a slow rocking that even here on dry land still causes my body to gently roll to imaginary waves, a thrall to some invisible drunkneness ... what a trip.

I mailed some postcards from Turkey yesterday, when we stopped in Kusadasi... hope they get to their destinations soon, because it looks like postcards I mailed from Thailand last February are just now arriving to some people. Yesterday on Rhodes I went to meet the colossus, but sadly, he wasn't there ... was he ever? I stood where one of his legs would have been, a hundred-foot arch spanning the mouth to a tiny harbor, and colossi nonewithstanding (that's a fun plural), being on that island, dirtying my feet in the dust of what was once classical Greece, what was once the root of modern Western civilization ... that was awesomne. I walked back from the colossus-less pier and passed by a boat flying an American flag and a big "Delaware" stenciled on its back, the "Cerra CM" the ship was called, an no one on it spoke English save the Greek sailors who said the people on the boat were from Turkey and France. Maybe the world isn't that small afterall.

And now I gotta go get in line, get back on the ship, see some more of Greece and finish this trip.

Paris Purée

2008-06-30T16:29:00.003-04:00

I'm trying to get this out and these photos up on a German QWERTZ keyboard, and please note the lack of Y. So here are some photos of Paris. More on the digicam but hey, Picasa is only so generous with free space.

I did this trip eight years ago, and I gotta say, I loved Paris immeasurably more than I did last time. In fact, I hated is first time through. But the sense of history is immense, and I know that history much better now, and how it fits in my whole scheme for the system of the world. The Louvre is still impossiblz big, Paris cafes are still far too relaxing for their own good, the pace of life strolling through streets and meandering over bridges is still far too slow for a city with so much to see, and even with a lot of museum-hopping and a compressed schedule, the list of things to see remains huge. We were lucky enough to arrive during a minor holidaz, a Fete de Musical (or something), and I met a girl from Luxemborg who speaks French, German, English, the local Luxemborg dialect, and had just finished her Chinese exam. She was cute, we shared a beer by the Seine, and we chatted in Chinese for a while. Ah, Paris ...

London: Kaly and Sandwiches

2008-06-21T04:49:00.002-04:00

Its been a great three days in London, but we have to go. Gotta catch a train to Paris ... how many times do you get to say that? Photos!

Of the many great things in London, two stood out. First, I was able to spend the afternoon with Kaly, my friend and former student from Zhanjiang. She's studying in England, in Warwick, for her masters degree. She took a day trip in to London and hung out with us for a bit. I took her and a group to the Tower of London, and we saw the Crown Jewels. I was able to help explain a few things about them to Kaly, who probably never would have seen them if she hadn't gone with me.

Another great thing about London: sandwiches. After (literally!) months and years of nothing but Chinese food, which in case you didn't know doesn't make for good sandwiches, I've been eating a steady lunch of fantastic sandwiches and double espressos. Bread with cheese and herbs, cheese with names I can't even pronounce, meats and other fixings that sound like something from a mead-hall in Beowulf ... none of that bland crap English food here, I'm all sandwiches and smiles. Good sandwiches and coffee on every corner! It's like I'm in a real place again.

Surprise! Home Early (Father's Day Presence)

2008-06-16T11:53:00.003-04:00

Maybe you know, maybe you don't ... but I came home from China early, to surprise mom and dad and Patrick, in time for Father's Day, but also before this month-long pan-European trip I'm about to take. The lie was that I was going to meet Patrick, Deirdre, and the rest of the trip in London ... but really, I snuck (sneaked?) back home early, from Changchun to Hong Kong to Vancouver to Philadelphia, to spend just a few days with the family before flying out for this Europe trip. Rough life, I know, traveling the world and finding time to squeeze in visit home with the family ... but somehow I manage. The surprise was a total success, except for mom, who got a call from the moronic voicemail service of US Airways, who informed her that my flight from Vancouver to Philly was delayed. So to let me know my flight was delayed in Canada, they called someone else in America. Brilliant as always! So mom kinda knew, but dad and Patrick had no idea, as you can see. Some give Father's Day presents ... I give Father's Day Presence. Thanks for not groaning too loudly on that one.

And now for a few pictures (Vancouver pics and a few from first coming home here):

Deirdre holding a "Welcome Home Ashole" sign ... she says "ashole" with a fake lisp ... long story ... inside joke ... moving home ...

Meghan wearing her Chinese scrubs. The sisters made the entire surprise possible, helping me plan and buy tickets and keep everyone in the dark. Thanks shidders!

Just coming off the plane.

Sweet sweet milk ...

When will the farewell end?

2008-06-14T00:49:00.003-04:00

My last week of classes were simple: finals finished, I had some music loaded on my MP3 player to share, lyrics printed up, and I just went in, ready to talk. There were a lot of questions for me, questions about Europe and finding a job when I'm back home and the inevitable girlfriend (it's bound to happen some time, right?). We took a lot of photos, and I was glad that my truncated week included two classes that were a particular joy to teach this term.

These jokers ...

... and these characters.

As per usual, on Wednesday evening we attended the weekly English Corner, and for almost all the students there, it was their last time to see me. I didn't plan a big dramatic goodbye, but it kinda turned into one, as a lot gave me gifts, took (more) photos, started to tear up, and many worked up the guts to ask for a hug. (I ended just hugging everyone there ... it felt good.) It was a nice way to say goodbye, the week of classes to bring our time to a close, but always with the "oh but we can see each other at English Corner on Wednesday!" corollary to keep them a little chipper on their way out the door of our final class together. Only a handful could actually make it to English corner, but those who did were the students that I actually connected with in some way over the term, in or out of class, and so it was an effective if unintentional thinning of the so-long herd. So I wasn't having teary-eyed goodbyes to Student #16 of Class 7.3, but I was saying goodbye to Memento and David, Atlus and Amber, Hawaii and Maureen and Cassie and Violent and a whole lot more. It was personal, the students came because they wanted to, and that's what made it feel special.

I also did something that I hope will set a blazing inferno to whatever bridge connected me with BeiHua: I gave my students their final marks. Not the school's official bullshit final marks, but *my* marks, the real marks, the ones I kept and calculated based on their actual performance in class all term. Since the jackasses in charge just threw my grades out the window last term, with no regard for my assessment of the students or the student's performance, I got a little sneaky this term by making a photocopy of all of my grades, and handing them both their grades as well as the marked finals papers. With any luck, the powers that be at Bei Hua will be furious, and the students will either have enough leverage to keep my grades, or solid proof that those in charge of the school are crooks. Strong words, perhaps, but I'm never gonna see them again, so I don't care! In all seriousness, what will happen is this: BeiHua will continue to be oblivious to me and my actions, they will change the students grades, and despite having proof, the students will remain impotent. Sad that I can already see what will come, but that's Bei Hua.

On a lighter note, here's my little beer collection as per my leaving:

Those beers are: North Coast Brewing Company's Red Seal Ale, Rouge's Dead Guy Ale, Rouge's American Pale Ale, Harpoon IPA, Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, Duvel Belgian golden ale, another North Coast ale, this one the American Pale Ale, Bucanero, a cheapy Spanish lager, and finally, a Belgian white many may know, Hoegaarden. There are two big bottles of some unspectacular Russian beers hiding in the back there, too. I don't know why, but I am both proud and ashamed of this picture.

And here's Jenny taking a nap:

Aw, lookit 'er! She's exhausted from playing with a roll of tape, like a kitten with a ball of string!

What? This isn't Jilin ... is it? Cold blue skies, ice-capped green mountains ... where could Matthew be?! Tune in next time ...

So long, Farewell, Auf wiedersehen, Zai Jian

2008-06-12T10:16:00.004-04:00

Two years in China: check. Grades are in, salaries are paid, tickets are booked, and its only a matter of hours before I leave this mysterious, baffling, wonderful, terrible country. And now it's time to say so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, zai jian, to all things China, good and bad.

Goodbye homicidal cab drivers. Drivers who would not just be arrested, but beaten to death by angry mobs back in the states, and yet somehow still manage to get offended when you put on your seatbelt when they try to play chicken with a bus. And that seatbelt, so filthy from never being used, covered in dust and cigarette ash and god knows what else from countless other passengers, that it leaves a stain like bacon grease on the front of your shirt.

Goodbye cheap eats. I am still amazed at how cheap it is to eat out, and eat well, in China. A group of four can go out and have a small feast of three of four dishes and beer (sometimes it's even cold ... but more on that in a moment) for less than $2US a person, no tax, no tip. It's going to be painful getting used to dining out in America again, assuming I ever have the money to do so.

Goodbye, freshmen. It was a very strange year of not really knowing if you were learning a damn thing. What small glimpses of success I had were outside of class, never within, as even good students who were chatterboxes face to face were as passive as wet dirt in class. Only when students talked with me outside of class, students who before couldn't or didn't have the confidence to speak three words clearly, it was when they started having meaningful conversations, started voicing ideas that weren't just lifted from some textbook, that I knew I was at least having some impact. But goodbye none the less, students who at turns delighted and frustrated me, who made up such a large proportion of what life was about in Jilin.

Goodbye bad beer. If I never have another piss-warm rice-grain Snow beer again, I will be a happy man.

Goodbye Jenny, my dear friend, who was such a huge part of making Jilin what it was. She'll have good people with here next year, Kevin and Aaron and the other two Maryknollers who will be going north to Jilin.

Goodbye gateway travel. Before China, I knew of travel as an EF package tour through Europe. Post-China, travel to me is doing everything on my own, taking the run-down local buses, eating where the locals eat, avoiding the crowds of the beaten path, and finding joy in getting lost and getting around in a new country, in a crowd of new faces and languages. China has helped me realize this, and it's been a gateway for traveling throughout Asia. I'll never be able to travel so far and so frequently again.

Goodbye loud disgusting loogies. No place on earth will ever match the loud throat-emptying frequency of China's spitters and hockers. On the bus, in a restaurant, snot rockets on the ground or wiping it on the bus seat next to you, China will always remain the king of phlegm.

Goodbye dog on the menu. For shame.

Goodbye dumplings on the menu. You will be dearly missed.

Goodbye plentiful photo ops. I could walk around Jilin, or any city in China, and I'd run out of steam before my camera ran out of things to snap. So many strange, stupid, bizarre, and funny things going on when you cram billions of people together.

Goodbye Bus 32, the sole bus to and from campus, that was never empty, often times more than full, horribly maintained dirty ugly uncomfortable terrible buses. Goodbye the refusal to make a line to get on, goodbye idiotic and meaningless bullrushes to get on an already overcrowded bus, goodbye moronic drivers, horn honking that'd make the taxi drivers blush, slamming on the brakes, and goodbye hot cramped crowded human cattle cars. If I ever become a millionaire, I'm going to buy a whole new fleet of buses just for that route. I hated that bus, and I rode it all the time, and will be so happy to never ride it again.

And finally (for now, at least), goodbye crowds. Goodbye crush of billions of people, goodbye never having any personal space in public, goodbye gawkers and staring and yelling "Hello!" and people remarkably oblivious to others' and their own bodies position in three-dimensional space. Goodbye yelling spitting loud laughing hot and sweaty pushing shoving angry awestruck oblivious charming annoying Chinese crowds.

Bei Shan and the Flaming Bride

2008-06-10T05:11:00.002-04:00

Sunday was "Dragon Boat" festival, a holiday I remember fondly from Zhanjiang, where there actually were dragon boats and races in said boats. Guess the boats don't make it this far north, but the holiday sure does, and so Sunday was a holiday (with the bonus of having Monday classes canceled!), and to celebrate, Jenny, Kevin, and I climbed 北山Bei Shan, a "mountain" that is really little more than a hill, and so centrally located that I must have walked past this "mountain" park a hundred times this past year without realizing it. Jenny also invited me to her co-worker's wedding, but more on that in a minute.

The entrance to the park. A lot of people were there to celebrate the holiday, which seemed to be lacking both dragons and boats. I asked Jenny why people came to Bei Shan to celebrate, and she said that every year people get up really early and climb the mountain and go to the 早市, zao shi, the morning market the springs up around the park. Again I asked "why," and Jenny said, well, she didn't know.

This old man is like China's version of Cupid. He goes around weaving a red thread between lovers. He's the only one that can see the read thread, of course, but once you're threaded, you're together, for good or ill. He's old and prone to narcolepsy or something, because "bad matches" are when the old man with the thread falls asleep at the wheel (at the needle?). Young couples came and tied red ribbons and heart-shaped locks around him and the chain-link fence that surrounded him.

See? Ribbons and heart-shaped locks.

Couples that want a baby come and tie red ribbons around this statue of a baby. I don't know if there's any relation to the old man.

A small Chinese temple, one of many within the park. Jenny gave me a good little history lesson on how a lot of quasi-historical people from China's (far too long) history eventually became revered and deified. Like Greek gods, each now is an "immortal" and has his or her own little provenance in the universe, and you pray to different ones for different fortunes.

More red good luck paper stuff.

At the top of Bei Shan, looking down on Jilin. A nice goodbye panorama ... on to the wedding!

The groom owned a nightclub, and so the whole ceremony went down in (one of?) his club(s), with all the trappings of the night club scene: loud music, fireworks, magic shows, and singing, all with that unmistakably Chinese penchant for the loud and fiery.

Jenny and one of her co-workers at the wedding.

In a rain of confetti, the groom asked (again) for her hand. I couldn't really understand why, there was a lot of spectacle going on, a really loud MC who guided the couple through candle-lighting, wine-pouring, and a bunch of other ceremonies. It was all really flashy.

You can see the candles and the heart-shaped array of cascading wine glasses.

That looks both professional and safe, and in no way poses a fire hazard.

She looks really happy here.

Whoops! Just as the ceremony was drawing to a close, with the bride and groom and the MC standing shoulder to shoulder at the front of the stage, bowing and saying thanks, a string of fireworks right above them began vomiting sparks and confetti. Clearly, this wasn't planned very well. The confetti immediately caught fire and came down in sheets of flame, like someone threw a buck of fire on the stage. The result ...

... the bride's (rented) dress caught fire. It wasn't a tiny little fire, either; the entire train was a mess of confetti and ash and melting nylon. I've seen a lot of indiscriminate fireworks in China, and swore one day it's end in tears, I just never thought I'd live to see it end with a flaming bride.

Well, an afternoon at Bei Shan and a truly incendiary wedding. Not a bad final weekend in China!

Video Redux

2008-06-08T01:11:00.002-04:00

I've made a few videos in these last two years in China, and some of them are total crap. But there are a few I'm really proud of, and would like to share them with you (again).

My first time traveling solo, a long weekend in Macau in October 2006. Little did I know this trip would be the seed that would blossom with me going to Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and a bunch of other Southeast Asian countries. I got a real taste for being on the road on my own, and this is kind of where it all started.

Making dumplings with my students and friends in Zhanjiang. My first time making dumplings ... I think I've gotten better now.

I love this guy making cotton candy on the back of his bike.

A cameo from Flargin in this one, Patch made a great video of my trip all over China with my siblings last year.

And for some reason, I really love this one, from New Years. Probably the music.

♪♫ You Can Never Hold Back Spring ♫♪

2008-06-05T23:49:00.004-04:00

♪♫ Remember everything that spring can bring ♫♪

Thank you, Tom Waits. You never cease to amaze me. What a shame I won't be able to see you on tour this summer. But if I had to miss it for anything, I'm glad it's for a month of travel in Europe with my brother and sister. (The real sting is how he'll be just about a week behind me in European tour dates ... but so many things have come together for this trip, I can't possibly complain.)

The weather is beautiful here in Jilin, warm sunny days and (believe it or not) a blue sky or two. My finals are finished, a pile of notes on performances and pronunciation waiting to be deciphered into legible marks so that I may turn in honest grades next week, despite the fact that I know BeiHua is going to just toss them in the trash and make up their own marks anyway.

And so the term comes to a close. The warm weather brought a sports "meeting" (as in track "meet") last weekend, an all-day affair where students ran and jumped and threw disuses (not disci, surprisingly). Each class also prepared a performance, a dance number or something. But when you have so many classes performing and so many students running, they all got jumbled into a big mess, the gun for the next race sounding in the middle of a performance (effectively cutting them off), an ADD crowd that couldn't be bothered to watch anything for longer than two minutes before they switched focus to a new race or dance. Typical China, I guess.

Kennedy represents the foreign students at Bei Hua.

The nurses in their retro uniforms. (They're not being ironic. It's what they wear.)

My student Alvin looks on as his classmates (the girls in the black and gold dresses) do a dance in front of hundreds of ambivalent students.

My finals were really great this year. The "exam" itself was simple: groups of four to five students had seven to ten minutes to do a performance. Anything goes. And I demanded costumes, props, music, vocabulary, and creativity. Probably the best thing I've done as a teacher in China, because it forced students to actually create, tweak, and speak a piece of English, while also letting their imagination run wild. Short of a few rouges who tried to get by on crap stories fished from the internet, they were great. I spent two weeks doing the exam: the first week was a "practice" exam, a dry run to make sure people were actually doing work, and as expected, nearly half of the students hadn't done a damn thing. So some stern talking-to's from Matthew, etc., and within a week everyone was on the same page, work had actually been done, practice and improvement was evident, and in the end the plays were spectacular. I wanted some photos of the costumes, but it was also our next-to-last-class for many (final class for some), so there was a lot of photo-taking and fond farewells.

Be warned: the students are (to be gentle) goofy. And there are some goofy/cute/ridiculous things being done in these photos that no twenty-three year old should be proud of. But they say China changes you, and at first you scoff, and then two years later you find yourself doing this:

Yeah. Giving myself dimples.

The girl on the left, in white? She was God.

Some students even made sets.

These girls took a Chinese story, and turned it into an English comedy. Well done.

Three little pigs ...

... and the big bad wolf.

Far too many embarrassing pictures here.

My Walls are Naked (Oh, it's June!)

2008-06-03T10:50:00.002-04:00

My walls are naked, the posters promising me Chinese words and characters I never learned taken down, the art projects I fished from the art room's trash have been peeled away, and now I walk into a big ugly white room with soot-framed boxes on the wall where cool colorful things used to be.

I am getting ready to leave Jilin, and I am happy.

I almost wrote "and I have mixed feelings," but I don't, because the surge of good times and goodbyes can swell inside you and make you forget how difficult and long the year has been. It can create an almost false sense of happiness. False isn't the right word, because it's real: when you take photos with students and you talk to them for the last time, when you eat meals with Jim and James and Kevin and Jenny for the last time, when you run by the Song Hua river for that last glimpse of a Jilin afternoon. It's real, and it's strong, and it reminds you of all the good times this last year, and you thankfully forget the long cold empty months of winter, the isolation and the dislocation and all that other bad stuff. So in some ways it's really nice to trick yourself into thinking Jilin was easy and a breeze and maybe even worth doing again ... but year two in China is all I have patience for. That same tricked worked in Zhanjiang, and I came back to China and realized just what another year entails, only the second year has lost the glimmer of the new and has nothing but a slow fading afterglow.

So I've got naked walls, an empty wardrobe, a pile of clothes that are too big for me that I'll be dropping off at the seminary soon, and a long list of to-dos before I go. I can't believe this year is drawing to a close. I can't believe by the end of this month Zhanjiang, Jilin, China will be in my past, I can't believe all the stuff I have to pack and do before I leave, and I can't wait to see what I'll be doing next.

The HIV/AIDS Lesson

2008-05-29T11:36:00.002-04:00

James has been coming to help me teach some make-up classes this week, finishing up a two-part lesson that began with me showing Philadelphia, and has concluded with a long, somewhat interactive lesson on HIV/AIDS that goes into gloriously redundant detail in ultra-simple English. I've even strategically placed some Chinese within the lesson, to explain more complex words like syndrome and virus (as opposed to bacteria) and condom.

The class has been going well, and I'm glad, because beyond being extremely practical in its goals, it's also something the students are familiar enough with that they don't feel completely unmoored from everything. Even the bored arms-crossed-head-down-in-abject-exhaustion students seem to be focusing, however drowsy-eyed, on what we're saying. It took a bit of planning and revision to make the lesson simple yet not shallow, a careful dance of information and simplification followed by re-emphasizing (sometimes again and again) later. But beyond just what we're reading in class, giving a lesson with someone else there is a welcome change.

I often feel like teaching here is kind of like being a stand-up comedian. (Well, it's kind of like a lot of things, but I'm in a good mood so I'll limit my comments to just the one.) I begin a lesson on Monday, and it's crude and clumsy, a freakish Quasimodo of ideas. By the end of the week, I've cut, trimmed, revised, and refined it down to a nucleus of effectiveness, if not learning. This can mean using groups on Tuesday after I thought solo work would do on Monday, to an extra page of examples and vocabulary after one class bombed, to telling the same stupid story or joke at the same moment to keep the class engaged and awake. And now with James in class, it's like a comic duo, playing off each other, setting each other up for questions and hitting cues like the Marx Brothers.

And there's a certain satisfaction that comes from hitting all the right notes in a lesson, from seeing heads nod in understanding, that quiet murmur of assent when students comprehend what we're talking about. That's been easier to achieve with this lesson, and I don't know if it's been James, the preparation, or what. Who knows, it could be his brief American Sign Language lessons at the end of each class? Or the one-two punch of the film and the lesson, the human face on the ideas and the disease? The students have really been responding to it well, and sometimes, I actually feel like a real teacher.

But I gotta say, there's another kind of satisfaction, and that only comes from ordering thirty people to say things like "condom" and "vaginal fluid" out loud, until you're satisfied.

Is it June yet? (And: Thoughts on a Chinese party)

2008-05-26T06:04:00.004-04:00

I feel intense hatred toward linear time right now, because I cannot honestly believe it's still May and I'm still here. This has been the slowest month in China by far, and while the days seem busy enough, the fact that it's only May 26 and not, oh, I dunno, June 11, really pisses me off.

This term, in addition to my freshmen, I've been teaching a class of prospective post-graduate MBA students who will (if all things visa-related go well) travel to Madison, Wisconsin to study at Edgewood College in September. I use that word "class" loosely, though, since it's really only been two men (and a third student, a woman who is perpetually coming next time). I've given them the English names Paul (a mid-twenties office-type who studied and worked in Beijing) and Brian (a mid-thirties bank clerk who has risen to the top of Jilin's Bank of China). It was supposed to be Mike and Brian, after my uncles, but Paul didn't like the name Mike (blame some NBA player named Mike who fouled Yao Ming once). So I asked Paul what his name meant in Chinese, and he told me stone, and so I got all biblical and gave him Paul. Then I realized two weeks later that I'd mixed my Christian P's, it should have been Peter, but he liked Paul so the name stuck.

This class has been an interesting way to meet some Chinese who don't fall under the umbrella of obscenely sheltered undergraduate English majors. Brian has a family and a damn good job as the president (or something ... important, he assures me) of the Bank of China in Jilin, and when we had dinner at his home and I met his parents, I realized Brian is the ideal of the new upwardly mobile generations in China, a man from humble origins whose parents were laborers who has gone on to a good job, a nice home, a car, money, affluence ... he's like a poster-child for what most people in China shoot for, of the success China hopes the white-hot economy and its one-child policy can create. Paul, a little younger but also educated, has lived in the capital and seen more of China in his twenty-odd years than most of my other students will ever see. They're both smart guys that have the money and clout to get into a program that will send them abroad and earn them a bona-fide American diploma, and that's a write-your-own-ticket kind of deal here.

The class has been good, if awkward. Brian began the class pretty much incapable of speaking English, whereas Paul was pretty good from the start. Through a lot of effort on his part, Brian has improved a great deal, but I still think he'll have a rough go of it in the states (that's assuming he passes the English interview for his visa). Our class has been a four-hour block of class on Saturday afternoon for the past ten weeks, with no book, no material, no final exam, no help whatsoever from the "school" I'm supposedly employed at that keeps cashing all those tuition checks. I asked the jackass in charge what I was supposed to teach in this class, and he told to just show them a movie each week, or have them take me out to eat. First class, BeiHua. Anyway, I've been doing my best to make the class useful for them, but as anyone that's ever tried to study a language can tell you, a once-a-week four-hour cram session is, shall we say, less than ideal.

In class I've tried to balance practical vocabulary (like directions, eating, shopping, and dealing with every-day problems) with concerns about their medical insurance, costs of living, work-study jobs, and life in America. We've looked at the maps of Edgewood and Madison and tried to get a feel for where they'll be living, alongside learning how to order a drink in a bar and not get a glass of chardonnay (all alcohol in China is called 酒, jiu, which translates to wine, so I've had to explain what "wine" is in the West and how to make sure you get whiskey or beer when you want it). We've met outside of class as much as we've met in class, for meals or at Brian's home to meet his family, and this has really been an extraordinary glimpse of real life in China. And last Saturday, in lieu of our final class being another dull round of vocabulary in a classroom, Brian invited Paul and I out to a party for his co-worker's wife's father's sixtieth birthday. A tenuous connection, that, but why not?

Brian and his son, who calls me Superman.

He also talks to me in Chinese like we're best pals. All I can do is nod and smile.

Paul, me, and Brian, and 弟弟, didi, little brother.

Why not? The puddle was already there! (Bonus caption: man that kid had to go!)

Paul, 弟弟, and Paul's girlfriend.

For the party, they chartered a boat at the Song Hua Hu (松花湖), the same lake where I was camping a few weeks ago.

The boat landed on an island, and after we walked a ways, we came up to a tiny restaurant that seemed like the closest China has had to Woodloch. The whole restaurant was rented out for the big party.

Balance beams!

Made it there and back!

At the party, Brian pours us some 白酒, baijiu, "white wine." This unspeakably horrid drink is the drink of China; it is to China what vodka is to Russia, Guinness to Ireland, Coke to America. This "white wine" is closer to nail-polish remover (or, barring that, hard alcohol) than it is cab-sauv, but herein lies the root of the wine =/= alcohol conundrum for Chinese learning English.

Those two plastic cups are water. I swear.

At the party, the host had to go to each table and make a toast, probably several. Brian, being a higher-up at the bank, had to do the same. Thankfully they had switched to beer at this point, because ...

... yours truly got in on the next toast. The man on the right of the picture is Brian's co-worker, and it's his wife's father whose birthday was being celebrated. Which means he was toasting all day, and getting quite drunk.

After the big meal, we waited out the rain on the porch of a tiny cabin. Paul and his girlfriend along with Brian and his wife. I can never say her name correctly so I just call her 姐姐, jiejie, big sister.

Back to the boat.

Naturally beauty, where you been all my life? (那个地方有山有水.)

And back again.

I realized at the party that it's not Jilin that's getting to me, it's not China. (Well, it is, but that's only half of it.) It's missing home. It's wanting to spend my Saturday at a birthday party for someone I actually know, someone I can have a meaningful conversation with. It's wanting to spend time with my friends and family back home, and not flop around awkwardly like a fish in a bucket of milk at a dinner party where I can barely speak the language. It's an incredibly isolating experience sometimes, being here and having no one to really talk to. I have the other Maryknollers here at BeiHua, true, but it's hard talking to the same people in such a small group for so long without any outside input. It's hard to live in a place where no one speaks the language well enough to have an honest talk, where you sit there and are amazed at the pat tripe you spew out to students and other English learners, because they can't handle or understand how you really feel. That's what I felt at this party: it was nice, it was a good experience, and I was happy to go, but being there just made me realize how forever alien this place will be to me, and I to it.

Reverse Culture Shock

2008-05-22T10:54:00.002-04:00

It's strange, as I go through this slow extraction process, how I am begging to feel like I felt when I first arrived nearly two years ago in Zhanjiang, when I was deep in the throes of culture shock. I was exhausted, impatient, mentally unfocused, quick to anger, and all sorts of other unpleasantness. And now, like a novel that begins to echo itself in its final chapters, I find that I am once again often tired, and extremely unmotivated, and grumpy. I feel apathetic toward so many things here, a thick stubbornness growing in my mind, attitudes about this place shifting as I march toward the exit and begin to forgive less and less of every-day China.

What's the reverse of culture shock? Culture saturation? I've been wading through China for nearly two years now, and my attitudes have shifted dangerously close to how things were in the beginning. Well, not close, but let's say the first impressions weren't far from the mark.

I first arrived in China terrified to say anything bad about the place, fearful of being an ugly ethnocentric foreigner. I was happy, even quick to criticize America and the West, so familiar and so clearly in error in many ways, whereas here was China, a place I accepted at face value and was too ignorant of to talk intelligently about, let alone criticize. I was confused and angered by a lot of the foolishness (and yes I know that sounds like a grandma word) I saw in China all the time, but I swept it all under the mental carpet of "wow this is amazing these people are beautiful YAY!" A novice to the language, I looked at it as an incomprehensible mess of strokes and symbols that three lifetimes of effort could never decode. And now I've swung from passive acceptance of all that every-day ugliness to once again being angry about it, but not being afraid to say so; to once again being able to look at a piece of paper, to understand how the language and the characters are put together, and still chalk it all up as hopeless.

I got in a fight with a cabbie the other day. It was raining pretty hard, and James and I were coming back from the gym. Flag the cab down, heading to campus, the guy was speeding like a madman, incredibly unsafe *in the rain*, and trust me, it's a feat bordering on a deathwish to be in a cab in China and feel especially unsafe. This guy managed to do that. We told him to slow down a bunch of times, but he only grinned, a slow stupid smirk showing on his face in the rear-view mirror. He continued to cut people off, use the horn instead of the breaks, and drive with needless abandon. We arrived at the gate to our campus, still raining, and the jackass refused to drive in through the gate and up to the door. We asked, prodded, told him it was OK, and he just returned some bullshit answer in the typical bored Chinese male attitude, the "too bored to even consider whatever it is you're suggesting" voice. "你是白痴," "Ni shi bai chi," "You're an idiot," I said, threw the money on the seat, jumped out and slammed the door. He opened his door and was yelling at James and I as we just walked toward our dorm in the rain.

I guess that's how you know you've been here too long: when you're calling people idiots for being idiots, in the native language, not feeling impressed that you said it correctly, not even caring.

This Is How The Journey Ends

2008-05-17T10:00:00.002-04:00

Not with a bang, but with a long, profound groan.

I've been showing Philadelphia to my students this weekend, part of a two-class lesson on HIV/AIDS that will wrap up next week with a short quiz on the film, some shamelessly fact-dropping dialogues, and well-anticipated awkward silences as I talk about sexual-transmitted diseases in front of a group of students who still laugh at the equivalent of peek-a-boo. Yesterday the film went over pretty well: Chinese subtitles on (because there was no way in hell my students would understand a second of the film otherwise), the students were a great audience, laughing and sighing and nearly crying right where the director wanted them to. Today, well, not so much. I guess tonight was the stragglers, the lets-go-to-Matthew's-movie-and-sleepers, the twinkling screens of re-re-re-checked mobile phones creating a constellation of boredom in the yawning high-ceilinged lecture hall. Some paid attention, some tried to understand, some must have enjoyed the film, but all it did was leave me with a profound longing for home, mixed with feelings of intense resentment and venomous apathy for the rest of the classes I have to teach here in Jilin.

But what am I complaining about? All I have is a wildly unfulfilling job that is inexorably albeit slowly coming to a close. There are far more serious problems in the world, in China. To wit: estimates of up to 50,000 dead and missing as a result of the Sichuan earthquake. I was having a drink the other night with Kevin Clancy, Father Brian (the chronically busy Maryknoll priest here in Jilin), Kevin, Jenny, and Jim, and Jim raised an interesting point. This is China, the land of the One Child Policy. Now that's policy, friends, not a law: many people can and do have more than one child, but it's rare, and it only seems to happen if you're especially wealthy, live in a province with really lax enforcement, live in the country, or (this is China, after all) you know the right people. But for the most part, families do have one child.

And now, for many families, that child is gone, as an unimaginable number of children perished in the disproportionate number of cheap, poorly-made schools that collapsed in the quake.

“Our grief is incomparable,” said Li Ping, 39, eyes rimmed red, as he and his wife slowly, carefully pulled a pair of pink pajamas over the bruised, naked body of their 8-year-old daughter, Ke. “We got married late, and had a child late. She is our only child.”

The earthquake has effected the entire country. And maybe that was why my students didn't care to see a movie about AIDS, about more death and sadness. From having a student break down crying in my class because her boyfriend from Sichuan was unreachable, to having students comment on 2008 being a "terrible" year for China when just days ago they were beaming with Olympic pride ... it's been a strange time here, just five days from the event. When Americans mourned for Hurricane Katrina, where just under 2,000 died, we were saturated with grief. China, and my students, are still reeling from a far more profound disaster.

Well that's quite a pluralistic combo, complaining about being here and then indulging in the human vantage living here affords. That's the paradox, the combination of frustration and insight, that this place brings. I learned from Father Brian that my blog is being read on the radio, on his radio show, here in Jilin. Well, this should make for interesting broadcasting.

Some good news to close: James just finished running a marathon along the Great Wall of China, just outside Beijing. This time last year, Nicki was about to hop over to Hong Kong to run a half-marathon there. For what it's worth, I just ran all the way from campus, along the river, to the heart of Jilin city, for the first time. Not exactly a marathon, but, well, one landmark at a time.

One Month

2008-05-14T11:40:00.002-04:00

Kevin "The Man" Clancy is here in Jilin, checking up on us Maryknollers and making sure we haven't burned this city to the ground yet. He got in to the Lucky Forest some time around five this evening, and after the foreign teachers brought a pathetically sparse edition of English Corner to a close, we went into town for dinner, met up with Kevin, and had a good long catch-up chat together.

Kevin's been married to Kaishan ("Snow White") for more than half a year now. It was good to hear how that was going, to get some tips for Jim when he and Kat tie the knot next year, to talk about this past year in Jilin and what teachers will come after us and what this program will be in the next few years as the Maryknoll priests slowly go extinct.

It's about one month and counting for me here in Jilin. I look back at last September, I remember getting on the plane in Philly on that lost lonely August day, I remember coming in here to Jilin for the first time and seeing where I was going to live, I remember those first classes with my freshman last September that felt so familiar and yet so awkward. I've changed a lot, and in some ways I feel like I changed more this year than I did last, Jilin's harsh winter and my amazing trip through Southeast Asia acting as a kind personal and spiritual centrifuge. But in many ways this change is harder to explain, harder to put into words, harder to convey in a pat little blog entry. I feel so few people truly understood my first year here in China, so few ever had to time or the desire to really know how it affected me, so how could anyone possibly understand all that has happened in a second year?

Despite the uncertainty I face going back home, I feel all the more equipped to face it. I think I've whittled out a lot of unnecessary diversions, I've been able to see some things clearly in China despite the smog, and in just under one month, I'll be leaving China behind.

I'm Fine (But Thanks for Asking)

2008-05-12T11:51:00.004-04:00

Just a quick little update: the earthquake that rocked Sichuan province is very far from where I live. I'm fine here in the northeast, Sichuan being in China's midwest.

The earthquake was in Sichuan, which is here:

And I live in Jilin, which is here:

Quite far from me, as you can see. Sichuan is the one province I was yearning to visit before I left China, home of the spicy food I love and mystical landscapes of your imagination. I won't be able to visit before I leave China, especially not now ... but one day, I shall return.

Obligatory Blogging (ObligaBlog?)

2008-05-11T10:30:00.002-04:00

So I guess it's been a while since I last blogged. It's been, well, May, actually, my last blogging an odd stream-of-consciousness vignette about bus riding here in China. I hope I gave you a glimpse of what goes on in my mind here sometimes, and with me trying to get off campus at least once a day, getting on the bus is something I do often. Hey, one kuai bus rides beat thirteen kuai cab fares.

What's new? Not much, to be honest. Midway through May here in Jilin, and I came upon the unsettling idea that this, right here and right now, might be as good as my Chinese ever gets. I hope to study the language in America of course, to build upon all I've learned and expand my character comprehension, but let's be honest. I'm coming from an environment of total immersion and moving to one of language erosion, because the fact is, there won't be many places to actually speak Mandarin once I'm back in the states. While I don't like the idea of my Chinese being doomed to the nether reaches of my mind's attic, leaving China and living in America are going to present far harsher realities than that. I'm not giving up on the language, still paying those tutors and going to class. We'll see how it goes.

But that's to come, later, after Jilin and after Europe and Vermont this summer. What's happened here in Jilin has been a holiday, about a week and a half ago, the May Day (May 1) holiday, Chinese Labor Day. Jim was off escorting his second cousin through the wilds of Beijing, and so Kevin, James, and I joined Jenny and our friend Michelle, a Canadian foreign teacher at a nearby school, for a little camping on Five Tiger Island (五虎岛, Wu Hu Dao) in the middle of the Song Hua Lake (松花湖, Song Hua Hu).

On the ferry with all out stuff, ready to go camping on Five Tiger Island. We got there and realized that the island has more or less been converted into a half-assed amusement park. Nevertheless, we struck out for a remote corner of the island, determined to camp.

The star of the trip was undoubtedly Pengyou (peng, rhymes with rung, and you, as in Yo!), Michelle's energetic boxer that she brought all the way from Canada. The Chinese don't keep dogs as pets in the same way Westerners do; if they're big, they're either dinner, or guard dogs treated like any other beast of burden (which is to say, poorly), or they're tiny and completely nonthreatening. To see a dog the size of Pengyou out and about was a consistent shocker to most Chinese. To help keep things calm, Michelle has named him Pengyou (朋友, "friend" in Chinese), and tried to train him in Chinese (sit, shake, etc.) This calms most cynophobes down, but some still get freaked out when they seem him.

Laying on the gravely beach, playing with Pengyou.

Pengyou helps James gather some firewood.

We got a good fire going to cook dinner (*ahem*usingMichelle'sgasstove*ahem*), and to teach Jenny about the magical awesomeness of s'mores.

The sun begins to set.

What can I say, Pengyou's a photogenic dog. I miss Duke.

Ladies cooked, so the guys cleaned.

Playing with the aperture of my camera.

James can multi-task.

Camping on Five Tiger Island: success!

With the weather quickly going from cloudy to rainy, we packed up our gear and cut our camping time down to just one night. Just in time, though, as we made it back mid-downpour (which would not have been fun in those tents), and with enough time to spend the next day in Changchun (长春), Jilin's capital city.

The throne room of the last Qing emperor, who sided with the invading Japanese during World War II in the hope of regaining power in China. He "ruled" a huge area of Northeast China that was seized by the Japanese, but really he was merely a puppet. This is known to most Westerners as the Manchurian government. There is a lot of lingering anti-Japanese venom in these parts of the country, and the government does nothing to quell the hatred; in fact, they often encourage it.

Yummy street food in Changchun.

We ran in to one of my students, Ariel (the girl in the pink) while walking around Changchun. She showed us a Christian book store that served cheap brownies and Starbucks coffee.

So that was the May Day holiday. Not bad! Some camping, some s'mores, a day in Changchun ... can't complain. More photos here. And now we're entering mid-May, it's Mother's Day already (I already called home ... did you?), and before I know it, it'll be June and time to get outta here.

Getting on the Bus

2008-04-30T08:41:00.002-04:00

Dammit, I just missed it. Now I gotta wait like an hour for the next one. Must be a hundred of those damn buses, but none of them come down here, they all stop at the top of the hill at the main gate. Well, screw it, I'll just read until the next one comes.

Honking. Always honking. No, I don't want your stupid cab, if I wanted a cab I would take one of the five idling in front of me, no need to sprint through oncoming traffic to grab your precious gem of a vehicle. Just standing here does not mean I need a cab, having white skin does not mean I am utterly lost and in need of your unhelpful "assistance." I swear, these cabbies. Like a honking horn communicates anything here, where everyone is always honking at something. If an alien race were observing the movements of cars in China, they would go insane trying to unravel the mysteries of the honk. "Yes, but what does it mean?!" they would cry, before throwing themselves into a space incinerator. It can mean get the hell outta the way, it can mean I'm backing up, it can mean I'm turning and don't want to break, and, apparently, it can be a proposition for a ride, a proffering of services, conditions of carriage. How can one sound mean so many things, the aliens would cry. Go insane trying to figure it out.

OK, looks like another one is coming. Jesus it's crowded today. Usually no one's on the bus down here, route starts just a half mile away. Ah well, here it comes ... and there it goes. Precision brakes on this well-maintained fleet. You'd think whoever owns these buses would hire competent drives and take care of the buses in what is clearly a low-profit-margin gig. But no, cattle cars with wheels, the steel plates that are technically floors rotting away beneath you, the engine encased in a womb of plastic right there in the middle of the bus for all to breath and smell. Pop one kuai in and it'll take me in to the city, me and thirty other people on a bus designed for fifteen. Sardines have it easy.

Up the hill, stopping at the main gate of campus. All these students going home for the May Day holiday. What'd Autumn say in class today? Like "Worker's Day" or something. Labor day, more or less. Or as the British say: Labour Day. Lotta students trying to get on this bus. No cabs here. Student's must've taken 'em. More crowded then usual. Ah, and the classic conundrum: do I offer my seat to the inevitable old lady that's going to get on, looking all helpless and predeceased? Or do I let one of the Chinese on the bus do the right thing? Screw it, I'm not giving up my seat. One of the other five men on the bus, young "men," students, so hip and bored with their finger-in-the-socket haircuts and painfully hip fashion that's so weird it feels like it's from some bad sci-fi movie, THEY can get off their ass and offer THEIR seat to the 老人. It's their goddamn country. Where's that veneration of elders when it counts?

No. If you don't give up your seat, you're just as bad as they are. What do you care if you stand? It's a twenty minute ride to the gym, you can read standing up. Be the bigger man. Set an example for them. Show them Americans, foreigners, take that respect of elders seriously, that we'll make those polite little sacrifices while the Chinese "men" on the bus sit there all smug and entitled, endlessly playing on their conspicuously-consumptive mobile phones. Show them how easy it is to be better.

Oh screw this. There must be forty people on this stupid bus. Their country, their old people, their problem. I'm staying in my damn seat.

(More) Spring in Jilin; Also, Jim's Birthday

2008-04-26T11:12:00.003-04:00

Springtime for Jilin and China. (Winter for ... *sigh* Jilin and 东北 Dongbei.) Yes, what better way to welcome spring than with one of those casual April snowfalls?

It was Jim's birthday on Wednesday, so we took him out for the usual birthday meal (well, usual for us at least): dumplings. We also made him an awesome chocolate pudding cake, complete with double-layer oreo cookie crust. The bizarre April snowshower began after days, almost a week of spring-worthy warmth. It may be hard to tell in the picture, but we're outside the restaurant, and it is indeed snowing.

Hands off, ladies, he's engaged. The cake was approximately three hundred percent more satisfying to eat than it was to look at.

The restaurant where we seem to end up for every birthday (well, mine ... and now, uh, Jim's) takes pride in being one of the oldest jiaozi restaurants in Jilin. A lot of that "legacy" is manufactured: old cannons that couldn't shoot the breeze litter the facade, while 服务员 fuwuyuan (that is, waiters and waitresses) scurry about in carefully-orchestrated anachronistic frocks. (God I love that word, "frock.") But they do put on a nice little tea-pouring show.

James loves tea!

Now that's impressive.

Three-pointer.

Sanae and Wakana love tea, too!

The weeks here in Jilin seem to be slowly but surely slipping through the ether, an invisible clock that you nonetheless feel ticking down to June. I can't believe it's almost May! (And now, because I had it written already, is another clumsy timepiece metaphor:) The sand in the China hourglass is dwindling, and life seems locked in a predictable pattern of class, tutoring, gym, and never finding enough time to study.

I've made a real effort this term to spend more time with my students, and so far, it's been a total wash. I could walk out my door on any random Zhanjiang afternoon and spend more quality time with students in half a day than I've spent with my students here all year. I've offered them chances to come over and cook, talk, try some fresh coffee, watch a movie, damn near anything, and I get nothing, no response, or at least no real response beyond a lot of empty enthusiasm. Not just me, either, but all of the other teachers here as well. I had one group of girls set to come over this afternoon, we were all set to cook, until ... someone's mother called and asked her to come home. Well, she'll be home next week, Mom ... and so one girl bails, and the whole afternoon was scrapped. Two weeks ago another student, Maureen, stopped by Sunday afternoon and stuck around for a good long chat. She asked if we could meet like that every Sunday; sure, I said, bring your classmates, let's do it! Sunday came and went, no call from Maureen; I saw her in class that week, asked he what was up, she told me she snuck (hmm, FireFox's spell checker is telling me I should write "sneaked") out of her Sunday computer class, went back to the dorm, and slept all day. And now it's after midnight on Saturday "night," and something tells me I won't be seeing Maureen tomorrow.

So there it is, folks. I guess I shouldn't complain; anywhere else on the planet, the last thing a student wants to do is spend their free time with their teacher. But it's different here, dammit, or at least it should be, when I'm a young disposable foreign teacher whose class is a joke by default. I shouldn't be angry, the students can do whatever the hell they want with their free time, but when the job has long since become a farce, the pay is just enough to keep you from going broke, and you live in a half-frozen armpit of China for nearly a year, well, you kind of start wanting a reason for it all, something to make it all worth it. That human connection with my students was there in Zhanjiang; it's proving elusive here up north.

On the bright side, apathetic students have given me plenty of time to study Chinese. But that, in turn, has only helped me realize that I don't want to spend the next half-decade of my life learning this language that is long on frustration and short on any kind of sexiness. Mastering Chinese is a noble goal, and if you have a handful of years to throw at it, be my guest. But after two years here, I've had my fill of China, and while I'll continue to study the language and its fascinating intersections of symbols, abstracts, and a peculiar if not consistent logic, I am dismayed that no other aspects of China can match the promise of the language.

Whoo boy. It was supposed to be a short blog for photos. I need to learn when to shut up.

201st post!

2008-04-19T12:15:00.003-04:00

OK, I guess it kind of loses its effect coming right on the heels of that big fat "200th post!" entry, but whatever, this is post 201! An exciting post, the first in the next one hundred! Hmm, we'll see where this blog goes after China.

I've been blogging since August 2006. Sometimes that feels hours away, sometimes decades. I started this blog quite literally the night before I left for China near the beginning of August 2006, a languid-yet-tense night of post-packing second-guessing and pre-voyage rumination, with a side of family drama and emotional numbing from the enormity of it all. I was a bundle of nerves and hubris and paranoia and a strange kind of over-confidence, and some times I look back on that night, the pan-Pacific trip, that first bus ride to Zhanjiang, and wonder where the hell the courage and/or lack of sanity came from, to just up and do it. I had only the faintest idea of what the hell I was getting myself in to, and now, nearly two years later, I couldn't have imagined that China would become what it has become, I couldn't have hoped for such an amazing, formative time, I couldn't have guessed how much I would have changed and grown. It has been hard at times, mind-numbing at times, damn near unbearable and isolating at times, but also exhilarating and enlightening and I am just so incredibly happy that I've come this far, pushed myself kicking and screaming to this new precipice, done what I've done seen what I have seen. And if I have seen farther, understood better, because of it, well ...

Last weekend I (we) made jiaozi, again, and now I can actually roll them into a decent-looking snack; plus I got the ingredients written down, and should be able to make 'em back home. It was James Kevin and I, as well as Jenny, and our Japanese foreign teacher friends Wakana and Sanae.

Let the deliciousness begin!

So ... many ... jiaozi.

Roll 'em up carefully.

And to finish it off ... Kevin's chocolate tofu pie! Much tastier than that sounds.

What else? Ah, yes: just the other night, the foreign teachers here at BeiHua were all taken out for a meal by the Powers That Be here on campus. "Why" was a mystery, until we were informed at dinner that the unannounced mystery-guest we were eating with, who as far as I could tell didn't speak a word of English, was a police officer; the topic of conversation was awkwardly yet purposefully shifted toward Tibet and the Olympic-related protests the world over; and we all more or less had our political pulse taken on the whole thing. But hey, free meal!

The "cop" is taking the picture.

And this evening I had a long home-cooked meal with my MBA students, and I was able to go to the home and meet the family of one of them, Brian. Over the course of a huge meat-filled dinner with seemingly endless cups of 白酒 baijiu, beer, and tea, we talked about everything going on in the world re: China, from pro-Tibet/anti-China rallies in France to rising food prices the world over to Clinton's/Obama's answer to the imploding American financial market, all in a truly bizarre cocktail of English and Chinese. It was the most honest conversation I've had with students, with damn near anyone in China, in a long time.

One weekend. Three meals. Students, friends, teachers. Challenges and strangeness and culture shock and China being China. The trip to 201 has been well worth it.

200th post!

2008-04-17T02:35:00.003-04:00

Wow, two hundred posts here on Matt's Myth! Well, what can I say? It's been a helluva ride, huh folks? FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YE-

Well, not in China, anyway.

I actually just popped in to berate myself (and the approximately zero other people who read this thing who find Chinese language lessons interesting) for writing a bit of the song that my students taught me incorrectly. I wrote:

跑的快 / Pao de kuai / Basically this makes no sense.

When I should have written:

跑得快 / Pao de kuai / Quickly run.

So maybe this can be a glimpse into the special madness that is learning Chinese. The words I used are both pronounced "de," same sound, same tone (well, lack to tone, actually), and both are used commonly. The first de (的) is the attributive for a noun, kind of like Spanish: 我的大衣, Wo de dayi, my coat (the coat of mine). The second de (得), the correct one for the song, is a complement of result or degree, like 跑得快, pao de kuai, running quickly, or 说得好, shuo de hao, speak well. It's not unique to Chinese I'm sure, but it's a huge pain in the ass to have so many vitally important bits of speech sound exactly alike.

Wow, that's about as dry as a celebratory 200th post can get. I promise I'll be back soon with something good for post 201.

Two Tigers (See How They Run)

2008-04-14T02:41:00.002-04:00

Today my students taught me a song before class, and to my complete surprise, I understood every word of it (except one). Ahem (sung to the tune of "Frere Jacka"):

两只老虎 / Liang zhi laohu / Two tigers
两只老虎 / Liang zhi laohu / Two tigers
跑的快 / Pao de kuai / Quickly run
跑的快 / Pao de kuai / Quickly run
一只没有眼睛 / Yi zhi mei you yanjing / One has no eye
一只没有尾巴 / Yi zhi mei you weiba / One has no tail
真奇怪 / Zhen qiguai / Very strange
真奇怪 / Zhen qiguai / Very strange

The one word I didn't get was ... tail. Weiba. But otherwise, it all clicked. Pretty amazing for me. I often see in my students, and see in my own use of my vocabulary, a reiteration of various core words that can be grouped with other simple yet powerful words to express complex ideas; basically, talking around what you want, but defining it more or less within comprehension. I've used that word qiguai, strange, so often to comment on a million things that are weird, rude, unsettling, vulgar, and unusual. And he it comes back at me in this simple kid's song.

Then I was humbled when my students sang it back to me in English and in French.

Great day of class today. And then a great tutor session where I was able to derive the meaning of a lot of new words based solely on the character. The weather is gorgeous, sunny and warm, and I think I'll go run to the gym, rather than running at the gym.

I told Jenny a while ago, some days I love China, and some days I hate it. Today, I love China.

清明节 (Qing Ming Jie), or "Tomb Sweeping Day"

2008-04-09T10:24:00.004-04:00

Last year China gave the, uh, country, a whole week off in May, around the "May Day" (first of May) holiday. The result was another typical Chinese holiday of skyrocketing prices, mind-boggling congestion, and basically billions of people all trying to travel and go to the same places at the same time. Not ideal.

So this year it looks like The Powers That Be have axed that week off in May, and have instead decided to parcel out that week off in discrete three-day-weekend increments, by "embracing" more regional and/or low key holidays. The first of those happened last weekend: Qing Ming Jie (清明节), a holiday popularly translated as "Tomb Sweeping Day."

(A side note: it is kind of strange to live in a place where a government decree suddenly changes how over a billion people celebrate a tradition. Can you imagine the government in the states trying to tell people to cancel one holiday and take those days off another time? It seems incredibly odd to me, but hey, most people, myself included, were just happy for the day off, and were using the time to be with friends and family ... which seems to be what people the world over do with their holidays, regardless of the underlying reason for the day off ... six one way, half a dozen the other.)

Jenny, Kevin, and Michelle browsing one of the innumerable stalls selling Qing Ming Jie paraphernalia.

"Tomb Sweeping" is really only a small part of the holiday, but the day seems to be comprised of all the elements of that classical Chinese veneration of ancestors. The tomb sweeping sees families visiting the graves of their relatives, giving them a little spring cleaning, and leaving flowers, fruit, and other savories at the grave. There's also a lot of money-burning, but more on that later.

You've probably already seen pictures of my good friend Jenny. She's eating pizza with us below, she's traveled to 长白山 (Chang Bai Shan) with us, she's tutored us, she's helped us in countless ways: Jenny is a true friend here in Jilin.

Jenny has also lost both of her parents. Her father when she was younger, her mother much more recently. She's an incredibly strong woman, and she is so outgoing and cheerful that it's easy to forget what she's been through. She invited me, along with Kevin and our friend Michelle, to visit the graves of her parents this past Qing Ming Jie, and I was honored to be there with her.

Jenny's mother was baptized (with Jenny's consent) before she passed away, and her mother and father were interred together in a Christian cemetery.

I know it sounds insane, but sometimes I just forget that Jenny speaks to us in her second language. I mean, I know it, I know it in an academic sense, I can hear her accent and all, but still. When Jenny finished cleaning the dirt off of her parents's grave, she started speaking to her mother, and of course it was in Chinese, and I've heard Jenny speak Chinese a million times before ... but it was strange, different this time. She wasn't speaking simple Chinese for my learner's ears, she was talking, praying, to her mother, with all the beautiful fluency of your native tongue.

Jenny brought some fruit, flowers, and pastries from a local bakery. She left some on the grave, the rest she brought with her as we left. I don't know if she bought those pastries because her mom liked them, or because she likes them.

Outside the cemetery, we began to burn the (fake) paper money. I think it's to offer wealth and fortune to those we've lost. Jenny bought a large pile of big yellow money, old money (as in, deep-in-the-past-dynasties old) that looked more like bills of exchange or property deeds than money. No one really knew how to burn the money, what ritual we were supposed to observe, so we made a little stove with some nearby rocks and burned two big piles, one for Jenny's mother and one for her father.

Michelle helps Jenny finish off the paper.

I felt incredibly honored to spend Qing Ming Jie with Jenny, to see first hand how this day is celebrated. But I don't really know what else I can add, so I'll stop.

I Told You I'd Do It, But You Didn't Believe Me!

2008-04-06T11:26:00.002-04:00

Why didn't you believe me?!

Pizza Hut: 1
Matthew: 0

eFreedom (And: I Want Pizza)

2008-04-02T07:57:00.003-04:00

Huh. That's weird.

My blog, it ... loaded. In China. Without incident. Hm. No Tor, no Anonymouse, no proxy of any kind.

A few weeks ago, YouTube was unblocked. Then I heard that BBC was, at long last, accessible. Now Blogger ... wait a minute, maybe this means ...!

Holy shit! Wikipedia! It loads!

What's happening to China? Is the government at long last trusting people with information? Is this all just to earn some face for the Olympics? Will the Great FireWall come crashing down in a matter of hours, weeks, months?

Regardless, it's nice to enjoy some eFreedom, at least for now.

It hasn't hit me anywhere near as hard as it hit me last year in Zhanjiang, but the pangs for good Western food are upon me something fierce yet again. I was gChatting with Lawler and somehow the idea of food around Villanova came up, and I would be lying if I said I didn't start to salivate at the idea of big juicy greasy cheesy Garrett Hill pizza with those beer-battered fries and a icy-cold DFH90 to wash it down.

Bah, stop this nonsense Matt, food porn is poison.

But you don't realize how important simple things are like good food and tasty beer are until you go without. Kevin likes to cook, as did Nicki last year, and though we usually eat out (in China, where great food is so cheap, how can you not?), sometimes you get a taste of home-cooked food, food just unlike all the other food in China, and you realize there's a whole paradigm of preparation and ingredients and style and snacks on the other side of the Pacific, and you miss it in a different way from friends or family but just as deeply (OK, not just as deeply, but deep), and before you know it the foodlust is upon you.

I know I'm repeating myself, you can find these yearnings is previous entires, but screw it, I want pizza and beer, and I'm just desperate enough to close my eyes and march into Jilin's newly-opened Pizza Hut and pretend it's the same thing. And I assure you, that itch will be only very slightly scratched, "fulfilled" the same way a man in a desert is "thirsty," because my friends I say to you, the same thing they are not.

The Good Times Just Keep On Coming (Or: Twinkiemeat)

2008-03-31T09:50:00.003-04:00

Oh China! Just when I'm down and out, ready to burn you to the ground and dance on a mountain of ashes, you go and charm me like you did this afternoon. Was it the phone tag between me and my "boss" to get the rooms he promised last week (that suddenly became unavailable) to finally show a film for the first time *ever* in Jilin? No. Was it the whole city looking at my like I had three heads as I walked to the gym in my shorts? No, but close!

It was not telling me that the water would be off all night until I got back from the gym! Yes China, that's the little feather in your cap that got me today.

China seems to have an obsession with over-packaged hot dog wannabe mystery meat, which I will now call "twinkiemeat," a neologism that I just made up as I sat here writing this blog and a name that I will now use forever and ever because it's awesome. It's really gross, and this from the guy that used to eat hot dogs like I was trying to win a prize. But I see this twinkiemeat all over the place: plastic-wrapped hot dog-looking way-too-pink meat stuff that I don't need to eat to know it's cow brain and pig hoof and, well, probably a good bit of plastic in there too, plus god knows what else. And, confession: I think I ate some, once, but I was new in China and I didn't know better and I needed the money. And as you'd expect, this twinkiemeat has no substance in your mouth at all, it's just filler and crap barely held together by whatever glue they processed it with.

And this twinkiemeat is everywhere. At Chang Bai Shan, we saw them being boiled in their little PVC-plastic packaging:

Part of the repugnance, I think, comes from the awful overuse of plastic and packaging materials, to make sure you know this is as synthetic a "meat" product as is possible to make by known human food processing methods.

I see them being slowly turned on little gas-powered skillets at the various food stalls around Jilin, I see them stuck on kebabs and eaten, like it makes sense to just put this congealed paste that once was meat on a stick and eat it, and not have the decency for even a bun, or mustard. Chinese food can be some of the most savory food on the planet, and yet there seems to be an insatiable appetite for this garbage.

And every day I walk out of the gym, and there's my girl, Fried Hotdog Lady, grillin' up a frying pan of twinkiemeat, ready to inject that protein back in to ya, because what's better after a hard workout than a stick of rat dick and pigeon skull? Mmm-mm!

Poor Performance

2008-03-30T10:40:00.003-04:00

Well hot damn, it's nearly the end of March and I've got a deadline: blog, at least a little bit, so that this month doesn't go down as the worst month for blogging in Matt's Myth history! A deep prestigious history at that. Yes, the internet itself may very well crumble if this beachhead of a blog doesn't improve it's performance!

I guess what's been weighing on my mind of late has been China, and how I can't seem to think about much else other than leaving it, and one of the main reasons being just how pointless trying to teach here can be sometimes.

Last year in Zhanjiang, Nicki once said that she thinks China doesn't need foreign teachers. But while I think there will always be room for native speakers as teachers for anyone trying to learn a foreign language, for the most part, she's right. Because China has no clue what to do with foreign teachers.

Allow me to first say: I am not a good teacher. I try, I do a middling job, and the students who care seem to like me, and I can notice an increase in confidence and skill in some, but I am not a good teacher, and I realize I am sorely lacking a background in TESL to make my job go smoothly. But these problems exist regardless of me.

I look back at the classes I have given here in China, and they have been a mix of well-intentioned but trouble, and utterly pointless. The British and American literature classes I taught in Zhanjiang? That was a great class, a fun class, a class to share with students (even though maybe only handful ever engaged on any meaningful level) some of the important stories of the English language. The other classes I taught in Zhanjiang? Much more in the pointless category. A writing class with a rubbish textbook, a class that no one bothered to tell me was really supposed to prepare my students for a big nation-wide test; in the end, I was left without any direction for the class, and the students were done a disservice because they weren't given a class to basically learn how to take the test (since China more or less teaches to the test for everything). Another class, a thesis writing class that was all for one big fuck-all thesis paper at the end of the term: Steve and I trying to actually teach some students how to do research and take notes and do MLA citations and stuff, a term's worth of work, and then, shrug, the school has some student from last year give a two-hour speech on How The Papers Are Meant to be Done, and that's all they should listen to; ignore everything the teacher has told you.

And here: a simple Oral English class for Freshmen. Only problem is, the Freshmen's English is bad. Really bad. So bad that more than half need a bilingual teacher much more than a foreign teacher. Maybe the junior students I've met, they might benefit from a foreign teacher, but the school deems it unnecessary to give them an Oral English class. (Meanwhile, my Freshmen, so woefully unskilled in English, are now being forced to begin a new foreign language, either French of Japanese.)

So I teach Freshmen, many of whom honestly cannot understand what I am saying, and on top of that, I have a textbook that is absolute shit, couldn't teach a book to read. Fine, whatever, same old, all last term I wrote up my own dialogs, made photocopies every week, bought magazines and other things to use in class, all outta pocket, at least those who engage and try will get some useful experience, and hopefully improve, and my grades will reflect that, right?

No. Wrong. Come to find out, the people here at BeiHua changed my grades last term.

They didn't tell me. They didn't ask me to adjust my grades to fit their "oh you have to many students in the eighties" so-called "requirements." Just changed the grades. Gave the top three in the class 90s, the middle of the curve got 80s, most got 70s. The shithead kid who couldn't say his name and skipped class nearly every week? 70. The girl who came and tried hard and got a 90 on my final despite doing poorly all term, whou could lose her scholarship if she scores below an 85 in any class? She got a 70, too.

She'll lose her scholarship because of my bullshit grade, and the school refuses to do anything about it.

And here is where I make some reconciliation, where I drop a little pearl of understanding, or I slough it all off and just say I'm China-jaded or culture-shocked or something to sweep the whole ordeal under the rug with a happy "isn't China great!" smile. But no.

I am tired of teaching and living in this country. I'm tired of the truly amazing levels of incompetence I have encountered at every level of both universities where I've worked. I'm tired of lazy, disinterested waibans and lying, misleading bosses whose constant inaction and refusal to DO THEIR GODDAMN JOB slowly kills even the best intentions. I am tired of the games you have to play to get anything done here. I'm tired of even playing these ridiculous games, because just playing lends them some kind of legitimacy. And I'm tired of pretending there is something of value to be had from such pointless frustration.

It is very clearly time to go.

The Way You Once Were

2008-03-27T08:27:00.002-04:00

Any time I'm sick, I try to make a mental snapshot of how I feel (quietly saying to myself, remember how this feels, REMEMBER), so that when I feel better I can look back on that moment, recall said snapshot, and appreciate being well. It never works, of course, until I get sick again and find myself muttering "remember!" on the bathroom floor through a nose full of stomach acid and snot.

I don't know how it happened, but I feel awful, fever, chills, the works. I'm leaky at both ends, if you get my meaning, and the worst part is that I made it through class just fine, the stomach only beginning to churn like a drop of lemon in a glass of milk by mid-class. I came home and felt the pile of oatmeal, yogurt, and coffee sitting in my stomach, demanding to be released, and it was a boring mid-day of the fever rising and just waiting for the sick to come.

And then the vomit burst forth, flowing like obscure words in a long-winded dam metaphor, and I felt a bit better, but here I am at 8:30, feverish, chilly, stomach ready to evacuate again, unable to go an hour without having to run to the bathroom. I sat down to write this blog about something else entirely, but here I am drolling on about being sick, and suddenly I don't want to write anymore. So that's that.

Thoughts in a Chinese Gym

2008-03-18T09:46:00.003-04:00

The gym I belong to in Jilin is approximately 300% better than the gym I belonged to in Zhanjiang last year. It has a lot of modern equipment, from treadmills to dumbbells (where you can actually read the weight!) to cable machines. They're all plastered with the brand "Impulse Fitness," which also (coincidently?) happens to be the name of the gym, and this name is everywhere you look, plastered on the walls and mirrors like they're trying to indoctrinate you or something. I find myself just staring emptily into the company's logo on the support beams in front of me as I try to make it through the last five minutes, sweat streaming down my face like tears, telling myself I won't look to see how much time is left until this song is over, OK-now-look, FIVE MINUTES?! WHAT THE?!

Chinese men appear to have no qualms with nudity, and they like to strut around the locker room at what I consider to be absurd levels of nakedness. Nakedness that is so constant that it seems like it's trying to say something, like a point is trying to be made or some kind of silent protest is underway. There's always one guy, fresh out of the shower and yet somehow without even the decency of a towel, gingerly laying out his clothes on the bench, carefully weighing the decision of what to put on first with nude pacing that orbits the entire locker room; or another guy naked in front of the mirror, one leg sprawled high on the counter like he's stretching for a marathon, using a hair dryer to fluff his pubes and dry between each toe, because if any part of you is at all wet, YOU WILL GET SICK; all the while his ass crack broadcasts a vertical smile for all to see.

I was changing in the locker room and overheard three guys, late-twenties-early-thirties guys, joking as they got dressed to leave. And what was funny is how it sounded like my friends: I could tell by the change in one guy's voice that he was doing some line for a show, a sitcom catchphrase or something, and they were talking about what all guys talk about, farts and dumps, saying something about how one guy farts too much and the other guy's farts don't smell. I felt like these guys could have been my room mates, and it was a special if strange moment for my Chinese.

The Return

2008-03-10T22:21:00.003-04:00

So it's been a while, hasn't it? At least a mile in the Memento-esque non-memory of the internet, where the "what have you done for me lately" mentality is measured in seconds.

I have returned to Jilin. I'm finding it very difficult to get a good routine of studying down, mostly because every tutor I have sought has fallen through: one tutor, Lotus, has been given the chance of a lifetime to go teach Chinese at a Confucius Center in South Korea; my tutor from last year, Yu Laoshi (于老师), is overburdened with classes this term; and the other teachers that I've approached all seem to have schedules that conflict with when I teach. So it's been just over a week back here in the "lucky forest," and I still don't have a routine for studying. Which, for me at least, means I barely study. Damn it.

I do have one good routine going, but it's hardly a week old and I hate to jinx it, but I've joined a gym (a good, modern, Western gym, too, at steep, modern, Western prices), and I've been going consistently, if you can call a week "consistent." Every time I step on that treadmill it's punishment for every Ben and Jerry solo I've ever played (or maybe it's more honest to say Ben and Jerry duet). For me, it's always been a matter tricking myself into a financial obligation to get my ass to the gym: if I put a large sum of money down, up front, on a mad whim of healthy self-improvement, I'll have no choice but to get my money's worth and go to the gym. So that's what I did, and here's hoping it works out. (Oh, the puns, they are so delicious!)

James, Carolyn (taking the photo), and I crossing the mouth of the waterfall at Tat Kuang Si, Luang Prabang, Laos.

Yeah. That waterfall.

I am sitting here, in this sleepy smoky little pocket of northeast China, and I am still in awe of this trip, this Trip of Trips, from which I have just returned. It was, quite simply, audacious. Epic. In the true sense of the word, awesome. A lifetime of memories in a brief two months of travel, the journey against which all other travel will be judged. To come back and just, ugh, stay in one place ... it feels ... wrong. To use a pompous word I love, it's anathema after such a long time on the road. But Jilin is where I will be until the summer, a slow steady toil of teaching and studying and gym'ing, and come the end of June I will leave Jilin (and most likely China) behind me.

Talking about China of late has led to me vomiting a lot of hateful vitriol, a mixture of resentment of having to come back here after so much wanderlust liberation, of frustration with learning the language and all-too-quiet students, of desiring something great and challenging and interesting to come next, and deciding whatever that next step will be. But you get me going on China, on Zhanjiang and Hong Kong and Jilin and friends and Maryknollers, and I'll have that glazed real-men-don't-cry look in my eyes. I will miss this place. I'll miss everything so much. But, for now at least, it's time for me to go.

Luang Prabang, Kunming and Beyond (Or: Requiem for a Journey)

2008-02-29T04:55:00.003-05:00

Luang Prabang, for all intents and purposes my last stop in Laos, my last stop on this amazing trip. A beautiful old colonial French town, a tiny calm pocket of old-world charm on a green peninsula jutting into and bisecting the Mekong, the green mountains forming a kind of half-hearted basin-edge. It was a town for walking, for observing the sleepy wats and the shaded alleyways littered with UNESCO-protected buildings and links to a simpler, slower time. It was a great way to end the trip, until I had to take a thirty-three hour bus ride from Luang Prabang to Kunming, China.

Stop for a moment. Take a breath. Say that number aloud. "Thirty-three." Thirty-three what, you ask? Surely only certain things are measured in such terms, small things, insignificant things. The number of seconds it took for the popcorn to burn, the change in your pocket ... these things and more are often cited in the thirties, thirty-three even, and people don't pause.

Thirty-three HOURS. On a bus.

But to be fair, it was a sleeper bus, and a remarkably empty bus, by Chinese standards. We left Luang Prabang around eleven in the evening, and awoke in time to cross the border into China that morning.

Back on the bus, for more than a whole day of travel, and I tried to sleep as much as I could, off and on, music and sleep, the ceilings too low to sit and read or do anything other than lay down and try to sleep through it all. And so it was that I found myself waking up in Kunming, approximately thirty-three HOURS later, asking in half-asleep Chinese, "Kunming ... arrived ... ma?" I stumbled down the street and checked into the nearest (cheap) room I saw, showered, and for some reason decided to go explore Kunming. One last city for the road.

And now I'm in Hong Kong, ready to leave in just a few minutes to cross the border into the mainland, and from there, fly up to the great frigid wastes of Jilin and northeast China.

I remember thinking this time last year, after first dipping my toe in the "backpacker" pool by doing two and a half weeks in Cambodia and Vietnam, that long stretches of travel would be good things, maybe even great things. How the wanderlust was burning bright, and the flames were only fanned by a successful trip, not squelched. And how I could have gone on, maybe a solid month of travel, and while I thought that I might have become listless, unhinged after month on the road, but I knew it I could, should do it.

And here I sit at the end of nearly eight weeks of life on the road, a life of border crossing and bus riding and sight seeing, and I can't help but think: this is only a beginning. I thought crossing into Laos from Thailand that this would be it, this trip would scratch that travel itch for a while to come, and yet before I even arrived in Kunming, I was making plans on where to visit next: I cannot leave China without seeing Sichuan province, that mystical place calls to me, and hey, Tibet is practically next door ...

Travel. It seems like a way to rediscover yourself. You throw yourself into new places and things without much more than your instincts and, maybe, a guidebook with a lot of useless trivia but a few good maps and bus schedules. And that's the allure, I guess, of seeing what you can do and see on your own. It's easy in a backpacker ghetto where people order from English menus and mindlessly absorb repeats and Friends, but it's something different when you make your way overland from Singapore to China.

So the trip is over, the dream is ended. Further rumination is forthcoming, like it or not. For now, I gotta catch a bus into China, and then fly back to Jilin.

One More For the Road

2008-02-24T08:53:00.002-05:00

Vang Vieng: as much Khao San Road as it was Ko Surin. A beautiful borderless green countryside, and the only bad part is you have to stay in Vang Vieng, this giant plastic tourist camp where nothing is more than ten years old and people mindlessly wolf down Western food while watching constant reruns of "Friends." Thankfully I spent as much time out of town as possible and saw some truly fantastic scenery, climbs limestone mountains, went spelunking in underground caves, and biked my ass sore through the lush mountain valleys.

Where I was staying ... a glimpse of tourist blight in front of green mountains.

Ah, outside of town ... that's better.

Nice flag! Where's that?

Oh.

A view from up there.

Nice hikes with friendly strangers.

Let's go spelunking!

Inside the caves.

Hero pose.

Biking 26km is easy when its through landscapes like this.

And now I'm in Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage sight that is as beautiful as it is old. French shophouses line the streets alongside an old royal palace (now a museum) and ancient Buddhist wats, the long peninsular town comfortably nestled within the mountains with two rivers on either side. The whole scene is typically Laos: slow and comfortable, interesting yet low-key, old and traditional, beautiful and budding with new. I've been here for a couple of days, and I've even met up with fellow Jilin'er James. Tomorrow evening I leave, for a (hopefully painless) twenty-four hour bus ride back into China.

And so I stand on the precipice of the end: this trip, at long last, is coming to a close. It's been fantastic, unforgettable, fun and relaxing and awe-inspiring and, in every sense of the word, truly awesome. But more on that later; more Vang Vieng pics here.

Vientiane, Round Two

2008-02-19T10:50:00.002-05:00

It's a lovely little city, that's for sure, but with a heart that feels no bigger than a square mile, it's pretty easy to see all there is to see here, and in a short period of time. It's a quiet city, by any measure. I climbed to one of the city's highest views, atop the four-arched Patuxai, and was amazed at how tiny, compact, and, well, green this city really is. But there's enough sights around Vientiane to show the pride and exuberance of the Loas people even after years of war and revolution.

So, yesterday on foot, and today riding a bike, and now ... well, I kind of feel like I'm done. So tomorrow I'll head north to Vang Vieng, a place renowned for it's natural beauty, be it rivers, caves, rock climbing, or just rolling green hills that look like they belong on an ancient scroll somewhere. We'll see how it holds up; here's hoping it's more Ko Surin and less Khao San Road. And if you don't understand that sentence, you haven't been paying attention to this blog.

That's what I mean, baby: Laos pride.

The pace of life here can generously be called "relaxed."

Ah, Beer Lao. The first genuinely good Asian beer.

Love this photo.

Love that Laos style ... architecture clearly influenced by the Khmers (Cambodians) and Thais (take a guess), but it has it's own distinct features: gently sloping roofs, simple clay scales, intricate but not overly-ornate.

Patuxai, Laos' own Arc de Triomphe.

Climbing to the top ...

View from (near) the top.

The symbol of Laos, Pha That Luang.

More here!

Vientiane!

2008-02-18T06:20:00.002-05:00

No, that's not some perverse Lao-language come-on, it's the capital city of this lovely little country, Laos. So far Laos is quiet and relaxed, lazy slow hours spent in a cafe (with fresh Lao coffee) or on leisurely strolls around the grounds of a wat or two. Tomorrow I guess I'll rent a bike and really see the sights, but for now, it's slow and simple, and that's what I like about it.

Few too many foreigners, though. Like Bangkok, only this city is so damn small ...

Going into the National Museum this afternoon, there was the interesting, predictable stuff on show: exhibits explaining what was up in the land that is now Laos during the stone age, the bronze age, and all that; Laos history as a former vassal to the Khmers (Cambodia) and the Siamese (Thailand); a brief flirtation with the Dutch East India Company and contact with the west, and on until today. But there's also a lot of vivid images of the fight against French colonialism, as well as the "secret" war America undertook against Laos while we were fighting in Vietnam.

You mean you don't know about this "secret" war that has offered Laos the distinction of being the most heavily bombed country, per capita, than any other in the world? "Between 1971 and 1973 the USAF dropped more ordnance on Laos than was dropped worldwide during World War II." And the best part is, the war wasn't even real! Which means the money to drop those bombs didn't appear on any budgets, the Laos body count never appeared on anyone's tally of the war dead, and the Geneva Convention didn't apply, meaning American and Laos pilots could (and did) target schools and hospitals and other civilian targets with those bombs! Hurray for American Imperialism. And people wonder why I don't trust this government in the Middle East.

Anyway, in addition to all of that horrible shit, there was also a sense of a young country proud of it's nearly sixty years of independence. And I mean really proud, because it seemed that nearly every inch of current Laos progress made it into the museum in some form or another: large bundles of illegal drugs on display to show the might of the drug enforcers, pictures of farms and the bountiful Laos produce (read: framed images of cabbage in a museum), a display of what looked like the exact same medicine you'd see in the local pharmacy, only here proudly displayed to show the pharmacological progress of the Lao People's Democratic Republic! It was kind of hokey, but also interesting to see a country whose past is so mired with violence so proud of its progress. They were closing the exam and I didn't get to see a good chunck of it, but I'll probably go back tomorrow, it only costs 10,000 kip (just over a single US dollar) to enter.

So, yes, that's my first impression of Vientiane. Tomorrow should reveal more.

On the Border: Nong Khai, Laos, and a Bizarre Sculpture Park

2008-02-17T04:41:00.002-05:00

So here I am, on the border with Laos (and that's a silent French "s," for the record, so it should rhyme with "wow"), the Mekong River lazily, neutrally sliding past. I've been following this river, off and on, for over a year now: I walked along it in Cambodia, I sailed on it in Vietnam, I'm looking at it now in Thailand, I'll see it tomorrow in Laos, and I'll soon be following it to its source in Yunan, China.

But anway, I don't know what any of that means, so, moving on: I intended to blow through this Thai town, Nong Khai, and just go right to Laos. But I lingered, because it's a cool little town with a slow pace of life, some nice cool weather, and a really strange sculpture park. Behold! (Stick around/skip forward to the big sculptures, they're really cool!)

So tomorrow I'll cross the bridge into Laos. Should be fun! I'll be crossing over the Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge, a bridge that goes from Thailand to Laos (or from Laos to Thailand), built by Australians for (American dollars here, folks) $15 million. So it's a bridge international even in its contrsuction!

More, later, from Laos!

Ruins in Ayuthya

2008-02-14T05:03:00.004-05:00

So I was in Kanchanaburi, seeing the River Kwai and hanging out with tigers and such, and I just got tired of that town. After five in the evening, there was nothing to do but roam the streets and pass by loud bars blaring muzak and watch rich fat white men sit in a table with two or three Thai "lady-friends" who'd always give a chorus of "hal-uoh" and "well-come." So friendly! I guess I needed some Bangkok decompression, too, because I found myself sleeping a lot, which wasted a lot of daylight, but I also didn't feel like dishing out for the overpriced trips to waterfalls or other parts of the Death Railway, so I ended up doing a whole lot of not too much.

So I left. On a whim. Just woke up, hopped on a bus, and plopped myself down on a seat and rode. I knew I was heading generally north, then generally west, and when we came to the end of the line, I saw a bus for Ayuthya, which I knew was a city with some interesting ruins, and used to be a Thai capital, so I figured, what the hell?

So here I am. Ayuthya. I spent the day on a rented bike, driving around the city and seeing a whole lot of impressive (but not quite Cambodia-impressive) old Thai ruins. It was a great day of sun and biking and temple-spelunking.

And then I got an elephant kiss. I hope you can hear it.

More photos - temples and elephants - here.

So What Did I Do Today?

2008-02-12T09:37:00.000-05:00

I hung out with tigers.

And then visited the famous bridge over the River Kwai.

More photos here. God I love traveling.

Slideshows, anyone?

2008-02-09T12:36:00.001-05:00

By the gods, I love what Picasa can do. How about a little slideshow of Ko Surin?

No? How about a slideshow of Bangkok, then?

Bangkok has gotten a lot cooler recently, but there's still a lot yet to see ... and I've got the rest of the country and Laos to think about as well ... and, well, money! Travelin' ain't free.

Ride 'em, Soi Cowboy

2008-02-08T12:07:00.000-05:00

Bangkok is pretty big on the whole sex thing. Selling it, that is. I know it's there all over, in New York and Hong Kong and hell, my hostel was in the red light district in Singapore, but Bangkok seems to make it a spectator sport, a kind of open-air flesh market. So tonight I ended up making my way to Soi Cowboy, "Cowboy Road" or something similar, one of the gaudy strips of bars that promises untold naughtiness behind their red-glowing doors, scantily-clad beer touts that hold their signs upside down that promise "hundreds of beautiful girls plus two or three ugly ones."

I don't know why I went there, or maybe I do, and I just don't want to admit it (especially not here), but I don't have the money for beer, let alone drinks for two or three "friends." I guess the place is as harmless or harmful as you want it to be, you can walk and just take in the spectacle, or you can grab for your piece of the flesh pie. I turned into the neon-saturated alleyway and started to walk.

Left and right, there's subdued insanity, beer, tired-happy men, fake-happy women, and signs proffering poorly-punned promises of promiscuity. The openness of it seems to be a kind of thrill, inviting more ribald goings-on and giving confidence to the meek or the married, and as I walked I wondered if the people there are the kind of guys that go to strip clubs, the kind of guys that visit hookers at home, or if they're just passing by Bangkok and (like me, right?) figure, what the hell?

For the most part, I guess I was ignored, because you can get the feel for the clientele pretty easily: mostly foreigners, mostly older men (but let's not discount the locals that really keep this place running). So a young(ish) guy like me making his way down the street seemed to fall much more in the voyeur category. Or maybe they smelled the smell of walking in Bangkok heat all day and saw the well-worn t-shirt and jeans and backpack and guessed my budget. As I made my way down the street, noting beer specials and soaking in the lurid noise of it all, I was distracted by ... an elephant. Just right there, in the middle of the street, patrolling up and down, handlers on each side. And I couldn't stop looking at the thing, all sad-eyed and huge, shaking hands with his trunk, walking with him down the sidewalk, patting it's back and legs because, hey, it's an elephant!, and ignoring the tugs on my sleeve by brave little beergirls, and I followed my pachyderm without realizing it to the end of the street, where I bought a bag of fruit, fed him pieces one by one, and patted him on the head and gave him a kind of Eskimo kiss, my head against his massive skull, his brown sad eyes seeming to say "now you be good" as I left.

My Jesus tonight was an elephant, and he saved me from temptations of the flesh with a bag full of bananas.

On my way out, I ran into a group of young European Christians doing anonymous surveys about HIV/AIDS, the stark reality of forced prostitution in Thailand, and all that. They were in groups of two, clipboards and random pairings of Finnish and Swedish and Norwegian, and I chatted with them a bit, probably the only person who voluntarily talked with them the whole night, and they were doing a couple weeks all over Thailand, teaching and doing AIDS volunteering and all that. I asked how the survey was received by the sex tourists; they said it varied, sometimes they just ignored them, other times they got angry, still others talked and talked. "I'm here because I like sex," one guy said, girl in hand, strange accent (the "sex," the "x," was emphasized). We chatted about China and their time in Thailand and language and I said it was good work they were doing, even though the pamphlet they gave me came off a little too Jesus-freak.

Bangkok has certainly grown on me, after a good day of sight seeing and hoofing it all over. The public transport is a nightmare, a combination of slow boats, subways and skytrains the don't actually take you where you want to go, and taxis and tuktuks that just try to rip you off by hundreds of baht until you find one that will use the goddamn meter. But the city has a kind of raw appeal that the fully-suited squeaky-clean Hong Kong and Singapore seem to have lost. I think it's a good city to return to, because it can have highs, and it can have lows, and coming back to the perpetual Spring Break of Khao San and the backpacker ghetto is pretty damn low.

But even Khao San can't suck so hard that it robs the locals of just being such good people. Wading through that cesspool, I managed to buy two hand-painted cards from a young deaf man, and I was able to sign "I am American" and "thank you," thanks to James and his mom. I saw a local artist with some really intriguing paintings, and while I didn't have 700 baht to blow on one, it was nice to talk to him and let him know I dug his stuff. And before I came here, to this aircon netcafe with PCs you slide ten baht coins in like they're arcade machines, I found a bookstore that had just the book I wanted, it was run by a second-generation Chinese immigrant, and I was able to chat in Mandarin for a good twenty minutes, and only had to switch to English twice!

So yeah, Thailand, even Bangkok: it's good. I'll get some photos up, as well as photos from Ko Surin (the island with the amazing snorkeling) as soon as I have a PC that isn't fed on coins.

Growing Hostelity

2008-02-07T03:21:00.000-05:00

So this is Bangkok. If you look really hard, you might even see someone from Thailand.

That's my first impression of the place. It's raining outside, the umbrella that's been useless since Singapore sits dryly in my room while the rain comes down. It's been a slow, strange morning.

I took the night bus in, and arrived at some bus terminal in some dark corner of the city somewhere between four and five in the morning. Didn't know where to go, didn't know what to do, so I sat on a stone bench with piles of garbage underneath and ate two tangerines. At the time, it was the best option.

I followed the only stream of people I saw, made my way to a taxi line, and then saw buses, running even this early, and I got on the bus and a helpful ticket lady asked "Khao San Road?" the backpacker ghetto where all travelers seem to find themselves. I nodded, not really knowing what else to say. I rode the bus a little in the predawn blackness, guessing at passing snatches of the city, and was quietly tapped on the shoulder and told this was my stop.

I got off the bus and saw nothing but street, food stalls being rolled down the road and a late night/early morning scramble of people, workers and revelers and hookers, oh my. I ran into a friendly Australian girl, Jessie, who's just returning to Bangkok after a year of traveling, one of those round-the-world plane tickets that saw her to North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and now, just shy of a year later, a flight on Sunday back to Oz. We walked a bit and found Khao San Road, and the entire spectacle, barely a pulse at that ungodly hour, reminded me of some kind of faded MTV nightmare, drunks with beer-stained t-shirts and dig-this hippies with identical faces and tattoos and up-to-the-elbow meaningless bracelets doing the same shit on the sidewalk. I walked, head down, looking for a room. Nothing, all full.

Well, shit.

We walked farther, chatting and good lord the rain is really coming down outside now, and we found a secondary road off of Khao San, another road whose purpose is to make foreigners forget as much as possible that they are actually in another country. English signs and promises of sandwiches and "European food," and, already sweating in the predawn heat, Jessie and I sat down at an outdoor cafe, and decided to take turns stalking up and down various roads, looking for a place to sleep.

Jessie left her bags with me, I ordered a bottle of water and discovered a half-drunk bottle of Johnnie Walker Red under my seat, and after two failed trips up and down various roads, Jessie decided to sit down and just wait till noon, when everyone was due to check out and vacancies promised to appear. I got up and found my way down a back(ish) alley, and found a room, a double bed with aircon and it's own bathroom, a place that looked like the goddamn Ritz compared to the tent filled with ants and sand and clothing-for-pillows I'd been using for the last couple of days. 550 baht, which seems and is high, but screw it, I was overtired and dirty and sweaty and needed a place to sleep NOW, not tonight.

I went back to the cafe, a block or so away, and told Jessie. I'll take it if it's too pricey for you, I said, knowing that rooms can be had for as cheap as 150 baht if you're OK with a fan (no aircon for you at that price range), shared bathroom, and questionable hygiene. We made our way back to my room, I turned on the aircon, and we just collapsed in the cool air and quiet. I was a week's worth of beach in my hair and on my body, so I showered and we just sat there talking about traveling and her time at a Tiger Temple west of Bangkok that I have to go to now. We both took overnight buses into Bangkok, and it was the nerves of finding a place and getting settled, for a day at least, that kept us awake, but soon enough we both just slept.

She went and found her own room, I went out and explored what little of the city I could between then and now, getting out of this downpour. From what I can tell, Bangkok, or at least this tiny little part of backpacker Bangkok, is just a sea of crap, a bunch of tourists who come and dip their toe in Asia here in Bangkok, get the massage and the cheap t-shirts and DVDs and braid their stupid me-too dreadlocks and obsessively check MySpace or Facebook. I've seen both in pretty much all the languages of the West, and they're all equally stupid. I know there's more to Bangkok than this one tired tourist ghetto, but so far, the only Thais I've seen have been trying to scam me, and everyone else is just hovering around this plastic version of a foreign country.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm just another tourist. I know living in China doesn't give me any special insight into Asia, I know I'm as much a member of the mob of travelers and gawkers as I am disgusted by them. C'est la vie, I guess, but that doesn't mean la vie can't be disappointing.

When the rain lets up, I'll get the hell out of this bubble and try to see what Bangkok really has to offer.

Back from Ko Surin

2008-02-07T00:41:00.000-05:00

I'm in Bangkok. Made it safely from Ko Surin, from some of the best snorkeling and clear blue water I've ever seen, a kind of beautiful parody of beaches and brilliant water and sun.

So I got a night bus into Bangkok and here I am. More later.

Behold the Raffleisa

2008-02-02T02:09:00.000-05:00

I guess I'm the only one excited about this dumb flower. Oh well.

Yesterday I finally saw what I came to Khao Sok National Park to see: the rafflesia, the corpse flower. I had heard tales of it being a meter-wide, foul-smelling monstrosity of a flower, I heard stories of people taking a hike on a whim to see it and suddenly coming upon a giant one, people who weren't even really looking for the flower, who didn't really know anything about it or care that much, people who (with the help of a guide, of course) stumbled upon a postcard-perfect specimen.

I was wanting, lusting after this flower, trying to see it since Malaysia ... and when I finally got there, it was dying, wilting, a tiny pathetic little thing.

At first I was angry. 500 baht for this?! An hour and a half of trekking in the hot jungle with a guide that spoke no English and going uphill, a steep kind of uphill that normally you wouldn't even think is uphill, you'd think it's just a wall, impassible, not an option for navigation ... all that, for this dinky little rotting flower?

It's some kind of poetic justice, some kind of luck or fate or karma, I guess, that the person who seeks so relentlessly for this thing comes upon a tiny withered dying one, whereas the people that don't really care too much find a record-breaker.

But the more I thought about it, thought about the reasons that I still can't explain, the reasons behind wanting to see this flower, the less angry I became. Here I was, in thick hot Thai jungle, clamboring uphill and over streams and seeing signs of wild elephants along the "path," and my reward is a glimpse of this impossibly rare flower that few people will ever actually see. So what if it's not a specimen worthy of National Geographic? So what if it's a dropping, rotten-salami ghost of a full-bloom rafflesia?

I got over my disappointment and just went up to it, smelled it and looked at it and just enjoyed it for what it was, seeing it with the young eager eyes of curisoity and wonder and awe that made me want to come all the way out there to see it in the first place.

I saw it, I touched it, I smelled it for myself, I took this idea and image of this exotic and bizarre thing and internalized it with sensation and memory, with touch and smell. That's all you can ever hope to do when you travel, to see a flower, to see a city, to see anything.

So I took my photos, I took my video, and I was happy to see what I could see of this one small strange part of this world.

More photos of the flower, hiking, elephants and jungle and my time in the park here.

Festina Lanta

2008-01-29T08:45:00.000-05:00

I know I am the only person who enjoys that title, but hey, I'm the only person who reads this blog anyway. Festina lente, Latin for "make haste slowly." And that's what I've been doing here on Ko Lanta ... going nowhere fast, cramming my days to the gills with nothing in particular.

Yesterday I went snorkeling. Good stuff. Not the most professional setup, the word shitshow was tossed around a few times as our boat's captain hopelessly maneuvered the boat like he was parallel parking on the ocean, and the boat vomited oil and smoke, but it got us to where we needed to be. We snorkeled around giant stone atolls, hilltops jutting out of the water, and the coral and the sea life was superb.

Atolls like this.

We then went on to an atoll that had an underwater cave that, during low tide, you could swim through to a hidden ravine in the middle of the island. Inside was your own private paradise, beach and water and green wild jungle. The underwater cave was used, supposedly, to hide pirate treasure, and then for the movie The Beach. Truly an illustrious heritage.

Ate lunch on the shore, and found some starfish in the water around the boat. Then it was one more stop and then a long "sightseeing" ride home.

During the course of the day I met an American couple, Emily and Marc. You don't meet many Americans traveling in Southeast Asia, which is a shame. Anyway, we ended up having drinks, which turned into a superb Thai dinner, which ended in beers and a hookah/shisha/water pipe. Smoking and drinking, a world-weary Frenchman who has been "traveling" for over four years came into the bar, and proceeded to give us an impromptu fire baton show. We talked about traveling and life in Ko Lanta with long cool hits of apple tobacco. It was a mellow end to a great day.

And let me assure you at home, yes, that's tobacco, and only tobacco.

And now I am sunburned like crispy bacon. And I'm thinking, enough with the beach. I'm going off to the interior of Thailand, to hike around Khao Sok National Park, and hopefully see a blooming Rafflesia, also known as the corpse flower.

Cheers, Ko Lanta. I'm outta here.

Ko Lanta, Baby

2008-01-27T09:08:00.000-05:00

Enjoying the sun in Ko Lanta. Rented a motor scooter, spent the whole day driving, sight seeing, getting sunburned. Arrived yesterday evening, Saturday, everything was booked. A family-run beach-suite outfit said I could sleep on an extra mattress tonight (for free) and then get a room in the morning. I said, yes please.

Any time I take a photo of that backpack, I feel like it's a self-portrait.

Sunset. About a hundred yards from where I sleep.

Climbing to the top of the lighthouse ...

It's a bridge, what more can I say? A very islandy bridge, though.

This is how they advertise bars.

Full album here ... more pics tomorrow.

Thailand 到了！

2008-01-25T01:45:00.000-05:00

For those playing along at home: Thailand dao le! I've arrived in Thailand! Welcome to the Land of Smiles.

Last night I realized how a few weeks away from language study can retard your progress. It's only been about ten days since I arrived in Singapore, maybe three weeks since the crush of finals, grades, and end-of-semester goings-on (like trips to Harbin) took over my schedule, and so it's been a while since I've practiced my Chinese, and I feel my tenuous grip on the language slipping. I tried to use it in Malaysia when I could, enough Chinese and Mandarin speakers there, but they use a whole different body of words, asking questions using different verbs and tweaked grammar, and I just felt helpless. But then I just took control of the conversation, telling them about me fast enough that they had no time for questions, and that left them mutely awed.

I just hopped the border into Hat Yai, Thailand. Know what they say about first impressions? I gott admit, at first, it was pretty daunting, really. Singapore, Malaysia, they've all been using roman alphabets, and if not just outright English, so even if I can't understand the word on the sign or above the shop, I can read the word and recognize patterns. ("Kedia," for example, is store, which I learned because every damn shop had "kedai" in it's name; "salemat datang" is welcome.)

Thailand is like walking into a warped China, in that there is no English ANYWHERE, everything is in the strange squizzle-loop Thai characters, and even on road signs I look down and see a tiny few roman letters and think "that pinyin is all wrong!" and of course it's wrong because pinyin is China and this is Thailand and hey, let's get lingua-fied and crazy and have 5 tones and gender-specific words (I'm not kidding, men and women have different ways to say the same things ... that's a language first for me, and takes Spanish's genders to a whole new level). But there's just something about studying all that Chinese and learning all those characters, only to come here and see a whole other language's worth of pictograms and symbols that for the life of me I can't read ... it's all very disorienting at first.

But I have my Thai phrasebook, which is good. And to my not-so-big surprise, the people at the bank, the hostel, and the little restuarant where I just ate a plate of fried rice, all spoke enough English for me to get by. Guess they get enough foreigners here, which is good, but strange. Met a couple going more north than I am at the moment, two of the only other Americans I have seen here in SE Asia, and they told me they've been through Thailand once before, and can't speak a lick of Thai, and have had no trouble, because everyone more or less speaks English or understands you're just a poor foreign backpacker trying to get somewhere, probably a beach.

Yes, so: Thailand. It was almost surreal, crossing the border: on one side of the gate was a clean, empty blacktop, the Malaysian side, and right across that imaginary line, the pavement cracked, the people multiplied, steam and foodsmells and noise thumping into the van ... Thailand. I can't wait to explore.

Thaipusam Celebrations and Thoughts on Penang

2008-01-23T07:03:00.000-05:00

I was afraid it would be impossible to surpass the simple high-altitude perfection of the Cameroon Highlands, but today I find myself here in Penang, tired and hungry from a day of walking in the heat and following self-mortifying Hindu penitents and exploring Georgetown's old British fort, and I'm very much surprised at just how great this city is.

Wait, what's this about self-mortifying Hindu penitents?

It's a festival called Thaipusam, and I know as much about it as this Wikipedia link. Fascinating bit of travel, to find yourself in a strange new city, and a gentle tip from a kind stranger results in stumbling upon something so interesting, people so ecstatic and joyful and welcoming, not just as witnesses but welcomed to come and pray together.

Removing your shoes and entering the temple, all were welcomed to pray or reflect. I was given a coconut laced with a banana leaf, a banana, and some incense. We entered the temple and were marked with a chalky white powder, making our way toward the deity at the heart of the temple.

Outside again, we followed the crowd further down the street, music blasting, people dancing, food and celebration everywhere.

Making our way up the holy mountain.

Climbing the hill, traditional music was blaring out of loudspeakers, but as we reached the top, the music faded and nothing but a giant bell could be heard, renewed with fresh strikes from worshipers. It was a powerful moment, climbing the hill, tired from the long walk and the heat, the bell pounding in your ear and setting the rhythm for the climb, and inside people were praying, laughing, happy that the celebration was over and those hooks and spears could be removed.

And ending the day with a leisurely stroll through Fort Cornwallis.

Cameroon Highlights

2008-01-21T04:12:00.000-05:00

The Cameroon Highlands. Specifically, the city of Tanah Rata, a tourist hub. Take the best parts of Vermont - cool temperatures, boundless green hills, friendly locals - and mix generously with a subtropical jungle, insects of sci-fi nightmares, and flowers that would make a botanist all hot and sweaty. A high plateau in the middle of the country, hairpin turns along a mountainside with neat green corduroy belts of tea snaking up the impossibly steep cool-breeze hills, all under a cartoon-blue sky. If this is Malaysia, I don't want to leave.

We started our day off at the "Butterfly Garden," but really it was a petting zoo of bugs, reptiles, and other less cuddly creatures.

Well hello there!

Who's got two thumbs and loves scorpions? This guy!

Not-so-wee turtles.

Their legs are so strange, like a hundred tiny hairs on your arm, like reverse goose bumps. Pretty creepy feeling though, when they move up your arm.

Hello little friend.

Bird of paradise flower.

Like something out of Willy Wonka or Dr. Seuss.

Sarah and I above the highest peak in the highlands.

Hiking in the mossy forest. Wonder why they call it that?

Tea plantations, "BOH." Best of (the) Highlands.

Sample some of the beautiful scenery.

I actually hit the target, twice.

Sarah and I went hiking down to a waterfall and quick as gravity a small brown-black snake reared up and "ran" through the grass, a snake moving the way you hope snakes never move, fast and precise. Our guide got scared and told us "to come dis way plees qweek-ly," and when the guide who does this all the time is scared, you know to be careful. We climbed down to the bottom of the waterfall, and then climbed through the green dense jungle-growth of plants and roots and mud to get to the rocks at the water's edge, and I asked the guide how he knew there were no snakes on those root-steps we climbed over.

Full album here. God I love traveling.

Notes from Melaka

2008-01-19T04:48:00.000-05:00

Meleka, or Melacca, was my first port of call in Malaysia. An old colonial town that forged alliances with China way back when the Thais ("Siamese") were aggressive, it was subsequently raped by the Portuguese and then the Dutch and then the English, a long successive displacement of foreign conquerors, and yet somehow the city never seems to have been tamed, despite having a Dutch fountain in the middle of a Portuguese town square with and Anglican church off to the side.

I also know that "malaka" is the Greek word for asshole. I knew this because of my Greek room mate for that one month in Beijing in 2004. So I knew I had to go.

The cool breeze from the sea chased away the perpetual oven of so-damn-close-to-the-equator weather. Sarah and I spent two days there before making it to Kuala Lumpur this morning.

Kuala Lumpur is ... strange.

There's something about the name, something deeply ingrained in my brain from history class, seventh grade with Mrs. Irvin-Davis, eighth grade reading my history book alone during lunch at Skyline. The city was a mental bastion of Asia, of The Foreign, The Other, a place whose name conjures (conjured) images of a place and culture as far away from Wilmington and Delaware and America as you could get.

And inevitably, it's a disappointment. Clear away the romantic fantasies of the naive traveler and you get just another huge city; Asian no doubt, with mosques and Chinese temples and seemingly impromptu markets and too many people and the smells that you can never really describe, the smells you wish you could capture in the moment with your camera that mix with sound and vision to create indescribable memories that aren't easily forgotten. But beyond that, it is just another city. There are giant buildings, there are homeless, there is litter, there are malls and shops like Kenny Rogers Roasters and Starbucks, Gucci and The Gap. Somewhere in the long lost forgotten, when the world was still growing and not as bloated as it is today, everyone decided that a giant gleaming mall full of pointless expensive shit you won't ever need was the pinnacle of whatever it is we're trying to do on this planet.

It's hard to find anything exotic and new and bizarre, it's hard to really marvel as a traveler at the brilliant diversity of language and culture that humanity has to offer, when there's a Kenny Roger's Fucking Roasters next door.

And one final thought: I don't believe in the spiritual loan you get from just entering a temple, for just walking around a mosque and seeing the incense in a shrine. It's backpacker-traveler bullshit, because your spiritual pool should not be so shallow that rejuvenation comes from such empty religious voyeurism. I'm guilty of it, I not only hit all the churches I come across, I hit the mosques (when I'm allowed in), I hit the temples. But they're all the same: a fallible man-made incarnation of the ineffable. I don't need an ancient crumbling whatever to think about that. But then, maybe some do.

Singapore to Malaysia

2008-01-17T23:18:00.000-05:00

Singapore was great. Very diverse. Photos here. In Malaysia now. Riding in on the bus, that giddy little-boy grin of coming in to a wildly new place and culture and country. More later.

Harbin's Ice Festival (哈尔滨冰雪大世界)

2008-01-11T09:09:00.000-05:00

So the tiger video, did ya like it? Well, screw you, I liked it. Anyway, for those of you playing along at home, that tiger park was in Harbin, a "quaint" town of four million people in China's most northern of northern provinces, 黑龙江 (Heilongjiang province, "Black Dragon River" province), and the biggest Chinese town near the Russian border. One of the benefits of being this cold (and trust me, it was cold), is that ice and snow tend to stick around for a while. So what better way to while away those frigid sub-Siberian days than to have a big crazy ice festival? I know, that's what I said! So, as is my wont, pictures! More wine, madder music, and pictures!

If getting there is half the journey, then the journey in China is cramped with oversold seating.

Our first taste of the ice world that awaited: a wall of ice, complete with advertisements and lights buried within.

The BeiHua Boys in Harbin.

Some girls played Chinese chess on a life-size chessboard ... a chessboard MADE OF ICE!

The Russian church of St. Sophia.

An ice bar. It's a bar, made of ice. The walls are ice, the bar is ice, you drink out of cups that are made of ice, and even the ashtrays were ice. It was a little drafty.

Like something out of Norse mythology, Harbin had a miniature ice forest.

哈尔滨冰雪大世界欢迎您! "Harbin's Big Ice World Welcomes You!"

Lotta lights, lotta ice!

Jim goes snow-golfing.

In addition to a lot of ice sculpture, there was a lot of snow sculpture on display as well.

Told ya.

An unrivaled combination of fire and ice! Robert Frost, eat your heart out. (And I think that "pillar" looks like a giant beer.)

The Songhua River frozen this far north, you can skate on the ice, or ride the giant ice slide down to the ... ice ... below. The strange thing is that this river is the same river that reaches down to Jilin ... amazing that the cities are linked like that.

Truly an ice ... world.

Well, those are the highlights. My full album is here. James was able to arrive in Harbin early, and has some fantastic photos on his Picasa of some amazing snow sculpture.

Hong Kong Balm

2008-01-11T08:07:00.000-05:00

Do you hear that? The soothing sounds of the fish-filled fountain raining water down upon the stones in rock-crusted basin, the palm trees rustling with the languid ease of a dog kicking in his sleep, the muted sounds of waves and air gently swirling around the knoll ... this is Hong Kong, my friends, this is Maryknoll, an oasis of peace and warmth away from the frigid emptiness of Jilin.

Man, is it nice to be back in the south.

Hong Kong is a huge city, a bustling, expensive, gaudy, brilliant city, and I love it in so many ways, but to me, Hong Kong will always be the Maryknoll house, it will be Stanly, it will be this quiet old house on the top of a monstrous hill, a place with good feng shui and a glorious view of the bright blue sea, a place that makes you forget the towering skyline and eye-gouging pricetags and furious pace of the city just a few miles away.

I am in Maryknoll now, after a taxing bit of travel: a long, tedious car ride from Jilin to Changchun, finally taking off four hours late from Changchun to Dalian, re-boarding the plane for the five-hour flight to Shenzhen, border hopping from Shenzhen into Hong Kong, and then a frantic race between Hong Kong's subways and buses before finally arriving at the Maryknoll door at one in the morning. And then a lazy day of good food and strolling around a city that I've known and enjoyed like no city before. It's great to be back in Hong Kong, to enjoy warmth and familiar faces after what at times seemed like an exile in Jilin.

But it won't last long. Monday morning, I head to Singapore, for a seven-week tour of southeast Asia, a colossal trip unlike anything I've done before.

Feeding the Tigers in Harbin

2008-01-09T12:40:00.000-05:00

Two videos in a row? My oh my.

Happy New Yeah

2008-01-04T08:09:00.001-05:00

Happy '08, everyone.

December Ends

2007-12-27T10:24:00.000-05:00

Today was ... strange. I gave my Oral English exams, a five-minute oral interview that really ended up being seven to ten minutes per student. I've been doing these all week, and I have over 180 students, so you can imagine how the mind can wander. Some of the odds and ends I've mulled over recently:

Not only is it supposed to snow for the next two days, but by Saturday it's supposed to be snowy and twenty degrees below zero.

China has once again blocked Blogger, but this time, they've even blocked the main blogger.com page. Used to be, in previous Blogger crackdowns, you'd be at least able to access the blog and update it, if not view it. Now it seems it's totally blocked, leaving some less tech-savvy bloggers in trouble. How do I access Blogger, you ask? Magic.

If you're reading this and also happen to be someone who often downloads music (that is, if you're Patrick), you should really check out the band Neutral Milk Hotel. They are sublime.

My student Dorothy plays a mean piano, and I asked her to teach me how to play next term.

I have a huge, audacious journey ahead of me come January: Haerbin along the China/Russian border, then a flight to Hong Kong, another flight to Singapore, and overland into Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and Souther China ... can I really do all that in two months?

Today, during exams, I reflected on the year, the lessons we've studied, the content of my class. To be honest, I feel I am a mediocre teacher. I think I lack the imagination and dedication to really ignite the kindling of learning. The best I can do is fan the flames that are already there. (Wow, that was a somewhat forced metaphor that dovetailed nicely into something somewhat meaningful.) I don't plan my lessons as well as I should, I don't have the spontaneity in the classroom that my favorite teachers have always had, and I usually find myself either scrambling to flesh out the two-hour running time of the class or repeating something from rote, highlight for highlight, stupid joke by stupid joke, without any deviation. Hey, if it worked on Monday ...

It doesn't help that the powers that be in both of the universities I have worked for in China have tried their best to beat any kind of passion you may have for the job out of you by making simple things needlessly difficult and difficult things impossible. From being forced to use awful textbooks, to being locked out of otherwise idle multimedia rooms for no reason at all, to just outright indifference, pointless evasiveness, and outstanding incompetence, the people in charge of the schools have been the least helpful in getting anything done. In my favorite plagiarism of Mark Twain, I'll say again: the biggest impediment to anyone's education around here is the school.

But despite all of that, giving my finals today was a really powerful moment. I know some of it was brown-nosing, but I got so many compliments about my class and my teaching. One student, who makes up for his lack of English with unbridled confidence, spent the entire interview-exam telling me how my class was so different from his other classes, how a smiling teacher who speaks slowly has boosted his confidence, how using things that aren't in the book has enriched his learning. Some other students dropped other platitudes, and at the end of the whole thing I was invited to "take photos" with some students (pictures below), but that one student's speech really made me feel great; however middling my teaching, he has grown and improved from it.

Ah, this short blog became long fast. Here are the pictures I took with my students. These little photomarts are everywhere in China, and it seems like most girls love nothing more than taking glamor shots of one another. This isn't the first time I've been invited for these kinds of photos, either. Please note that while I am pale as all hell (blame not seeing real sun for a few months), the colors are pretty washed out (they're preset this way to give the girls the pure white skin they all want). The two girls in these pictures are April and Ariel.

Merry Christmas from Jilin!

2007-12-22T11:25:00.001-05:00

Fat Cats in Freak Suits

2007-12-20T11:12:00.000-05:00

He was a benzene freak, doing anything for his next high. You asked him, jump; he said how high. Look here, caffeine hounds, this thing goes deep: CIA, FDA, LCD, MGM. There's a whole lot of fire in this hillside and it's about to blow. That's what they told Old Man Trombone Jackson, but he set them right: a high-powered scrotal punch, make your ancestors' gums bleed and their knees crack like firewood during summer camp at Lake Wankikpooka. Hoo boy that stuff was potent: arts and crafts, archery near the old grain silo, and oh how those children cried as the chainsaw roared and the dust danced in the long shadows of the sunset. How long you got here, partner, she asked tonguing the gummy gap between her teeth, and he just smiled, lifted his eye patch, and said, "Honey, you just made my fiesta."

Shenyang 沈阳

2007-12-18T11:22:00.000-05:00

James and I spent the weekend in Shenyang, a huge city here in China's northeast, visiting our friend Patrick and some other Maryknollers. A place like Shenyang makes your realize just how small and backwoods-y Jilin is. There's things to do, variety, the sun doesn't set at four thirty and places stay open past eight. The city is big; being there felt like being in Beijing, totally unlike the last two Chinese cities I've lived in. We spent the long weekend doing a walking tour of the city (which was impressive, kinda, since it was cold as hell), sipping coffee in Starbucks (!) while we took in the skyline and sights of the city. Ostensibly James and I were there to get some visa pages added to our passports, a free service offered by Shenyang's small but incredibly well-guarded US embassy. The final product was pretty sloppy, just some pages thrown in there with tape, but hey, it gets me into Thailand, so ...

A graham cracker Great Wall. How's that for a gingerbread house?

In a city this large, Patrick's campus felt like an actual campus, tress, open spaces, a bubble environment that keeps the loud city at bay. Strange art and snowy fields, too.

Our days invariably ended trekking through a frozen park, crossing an ice-slicked bridge spanning a frozen lake, the sun setting behind an immobile ferris wheel that's as dead as the trees: in his two years living in Shenyang, Patrick said he'd never seen it move.

Something about Shenyang was seductive, hence (perhaps) the last blog entry. The city inspired me, in those micro-epiphanies that I sometimes call "inspiration," that if only I lived there, could I really get a grasp on the language, could I see a third year of language study, sipping coffee and studying Chinese in a huge anonymous city and setting that goal ahead of myself and thus being content, happy. For me it's seductive, dangerously so, to set down on that path, that is at once both difficult and the path of least resistance. A fun weekend hanging out with a good group of like-minded young foreigners, of bowling and chatting with an Italian girl whose number I desperately wanted to get, of using my Chinese to get by and make new friends and just being happy to be there.

Novel; a change of pace; fun. For the weekend. But I think about a year from now, and if I'm still in China, still being a Maryknoll "volunteer," I can't help but think of one word: stagnation. I need a challenge, I need a change, I need a new direction. Where I go and what I do to find those, well, that is the big mystery.

What's A Year?

2007-12-17T00:32:00.000-05:00

Planning this pan-Asia trip has got me thinking a bit toward the future. This past weekend in Shenyang has got me thinking a lot about the past. Why did I come to China, why have I stayed in China, and what I will do next year.

A lot of it ties in with the language. A lot of it ties in with doing something interesting and challenging and not wanting to "tread water." A lot of it is fear of the unknown, of what I will do and how I will live if I were to come back to America next year.

Is a third year possible? Is it something I want? What do I need? What would be best for me? Why don't I know what I want?

Blog Neglect: The #1 Source of Blogger Anxiety

2007-12-11T11:02:00.000-05:00

So this blog is here and I don't have much to say at the moment. I am going to be teaching a class this week that uses a lot of music, a bunch of classic Christmas tunes but also some cool songs that aren't very Christmas-y, like "Sweet Jane" by the Velvet Underground, some great ukulele songs from none other than Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, and "In My Life" by The Beatles. (That one's good for teaching the word "bittersweet.") I'm also preparing to end the term, with finals, a trip to Shengyang on Thursday to get some more pages added to my passport, and some other term-ending jazz. So what to blog about when nothing too amazing is going on?

Like a copy of People, I'll just throw a bunch of pictures out there and pretend it's worthwhile content!

The pipe leitmotif continues.

I got lost walking the streets of Jilin the other day, and just for fun, I walked around in the alleyways between the apartment buildings. These things spiral in on one another like a fractal, there's always another corner to turn that opens into another alcove hidden away, more turns awaiting, ready to reveal even deeper realms of apartmentalism. I didn't just make that word up, honestly. So tucked behind one corner, as if thrown out with the garbage, were these two giant phoenix and dragon sculptures.

Kobe Bryant's reach is indeed long. Just shows you how insanely popular basketball is here in China.

I went to my friend Jenny's elementary school to be a guest for her students. Unfortunately, I got bumped: new uniforms had arrived, and the class was taken over for some kind of instructional about said new uniforms. Maybe next time. Snapped a nice little pic of sunset over the school though.

We're not tripping over canons in the streets of Jilin, but any time a new store needs to be opened with fanfare, a couple are brought out and shoot loud booming blanks that leave behind mountains of shredded red paper. We heard these fire from a block away and got there in time to see women dressed like extras from Outbreak cleaning up the red paper.

哎呀, it's closer to one that it is to twelve, which means it's time for bed.

Blogging Some December Miles

2007-12-10T12:11:00.000-05:00

So yeah, December has been an uninspiring month here in Jilin. Nothing in particular stands out, just a lot of the same familiar, and as the weather gets colder and it gets dark earlier, so it's harder to be chipper and clever here on the blog. So be it.

Lately, I've been obsessed with finding the Chinese equivalent of "c'est la vie." I guess in English we can say, "such is life," or to get a little more Vonneguty, "so it goes." I don't know why I'm compelled to find this phrase in Chinese. So far, the best I can do is a literal translation: "这是生活," zhe shi sheng huo, which just literally means "this is life," but my Chinese friends and students that I've asked say it doesn't have the same meaning as what I'm looking for. I've gone so far to enlist a student to ask the French teacher (who is Chinese) what it could be, or at least what the proper translation ought to be. And if I can't figure it out, well, c'est la vie.

One of the cooler things going on in Jilin (and, if you wait for it, the pun will become deliciously clear) is the rime frost that forms on the trees near the Songhua River. The river that seems to snake around the entire city is warmed, either naturally as some Chinese say, or by the myriad local chemical plants (as cynical foreigners are wont to believe), and as the warm vapor rises from the river, it meets the frigid air and cools in thin white ice crystals on the trees along the river.

It makes for a spectacularly frosty view in the morning. The rime frost is quite elusive, though, as I've only seen it a few times, and it melts pretty quickly.

And, what the hell, how about some more pics. Please note that the pics with snow are from the first snowfall a few weeks ago; most of the snow has already disappeared.

The poor guys adding the fifth floor to the dorm had to sleep in this pitiful tent, even in the snow. The snow got heavy enough that a whole side collapsed, and then one night, there was no light radiating through the small front flap. Now the fifth floor is finished, and the tent remains empty.

A typical lunch for me here in Jilin: 鸡蛋刀削面, jidan dao xiao mian, or "knife-cut" noodles with egg. Nothing beats the cold like slurping a steamy bowl of fresh-made soup noodles; so steamy it makes your nose run. Can't beat the price, either, only four kuai (about fifty cents) for a big bowl. Note the copious cloves of garlic; I usually go through four or five per bowl. It's the spinach to my Popeye.

Guess the swing is off limits.

Kevin said these pipes look right out of Brazil. I'm inclined to agree.

Always good to be prepared.

This statue is the unofficial icon of Jilin. It's there in the heart of the city, I pass it every time I take the bus into town, and you can see it in miniature on cabs and elsewhere in the city.

All for now.

Time Flies When You're Having China

2007-11-28T22:12:00.000-05:00

Where have the past two months gone? Like so much overheard Chinese chatter on the bus, October and November just dissolved into the ether: I was paying attention, I was trying really hard, but in the end, they just slipped through my fingers.

Forced metaphors aside, I really cannot believe how quickly these past two months have come and gone. The dangers of routine, I suppose, or maybe the joy of keeping yourself busy. I've been studying a lot of Chinese, and improving to the point where even I can say without modesty that I no longer suck. Of course, I've spent a lot of time in class and with students as well; noticeably less time with my students this year than last, something I both regret and enjoy. My Freshmen have blossomed into real people, but they are so busy with class (even on Saturday) that we've seen little of each other outside of class, and just as they are often too shy to make the first move toward a meeting, I often selfishly keep my weekends free to do whatever I want, which is rarely anything special. Other than giving class, it's been time in Chinese class and with Chinese tutors and studying.

The truth is that living in China, or, I suspect, living abroad anywhere, begins with a wave of novelty and soon settles into a trickle of normalcy: you fall into a routine, you get into ruts, you have lazy weekends, and you don't do anything worth writing home (or blogging) about. Part of me feels bad for being lazy, for being boring, for being normal, for not seizing every moment of living abroad to travel to a new city or see a new sight. But as much as I love traveling and seeing and doing new things, it's impossible to live like that all the time. Just being abroad doesn't magically change how you go about life. And so for all the wondrous things and people and experiences in China, there's just as much downtime, hanging out with James, Kevin, and Jim, or sitting alone in my room studying or planning or just doing nothing at all.

I can write about my "boring" life here, and at the same time look back on the last few months and remember the little moments of joy and happiness that have given texture to my life here in Jilin, moments that aren't worth writing about, or moments so strange and funny and different that to explain them here would be useless. So it goes, c'est la vie, etc. (I'm sure there's a similar phrase in Chinese, just haven't learned it yet.)

The long holiday for the Spring Festival will be here soon. I'm looking at nearly a month and a half off, from about mid-January to the very beginning of March. Aaron and other Maryknollers have taken that time and returned to America, but I just can't afford that. What I can afford is a cheap flight from Hong Kong to Singapore, and once in Singapore, I'm thinking of making my way through Malaysia and into Thailand. I think I can spend a month or so doing that. That month won't slip away.

My Pictures, Let Me Show Them To You

2007-11-26T07:54:00.000-05:00

There's been a back-catalog of photos I'd like to share of the past few months and weeks here in Jilin. Some are boring and ordinary sights from life around here, others are more exciting moments (like Halloween), and still others fall squarely into that "miscellaneous" category I'm so fond of.

Pacifist, eh? Well that's nice. This is one of the many visually loud stores on Jilin's "walking street," He Nan Jie (河南街). Think outdoor mall, only spread along one street that cars can't drive on. These are the kinds of stores that sell inexplicable fashion while blaring the muzak to get your attention. Which is odd, because every store does the same thing, and the whole thing is just a loud wash of muzak-noise that would be just as effective as everyone turning the damn muzak off.

Those characters are not the Chinese for pacifist, by the way: it must be a phonetic translation. (Phonetic as in: Coca-Cola is Kekou Kele, "可口可了.") Pei (沛) meaning "abundant," and ke (客) meaning "visitor" or "guest." So "abundant guest" is what the Chinese are reading when they go shopping there. Hmm. Moving along ...

Jenny came over a while ago and helped us make some dumplings.

Rollin'.

The dumpling "stuffing:" we made a few different kinds, as you can see. We had 1.) egg and mushroom, 2.) beef, potato, and cilantro, 3.) pork and celery, and 4.) pork and chives and cilantro. Good eats!

A view from within campus during sunset. It's getting that dark around here at about 4:30. I think I am developing SAD.

Once of my Chinese teachers, Yu laoshi ("Teacher Yu"), also happens to be my tutor. Our "Beginner's Level 2" class (初级二班) is a small class of four or six (depending on who shows up) friends from Korea and, well, me. (And Jason, but he's not important to this story.) Whether they were friends beforehand or are just fast friends here in Jilin remains a mystery. Anyway, Yu laoshi invited us all along for a meal at her house. Fresh from grad school, Yu laoshi lives with her mom and dad (as is the norm in China, usually until you get married), and together the Korean girls cooked up a great dinner (Jim and I were willing and eager to help, but were barred from the very traditional kitchen and told to knock some drinks back with Mr. Yu).

Mr. Yu (left), Yu laoshi (middle, in green), and some of my Korean classmates. Mr. Yu can drink like a fish for such a small guy; he was knocking back shots of 白酒 (baijue, a horrendously powerful and awful-tasting Chinese liquor) and beer all night.

Cheers! Anyone ... ?

My awesome jack-o-lantern.

We had a Halloween potluck dinner, and what started as a small meal became a pretty huge, beer-soaked party that brought a lot of shy faces out of the Beihua woodwork. Names for the soiree vary: I was happy with Ni Haolloween, while some charlatans out there insist on calling it Chillin' Jilin Halloween Bash. Without being divisive on the issue, I am right and James is wrong.

Mummies: both terrifying and convenient.

And with that, I move on to studying some Chinese. More pictures can be found here.

It Really Is That Cold

2007-11-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

Once again, Calvin can say it better than I can:

It really is that cold. This morning, walking to class, I itched what felt like a perpetually runny nose. Through my mammoth catcher's mitt gloves, I flicked the tip of my nose to the side, and felt a small tug from the other side, a cold pull. Tiny, barely perceptible, but it was there, like a swab of glue in my nostrils, cementing them together.

My boogers really had frozen.

What Can I Say? I Like Coffee

2007-11-19T10:32:00.000-05:00

Have you heard? I like coffee. A lot. Since college it's been a borderline passion. I love the taste, the smell, the history of the drink. And the caffeine rush doesn't hurt at all.

China is, shall we say, firmly in the tea-drinking camp. Coffee is here, sure, but a good cup of joe isn't easy to come by. So despite my distaste for the Golden Arches, I find myself venturing into McDonald's for a cup of coffee every now and then, because it's the only place you can get reasonably-priced java. And for some strange (strangely awesome) reason, McDonalds in China give free refills on their coffee.

听说还加咖啡免费, 对不对?

I'm not complaining. In fact, McDonalds is one of the few clean, well-lit places here where you can sit, relax, and be left alone. The café just doesn't exist here, not in the sense that you can buy a drink and lounge. So I find myself hunkering down in a corner of Mickey D's, sipping on a decent cup of hot coffee, and I may just sit there and read or study for a while. In fact, my Thursday afternoon/early-evening routine has been to finish classes, go to my tutor, and bus it into town for a protracted relaxation with some hot coffee, a book, and some 生词 (new words).

Only problem is every refill, they give you another creamer and another packet of sugar. I drink my coffee black, I'm not about to throw this stuff out, so ...

Yeah. I like coffee.

Oh yeah, and it's snowing here. 下雪! It's pretty funny to see people from Pakistan and Africa playing in the snow for the first time. One of my classmates, a native French speaker from Africa, asked me (in Chinese): "Can you eat the snow?"

Here's a picture James snapped of the front of campus. It started snowing around eleven this morning and has not yet stopped. Click the photo to go to his blog.

From Jivin' in Jilin

漂亮!

What a Pity: You Fail

2007-11-18T03:29:00.000-05:00

Last week I gave a class with two goals: to teach my students a few popular English idioms, and to get them to stop saying "what a pity" anytime something goes wrong.

"What a pity" is one of a myriad of phrases that, while accurate, are maddeningly overused here in China by English students. If something is even remotely palatable, it is "delicious." If someone barely passes fugly on the attractiveness scale, they are deemed "beautiful." So I wanted to try eradicating this asinine "what a pity" paradigm and replace it with something English speakers actually say.

I typed up an idiom worksheet, keeping the language as simple as possible: cold shoulder, butter someone up, Eureka!, once in a blue moon ... all of these and more. Each sheet had the idiom in bold, a simple explanation underneath, and an example sentence to show the idiom "in the wild." I had students pair up, with one reading the idiom and the example, while the other guessed it's meaning. I had a lot of idiom worksheets, too, so after a few minutes, the sheets were swapped, the guesser became the reader, with the former reader now having to guess a new set of idioms. The reading and "teaching" of the idioms to one another helped them practice speaking, the guessing helped them think in English, and overall, I think it all worked out pretty well.

I also had some vocabulary on the board, all meant to replace "what a pity:" What a shame, how disappointing, I'm really sorry to hear that, etc. We followed this vocabulary up with readings from the (otherwise disgracefully useless) textbook and a dialog of my own design. At the end of this part of class, we had a fat list of alternatives on the board, and even more in our book. Not new vocabulary, really, just new phrases and patterns. Simple, really.

So, the first half of class: reading, speaking, and practicing dialogs with "what a pity" alternatives. Slow, steady, but drilled deep into their skulls.

The second half of class: idioms.

Now class: idioms are on the worksheet. "What a pity" alternatives are on the board and your textbook. Everyone got it? Really? No questions? Good. Let's review one more time.

OK. Now: make a dialog with your partner. Use one idiom, and one of our new "what a pity" alternatives.

Now remember: idioms, paper. Alternatives, textbook and blackboard. Got it? Any questions? OK, go to it.

Two girls in the back of one class, two extraordinarily lazy students who have done nothing but sleep, talk, and text message for the months we've been in class, were going to be in trouble when it came time to read the dialogs in front of the class. So I spent a lot of time helping them with this: we went over nearly a whole page of idioms, we talked about the dialog in our book and review the new phrases: despite all the evidence to the contrary, they assured me they "明白" (understood).

As the other groups worked busily, I saw both of these girls sitting, heads down on the desk, arms dejectedly covering their head, in that totally exhausted "I don't give a shit" look so common with Chinese students. I was really hoping they'd pull it off, because I'd given them as much help as I could give two lazy students in a class of thirty, and in the end there were no new words, only new phrases and new ways to use very simple vocabulary.

Prep time finished, groups began presenting. I emphasized a short dialog to everyone (a necessity if everyone was to go), and they all delivered: terse, lean dialogs that gave the idiom and the "what a pity" alternative with little fluff. Some of the idioms were a little rusty (money "burning a hole in your pocket" seemed especially troublesome), but overall, not bad at all.

The two girls in the back looked as dead as ever. I couldn't avoid it any more: I had to give them their turn. I called their names, and they slowly stood, came timidly to the front, and began:

"So, this evening, how about it? Would you like to come to my dormitory to study?"
"Oh, I am sorry, but I have no time."
"Oh, what a pity."

Heads up, eyes on me, expectant smiles.

When Did America Become A Bunch of Bastards?

2007-11-15T20:31:00.000-05:00

A passingly interesting article about John McCain on the campaign trail is up over at the New York Times.

The article sees McCain come in to a coffee shop in middle America, and without getting into all aspects of the political spectrum, he starts condemning torture. And Joe Sixpack in Middle of Nowhere, Iowa, has the stones to disagree with McCain.

For one, I find it darkly hilarious that a bunch of middle Americans disagree with McCain on torture. The one man who can speak to the futility of torture from first-hand experience, from five years (five goddamn years) of torture in Vietnam, is called into question; meanwhile, the guy from Law and Order, who thinks torture is OK, isn't being questioned. As you can see, this makes total sense.

I just have to ask: when did America become a bunch of bastards? When did torture become something we ever wanted to let happen even in rare circumstances? When did we join ranks with the darkest, most perverse swine that human history has ever produced, by allowing torture, by allowing the idea of torture, to even be considered?

Torture makes us the equals of Pol Pot (Cambodian madman, "Brother Number 1," all told responsible for more than one million deaths; see our peer's handwork here), of the Spanish Inquisition. Torture makes us into the bloodthirsty monsters that the people who hate America want us to be.

When did we become a bunch of bastards? America was firebombing Vietnam and Cambodia in the name of democracy well before we were invading countries in the Middle East in the name of, oh, uh, democracy, again, I think. So our government have been bastards for a while. But when did Joe Sixpack in an Iowa coffee shop become a bloodthirsty, pro-torture bastard? When did the American zeal for pain and hate equal that of the bastards who boarded those planes on that September morning six years ago?

An Apple For Teacher

2007-11-14T22:43:00.000-05:00

I was just given my first apple by a student.

I've been given small gifts before, even fruit before, but there was something special about being given a single apple by a student.

Her name was Valentina, and we were chatting about her victory in a speech competition last night. Jim and Kevin were among the judges, and they were able to tell me first-hand that she just blew everyone else out of the water. Her class was about to being (mine had ended), and I was headed out the door when she stopped me, smiled that giant smile of hers, and handed me an yellow apple.

Welcome to BeiHua

2007-11-10T13:29:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, the new Freshmen here at BeiHua (read: my students) invited us foreign teachers to a welcoming ceremony/talent show thingy. Some of my students sang, some danced, while students in other majors provided some performances. It was a really special little get together, because so rarely do I see my students (hell, any students here) cut loose and just go crazy. Plus James was roped into performing a "boldly unorthodox" rendition of Sleeping Beauty. And I now share it all here with you. Just remember that I was only one in an audience of at least 200, likely well more.

Guangdong Wedding

2007-11-07T10:15:00.000-05:00

Kevin Clancy, friend and Maryknoller Extraordinaire, is getting married this month. I've had the pleasure of meeting the Future Mrs. Clancy, Kaishan "Snow White" Kong. The Zhanjiang crew of last year (Kevin and Kaishan's former colleagues and friends) got together for a meal, we drank baiju out of glass hand grenades, and the night ended with some topless KTV debauchery. (Mind outta the gutter, folks, only a few of the guys relieved themselves of their shirts.) Kaishan is a great lady, Kevin's a great guy, and I'm really happy for them both.

Sadly, China being what it is (that is, massive), I will not be able to make the trip south and join in the matrimonial festivities. Besides, I've got nothing to wear; no way the jeans, buttoned shirt, and sneakers combo I squeak by with in class would cut it at a wedding.

Anyway, Kevin and Kaishan have been wedding-blogging (wogging?), and recently they posted some really great photos. I swear, the sheer number of traditional Chinese formalities Kevin has gone through officially takes me out of the running of a cross-cultural marriage. But Kevin's weathered it all with a smile, and I can only hope that he doesn't hate me for sharing these pictures with (more) of the world.

Kevin and Kaishan's Wedding Blog Thingy

And for the record, I always thought that Kevin and Kaishan should have called their blog "Snow White and the Kevin Dwarves." But that's just me. (And yes, I know it's "dwarfs," but I like Tolkien's spelling better.)

It's Funny What Makes You Laugh

2007-11-05T10:53:00.000-05:00

I've been listening to some Buena Vista Social Club lately. It's strange to hear Latin jazz in an American's dorm in China.

I was meeting with my tutor today, and I asked her one of those "why haven't I learned how to say this yet?!" questions: what's the word for picture, as in, from your (or my) digital camera? She had already told me that camera was 照相机 ("zhaoxiangji"), with that last character 机 ("ji") being a kind of catch-all word for machine. (Mobile phone, for example, is 手机, "shouji," which is literally "hand machine.") I wanted to know what my camera could do; my camera takes/makes what? She explained that a camera takes 照片("zhaopian"), photographs.

OK, I thought, I'm all set: I've got my vocab for camera, vocab for photographs ... wait, I just need the verb: my camera what photographs?

She looks at me with that "this should be painfully obvious" look: your camera 照相, "zhaoxiang," takes photographs.

Dig it, I thought: 我的照相机照相. "Wo de zhaoxiangji zhaoxiang."

Literally: My photograph-taking machine takes photographs.

I laughed for ten minutes.

Dolphin Slaughter

2007-11-02T09:13:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you hear nothing but bad news about China: the environment, tainted exports, and the various everyday bitching about daily life in the Middle Kingdom by yours truly. But every country has its share of problems. Take Japan, for example:

So are dolphins just another fish? If we're outraged by this, shouldn't be be outraged when a cow is killed for meat? I love dolphins and think that everything in this video is a travesty, but can you put all the blame on the fisherman from the sleepy fishing village that are tying to feed their families by simply sating a demand of the market?

Halloween in Jilin

2007-10-29T11:48:00.000-04:00

I hope there are more pictures to come by the end of the week (the three-room Halloween party/potluck dinner we're holding on Saturday better bleed pictures), but for now, here's a taste of Halloween here in Jilin.

Maybe you can't see it in that last pic, but that little pumpkin is pretty sweet. It took a while to carve, mostly because the pumpkins here are as thick as tires, about as carve-able, and there's approximately one square inch of room within them to maneuver your knife and scoop out the guts.

I just showed one class Sleepy Hollow, a movie that is quickly becoming my de facto Halloween movie here in China. I mean, what other movie has the spooky look, evil spirits, autumn motif, and comedy kicker? I think it went well.

With luck, more later

Look what I can do! Pt. 2/第二次

2007-10-28T05:07:00.000-04:00

Last time is was all about photos ...

现在都是汉字！！！

(Now it's all Chinese characters!)

真的！我的电脑能写一点点中文！

(Really! My computer can write a little Chinese!)

I knew my computer could do this for ages, but it wasn't until James and Jenny started chatting to me via Gmail using characters that I was motivated enough to figure out how! And now that my Chinese is getting better, this feature is actually useful!

我很高兴！

(I'm so happy!)

After a Long Week

2007-10-27T00:50:00.000-04:00

China banned YouTube this past week. While this time a year ago that would have been an unforgivable sin, I've found a way around it. Maybe it would be imprudent to name it here, but using this nameless program opens a tor rent of new, previously blocked information.

If you had asked me Tuesday how things were going here in Jilin, I'd have responded with an enthusiasm that might have shocked you. Things were going so well. Too well to last, I guess, because by Thursday I was in a bitter mood, and I couldn't really explain why. Even giving my good, useful, and fun lesson on Halloween, complete with jack-o-lanterns and Dracula cape and Halloween songs, couldn't cheer me up. For the most part, the lesson was well-received, too, so I can't quite place it. Maybe it was hundreds of small frustrations, inert students, a lack of free time, and a general failing to study all the Chinese I was hoping to, that all conspired to simply wear me out by week's end. Now it's a shitty rainy day here in Jilin, I woke up early only to waste my morning doing a bunch of nothing on the internet, and now after sweeping and cleaning and doing some laundry I am off to the city to find some stimulation. (Please, Zeus, let the pirated Xbox guy have Portal.)

How could a good week have ended so drearily?

Last weekend Jenny, Kevin, James, and I went hiking. We were supposed to see a forest famous for it's crimson leaves. We hired the services of a shady cab driver who just drove us through the gate without buying tickets, blowing past the "guards" with a suspicious honk, and as we hiked the well-worn trail on the coldest day in Jilin so far, we realized that all the leaves had fallen, and only barren trees remained. Still a nice hike, but far less red than we were expecting.

So here's a pic from the hike. More can be found here.

Off to town.

Of Garlic and Visitors

2007-10-18T10:25:00.000-04:00

Garlic. It's good for you, it makes virtually everything taste better, and I've been eating a hell of a lot of it these days. How much? Today Kevin Clancy, the Big Boss of the Maryknoll teaching "volunteers" in China, had lunch with Kevin, James, Jim, and myself, and over a simple bowl of noodles, I was able to consume five raw cloves of fresh garlic.

That's five cloves, in one sitting. And raw: I peel the cloves and nibble a little bit off to chew with my food. I should probably chew more gum.

Kevin has been up here checking in on us Dong Bei'ers (Northeasterners). He's here to make sure we're doing our job, but also making sure we're being taken care of by our school, and to just check up on Maryknoll's people in general. Kevin taught four years in Zhanjiang (where I taught last year, for those keep score at home), and I was lucky enough to know some of the very people he taught with before he transitioned into a more official role in Hong Kong. Kevin's insight and advice has been invaluable to me personally and Maryknoll teachers generally, so it's been great having him up here in the north. Kevin's also getting married in a month, to Kaishan "Snow White" Kong, and if I can, I'll be attempting to travel to Guangzhou for the wedding.

Anyway, Kevin came to sit in on one of my classes today, and it was the dreaded "crashing blood sugar levels" post-lunch 1:30 class.

Fortunately, Kevin's mere presence seemed to perk everyone up, and as he and I walked from group to chattering group and engaged the students in a discussion of the story we had just heard, I was really happy that my students, shy as they are, perked up just when they did. Christ knows they didn't keep that energy up for the second half of class (when Kevin was off visiting another teacher), but it was great to see them talking and genuinely discussing things in English when normally they lapse all too easily into Chinese. I realize now that the class I had prepared was a bit too free-talk heavy, and the nebulous structure saw interest wane toward the end. They were probably sore that I didn't teach them a song like I promised, too.

I feel bad that October is already half over, and there have been scant few updates on my blog of late. I've been doing more Chinese, more reading, more everything, and the blog just kinda tends to get pushed back. Oh well. Here's to "more to come."

A Rambling Entry that you Should Probably Just Ignore

2007-10-13T15:25:00.000-04:00

The promised power outage never came. It was a smooth, electrified Friday and Saturday here in Jilin; I came back from a long day in town (but more on that later) to a pitch-black apartment, but a quick trip to the "front desk" solved that problem.

I felt compelled to write something here today, in fact I was thinking about it all afternoon. What brilliant insights into China shall I deign to unleash upon my frothing readership today, I asked myself rhetorically. But now I can't for the life of me remember what it was I wanted to write. Guess it just works that way some times.

This morning and afternoon was spent with Jenny, James, and Kevin walking about Zhanjiang.

Wait, what? I honestly just wrote Zhanjiang without realizing it. It's been on my mind lately. I miss it, if you can believe that, and if you'd been reading this blog for any amount of time, about the only constant has been the inhuman amount of bitching I did about the place. But I do miss it: many things that were comfortable there, and familiar, that are now so far away; the e-mails I've recently swapped with students that take me back to hot classrooms, belabored lessons, Cantonese frustrations; and above all it's hearing from friends from down there, the people that made Zhanjiang what it was.

Home for the summer, it's almost as if I never really thought about Zhanjiang, or China, or what any of it meant to me, until I got back to China. Talking through it with friends and family was the begging of a process that only accelerated upon my return. I remember arriving in Hong Kong this August, a self-assured swagger as I moved through the familiar city, feeling that this country was old hat, well-worn territory. And as I watched the images of Hong Kong flash by through the windows of the double-decker 6X, a year's worth of luggage and memory shifting in the seats next to me, the bus crested that first amazing, familiar view of Repulse Bay in August and turned that slow obtuse turn around the beach toward Stanley, and my first year in China hit me, a mental fist with Zhanjiang fingers. Hong Kong, Zhanjiang, teaching, friends, traveling, Meghan and Deirdre and Patrick, the final weeks of the term, leaving; it hit me, and I was alone, trying to put it together before I got off the bus.

(I could have said a mental fist with a Zhanjiang brass knuckle, but I decided not to. I have too much respect for you, reader. You're above that.)

Anyway, I spent the day in Jilin, and I bought my first Chinese mobile phone today, going for the cheapest dependable one I could find, and in a sick twist of fate it appears to be the exact same model that Nic had in Zhanjiang last year. So it goes. I have absolutely no idea how much calling me on this thing costs, or if talking for a moment to someone in America will wipe clean my supply of minutes, but my number is 159.442.44.117.

I got the phone out of necessity (kinda), because having one just makes life easier here in Jilin. There seems to be a much more disparate social scene here when compared to Zhanjiang, a lot more people my age, a lot more people, period, and having a cell phone simply works. At the same time, the vastly different social scene makes this place feel far more like college and less like the "rugged" individualism of last year.

And here it is, nearly four in the morning. Good old blog: I never need anything to say to say it on here. I knew I needed to blog, and, well, you got a first-year memory dump. So it goes.

I'll leave you with what appears to be a new (?) brand of chips here in China. I first spied this brand in Yanji, but saw it here today in the building's little convenience store. I can only imagine what the people that came up with it were thinking: "Well, foreigners love Lonely Planet, and they seem to talk about God a lot, so ..."

I Blog Because Tomorrow I Lose Power

2007-10-11T10:59:00.000-04:00

For about the third or fourth time since I've arrived in Jilin, they're cutting the power to the entire building (and I think the entire campus), as well as the water. As fun as that may sound, it's getting a little old to have my power cut at random intervals, and tomorrow, it's going to be slightly harder to swallow: no power or water, starting at seven in the morning, and ending sometime Saturday. That is to say, over 24 hours later.

So, I've learned to take showers at night, to say the least.

Blog ... I remember the first time I heard that word. I hated it. Reviled it. "Blog" sounded like some kind of artifact from the future, an anachronism just waiting to happen, some stupid anagram from a bad sci-fi novel, something from the far-flung future so strange and new the world couldn't help but make up a stupid name for it. But I guess when zorbing is real and you can actually buy a canine abomination like a groodle, blog is tame by comparison.

Well, I guess I should tell you about Change Bai Shan and that?

It was a fantastic trip. The two extra days in Yanji, along with Kevin and James, were great. We toured all over Yanji, and took a fantastic trip to Tumen, where I came as close as I wanted to North Korea.

A serene mountain sunset in Yanji.

And here I am on the top of that very mountain ... God I loved that stick.

I wonder what they serve here? (Yanji is a very Korean part of China.) That character to the right/underneath the dog's head means "meat."

Some well-used kebab skewers. No relationship to the dog. Honest.

Looking into North Korea.

I paid a guy two kuai to look through his (relatively) high-powered telescope, and snapped this pic of some North Korean farmers. Dirt roads, no machines, all by hand, it seems ...

Right there at the very edge of the border. We can safely assume that it says something along the lines of "Don't cross."

James, Kevin, and I left the border area, rented a three-person tandem bike, and drove along the river, watching the dusk slowly creep over the lightlessness of North Korea.

A great trip, made all the better by three foreigners making their way through China using their shaky Chinese. (More pics here, by the way.) Finished in Tumen, Kevin, James, and I hopped a train back to Yanji, and shortly thereafter, made our way to Erdao/Baihe, the towns near the Change Bai Mountains. After getting situated in a hostel that was little more than a family's spare room (we played cards late into the night as their daughter slept on a cot in the kitchen), we woke up early for a full day on the mountainside.

Careful, James.

The lake was huge, an unreal blue, and breathtaking.

Ready, set ... pull a stupid face, Matt! OK, cheese! The mountain's famed waterfall. Sadly, the stairs for climbing to the top were closed due to rock slides. Maybe next time.

The famous hot springs ... eggs and veggies boiled in the water, available on demand.

I made new friends, Patty and Amy. I think we said "goodbye" twenty times.

At the "Xiao Tian Chi," or Small Heaven Lake (Heavenly Pond?), the white trees, stripped of their leaves, beamed in the water's mirrored surface. Very peaceful, that pond.

Off the mountain, back in town, there was a fantastic, sculpture-filled park. Set amid a forest burning all Fall-orange and dying red, it was a great afternoon for saying goodbye to the mountain.

Our driver to Chang Bai Shan and back to our hotel, and around town and all that, was a local man we dubbed Chuckles. Chuckles was the happiest man I have ever met: pure joy in his eyes, he was so happy to meet us, to listen to use speak our bad Chinese, and inform us of all there was to see in the beautiful town, that he simply couldn't stop laughing. Literally, laughing, as in, guffaws marred his speech to the point of incomprehension. Of course, our photographer defied the laws of the universe and managed to take a picture at the only moment in time Chuckles wasn't smiling.

And that's Chang Bai Shan. Plenty more pictures here, if you care to peruse. I'm gonna go shower now, because I won't be able to in the morning.