A Rare Clear Day

I awoke to a view I was told by the foreign teachers I wouldn't see for weeks, a **clear** blue sky. I should know not to listen to them. I have read and have heard from Haiyan and Mr. Li that in autumn the Beijing sky's blueness is described as "tall". I can only think think that this tallness assumes the color's proximity to the deep blue of the upper atmosphere, reaching closer to space. The spring sky at its best, according to this rare day of clarity, is pale and gauzy and fleeting. As I type this now at 6pm a haze is diseminating over the city. But at least for most of the day I was offered a glimpse of the mountains
Today was my first day of observation at Aihua Academy. I headed out at 9:30 am. The school is tucked in an alley behind a wall of apartment complexes. On the other side is a howling thorough fare teeming with buses, cars, bicycles, tricycles, scooters, peddlers selling steamed yams out of charred barrels, magazine and paper peddlers, and the Subway line that I will be taking to school everyday. Its amazingly only 1 stop from the apartment. 3 RMB per ride, which is about 40 U.S. cents.
My first time to behold the Morning Exercises in the courtyard of Aihua. All Chinese students have morning exercises, which range from calistinics, to aerobics, to simply forming up and marching in place. Here the students are in "Military Training" which is just a discipline exercise of standing in lines and intermittantly thrusting ones arms out straight and turning directions every 3 minutes while in between listening to the leader yelling commands. Its not a very vigorous exercise. Occasionally, the leader told the students to shake out their legs in between long sessions of standing like ramrods. So the kids reluctantly wiggled a little bit.

I observed 3 classes today participating a little bit to lead a memorization game called "What has Finlay's brother got?" The kids yell "HEllo!" at the top of their lungs when we walked in. Some adorable little girls ran up to me a put their bundled up arms half way around me. I could not stop smiling during class it was so cute!!!!!

I'm looking out "my" window....

...Upon a six lane highway. It's almost 10 in the morning. Squat trucks and cars are passing. There is a ferris wheel and some amusement park roller coasters in the hazy, smoggy distance, endless clusters of 20 story apartment towers, there are some faint outlines of mountains very near. I am very surprised to see the mountains. They are as tall as the Catalinas in Tucson, but a little closer to me. Everything is rendered soft by the haze. The sky is a dull white.

This is a paper cut on the parlor window, decorations from the New Year. There is a basketball court down below. I watched a lady jogg slowly around the tower, a promising track for running.

My breakfast: oranges, dumplings, bok choy, tomatoes, and my favorite sesame oil chilli sauce. (I actually made this) Haiyan leaves to catch the train at 7 am.

My room. I really like the hard flat Chinese style bed.

The beautiful office (Haiyan's bedroom), from where I type this. I am using Robert's pretty fast PC, but all the script is in Chinese. I have to guess at the right prompts. Haiyan is going to stay in this room now. That's her little bed. She gave me the bedroom, which is rather spacious. She would have it no other way.

Even the laudrey-hanging room has an amazing view. With all of the changing flights hysteria in the states I never got my luggage (2 huge suitcases and my bike!) I will probably be wearing this shirt and socks for a while.

This is the court yard/parking area in between the apartment clusters. I walk towards the green building to get to the street.

Here is the fairly busy street I live off of. Haven't really been out yet expect for standing outside waiting to be picked up by Aihua to register my foreigner status at the police station. They didn't arrive because they thought I was sleeping in. But at least I got to people watch, and be watched by people. They like to look slyly out of the side of there eyes. When I smile they in turn light up, or shyly giggle. I am trying to say "Ni hao" without actually thinking "Hello"

Here is one of the many three-wheeled motorcycle taxis. This one was rather shiny looking. Others were a little raggedy and clunky. I can't wait to crawl in the little space inclosed in the back for a ride. There were many heavy duty bicycles too, some of which had huge carpeted pallets attched to the back.

bonus: Some scenes from the journey...

The route from San Francisco to Beijing skims the continents of the Pacfic coast, along Alaska, across the Bering Sea, over Siberia (shown here) and across the vast ice sheets of the sub-Arctic ocean. This was an astounding sight. This planet is unbelievable, I spent hours looking out that window.

The frozen Bering Sea

Shiny Beijing Airport people mover. This was the glitzy part of the terminal. Standing in line at the less glitzy, more solemn customs and visa checkpoint, I wanted to take a picture of the mega screen with red scrolling English text that stated the rights of the "State Organ" to prevent foreigners from compromising the frontier, which might result in the "disposal" of said foreigner...but I was too scared.

We walked out of the airport and I was immediately hit with the smell of burning of various materials, ranging from tires and plastic, to food. I was going to ask what's that smell, but then I realized that would get me laughed at, because that's the smell of Beijing.

The van ride on the Ring Road freeway was brisk, we passed clusters of skyscrappers rendered sci-fi through the smog. And stanger-- along a stretch of the highway there were some, I am guessing, open-air factories (?) were men in helmets and protective gear torched big pieces of metal and bustled about under a fountain sparks.

Well, that was the first 20 hours. I will now brave the unknown and go for a walk, hoping not to get lost before I must be picked up to go to the Police Station, where I will under go a medical examination and other procedures that according to Finlay "scare the hell out" of you.

Tonight, there is a banquet with the school Directors. I suspect they will try to get me drunk, as is the tradition at banquets. It's rude not to join in on the toast, but I hope they will go easy on me because I want to be concsious to meet with Haiyan's friend who will be visiting and sleeping over later tonight.

I hope to write about Haiyan more later. She was a very accomodating host, very sweet. Upon entering the house she gave slippers and promptly made me tea. Later, she made me a fried egg (best I have ever had) and warm soup with chinese greens. She apologizes for her English, but I think it is very good. If I need to slow down or use different words she kind of indicates that she is confused with her expression. I am so lucky that she can help me get things sorted out here. I would be baffled without her. We have tiny difficulties communicating, mostly giggling.

(Hope this blog post turns out alright. I can only post. I myself can not access the website to see what it looks like, for reasons I haven't yet figured out.)

My View

I've done some biking and walking and train riding around Dallas, but for some reason hardly ever with my camera. Meandering through pretty neighborhoods and coming across parks, empty but no less inviting, I never quite felt as if this were a place I was to get comfortable with if only for a month. For the most part, in my head, I have spent my time here like one might amble away a couple days of an extended layover trapped in the inconsequential hospitality districts surrounding an airport. Content with the amenities, but unconvinced that this in itself is apart of the journey. No one really relishes there idle time in places of transition, besides those more connected to the present than myself. And I suspect this has little to do with the immediate environment being inherently dismissive, and more to do with the person being in a state of dismissive-ness.

My time spent here in the pretty college neighborhood of Highland Park, Dallas I have spent convincing myself of my rapidly approaching departure from it. I have frequented a coffee shop over and over, yet still refused the repeated buyer’s punch card on the grounds that “I won‘t be here long enough to get the free coffee.” I haven’t really tried to make friends with my work acquaintances at the bookstore telling myself time would be better spent studying Chinese or reading a book about China or riding the train to no particular place and walking around with no particular intention, as if just to exercise the mentality of traveling. All together not a bad way to pass the days and I have really enjoyed it, despite my eagerness to get on with my adventure. And perhaps a time of social distance was called for before moving to China, like weaning me from the dependency of easy communication.

The world outside my immediate window is loud with traffic and people talking underneath the trees, the occasional church bell and stadium noise, but I feel very quiet here. I get lost on the freeways and I don’t know how to get to places that everyone else is familiar with, like the mall and Target. The office parks and shopping plazas are hazily set off by the bright blueness of the central Texas sky as if everything had the reflected waviness of deck furniture by a pool. On my rides on the bike path from Highland Park to the Downtown, the trail skirts the backsides of the office parks, trendy shopping districts, and new fangled sky rises whose careful facades face the freeway. The scenery passes like weightless projection on a white flimsy screen. Everything I ever wanted to take a picture of, but didn’t, were those shots that hint at the traces of people in places where people are supposed to be but aren’t--the empty overly lit parking garage, the single office whose lights left on floating squarely in a wall of black windows reflecting only the orange lamppost light outside, empty rappelling rafters left by window washers on the backside of a mini-skyscraper. But if such shots, if ever taken, were to say anything about human beings, the most they would say would be about their photographer, whose eyes were excited by temporary emptiness and quiet and who found themselves enticed to be on the backsides of things, in the after hours, before they lit up again. And of course those shots that I didn’t take might reflect the leisureliness of this transition, the idle transiency that I feel here.

STORMPAY: A Friday Night.

Tonight:


Ate a few bites of salmon prepared by my mom on a George Forman Grill, which was surprisingly sumptuous.

Downloaded and played a vocabulary flashcard game off the internet.

Applied Epi-Otic, a veterinary analgesic for dogs, on my ears

Pretended to read the Dallas Observer while standing extremely close to a group of middle-aged women reviewing a film they had just seen starring Dame Judy Dench.

Declined an enormous and free ice cream cookie sandwich.

Thought about and decided that since I am a bad daughter I would have to name my adopted Chinese baby girl Sandra after my mom, but that I would pronounce in San-jra, as if it were an Indian name.

Bought two hot pink pocket bibles.

Sat in front of a unintelligible arguing black couple on the train and actually read the Dallas Observer.

Loitered in front of a Hispanic news team hoping to get interviewed.

Found a flyer on the ground that said “CONDRADULATIONS! ” with an image of several huge sacks with money signs on them. Of course, intrigued, I squatted down to read it (as it was taped on the ground) The flyer asked me if I was “Ready to have [my] own ATM machine in [my] home receiving $10 bills daily for the rest of [my] entire life?…Let me introduce to you A FULLY AUTOMATED INTERNET CASH MACHINE that makes real money for real people, the ONE AND ONLY……….VENUS AND MARS LIFETIME INCOME CASH MACHINE……..

Saw my cash machine in action at
http://www.venus-and-mars.com/index.php

"Hobbies" ke

“You like dance?"

"You do?! I dance at Dallas Ballroom. Since I odor no man likes dance with me.” She laughs at herself. “I too good. Too strong for them to be leader. But it's bor-ring with no partner. You just sit on chair. So I,” she laughs and begins to tap me after every sentence, “I bring best two or three girl with me. I leader!” Smiling, I repeat what she says adding a tinge of incredulity. “Yes, I always leader!”

Does your husband dance too? I ask in broken Chinese. She shakes her head as if shaking out confetti, her hair crazily batting her face. Then stopping, she looks me straight in the face and tapped me just once on the shoulder. “Hey,” as if I were not paying attention, then begins to tap me on the shoulder more pointedly, “Hey….Hey” And as soon as I begin to think I asked something I shouldn’t have, she smirks just slightly tilts her head plaintively, “Husband not same. Husband different…This correct? Different?”
Yes, different. “Husband does not like dance. He likes only sleep. He likes swim only at 24 ow-wa Fitness.” This I had already surmised. Apart from the rotary phone on the toilet, a mysterious assortment of plastic bottles filled with pale-ish liquid, the shower stalls and door knobs were draped with at least six small swim trunks and bright floral one-pieces. Seeing as this is the only room other than the pot plant crowded foyer I have seen of Cindy’s house, and the unruly and unmatched manner of its contents, I think it is safe to surmise a few things about the Chen’s, their a fairly typically suburban American middle-aged couple.
We sit shoulder to shoulder during our lesson in front of a huge window which over looks a busy residential boulevard and a Blockbuster Video. “You have so many clothes in closet, he says. Why you buy more. I think since odor he more Chinese. I more like American. I like to go shopping, find good sale. He only like save.” She snapped her hands on her lap as if giving up to the un-sameness of it all.
“When he young he like dance, tiao wu shr da….” She interrupts herself haltingly, points to the page of pinyin and we return the lesson….“Hobbies.”

Message contains cash prizes.

Haven’t written perhaps this is one loafing about individual. Truth be hollered (so that this one can hear) I am afflicted by an infection. Perchance to dream, without earplugs, lest these plugs deliver the ear to a scaly pinkish itchy moist condition. The infection allows itself a respite all along the spiraled infrastructure of my outer ear, though mercifully not adventuring to the deep down bellows where the drums are sometimes stroked and many times hammered. Haven’t sought medical attention. Haven’t yet swallowed the notion that my ears could seal up of their own volition. Mom forwarded me some internet content on the subject. Talk of loss of hearing, talk of facial paralysis. But these I surmise are of some wretched caliber of infection, and I believe the ear plugs, of which I have grown dependent upon to sleep for more than a year now, were cast haphazardly by my waking self on a contaminated surface, just so landing on a microscopic host of specific potency, whose collective microbial desires were awaiting a non-inanimate object, such as my ears, to take up new residence.

Have been reading blogs that were translated into English from Chinese by merely right-clicking. The affect of a search and replace program upon language is stupendous, and the affect also inspiring. Here is my friend Zhao Haiyan (whose pen name is “Thinks White”) writing about her return to Sichuan, containing a small anecdote about not remembering a high school friend who happens to remember her. Haiyan means “huge mythical bird”:

Returns to one's native village the prelude
Goes home buys the ticket several passes through the troubles, including completely thinks had the assurance the airplane ticket all " flies ". Yesterday morning sat when drank with difficulty the lower pharynx red bean gruel outside the plot dining room, in heart also a little cool cool think, actually is which lovable vehicle can me bring to hometown street corner, ate that red spicy spicy rice noodle?
Sat in the home without stopping, ran the unit, to on-line grasped the ticket, unexpectedly exceptionally smoothly spend 500 big oceans, bought 24 sleeping berths. Takes the ticket on the way, with hires the driver speaks endures without stopping oneself son " ha ha " happy, he leans takes a look me: " Were you the ticket which attained goes home?" I " " ate as soon as am startled. 过心 inside again slightly does not have the self-satisfacation: I have the hometown, some remote places may read think, your person from Beijing always does not have? This time also endures without stopping to look like Arab League Q equally feels buoyantly superiorly gets up.
Attains the ticket on one after another start working overtime. Several days overtime pays may struggle to get free my lovable vehicle ticket price, thinks is full on working zeal. Evening when working overtime as soon as releases directly for the Zhao huge mythical bird low and deep music, also thinks relaxed, is not that tired. What feeling just before leaving do the time always some sheds have not, to say what not well is, very infers Beijing one side good friend, also did not have the time. Is just about to 伤感, the hometown schoolmate made the phone call comes, inside the warm sound immediately pulled me returns my hometown to go.
Is their three one what place dining together, in the telephone everywhere made noise, thanks just pulls class leader the manner sound says: " We all very think of you, here has the Jiang fine jade, the poplar sturdy pine tree, Du.... Who do you and speak?" Does not have " elects America " with enough time, already one each one answered the telephone and I says, the heaven, until laid down the telephone, I all did not know spoke in and whom, more than 10 years did not see the high school schoolmate, I listened to the name to respond only came, had to to make excuses, very exaggerated say: " You?" Actually does not know is who, is called them there to leave a good name in class leader, I go back slowly recognize. (Which schoolmate if looked my, left " considers densely " yo, ha-ha)
In family's telephone also one day several. My mother already gave me arranges very to pay a visit 三姑六婆 eight maternal uncles' matters, the elder sister also arranges to see this friend, that teacher, was because I good spoke, saw the daddy the relative also pulls me, mother's relative also was I accompanies, returned to the brother-in-law including my elder sister the native place, I all with. But the advantage is, may eat hundred foods, which families all have the oneself adept vegetable.
The computer head of a li in sings " this Lyu island, looks like one ship, in the moonlit night swings swings......" Had one ship must bring me to go home.
Already very was late, should go home. Goes home has a dream.

Yesterday's Mongolain Goodbye, Today's Wired Van Horn

I left Tucson this morning the first day of the new year, anxious to drive the completely straight 1000 miles stretch from Tucson to Houston. Haven't done it in a couple years and missed the big cold sky and raging winds at the truck stops.

600 miles to go.
{I need to mention, out of a impulsive need to be utterly indulgent, using celebrating the day I left Tucson as an excuse, I come to you blogging from the bathtub in room 133 of the Motor Lodge of Van Horn, Texas. Van Horn is replete with motel 20-30 dollar bargains. Once, and still mostly little 60s era independently owned lodges, now alot of them have free internet wi-fi and hot breakfasts to keep competative.}

Now I will remember some rememberings from my last night in Tucson that have been rendered forever dreamy with the digital camera.

A RIDE TO BEIJING.

I got a ticket!
Leaving January 25th!
Arriving the morning of the very first day!
of Spring Festival!
the biggest!
festival of the year!
in the capital!
of the most populated!
country in the entire world!

Nevermind! I knew nothing! I'm going to Beijing!!!!!!!!

I just got a call from Finley Beaton, a scotsman in West Beijing, to be precise. They want to hire me. Aihua Language School is in ShiJingShan, a far west poorer district of Beijing, which supposedly is more "Chinese" than any wear else in Beijing. Plus I can ride the subway 30 minutes to Beijing. Plus they've got a sweet little deal, more money potentially than Guan Ya. I'd have to share a appartment, but eh. Plus the school is run by cute Irish and Scots. Plus its just better...hopefully. This is such a hard decision. AGH!!!!!!!!!!I NEED TO DECIDE SOON. like tomorrow! I can't sleep.
Here is the site, its rather peculiar, and I like it.
http://www.aihua-english.com/English/

Zunyi City or Shenyang? Help me!

Zunyi City in Guizhou Province, south central China ("little" city, lots of hills to run around in, green limestone pinnacles, rice paddies, exotic chinese minorities that wear funky outfits, nice administrators, public high school)


Shenyang, Liaoning Province, north-east China (3 hours from North Korean border!, big city lots of stuff to do, city parks to run around in (if not frozen) Guan Ya school has good reputation, sub-arctic, nice administrators, private english cram school)

I'm SO totally blogging my office party.

BYE ECoBA, thanks for your employment, not to mention your pizazzaz and panache.


Vinn Diagram of Good, Bad, and Ugly Attributes of "Water" + Water CASA name poem (co-author Scott Stark)

"Evaulation of Cost Benefit Analysis of Actual Water Savings" PARTY 2005
Portrait at Tohono Chul in Nicaraguan Apron.

I made the saag baag and the spring rolls. Saag baag is left most green slop.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BALLOON HAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go here now and behold:
http://www.balloonhat.com

And the story on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1419315

Having a Belgium Feeling

It’s cold and dry and bright, unlike in Belgium. I feel like being in Belgium. Not sure what that entails. Maybe I can come up with something later tonight. In Belgium they are 8 hours behind.

I once saw this bizarre, but lovely Belgium movie, Rosette, about a chubby, but pretty girl who lived with her mom in a trailer park on the periphery of an interstate and warehouse/factory district. It was constantly drizzling in the movie. In some scenes there was drizzle on the camera lens. She wore rain boots all the time. She lost her job at a factory for being late or generally incompetent, can’t remember. She got a job making waffles in a trailer outside one of the factories, which I believe was under the arch of the interstate overpass. As such, she was constantly eating waffles, holding them with only her woolen gloves. In my favorite scene Rosette was making a single hard boiled egg. The scene lasted as long as it takes for the water to start boiling and the egg to float to the surface, which, if you didn’t know, is indication that the egg is done. Rosette attended the egg for the entire duration of the boiling, constantly stirring it and changing the heat settings. She then dipped a ladle into the boiling water and greedily tried to remove the shell, which was (obviously) too hot and delicate. So she set it in a cup of water in the sink and stirred the egg around. Once it was cool she removed the shell in a single peel. She then rushed to her bed, got under the covers, and ate it.

In Avignon, France on the first official day of my bike trip last March. I met a Belgium tour bus driver in the foyer of this old hostel. I was putting together my bike. It was cold and late and the hall light was on an energy-saving timer. I constantly had to set down my bike and tools and press the button that is until he arrived and eagerly offered his assistance. He manned the light switch as he watched me assemble the bike. We began a long conversation via a pocket dictionary, which would stray into the night. He told me he is renovating a house in Belgium, like major renovation, but that the process has taken years since he is only home for a short while at a time in between Bus tours. He offered me some tepid Belgium beer, Juliper. We drank it in his hostel room, which was filled with cigarette smoke. He told me to be very careful in the south and in Italy. He told me I was brave, but he said what I was doing was wonderful. I was supposed to meet him for breakfast in the mess hall the next morning, but I overslept, I was afraid I hurt his feelings.

In another scene, Rosette is filling two buckets with water from an outside spigot. As she is carrying them back to the trailer a person she does not want to see arrives in front of her house. She drops the buckets and runs away to a nearby marsh and trips into a muddy pool of water. I imagine life in Belgium can get be pretty bleak if you’re chubby, a little slow witted, and unemployed.

North Korean Director plans prison camp stage musical

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/arts/2005/11/23/nkorea_musical/

"Thank you Jesus yadda yadda where's my cheap electronics" day 2005 + Dallas Downtown Adventure

My adventure day began as most adventures do, standing in line with a few hundred people outside of a Dallas Walmart at 4:30 am in the windy cold.



An orgiastic plundering of $68 DVD players in the aisle.

Credit Cards waved in the air at the Dallas- Richardson Walmart, 5 am.

"We were here all night. We watched you unload the truck. I'll leave when you give me one!" Nasty lady to Walmart employee about why she and 50 other people were crowding the cashier station in the electronics department to buy $400 laptops.

A few of us stood on the "sidelines" laughing at the ridiculousness. Before some security guards started screaming and we could feel it getting scary. I snapped some pictures and we left. Later tonight we saw on the news that several people had been trampled in a Beaumont Walmart and there was some Walmart ruckus in other parts of the country. The news showed security-cam footage of the doors opening at 5 am and crowds pushing in like the running of the bulls. A large black woman fell over, knocking off her wig. After a little bit of trampling and no one helping her she was able to crawl to her wig and place it back on her head before rolling herself up. Later, she was taken to the emergency room. Turns out...she was pregnant. For Christ's sake! This was the headline story. Honestly, I felt just a insy bit like I was a part of history, maybe even a unifying movement as it turns out every good american was at a Walmart this morning. I also felt, as I do most of the time, that this country is the laughing stock of the entire world. There are a few moments when I think I could become the proverbial street lunatic that yells its the end of the world. Its like the fleeting thought of jumping when your standing on the edge of a cliff or a building. I wanted to yell to everyone in the electronics department, "Hey, there's a war going on!!" But I guess what stopped me is that I was too busy laughing. That's sad, whats wrong with me. We came home I put on the shirt my mother gave me to sleep in and I slept for 6 more hours.

Then I woke up and rode the train downtown!

the Downtown.

This kid was eating a huge sprinkle cookie that was all over his face and staring at me a mere foot from my face. When I said to him "That looks like a delicious cookie." He looked honestly confused then replied, "What language you talking? Are you a mexican?"

The Hyatt Regency Reunion Ball Tower and Cocktail Lounge--I went up to the ball! It was the first space ball of its kind back in the day, setting the trend for countless south-east asian tiger urban dystopia cities of the 1980s.... The cocktail lounge was probably really nice in the late 60s. I pondred having a drink but there were lots of families drinking cokes and eating cold shrimp cocktails like they'z something fancy.

A view inside the ball.

This is an art shot I call this "The tops of things"

yeah! Dallas.

"Thanks, AMERICA/Jesus." Day 2005!!!