PHO-nomenal!

Vietnam is amazing. I ate this bowl of soup called pho (pronounced "fuh," which, as one can imagine, provides endless possibilities of puns in the English language), and it was so good I cried. I'm not kidding. It's a rich broth with cilantro and lime and a hint of chilies, with slippery noodles and juicy shaved pork. *tear* I think I'll go get some when I'm done with this entry.

Hanoi is busy, noisy, beachy, dirty, and happy. People have big eyes and beautiful smiles. Lots of motorcycles! Palm trees are everywhere, but there's a displaced sunlight all the time because of fog/pollution. It makes the atmosphere sort of hazy and sleepy. There are about 4 Vietnamese boys staring over my shoulder while their friends play computer games next to me in this Internet cafe. I've been here for awhile so I should probably wrap it up, even though this probably won't cost me more than about 30 cents. Pho is about 75 cents. This place is crazy. I'm going exploring.

More later!

So the first picture is us with President Thomas (whom we affectionately refer to as Ron Thom¨) when he and his wife Mary met us in Fuzhou the other night! They arrived at the Shangri La Hotel (super ritzy...all the lounge waitresses were wearing Santa bathrobe outfits with fuzzy boots, which is undoubtedly the mark of a sophisticated establishment). But really, it was really great. There was a reception and we all got to chat in a big circle about how Pac Rim was going, and then we all got baseball hats!

The other two pictures are me with my new Chinese buddies. They really wanted to show me this church but it was late at night, so they got the guard lady to let us in because they said I wanted to compare Chinese churches with American churches (I didn´t have the heart to tell them I´ve never been to church in my life. I guess I HAVE been inside them, thought...). These guys, whose names are Rosemary, Michael, and Panda (he´s in the red) were really great. We talked about a lot of interesting stuff at dinner, like POLITICS!

I started telling them about the election in America, and how it was unprecedented because young people like ourselves turned out in droves to actively campaign and get people to vote. More young people voted in this election than in a really long time, I told them, and I told them about how good it felt to be part of something big. I am not kidding, their eyes were glowing and they were saying things like, ¨Yeah!¨ and ¨How great!¨ and I could tell they were genuinely excited about it, but as soon as I asked ¨Do you ever wish you could participate in an election like that here in China?¨ this sort of glazed, blank expression took over and they didn´t talk right away. It was so awkward!! They were like ¨No, not really...¨ and then Rosemary sort of laughed apologetically (she was the social one) and said, ¨The Chinese government has a lot of stability...we don´t need to change it.¨

Wow! Then yesterday morning I was sitting in on an English discussion class led by Dodie, an American ex-pat teaching English at Hwa Nan, and we got to talking about political protests and that sort of thing. When I asked if it was difficult to go against the norm, this one girl Lynn said ¨Yes. We are all inculcated to be obedient.¨ !!!!!

So you can imagine, this is like a gold mine for me in terms of finding stuff to write about in my research paper about the political attitude of Chinese students. Wowee.

The other photo is Alfred, the ewok-squirrel doggy, and the last one is a cute baby. (This baby was a 7.5 on the cuteness scale- Mongolian babies are 10s).

Tomorrow, VIETNAM!! 80 degrees....i can´t wait...

Hu´s in China Now?

I´m sorry, that joke is so overdone. But yes, I am back in China! We are at our university´s sister school in Fuzhou, which is tucked away in a cute little neighborhood I would describe as Beverly Hills: Third World. I´d upload some pics but my batt´s dead in my camera, so I´ll do that soon. Basically the city is hilly with palm trees and alleyways of high concrete walls, twisted around in labyrinths and topped with shards of broken glass instead of barbed wire. See, I told you there was recycling in China!

Every day we go to class at the University, where Prof. Fields from UPS is teaching us a course on Nationalism. The balcony outside the classroom has a terrific view of the city, which is split down the middle by a huge river (Ming? Ying?) and looks remarkably like LA: blue sky, bright sun, and subtle layer of pollution. At night, the sun burns orange and bathes the sides of the skyscrapers in that fiery CO2 glow. I have to admit, it sorta feels like home...

We´ve got assigned buddies here with the Chinese university students, which is really terrific. My buddy´s name is Ivy and she is a real pistol, in the best sense. Absolute sweetheart, but not afraid to bargain down from four dollars for a pair of sunglasses (winking at me while doing so) or afraid to shove her way onto a bus when everyone is easily a foot taller than her. She talks fast, smiles big, and says things like ¨I´m so full but to leave food is waste, so eat eat eat!¨ We´re hiking a mountain on Thursday, apparently. Whew!

I´ve been making friends with the locals on my quests for food, which occur after class (elevensies), at noon (lunch), at 3:30 (second lunch), at 6 (dinner) and at 8:30 or so (after-dinner snack). I´ve been getting noodles at one diner in particular...I always go in the afternoon when the cook´s favorite kung-fu drama is on, so I order before it starts and then we watch it together (far away from each other but we´re the only people in the diner), and then I ask for my check during the commercial break. It´s a nice system. He´s got two little boys, one with really red cheeks and the other a tiny version of the first only jollier, like that ubiquitous Chinese laughing Buddha. They say hi to me and then murmur in Chinese and laugh hysterically. Joke´s on me, I´m sure, but I don´t care.

If you walk across the street there is a knick-knack shop, and inside the knick-knack shop lives a small dog(?). If he were my pet and I lost him and had to describe him in a poster, it would probably read something like this:

¨LOST: SMALL THING WITH GINORMOUS EARS. LOOKS LIKE LARGE SQUIRREL, FACE LIKE EWOK. RESPONDS TO THE NAME ´ALFRED.´¨

I named him Alfred because he looks like a grouchy old man abruptly woken from his afternoon nap with rebellious, disheveled eyebrows. I say, ¨Here, Alfred¨ when I walk by, but he sniffs at me and then jumps into his bed, which is under a tarp draped over two motorcycles. It looks really warm in there, I would totally curl up in there with him if that wasn´t weird and this wasn´t China. Anyway, I´ll try to snap a picture of him soon so you can all meet him.

Today Marlene and I were carrying our leftover trash from dinner while walking back from the university and spotted a trash can and stuck our garbage in. Then I noticed the can was one of two baskets, attached by rope to a long flat stick strung between them. This is the thing people use to carry stuff on their shoulders.

Suddenly I just felt really strange... I dumped my trash into a basket that someone will carry on his or her back tomorrow morning.

I need to think about that.

Okay, So There Was Stuff To Do

Alright alright so I found some things to do. It turns out that everything was fine; in my room, there were two sweet gay boys of Mexican persuasion (Rrricardo and Gustaaavo) and a nice Australian grad student named Ben who was was studying robotic engineering (what what, dad! we talked for like half an hour about robots and japan and traveling etc etc). He looked like a nerdy Prince William. My friends arrived in the night too, so I wasn´t alone, either. See, Mom, Everything Always Works Out.

So it turns out the Russian boys were...get this...SLOVENIAN. Last night we were all sitting in the lobby, my friends and these boys, and it turns out they are on Slovenia´s National Karate Team. The first thing they asked me was Where is Slovenia and I was like, ¨Eastern Europe?¨ and they were disgusted and said it used to be part of Yugoslavia. Well How Was I Supposed to Know. I think I should get credit for knowing the general area. Then I said , ¨So what brings you to Tokyo?¨ and they said ¨Äirplanes.¨ har har.

Then one of them goes, ¨Do you know Ahmed the Dead Terrorist?¨ And Max, I am like oh man this is that Youtube ventriloquist act and sure enough IT IS. So we broke the ice with the Slovenians by watching Achmed the Dead Terrorist on Youtube. It´s amazing how much Youtube can bring people together all over the world...NO JOKE.

So after we had a good laugh, my friends and I were going to go to a jazz club, and we invited them all to come. Well we couldn´t get in because it was so packed so we went to a nice little bar/grille joint and everyone had three beers and i had wine. (Of all the various alcoholic beverages in the world, I find wine the least offensive.) So we ended up making friends with the Slovenians after all. Yay.


Today, I was hungry and wanted an afternoon snack so I stopped by this hopping joint with a horse race on the television. Apparently this was a Horse Race Yakitori Restaurant which basically means everyone eats yakitori ravenously and then waves their little shishkabob sticks angrily at the TV and say things like ¨What the hell number 5! What the hell!¨ I got plopped at a table with a Japanese man who looked to be somewhere around 60. He had the scratchy growl of a man who has ruined his voice half from smoking and the rest from yelling at TVs. He heard me talk to the waitress (¨I don´t need anything else, thanks.¨) and he said ¨Your Japanese is good. What brings you to Tokyo?¨

So I told him that I was touring Asia with other students and studying along the way. He said ¨Where have you been in Japan?¨ and I said ¨Kyoto. I saw lots of temples,¨ and he let out a whistle and said ¨That place has temples coming out the wazoo.¨ (*in the Japanese equivalent.) I said ¨Yep!¨ and we chatted a little more. When my food arrived, he said ¨Don´t you drink sake?¨ and I said ¨Sake? It´s barely four o´clock!¨ and he laughed. While we were speaking he had been pulling at a loose thread on his sweater, and finally the waitress saw him and came over and swatted his hand away (¨Stop pulling at it!¨) and clipped it with some handy scissors. You could tell he was a regular.

Then I told him about how my family was probably moving to Tokyo and he was excited. I said you´d be working on robotics, Dad, and he said ¨Tokyo is the place to be for that.¨ After we chatted a bit more and I ate a bowl of yakisoba, I pulled out money to pay for my meal and he was like ¨No, no, no. Let me.¨ and i said ¨no, no, it´s fine,¨ and was fishing around for a coin in my purse and he said ¨No, no, really!¨ and he yelled out to the waitress, ¨Hey! I´m buying this girl lunch!¨ and the waitress said ¨Really? Sure thing!¨ and he pushed the money back at me. He said, ¨Come back tomorrow and we´ll chat again!¨ And I said sure and thanked him. I won´t be there tomorrow, but it seemed better to just say yes.

(So the thread story reminded me of a night at my host family´s house in Toyama. My room was next to the living room, so one night after I went to bed I heard the mom and dad bickering about who got to take a shower first. They couldn´t decide so they played rock paper scissors and the mom won, and so after 20 minutes or so I could hear the dad snoring really loudly on the couch and I wondered, aww I wonder if she will let him sleep because he had such a long, hard day. So when the water turns off, I hear the pit-pat of the mom´s feet padding softly towards the dad and this is what happens:

Pit, pat, pit, pat. pause.
SLAP.
¨BATH TIME, DADDY!¨

I laughed so hard I had to stick my face in the pillow. It was great. The End.)

In Tokyo and Nothing To Do

So I am sitting at the hostel in the lounge with nothing to do on a Friday night in Tokyo. None of my friends are here yet...plus it is cold outside and I don´t feel like wandering around. There is a table full of drunk Russians on my left and across from me there is a very cute blond Russian boy who looks like a soccer/lacrosse/rugby type. When we made eye contact he smiled a very wolfish smile. Did I mention that I am in a bunk dormitory in this hostel so there are BOYS in my room? How awkward. Well there must not be any issues with this because this is one of the best rated hostels in Tokyo, according to Lonely Planet. Don´t worry, I know self defense. I hope I didn´t just give you a heart attack, mom.

What can I say in Russian? ¨I speak a little Russian?¨ Then he´ll TALK to me in Russian and I won´t understand. The Russian on my right keeps laughing at my pink computer and asking me questions like how many words per minute can I type and why is it pink and other things. He has his hair in a ponytail and, in a black turtleneck sweater, looks like the poet-type who takes his work too seriously and spends half an hour trimming his facial hair around his chin in the morning so it looks Just Right. No Thank You.

Man I am so bored!! What the heck is there to do!!!!

Planes, Trains, and Little Kid Roller Coasters

Okay, so no planes today. But there were definitely trains and little kid roller coasters. Today I left the house of my homestay family from four years ago, the last time I was an exchange student. It was very chill. I mean that in the relaxed sense, and also in the temperature sense because it was snowing. SNOW! We saw a temple in the morning and then watched three hours of CSI. Ah, Japan! A fusion of the old and new.

The next day was much the same, except we watched a 2 hour movie of the host daughter´s school´s sports day, filmed with a handheld camera. TWO HOURS. But I was hanging out with my host mom so I didn´t mind. :)

So today I hopped on two bullet trains. It was crazy, we started out in snow (yes, it was snowing!!) and then we literally sped into a new climate. I am in Tokyo now and it is pretty mild. Crazy! I sat next to a very nice boy on the train to Tokyo...he saw that I had my massively obese backpack and moved his seat upright so I could fit it behind us, and I was like ¨It´s fine¨ in Japanese and then we apologized about it for ten minutes. We both sat down to read but neither of us really wanted to, it seemed like, and I couldn´t think of a way to start a conversation. Then he asked to pull down the shade and I said ¨it´s fine,¨ and then he had to get up for a second and I was like ¨it´s fine,¨ and then I was thinking gosh he is going to think all I know how to say is It´s Fine.

Finally we were arriving in Tokyo, and I offered him some gum, and then he asked me where I came from, and I told him the whole story and he said he was a first year college student studying medicine. He said my Japanese was really good, but when people talk this is what I hear:

¨I am....student....medicine studying.....this weekend....isn´t it?¨ and i say yes, how interesting. Studying medicine is hard. and he says ¨Yes, but...and so...in high school....not too hard.¨ and i say oh that´s good. so it sounds like i am paying attention but really i´m just barely.

I do seem to be making lots of friends on trains...people must see this poor ragged looking foreigner hoisting 50 kilos of crap on her back and think ¨aw.¨ two days ago i was about to miss my connection because I didn´t know to get off the train, and this old lady was like ¨Hurry! You´ll be late! Conductor, wait!¨ and then, I am not kidding, FIFTEEN other grandmas sitting nearby all started making clucking noises and saying things like ¨Don´t forget your purse! Did you get everything? Move out of the way for the girl! Here she comes! Be careful, now!¨ It was like in the span of that 20 minute train ride everyone sitting near me decided to be my host grandma without me knowing. Thanks to them I got out in time, so hey!

On the train before the Tokyo train, there was a lot of snow outside so it was easy to strike up a convo with the lady next to me. (aka, ¨Some snow, huh!¨) At the end of the trip,, she gave me an extra coffee she had lying around in purse and helped me get to my platform. SO FRIENDLY!


I know, i know, you´re all wondering, ¨So what happened with the boy on the train to Tokyo??¨ I wish I could tell you it was something schmaltzy, like we looked into each other´s eyes and kissed and parted in tears, but we sort of just looked at each other and looked away and laughed awkwardly and then ran in opposite directions. I DID say ¨bye¨... yeah he was cute but who´s got time for romance on a trip like this?

Anyway, so the kiddie roller coaster. On the website of this hostel I am staying at in Tokyo, it says ¨Kiddie Theme Park nearby!¨ And I thought oh, how quaint. Little did I know they meant ¨Kiddie Theme Park RIGHT NEXT DOOR!!¨ I tried to take a nap this afternoon but it was hard to sleep, what with screams every 30 seconds. Poor weary travelers, who come so far only to have their afternoon siestas interrupted by the intermittent shrieks of children...

Who cares about formatting!

sorry the formatting is weird and the captions dont line up with pictures. Use your imagination :D

SUPERMATURAL RUB FEET ROCK

On a handout for a foot pressure point mat:

¨SUPERMATURAL RUB FEET ROCK.
Function go feet mat do feet crack feet helosis bermatophytosis a thletss foot sole coarseness callus scurf againpuregold point a good many evermore knea d be tet upto dispel illness repel wane lose eye forgettery hae mark edness curative effect.
Csage feet and root classs at one fime dip in re view water five minvee genely rub sole this or that b ut ue after ehenar velvet pliability especiany be well.¨

Excuse me while I go scurf my againpuregold. ahahah






So the picture above has a sign in the bus window that says ¨Welcome, Atkinson Norah Group of USA!¨ <- This is what our tour guide was holding when we arrived in Datong, China. I am pleased that the Chinese Communist Party saw to it that I was welcomed properly to their glorious country...otherwise I might have had to resign from my ambassadorial position.






So this is Asuka at night, after a long bike trip. I wonder who lives here. Sugoi!















I took this picture from the top of our college in Kyoto. It is literally built into a hill.








A massive Japanese graveyard in the hills of Kyoto. There are lots of restrictions on building here, so none of the mountains are developed. It´s like as if no one were allowed to build anything in the Hollywood Hills. Except these hills are green and luscious and not on fire! I just saw on the news that California is burning down. Oyoyoy,
I will pray to the mountain kami for California rain.

Tomorrow I go to see my old host family! Bullet train time. WOOOO! Don´t look out the window, bleaaugh :P And then, ON TO TOKYOOOOO.

Oh, yeah

¨Grundge Mat¨ is the name of a hair product that I simply had to buy...because it is called Grundge Mat.

I am curious to see the effects of said Grundge Mat. More updates will follow.

Grundge Mat

Okay, okay, i know. This picture is really cheesy. This is the picture in the backflap of your spiritual self-help book that says something like:

¨RIVERDREAM ATKINSON lives in Papua New Guinea with her three dogs and seven parakeets. When she´s not writing, she spends her time loving life and basking in the glorious warmth of the dharma.¨

hahar. But really, this is actually a very peaceful spot. It´s at the Yungang Grottoes near Datong in China, a huge industrial city that pumps black smog at the Buddhist sculptures and deteriorate them. The World Heritage UNESCO people declared it a world heritage site, so the government redirected traffic nearby to help with pollution. That´s great, what about the FREAKING COAL MINES NEXT DOOR? duhr!

¨But Norah, aren´t you in Japan?¨

So I´m a little behind. I was writing a paper last night about imperial patronage and the influence of Buddhism in state policy. I slept at 6am. Except I had drunk 3.5 cups of coffee and 5 cups of black tea, so every three minutes my leg would twitch and wake me up. So I basically pulled an all nighter. Ew, the toy poodle of my host family just farted in my lap and it smells like the worst thing ever. They don´t feed him much, so I wouldn´t be surprised if he munches on something inedible and smelly when no one´s around.

Anyway, Japan! I´ve been going to aerobics classes with my host mom. That´s funny because I just made a typo and wrote ¨hot mom¨ which is actually accurate, because she is probably pushing 50 but looks 35. No wrinkles! Yesterday when I was looking for dog food (trying to feed poor Guffy who probably ate a shoe out of desperation) I opened a cupboard FULL OF TINY PINK BOTTLES of collagen! I mean, Full. Like in the cartoons when you open the closet and the kitchen sink falls out. I think there were easily 100 bottles in this cupboard. So I came to the obvious conclusion which is that she must be a witch. A Collagen Witch.

She´s actually really great. She´s been taking me to this aerobics class and every time I mess up (as in, the instructor raises her hands and says ¨Skip to the front!¨ and everyone skips to the front and I raise my hands instead. Who the heck knows the word for skip? I was just doing what the instructor was doing...some wavy arm thing...anyway) the mom CRACKS up and man she has a big mouth. She really likes me because I do the laundry and walk the dog (and feed him, sssh!) and speak to her in Japanese. I am still slightly terrified of her. If I didn´t know that she was a nice person, I would think she would make an really good Evil Stepmother for some modern day fairy tale movie. You know, really put together and what not. But still kind of scary. Gosh, I don´t know why this is coming out like she´s evil. She´s nice...I promise..!!

A few days ago I walked the dog and i missed a little turd when I was picking up his poop (i honestly didn´t see it, it was NIGHT TIME) and the owner of the street (? i mean really, this was like in the street) was nearby and ran over and said (in Japanese): ¨HEY! HEY! WHAT´S THAT? Don´t you pick up after your dog in your own country? What country are you from!¨ and I said ¨Canada.¨

(I also apologized a billion times for not seeing it, but finally I just walked away because it looked like he was going to poop a small Guffy). I don´t feel bad for not saying the U.S., because this guy is going to think that no one in the U.S. picks up dog poop For The Rest of His Life and I just couldn´t have him think that.

That being said, I plan on leaving him a flaming bag of Guffy poo on his doorstep tomorrow.

(Not.)

Last week I was on the train and a sad looking, tiny little boy (almost 2 yrs old) was sitting with his mom facing me, and I started playing peek-a-boo with him using my scarf. He sort of looked curious, but his eyebrows were still all furrowed and so i put the scarf on my head and wiggled the ends like big floppy ears and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. It sort of looked like he was smiling! I mean, this kid was a TOUGH AUDIENCE. The mom was very happy that I made him smile, and when the man next to her got up she gestured for me to come and sit with her. So I did!

She was really sweet...apologized for her little kid because he had a cold and she had to drop him off at his grandma´s before she went to work. I mean, I´ve seen little kids with colds before, but this kid looked SAD. In a sort of detached, jaded, adult-on-a-long-commute kind of way. I think he may have had mild autism...just from what you´ve told me, mom, and you know. He just wasn´t acting like a normal kid does...wasn´t acknowledging any stimulus. When I saw him sitting there, I decided I had to make him smile. It literally took me 15 minutes. His mom seemed so sweet....I hope he turns out okay..

Gosh what a downer of an entry! Japan really is a lot of fun and goofiness..but some entries will be more somber than others, I suppose.

Allison and I are making tortilla soup for the fam tonight (Allison is the other exchange student). I hope they like itttt! She found an avocado! Yay.

To be continued!

FAQs

In anticipation of the wave of questions I expect to receive from avid readers of this blog, I have decided to preemptively answer what I predict will be common inquiries.

Are there lots of foreign tourists in China?
Yes.

Do they turn up their nose at you and act offended that they are not the only white person in China?
Yes.

How many foreigners does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two: One to do it, and the other to document it with a camera from several different angles in 6 different settings, including ¨Candlelight.¨

How bad is the pollution in China?
It is so bad that it takes you ten minutes to realize that the beautiful mountain range being described by your tour guide is next to the road you are on.

How many bobby pins have you lost?
13.

Did you buy a hat made of sheep wool?
Yes

Is it itchy?
A little.

Do the pants that babies wear in China have holes for pooping?
Yes.

Do you wish your pants had a hole for pooping?
Not really.

Are you sure?
Yes.

Why not?
What do you mean, why not? It isn´t practical.

Isn´t it completely practical?
No, my butt would get cold.

Why are you getting so testy?
I don´t know, why are you asking stupid questions?

Why are you answering them?
...

What is wrong with your apostrophe?
I don´t know. The key is broken. It turns everything into an ole´ thing.

That is stupid.
You´re stupid.

You´re the one making up the questions.
Shut up.

Why don´t you just write in a diary so that you don´t embarrass yourself online?
Because my chopstick muscle has been making my hand cramp when I write.

That is a terrible reason.
That is not a question. YOU LOSE!

Why don´t you just go to bed?
I think I will.

Do you hope that everyone reads the previous post instead of this one?
Yes.

Touring, touring, touring

Greetings from Shanghai, where the word on the street is FASHION. Or perhaps, CANKLES. It is a blustery 20-something degrees Celsius, which means unusually warm and humid. Many women here sport shorter skirts in honor of the blatant effects of global warming. Others are still holding out for fall weather, selling faux-fur-lined puffy vests* from street corners and squinting up at the sky as if to say ¨Hurry up and get cold so I can sell more gaudy furry vests to unsuspecting tourists for a ridiculously inflated price!!!¨

* (Note: I do not understand puffy vests. If it is cold enough outside to warrant a down, puffy vest with furry lining, is it still warm enough to have barely covered arms? I do not know about you, but my arms are just as important to me as my torso. I would be seriously upset if I lost just my arms to frostbite while wearing a gaudy purple puffy fur vest that I bought with good money in Shanghai.)

On the street, I saw a couple wearing sweaters of the exact same shade of purple. I reasoned that they had only just started dating, and probably weren´t living together yet, maybe because the girl (let´s call her Judy) has a very strict father who wants Judy to live at home while helping with the family lacquer business, and the guy (Terrence) lives in an apartment with three other boys, all of whom are too smelly/crude/unimpressive to introduce to Judy just yet. After all, they just started dating. I know all this because two people who lived together and got dressed together would never intentionally wear this same color purple on the same day. Unless, of course, they did it to keep from losing each other in the crowd. Which is entirely possible.

Yesterday on the train to Shanghai I made up a game called How Many Disney* Songs Can You Sing Off the Top of Your Head In 5 Minutes and the answer is 13.
* (Songs from Anastasia and Ferngully do not count because they are not from Disney, but I sang them anyway so that makes 18 if you count them).

I also made a game called Make Up Your Own Inspirational Disney Hero Song As You Sing It and this is what I came up with:

¨(pounding drums in the background)
On this journey, I don´t know where I am going
But I know that this way is true
Show me a sign! (drumbeats) so IIII can find...
The place where I will find youuuu

(music swells! Hero stands precariously on tree branch/cliff/moving object and looks into distance)

Here I am! All alone! On a journey for trrrruth...
I don´t know, what to do
So I am counting on YOUUU
Give me a sign! Let me leave!
This pa-aast behiiiind...
(music swells back down)

Help me find the waaaay
Away from who I waaasss...
Onto something newwww...
Wiiiiiiith yoooooooooou.¨

Then Jeff Schmitz* asks ¨What movie is that from?¨ And I laugh to myself and say ¨I just made it up.¨

* (Note: Jeff is not surprised. Jeff knows every Disney movie soundtrack ever produced, including all the gospel parts to the opening of Hercules.)

I just finished a room-service dinner, which was described as Wonton Soup and Plain Boiled Chicken With Shanghai Style. The plain boiled chicken part was quite enticing although I admit I was a little curious to see what Shanghai style was...

Well, when it arrived, it looked like a normal piece of boiled chicken, sliced and arranged in a little filet. How delightful! Except that when I flipped it over, all the bones and gristle and rib-part-things were still attached. Shanghai-ed, indeed!!

I cut away the bones and ate the meager leftovers, and am now preparing to go out for noodles with Lindsey*, my roommate, who a few hours earlier called me the Human Jukebox.

* (Note: Lindsey has tattoos on her leg and her back. She also has good-smelling body products. I smell them when she´s not looking.**)

** (Her bath products, not her tattoos.)

Lindsey is giving me a funny look. Noodle time!

Biking in Beijing!

Today we woke up at 3:30am, clambered onto a coach bus, and hopped a flight to Beijing. Short flight!! Safa and I sat next to Regina, a cute half-Samoan girl from Australia who had been on a missionary trip in northern Mongolia. We played Mad Libs and then traded UB (Ulaan Baatar) stories-- she hugged me goodbye at baggage claim and waved goodbye in her ¨I Love Cairns¨ t-shirt.

BEIJING! Despite my apprehensions, my first reaction was this: ¨Niiiiice!¨. A beautiful blue sky greeted us outside (although tinged with brown) and the drive to our hostel was...GREEN.

For some reason I had imagined Beijing to be pure, solid, cold concrete: gray air, gray buildings, gray bulletin boards. On the contrary, the entire length of the freeway ride was lush with trees...tall ones with broad canopies and some young saplings. I asked Daniel, a UPS alum who lives nearby, if it was new. He said they were all transplanted for the Olympics. Talk about a sweet social expenditure!

So we are definitely staying in the high end of Beijing. For lunch, we ate a delicious meal of mapo tofu, orange chicken (it tasted like chicken nugget with a spicy Cheeto sauce- aka DELICIOUS) and chow mein. Mm!! 4 people ate for under $2 each. WOW.

After lunch, Safa, Todd, Epiphany and I went for a bike ride through the city-- the hostel provides bicycles for rent! Todd´s chain fell off and none of our brakes worked but it was terrific! The wonderful thing about Beijing is that there are bike lanes EVERYWHERE. I am talking 12-20 foot wide bike lanes on every main street. This was so exhilarating-- the sun was bright, good smells wafted out of every restaurant, and people smiled and waved and said Ni hao! We said hi back and dinged our little bells.

Suddenly we came upon a long red wall. A really long red wall. Epiphany said, ¨Hm, is this what I think it is?¨ and all of a sudden, BOOM! The Forbidden City! Complete with Mao´s portrait and throngs of pedestrians. On the other side of the street was that place where that thing happened you know when. It was covered in floats left over from the Olympics and there was a massively gaudy fountain in the middle covered surrounded by flowers. We stopped and oohed and ahhed and then pedaled on, delighted by the fact that we had stumbled upon two terrific landmarks- on bikes!

We then stopped for a snack. The owner was watching soaps. The menu was all in Chinese with no pictures, so I pointed to two random appetizers and she said ¨Dui¨ and then screamed over Safa´s head, ¨HAU! HAAAAAAAU!¨ Then a door popped open from the wall and nearly knocked Safa out of his chair, and out peeped a man who said ¨Shenme!¨ (¨What!¨) Then she yelled at him more and he ran through a door in the other wall and popped a dish out through a little flap, which she plopped in front of us. It tasted like strip of tofu with cilantro. The second dish was a nice complement-- sweet radishes. The entire time we ate, she sat in the back and watched this soap opera about a doctor in a love triangle and a crazy woman and a construction worker. When we asked for the bill, she said okay and then sat and waited for the commercial. We weren´t mad because we were watching it too, along with her son who was squatting on the floor and munched on a melon twice the size of his head.

At the end, we wanted to double-check our location so I said ¨Women zainar?¨ which is literally ¨Us where?¨ and she showed us. YAY! Evie, aren´t you proud of me? I not only asked an intelligible question in Chinese, but I also figured out where we were on the map! (We got lost on the way back anyway but that was not my fault.)

Dinner was greasy and spicy. The entire family who owned this restaurant literally pulled us off the street and sat and watched us eat our food. The cups were greasy but the tea was delicious, a sort of cinnamon, nutmeg-y green tea.

Now I am back in the lounge of the hostel which has a terrific wifi connection, chilling with Fayez, Kelsey, Nat, Reed and Mark from UPS (who is studying abroad in Beijing and met up with us tonight). I am content and happy and greatly looking forward to my soft bed tonight.

I don´t know if I will be able to/ it is wise to upload my Mongolia pictures, so those will come eventually! More soon!

MONGOLIA

Big sky country. The sky here is HUGE and even though we're in the city if you look past the buildings you can see the hills and then a whole lotta NOTHING. It's all scrubby grassland...on the way into the city we drove past yurts and old buildings with paint chipping off, some with signs like "MONGOLIA BEST IRISH PUB" and "Happy Optical!" It's crazy. Apparently there is such a high turnover rate in terms of development that there are no street addresses...stores that are here one season are gone the next. Also, everything is in cyrillic (sp?) because of the years Mongolia was run by the Soviets. It's too bad they don't speak Russian, because that would expand my vocabulary to include "Please," "thank you," and "this is a slide."

Everyone here chews gum. In a really loud and obnoxious snapping way. They are also better dressed than me... a lot of women strut around in cute strappy shoes and leather jackets with big Gucci sunglasses. And here I was thinking I would be the flamboyant Westerner...har har!

The food situation is okay....Beef beef beef beef. With beef sauce. And a side of beef juice. I would looooove a fruit salad... the water here is not safe to drink (but Mongolians are immune) so that means nothing washed in water is safe..which is everything. This concerned me when I took my first shower today. Someone else had an interesting question: You know those water purifying-sticks that you wave in a cup of water and they purify it? Well, allegedly these sticks emit some sort of UV ray that kills every sort of living thing in the water. So Epiphany wanted to know, if you were sitting in a bathtub and waved the stick in it, would you die?

Think about it.

Okay, I am going to go get breakfast. More soon!

Seoul, Man

Sinusitis

I am writing this pre-departure, in my bed, at school. I have been temporarily foiled by what my urgent care physician calls ¨Sinusitis.¨ In my two hours at this wondrous facility, I also learned that recently a family of Vietnamese immigrants nearly died from eating wild mushrooms, the depreciation of the dollar is irrevocable, my doctor´s brother lives in Japan and grows bonsai trees. Remarkably, I must have looked receptive to conversation, so I had a coughing attack and was finally prescribed my antibiotics.

In the course of the summer my neighbors seem to have obtained geese.

Oh, Tacoma!

Packing for Asia!

So today I am packing for Asia and it feels like playing Memory with 5 decks of cards. I have packed everything imaginable, from duct tape to goggles. JUST IN CASE. 

There's a lot of thunder and lightning outside. dun dun dunnnn...

Here's a joke: How many Northern Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Hella.