In my next life, I want to be a bike mechanic

It has been a while since I last talked to everyone. Sorry about that, it has been a busy week. I should be reading my Chinese Politics book right now but instead I am going to write this blog and register with the consulate and Washington state so I can get an absentee ballot. Then I'm going to read. Monday night Deborah, Andrea, and I went to a new English language bookstore in the foreign district near school. It is called the Bookworm and is very nice. Andrea told us about it because she had been there before. It has tons of books and is a very nice place to just sit and read or chat. There are not very many places like that in China it's also nice to be in the majority for a moment. This is the second branch of the Bookworm. The first one is in Beijing. It also serves western food, but that is really expensive. However, that night I was really hungry so I ordered one of my favorite meals ever...a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and a margarita on the rocks. It was OK, but I was so hungry and excited to get a ham and cheese that I didn't really notice. We went because they were having a book reading. The book was "Chinese Lessons" by John Pomfret, who is a journalist for the Washington Post. He was also one of the first foreigners to be allowed into a University in China after the opening. He went to Nanjing University and got to stay in the dorms with the other Chinese students (which they still won't let us do at Chuan Da). For his book he traced down a bunch of his old classmates and told some of their stories to talk about how China has changed and how that generation has adapted to post cultural revolution China and it's massive growth. I really want to read the book and it was really interesting to step back and discuss the culture I have been trying to digest for the past month and a half. I have to remember to do that sometimes because it makes me alot more tolerant of some of the more annoying or frustrating aspects of Chinese life.
The next day, after a day of classes, Andrea, Deborah, Matt, Ben, Tabitha and I went back to the Bookworm for their first ever trivia night. I was really excited about it until the questions were all 19th century world history questions (the British century). This is just not a part of history the U.S. focuses on and needless to say we did not do that well. We were also up against teams from New Zealand, England, Sweden, maybe some other European countries and some Canadians. It was fun though and we did get some of the questions right. We are going to come back next time and hopefully do better.
This was also when the bike problems really started. The chain of my bike had been coming off alot, especially if I rode too fast, but I just figured it came with the territory. Monday morning when I was riding to school my bike chain actually broke in two. Fortunately all of the parts were still there so I put it back together myself and rode to school. That afternoon I went to the bike shop and told the guy my chain was broken and it fell off alot. He turned my bike over and hit some things and moved some parts and then told me it was fixed. I was perplexed, but figured he should know. However, he did not know because my bike officially broke last night.
Everyone rides bikes in China. Below is a picture of some bikes, but all the pictures we take never do the chaos any justice. Laura and I are currently investigating other ways to effectively document this and we think it might involve some sort of video taping...stay tuned. In China it is also very common to see two people riding on one bicycle. Usually a boy will ride the bike and a girl will ride side saddle on the back. You can also just sit on the back part facing forward. We call this being "biked". Ben's bike was stolen so I was going to bike him over to the Bookworm. But I was not very good and biking him and his legs were too long, so we switched and he successfully biked me over to the book shop. After trivia night we were biking home and made it about half way before my chain broke in two again. This time I did lose a part, the connecting link, and there was nothing we could do but walk the bike to Ben's dorm and park it there for the night. It took a taxi home.
So today I went back to the same bike shop and showed him my broken chain. I think this time the magnitude of the problem was understood much more. He got a new link out of a little box and fixed it in about 10 minutes for 1 kuai. Then I was riding home and half way there my bike broke again, but this time in a different way. The tire of my bike started rubbing up against my basket because it was wobbly and loose. I took it to the next bike shop I found and told them my wheel was loose. They said "Your wheel isn't loose, you need a new ...something" I couldn't understand the something word, but I think it was something like bearing because then he took off my wheel and took apart the hub part (the rod that the wheel rotates on). He took off two disks and inside there was this goop with little ball bearings in it. He scooped out the old goop and put new in and set about ten new little ball bearings in a perfect circle on both sides. Then he put the tire back on, a put a little air in my tires, and 20 minutes and 5 kuai later I was riding a fancy new bike (relatively speaking of course).
I rode home and opened some birthday cards and presents that I picked up today from Li Juan's office. I got cards from Mike and the Kosowski's and a package from my mom. The package was very fun but also contributed to my theory that my mom is nuts. Inside the box were a bunch of individually wrapped little packages. Inside these packages were small little presents ranging from socks and buttons(useful), to party blowers and balloons (cute), to Mr. Moon and a dream catcher I made in kindergarten (sentimental), to a rubber ducky, foam statue of liberty crown, and legos made into a block shape (what?). However useless these things are, I had a lot of fun opening them and I suppose that is the point. They did make me laugh out loud. I have also decided that I am going to be the statue of liberty for Halloween, so maybe the other seemingly un-useful things will find similar fates.
Tonight I rode my newly fixed bike back to the Bookworm for the 3rd night in a row. Today we were meeting with Andrea and her friend (who is the medical officer for the Peace Corps among other things and has lived in Chengdu for 10 yrs now and is a very interesting lady).