Adventures

Welcome to Richland

2009-09-03T00:04:00.004+08:00

We arrived in Richland on Monday afternoon and went right to look at our first house. It was a little ranch house, but with some interesting modifications. And the landlord was a little pushy. Then we checked into the PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Lab) guest house, which is very nice, and went to look at a different house. This one was almost exactly the same as the last one but didn't have as many alterations, so it had a more open floor plan which I liked better. And I liked the landlord better. I thought that would be my new house. The next morning we biked around Richland, down by the river, which has a beautiful walking path that runs the length of the river. For lunch we met with my new bosses, Emily and Kim, who I love and will be my mentors when I start as well. Talking to them made me so excited to start at my job. They are also going to help me start a CSA in the area (which they are both members of) and told me about a bunch of stuff to do around Richland for fun (like softball and ultimate Frisbee). That afternoon I met up with Wendi, the woman who had offered to help me find places here in Richland. She was very nice and had offered because all her properties were already rented. The first house we saw was not very nice, but the second house we went to was perfect. The owners had bought it a year and a half ago, done alot of work, and now were moving. They wanted to sell it, but then decided they weren't ready yet, and are renting it. I think I was the first person that saw it and the woman, Walker, and I got along great. She is an electrical engineer at Bonneville Power (the local utility) and we decided that I would rent it right then. I filed out the application and gave them $1000 deposit. It a two car garage, a little covered walkway between the garage and the house, a beautiful backyard and patio,
two little living rooms with fireplaces, a hall bathroom and one in the master bedroom, and a really nice kitchen. And it's yellow, I always knew I would live in a yellow house. Anyways, here are some pictures of it,

although it doesn't capture it, so come and visit and see for yourself. I'll be there starting September 30th.

The Last Days

2009-08-08T11:18:00.006+08:00

We finished the presentations on Wednesday, which went well. Everybody did a great job and it was pretty well attended. All the presentations and the papers will be available on the website in about 2 or 3 weeks. www.wise-intern.org
We went to dinner after the presentations which was really fun, and delicious. It was at this restaurant called the Chophouse that had really good steaks and it was a good send-off. The next day we had our last WISE meeting and a meeting with senator Kaufman, which is the only senator who is an engineer. He replaced Biden and was really down-to-earth and obviously very smart.
That night a few of us went to Ben's Chili Bowl, a DC staple. It was really greasy, but really fun. We got the whole room we were sitting in to start singing 'My Girl'.

Friday I walked around Georgetown for the last time, packed, and went to the National's Game with Sarah A (who I worked with at the candy store in Seattle) and her boyfriend Joel (who was a chemistry major and I knew from class. They actually came from behind and won, which is a rare occurrence, and it was a really good game. Now I am getting ready to head back to MN and finally getting excited, now that there is nothing standing between me and the plane but some cleaning and a few hours.

But this has definitely been quite an experience. I have learned so much. I think I will probably blog one more time, as a reflection, once I get around to thinking about it. Thanks for reading, I like knowing people care about what I'm doing.

2009-08-02T06:34:00.008+08:00

Friday I finally finished my three drafts. Yay! So I rewarded myself by going to the Anne Taylor store and picking out a new outfit. I don't have that many business clothes, so I am really sick of wearing the same things all summer. Then I went to the modern part of the National Museum of Art. I decided I really like modern art, I love the bright simplicity. I couldn't tell you why, it's just my aesthetic. Then I went home and went for a run. Then I went to dinner at this restaurant that I heard heard about and Kurt and I tried to go to but it was closed. It does all local, seasonal ingredients and has a tree in the middle of the restaurant. And the food was really yummy too. Then I went to a movie at the movie theater right next door. It was a very relaxing, fun night and it was nice to just hang out by myself for awhile, which I don't get to do very often here.
This morning I went to this screen printing workshop at the Corcoran Art Gallery.
We got a tour of the museum and then got to make a screen print. I made this tree. I stenciled leaves in the background and then screen printed the tree. Screen printing is alot harder than it seems, its hard to get the paint even.

Then I went for a bike ride. Saturday night I met up with some friends I met who also graduated from UW at this bar with a live piano player who played requests and everyone in the bar sang along, which was really fun.

Sunday I dropped my bike off at the bike store to send it home, then walked up to U St and 14th for this street fair that was supposed to be happening. On the way I passed by the Dupont Circle Farmer's Market and bought some of the best peaches I have ever had in my life. I ate 3 today. The street fair was a little underwhelming, but it was interesting to see a new neighborhood. Then I walked to the Newseum, which was really neat. All the exhibits were really interactive and had lots of different media (TV, sound recordings, text, pictures, artifacts, movies, etc) to portray each thing. They had pieces of the Berlin wall and from 9/11. My favorite exhibit was one about the first amendment. They also had a whole room of newspapers from famous events that you could look at, all the way back to the 1500's.
Then I walked to the Botanical Garden, which was nice, but not that impressive. Then I walked home. It got REALLY HOT this afternoon, so it was nice to take a shower and not feel so sweaty after I got home. It's about 90 with atleast 80% humidity everyday now, which is so sticky.
Now I might start packing or work on my presentation, or I might just wait til tomorrow :)

A break from policy

2009-07-29T08:10:00.004+08:00

today was another awesome field trip. We went to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Testing) and it was awesome. We got to see alot of labs that had the most advanced measuring tools, some that I had only heard and read about. We got to talk to the researchers and ask them what they were researching and how the tool really works up close and personal. I won't get into all the different techniques, but it was nerdom at it's finest. It had a feel of getting paid to be in a well-funded grad school program for ever. Then they had a museum of Standards that had information about how they verify and set standards. Like this is a mole of Copper and a mole of liquid water. Exactly 6.o22 x 10^23 molecules. The next one is how they determine a second, exactly. It's based on the radiation cycles of a cesium 133 isotope at a specific temperature and pressure. The next one is a paper money durability tester. The white square under the metal tip is a dollar bill and they run it until the dollar wears through. Lastly, they did all the research following 9/11 and this twisted metal is all from the World Trade Centers. They had a piece inside of exactly where the plane hit. It was nice to think about real science again. Then it was back to policy in the afternoon, workout, and now I'm at home and will hopefully get a few more things done this evening before tomorrow.

Return to Boston

2009-07-27T23:00:00.006+08:00

Dad arrived on Thursday. We met on the mall and went to see our Senator’s offices. Who were predictably not in. On Thursday night we went to dinner at a crab house in Bethesda with Kaitlin Perry. It was a very authentic crab house, with newspaper on the tables. Their resources were clearly dedicated to the food and not the interior décor. Or more specifically, the crabs.

There were only a few things on the menu; crab, corn, and coleslaw. We ordered 6 dozen and they were delicious. Thankfully Kaitlin showed us how to extract every morsel of meat.
On Friday dad hung around Georgetown and the monuments until I was done with work. He also had lunch at Old Ebbitt’s Grill, which is the oldest Restaurant in DC and right next to the white house. Barack was not in, but I’m sure some of his staffers were. We left that afternoon for Boston. Traffic was heavy getting past Philly. We stopped for dinner and had Philly cheese steaks. We decided we were going to sample characteristic foods along our “journey”. This one claimed to be the original, but whether or not it was, it was great. It was located right in historic Philly, we walked past Independence Hall to get there. Many cool restaurants and a very interesting place.

We got to New London and decided to stop for the night and drive the rest of the way in the AM. We arrived in Boston around 1pm, close to Andrew’s Square and experienced a little of South Boston. We took the T in to the city and headed first to Beacon Hill. We walked past 41 Revere and the neighborhood was really nice. We walked over the hill to the commons and then down Winter Street. We saw Locke Ober’s, but they were not open until 5pm. So on to the Union Oyster Bar, which is officially the oldest restaurant continuously serving in the nation, since 1826. We shared a lob roll and clam chowder at the bar. We got to see a lot of Boston on our foot tour, Quincy Market, Faniel Hall, where mom worked in the Financial District; I really got a flavor of downtown Boston. Then we headed across the bridge to MIT and went sailing at the Boat House. It was amazing, they just pulled dad’s sailing card out of one of the lower drawers and out we went. The wind was variable, but it was a beautiful day and really fun to be on the water. Then we walked the Infinite Corridor and saw some of the impressive architecture on the MIT campus.
Then we walked to the first home of Sarah Heilman Widder, 14 Ellsworth. After finding the street, which is characteristically only one block long, we located the house after consulting mom. But dad knew the house when he first walked by, even though it had changed a lot. We walked from there through Harvard Yard to Harvard Square, a much more upscale part of town.
We printed out tickets we had purchased that morning to the Red Sox game and sat and had a beer for a while. Then we took the bus over to Fenway. However, as we were approaching the stadium we realized the tickets were unfortunately for September 8th.

The same teams were playing and this game was sold out, so the internet must have forwarded us to the next available game or something. At any rate, they very nicely refunded Dad’s tickets and we sat in a bar called Game On in the Fenway complex and watched the game.

We slept in Sunday morning, which was wonderful. That’s what you should do on vacation. We both deserved it.
We decided we had had enough of city and headed out to the Cape. We drove to the southernmost part of Cape Cod National Sea Shore, Nauset Beach. It was beautiful, just like White Fish Dunes. A little more crowded, but the beach just goes on forever.

I got to walk along the beach while dad did a postcard watercolor and made a commemorative sand sculpture for James’s 22nd year. It had 21 objects in a grid and then one “transitional” crab shell and a sun dial. We only had a few hours, but it was worth it. The beach is always so regenerative. Afterwards we went to the beach clam shack

and had a clam roll.
Then began the epic journey back, which was long and dark and rainy. We stopped at an Italian place in New Rochelle, NY for dinner to break it up, but didn’t get back until late. It was a wonderful trip and quite an adventure, but that just makes life all the more interesting! Now I am back in DC and getting back into the routine and trying to get myself motivated to go to work. I might go to the grocery store first, because that is more fun.

Pax River

2009-07-22T12:35:00.002+08:00

Sorry, no pictures were allowed today. But it was a really fun day, a good break from working. We went to Pax River Naval Base and went to several different facilities to learn about the different technologies DOD was working on, from communications to unmanned spacecraft. We even got to fly in a flight simulator and see testing on the Firestorm, the navy's unmanned spacecraft. They also always had the managers or important people come to talk to us, so they could answer all our questions, which was cool. At the end of the day we got to see boats too, which I thought was the coolest part. They have boats that run on jet propulsion instead of props for the navy seals and we got to see them and ask questions about how they work. Then tonight I went to a UW alumni event with Sarah A (the girl from my work). There were lots of interesting people my age there, and even another 09 grad. Mostly soft science majors, although there was one EE guy who worked for DOD. It was fun to talk all of them and made me miss Seattle alot. But it does mean I didn't work at all today. just means I'll have to work hard tomorrow. Night!

life in the city

2009-07-21T09:33:00.003+08:00

DC in the morning is full of people bustling, hurrying with their blackberry in one had and a Starbucks coffee in the other. Full of ideas and self importance. And I don't say that in a bad way, but DC is full of people who are rally smart and think they are right. Big decisions are made here and it's important to feel that way if you are going to make them.
These are all pictures from my walk to work. Notice the Caribou, at first I was so pleased when I saw one, but they are everywhere.

CVS is the other thing there is alot of, one on every street corner practically. They are a drug store sort of thing. Convenient, but a little much.
I didn't have to wear a suit today, which was nice. I wore khakis and a button down shirt, and felt dressed down. It's weird. I stopped at the cobbler to pick up some shoes on the way to work too. It's just such a city life.
The other cool thing about DC is that on the way to work I pass by all these cool places. Like everyday I pass by the IMF, or the World Bank. I never thought about those places actually existing before, that they were physical buildings. You can work there. I could work there. But I probably wont.
The rest of today. I just worked. I finished the first draft of my white paper, one of 3 documents I am writing while I am here. And I only have 2 weeks left to write, so I am definitely feeling the pressure now. But I'm trying not to take it too seriously. I left at like 6:30 and went for a long run to give my brain a break, which was great. I'll work a little but more tonight and then we are going on a feildtrip to Pax River tomorrow. I'll report when I get back, and maybe even take some pictures, if you're lucky. :)
Oh, and this last building is the building I work in, ACS.

better late than never

2009-07-18T22:02:00.003+08:00

Hello! Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, it has been a busy week. I've been working like crazy to get my draft done. I am almost done with all the writing and I spoke with Stuart, the guy from Energy solutions that is helping me with my paper, and we hashed out what the different papers would look like. i wrote outlines and started cutting and pasting yesterday and I feel like it is finally coming together. On Thursday morning I went to an AIA sustainability conference with Caitlin, called design dc. I went to an interesting presentation about solar installations from normal PV, to built-in pv and transpired solar or solar hot air, like we have on the cabin. Then I heard about all the things they are doing to make the AIA headquarters carbon neutral, which was pretty cool. They are cutting shafts in the building to facilitate as much natural lighting and ventilation as possible. They call is "passive building, active user" and it is part of AIA's 2030 campaign which is a carbon/energy reduction campaign they have to make buildings carbon neutral by 2030. It gave me a lot of respect for dad and how long he has been pushing for this kind of design. I mentioned that on the way out of the conference and, for an example, was telling Caitlin about dad's wind turbine design. She said, someone is already doing that. I said "who?" and she said she had found a video on you tube and emailed the guy to try to get one at University of Miami because it is the only wind power that will work with the low wind speeds they have there. I said "what did the video look like?" turns out it was Dad's wind turbine and she has emailed him about the project. What a small world. Speaking of a small world, on Friday I went to Nuclear Waste Policy briefing by the Brookings Institute, which was interesting. But the most interesting thing was that I after I had asked some questions at the conclusion of the conference, I was turning to leave and someone taps me on the back and says "Sarah!". It was Sarah Anderson, a girl I used to work with at the candy store. In the back of my mind, I knew she had moved to DC, but had forgotten and she is probably the LAST person I expected to see there. She was an english and journalism major and is working as a reporter for RadWaste monitor. It was amazing and took a good half hour to get over it after the encounter. I went back to the office to finish the draft, yay! and then I met her up in Bethesda where she lives with her boyfreind, who I also know, and we had dinner. It really feels like all roads lead to DC and the longer you live here, the more you start to know everyone, somehow. I'm going to a show at the Kennedy Space Center today of Space Pictures accompanied by the symphony in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11th mission. Then I might work a bit, go to a museum or two, have a slow day. Hot outside, maybe go sit down by the river. 3 weeks left. Yikes!

Weekend

2009-07-13T09:24:00.004+08:00

These are some pictures from our visit to the state department on Friday. We got to tour the diplomatic rooms, which were beautiful. They were full of American antiques and our guide kept telling us how expensive things were and knew so much about their history.

That night we went to Jazz in the Sculpture Garden. It was packed as you can see. That's one thing I don't really like about the city, fun ideas, but TOO many people. But it was fun. Then we went to dinner and a movie all as a group. We saw MOON, which was this really good sci fi movie about this guy who lives on the moon. Saturday I went on a long bike ride and then we had a group dinner for Jen's birthday. We made ice cream sundaes for her birthday, and played Apples to Apples. We play a way where the person who picks the winner picks the top two or three and gives each top cards 10 seconds to defend their card, which is a really fun way to play. This morning I went for a run and went to the Farmers Market. Also very crowded, but fun too. There were some guys playing blue grass and lots of free samples of really yummy cheese.

Then I went to work for 5 or 6 hours and got some stuff done, which felt good. Except for a moment when I thought I had forgotten to save it. Minor heart attack, but I found it. Yay!

Then I went to the Air and Space Museum, which had a really cool Universe Exhibit. This is a stained glass they had of the wavelengths of light. I really liked it. They also had a cool exhibit about using satellites to monitor the earth and about the Apollo missions. Now I'm at home and getting ready for next week. It was a normal, but pretty fun weekend.

Meetings on the Hill

2009-07-09T07:12:00.007+08:00

The past few days I have spent running back and forth from the hill, and trying to get some work done in between. I went to the first hearing about the comprehensive energy policy bill in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. It was a very interesting discussion and you could tell it was going to be a heated debate, but was also encouraging because it seemed like people on both sides of the aisle wanted to make progress on the issue of curbing carbon emissions and wanted to find a solution that had bipartisan support. The problem is we don't know if that exists, but we hope so. Then I went to see Franken sworn in MN's second senator, which was exciting, and met with one of Rep. Keith Ellison's staff members that someone my mom works with knows. It was an interesting meeting, and I might get a white house tour out of it, which would be very fun. I worked the rest of the day and went to sleep as early as i could. This morning I went to an energy efficiency housing news briefing about the new Green Acts in the house and the senate. It was really inspiring and made me really excited about my new job at PNNL, since that is what I will be working on. It reminded me that, while I am happy I am learning so much about nuclear, I really believe that conservation is what I want to work on and what I am the most excited about in the near term. And hopefully these bills will get some traction. There is similar language in the Climate Bill that passed the House, but it seemed like they wanted to introduce these bills in case it got cut or to maybe strengthen it. Then I went to a brunch with the other girls, one of our program coordinators Melissa, and the CEO of SWE. They were very interested in how what we were doing here, how we got interested in engineering, and wanted us to start blogging about our experience here for the SWE community. I decided not to offer my blog because I like not having to worry about what I write too much. Plus the other blog all of the girls are going to share, which will be fun. I will give you the address when it is up if you are interested. Then I worked all afternoon until we had a meeting with Rep. Gingrey from GA, who our faculty mentor Dan works for. He is a staunch republican, and it was very interesting to hear his arguments about the recent climate bill. Now, I am going to try to keep the momentum rolling on my paper so I can get a draft out by next week. More later, and hopefully pictures too.

Celebration

2009-07-07T10:34:00.019+08:00

This past weekend Kurt came to visit me for 4th of July and we had the best weekend ever. It started when Kurt arrived on Thursday night. We went to dinner in Adams Morgan, which is a neighborhood in the north of DC at an Ethiopian restaurant. DC is supposed to have really good Ethiopian, and it was delicious. They serve lots of little piles of curry like things all on an injera (a special kind of crepe-like spelt bread they make) with extra injera on the side. Then we went to this amazing jazz harmonica concert at the famous jazz/blues bar called Blue Alley in Georgetown (over in west DC). On Friday we had breakfast at a place that I had heard was good called the Tabbard Inn, but were not impressed. Although it was outside in a nice little courtyard. Then we walked down to the mall and went to the Museum of American History. My favorite part was seeing Julia Child's kitchen. They also had a really cool interview with her about her knives. They also had cool exhibits about the history of scientific discovery. There were of course many other parts of the museum, but by this time it was starting to get VERY busy, so we left and went to the Folklife Festival. We went back to the Welsh exhibit and watched one of the Welsh chefs prepare a rabbit dish. Kurt thought it was really cool and made him want to cook exotic food. Native American museum. I love the building, it is supposed to represent wind blowing across the plains, we went to the Universe part of the museum that had all their fundamental teachings and origin stories. They each had colors organized in a different way to talk about the four cardinal directions and what they represent. Then we went to the Eastern Market and bought ingredients for the watermelon salad I was going to make for a fancy party we were going to later that afternoon. The Eastern Market is a farmers market that burned down and was recently reopened, but it all inside and much smaller and less impressive than Pike's Place in Seattle or the St. Paul Farmer's Market. Then we went back to my dorm and made the salad. And Kurt agreed that my dorm is not a fun place to live, but atleast it makes you want to get out and explore more. Then we went a picked up a zipcar that I had rented. I rented a yellow mini convertible zipcar, which was really fun. The party was at this woman Emily's house who used to be affiliated with WISE. They lived in a really big, nice house in the Maryland suburbs. Emily's husband is a really big American art collector and gave us a tour of all his pictures, which covered every wall in the house. There was also a few of Emily and her husband's friends there and they were all very interesting people, one used to work PNNL and now lives in Malaysia running a new renewable energy program. She gave some advice about living in Richland. Then we went and pool and watched the Twins game. Saturday morning we got up and went to the zoo, which was really fun. It wasn't as busy and was fun to see all the animals. Seeing the pandas was cool of course, but our other favorite part was seeing the otters play in the river. If I was an animal I would be an otter, they always look they are having fun. Then we hiked through Rock Creek Park, a big park in the middle of the city, to the very northern part, which was really nice to get out of the city, or feel like it anyways. We went in search of a restaurant that was all organic and local that I had heard good things about, but it ended up being closed. So we had lunch across the street instead. Then we walked to Georgetown to go kayaking. I had rented kayaks for us to paddle around and watch the fireworks from. We had time to kayak all the way down past the mall and the memorial bridge before finding a good spot. There was an amazing number of boats in the water, but watching the fireworks in kayaks from the water with a glass of wine was by far my favorite part of the whole weekend. It was so fun. Sunday we got up and went to the Art museum. They had an amazing diversity of genres, from Monet, to Renaissance, to Roman sculpture. Kurt says of all the museums we went to, this one was the most engaging. We went in expecting to spend an hour or so and ended up spending more than two. Then we went to lunch at a really delicious Spanish tapas restaurant and had sangria. Then we went to a concert in the Park in Georgetown. It was a stereotypical community party with lots of families and a Reggae band. Then went to a fancy last dinner at this seafood and Italian place. Kurt had lobster and I had a mixed seafood pasta made with squid ink, that was really interesting. We walked along the mall on the way back, which is always really beautiful at night. On Monday morning we played cards, and Kurt is the champion on July, unfortunately. I demand a rematch. The rest of today I got back into the swing of things and got some work done and went to the grocery store. And that's all for that chapter.

Never a dull moment

2009-07-01T10:35:00.007+08:00

Monday we had a meeting at NASA, which was kind of like a publicity event, so not that exciting and especially disappointing for the guy who is focusing on space exploration issues. The only benefit was that is was done quickly, so I got to work by noon and worked straight until 7pm, so I got to work alot, and made slow progress. Then at 7:30pm my brain was fried and I went home. Fortunately, the other interns had ideas for fun things to do so I didn't have to think about working any more tonight. We walked to Georgetown and got ice cream, then walked down to the Lincoln Memorial, which was beautiful at night. All the buildings on the mall are lit up at night and the whole place is very inspiring and elegant.

Then Tuesday we had a meeting at NRC and got to talk with Commissioner Klein for over an hour. I didn't get all of my questions answered because he had to go, but it was interesting to see how he talked about reprocessing and made me very conscious of how to present some arguments in ways that people could relate to them. He was a very engaging guy and everybody else really liked it too. Then we got to see their operations center, which is like a control room for when there is an incident. The funny thing, I thought, was that they have only used it once in the past 10 years except for training exercises. But it's good to know they are prepared and it's really a good thing that there haven't been any incidents, it shows how safe the nuclear industry really is. Then I went to work and got another section done and went to the gym. I cooked dinner tonight too, for the 2nd time since I've gotten here, which was fun, so overall it was a really good day. And I get to work all morning tomorrow until I have a meeting with Matt Milazzo, the ANS congressional fellow, which should be a good meeting too. Never a dull moment, but now I'm going to read and go to sleep. Goodnight!

No Work and All Play, then some work.

2009-06-28T09:57:00.009+08:00

Just as I was getting ready to work this afternoon, the boys, Dan H., Steven, Joe, and John, came by to see if I wanted to go to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I decided that sounded like alot more fun. The festival is something the Smithsonian puts on every year to showcase 3 different cultures from around the world. This year was Africa, the Americas, and Whales. They bring over organizations, artists, and musicians from the respective countries to have booths on all aspects of culture from food and crafts to building materials and music. The Whales exhibit was the coolest, they had a really good band and an interesting exhibit about natural building materials. The word below is the worlds longest place name, in Whales. Then Jen and Cheyenne and I went to the Capital BBQ Competition. You couldn't have the competitors BBQ, that was just for judges, but they had lots of yummy BBQ restaurants and good blues and rock bands. I got home at 10 or so and was asleep by midnight, telling myself I would work tomorrow. I slept in and went for a run when I woke up, then went to the grocery store, a new one (Whole Foods), and then went to work. I was very productive, but got only a section written. This is going to take alot longer then I think, but it is always that way. I'm going to try to write a section each day. Enjoy the pictures, they are at the bottom because everytime I try to move them, explorer closes. Oh, computers.

Getting Out

2009-06-28T02:54:00.002+08:00

I don't have any fun pictures for this post, and it will be rather short, but I thought I'd just give an update. Thursday, the recycling day of the conference, went really well. I didn't really learn anything I didn't already know, but I did meet alot of people and make some good connections, plus it was interesting. On Thursday, during lunch, I went a bought a new phone, the kind that has a calendar and maps and email and everything on it too. I thought I never would, that I liked being unplugged, but I really like it now. And it's way lighter and more compact than my red book, which is nice. On Thursday night we had a big group dinner because one of the interns, Ian, had some friends in town, which was fun. Then on Friday we had a meeting on capital hill with a staffer who did technology, and particularly DOD, stuff. We wanted to go to the House gallery to watch the vote, since if you weren't aware they voted to pass the House Climate Bill on Friday, but the line was SUPER long and full of tourists, so we decided to go to work and watch it on CSPAN. It was an amazing debate, very heated and valid points made on both sides. Friday night we took the metro down to Alexandria, VA. We went to dinner at this restaurant called Bilbo Baggins. I was a little disappointed that the door wasn't circle, but it was good food and had a lovely selection of microbrews. They even had Rouge, which is an Oregon beer that I like. After that we went to a movie at this old fashioned theater they have there that you can have food and drinks in. We saw the Hangover, which was actually really funny. I got home and went right to bed because I wanted to go biking with this group on Saturday. But, when I woke up I couldn't find my water bottle anywhere. I'm still figuring out my life in this new place and I just can't seem to keep track or everything, or anything. But I knew I couldn't go on a long ride without one, so I waited until the bike store near my house opened at 9am, went and bought a water bottle, and then went on a long ride by myself. I had looked up a long ride online and brought the directions with me. The first part went out through this park that closes the road for bikers on the weekend, then I got into the Maryland countryside, which was really beautiful with lots of hilly, windy roads, and lots of amazingly big and expensive houses and estates. In the end I was really glad I got to go out by myself, because I got to go for longer than the ride would have and got to go where I wanted, at my pace, and explore. Now I am going to hopefully go and get myself motivated to work on my paper. More later.

new pictures

2009-06-25T11:35:00.000+08:00

http://www.wise-intern.org/alumni/2009/index.html

FCIX

2009-06-25T07:25:00.005+08:00

Tuesday i went to my first day of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Fuel Cycle Information Exchange (FCIX). As you can see, EVERYTHING is an acronym here. The conference is attended by a bunch of NRC people, industry representatives, DOE people, basically anyone involved with the nuclear industry at all. I am clearly the youngest and least informed person there, but it is really interesting. Or parts of it is anyways. Each day as a "theme" and the first day focused on "Lessons Learned", so a bunch of people gave presentations about their experiences building and licensing the first nuclear facilities the US has seen in 20 years and the problems they had. Wednesday was about Safety Culture and IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards and proliferation concerns. I attended the morning, but left early because the WISE people had a meeting at DOE with people in the Solar program there and I thought that would be more interesting. And it was. We heard from a guy who focused on PV, from the Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy Directorate. Then we heard from a guy about Concentrated Solar. Both of them were VERY optimistic about their technologies and talked about the current installations and where they thought solar would go, or had the potential to go. The most interesting thing I learned was that they just published a report about dry cooling for concentrated solar and that there will probably not be another tower built in the US with wet cooling. Then we got a tour of the solar installations they have on the roof. They have a big installation that generates about 500 kWh a day, which is only about 1% of the buildings energy use, but it's something I guess. Then they had a demonstration project that was 1 kW installations of Concentrated PV, CdTe, CIGS, and Thin film cells (just 4 different kinds of new solar technology). It was interesting to see the different sizes of them, it gave a really good impression of the relative efficiencies. Then I went for a bike ride this afternoon, which was short and traffic-y, but felt really good. I wanted to work tonight, but I sat down and just finished checking my email 15 minutes ago and it's already quarter to 10, so maybe I'll try to do a little. Tomorrow is the most exciting day of the FCIX conference, it's all about reprocessing, so I'm excited for that. I'll let you know how it goes later, but I thought I'd post know since I know you are all waiting with baited breathe. :)

Misadventures on the road to Liberty

2009-06-23T10:43:00.005+08:00

We got on the bus to Philadelphia at 7:30am this morning on our trip to the ASTM International Headquarters, a national standards organization. We had a really great meeting about the way standards are established in the US and the role they play in industry, and had a great presentation from a guy a Oak Ridge National Lab about nuclear standards and one about alternative energies.
Then we did some touristing at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. They had really interesting exhibits about the "road to liberty" from the original Declaration of Independence to civil rights and women's suffrage. They also had pictures of Chief Sitting Bull and the Dalai Lhama in front of the Liberty Bell. It made me think about how liberty is really a journey, or a trial, not a destination. It is not something that can be achieved, but something that must be fostered and encouraged and grown. I also enjoyed that the chairs in the signing room are just like the desk chair I picked out from that old hardware store on Brooklyn with my mom. At about 4pm, we headed home only to hit horrible traffic about 2 hours in, so the whole trip would take 4 1/2 hours before we finally got back to the dorm. Part of that was because there was a horrible metro crash on the red line, if you haven't heard. Which is doubly unfortunate because I am supposed to take the red line towards the direction of the crash tomorrow morning to get to a Fuel Cycle Information Exchange conference at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tomorrow. Hmmmm... I'll figure it out in the morning. Good night!

What a weekend

2009-06-22T05:13:00.010+08:00

So Saturday morning Jen and I went to Alexandria, where the Red Cross was having a fundraising festival. Alexandria is a fun, kind of yuppy, historic town in Virginia. We got there and it was pouring, so we stopped in a couple shops on the way to the waterfront. Cheyenne then met us on the way and buy the time we got to the waterfront, it was sunny and hot. We walked around the pier, saw the tall ships, and looked at all the shops. The best thing, I thought, was these parrots they had (for no particular reason that I could discern) but they ate french fries, which I thought was awesome. After that we stopped in "the Torpedo factory", which is building that used to be, you guessed it, a torpedo factory, but now is an artist colony of sorts. it houses three full floors of artist studios and you can just wander around and look at all the art. It was really cool. We made our way back home, by way of the nine west store, and got back around 5pm, famished. After dinner we all my roommates and my roommate Caitlin's boyfriend, who is also interning in DC with the state department, Carlos, walked over to the French embassy. They were having a Solstice party with all sorts of musicians spread all through the big white, modern building and all across the gardens. They also had grilled sausages in baguette and wine. There were TONS of people there and it was really fun. They had a really good acapella group, fire throwers/dancers, these crique du solei type performers, and lots of other bands. They had fun dancing at night too. Then today I woke up early, went for a long run, and went with the roommates to the National Basilica, which was beautiful. The ceremony was very formal, but it was nice to just sit and think about all there is in life to be grateful for, like dads. Happy Fathers Day Dad! I also think religion is amazing in the ability it has to bring people together, from all backgrounds. There were very different people at the service we attended, and they offered probably a dozen other masses that day in all sorts of languages. After the service, we took a tour and got to see and hear about all the unique things about the church. It is a sacred site because it is the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and it has 19 atriums, each dedicated by a different country. It also has the most amazing tile work and stained glass. Dad told me that the stained glass artist, when interviewed, said he didn't believe in god but he agreed to do the work because he believed in the goodness of people, which I think is alot of what religion represents and celebrates.

We stopped at Five Guys, a popular burger joint in DC, on the way home. It became really popular recently because Obama and his wife go there. It was delicious, and now I've just been hanging out at home. It's been nice to relax for a few hours, before the whirlwind starts again, a little calm before the storm.

good and bad

2009-06-19T11:01:00.003+08:00

so today was good and bad, and i don't have any pictures to go with it. It started out really well. I met with Thomas Lee, the energy staffer of Jay Inslees's office. He is the IEEE congressional fellow and I was excited to meet with him to find out what was going to be the response of dems like Inslee, moderate to liberal supporters of renewable energy, to nuclear energy. I had to wait for him to get out of a hearing of the energy and commerce committee, but when I finally got to meet with him, we had an hour long meeting and after about a half an hour of talking about nuclear and him definitely being receptive, and posing questions for me to think about and me answering them, he finally started to actually take me seriously and actually asking questions like what is the current technology on nuclear fuel recycle and what are the issues and what is the best plan, etc. He started at least listening to what I had to say, which was really cool. Then he said that he would like to see my white paper when I am done with it and I think I, if not sold him, at least brought to his attention, the importance of the nuclear issue. Then I went to ACS and started to write again. Then at 1:30 Genetta, the secretary that's desk is right next to mine, told me we had an ACS Public Activities and Government Relations Office Staff meeting. So I went, it was kind of interesting, but mostly boring. Then when I got back to working, I got stuck on some numbers that didn't agree and realized I needed to go back to compiling my notes before I wrote my technical sections. By then I was kind of frustrated, so I went to the gym. Then I went home and bought a wine opener on the way home, so I could have a glass of wine. I had a really good talk with Kurt tonight and it cheered me up. So now I'm in a much better mood and know what I have to do tomorrow, so I'm excited. I'm going to the Library of congress early tomorrow morning early and then going to work all day on notes. Then at night we are going to a Marine Corp Parade tomorrow. Here is the website if you want to know more: http://www.mbw.usmc.mil/parade_eveningdefault.asp I'll try to take pictures of this at least, so you can see it. but I'm really excited. I love parades!

It's all coming together

2009-06-18T10:39:00.006+08:00

Today I went to a House Science and Technology Committee Hearing about Nuclear Fuel Recycle, which was amazing. Mike Peters, the director of Argonne National Labs, Alan Hanson, the CEO of AREVA, Lisa Price, the head of GE-Hitachi, and Charles Ferguson, the Science and Technology Congressional Fellow for Foreign Relations, were the panel and all the congressmen there, except for 2 seemed really excited to be talking about it and very supportive. I learned alot about what the important issues were and what people's questions were that needed to be answered. After than I came home and started writing, which also felt good. I got the first two sections written, which is a start. Then I went for a run and we went to Chinese food in China town for dinner. We walked past the White House on the way home. It's weird, everything is definitely still new here, but I'm feeling like I'm finding my place too. I hope I can get something good written and actually contribute to the nuclear recycle debate that is happening now. I'm going to go to sleep early tonight now, because I was really tired this morning and I want to get to work early to get some things done before I meet with Thomas Lee from Jay Inslee's office tomorrow. Night!

These are pictures from Jenn, who is clearly more of a photographer than me. This one in particular is Dan Hendirckson with the "Water Horse" AKA Hippo statue near our dorm. There is a plaque in front of the "water horse" that claims it represents pride or something. I think it's kind of a stretch.

TOP SECRET

2009-06-17T08:41:00.007+08:00

Today we woke up early and went to the National Security Agency. We met at the museum they have, which is open to the public. We arrived a little early and waited for our host to arrive. This is Joe (ME from Minnesota), Cheyenne (ME from Alaska), and Jennifer (ChemE from Texas A&M) waiting outside beneath the NSA logo. And some of the other boys (from the left: Joe again, Dan Kreis Nuclear Engineer from University of Missouri, Dan H. Aeronautical Engineer from Florida Tech will be going to GWU for aerospace policy in the fall, Steven EE from UPenn, and John Nuclear Engineer from Ohio State). Not pictured, just to complete the list, is: Caitlin (my roommate and Industrial Engineer from University of Miami), Stephen Timothy (ChemE from Cornell), Charlie Haack (Architectural Engineering, ASHRAE, from Penn State), Iam Hoffbeck (EE from Calvin College), and Milad Alemohammad (EE from Drexel University). We were first led on a tour of the museum, which was basically a history of cryptology from the Rosetta Stone to the Enigma used in WWI and Information Intelligence. It was really interesting and we learned alot about the role of cryptology in war as well as how the NSA has changed to what it is today, which is much more computer based. Then we met with a guy who works there, but was also a recruitment officer who just talked about what it was like to work at NSA and somethings about NSA, although obviously he could not say alot. These are pictures of one of the first uses of signaling in the civil war, when "flaggers" would move this falg in special ways to spell out encoded messages that were just signal alphabet codes, like cryptoquip in the newspaper. Each flagger would get one of these flags as a reward for having such a dangerous position (standing up waving a flag during battle) and the words on the points of the star are battles the soldier fought in. The picture below is symbols Hobos used during the Great Depression to help each other. I just thought they were kind of funny. We got done at the NSA and back to our dorm around 2:30. Then I went and picked up my bike, which arrived today, and did some errands. I also met a woman at the gym who rides on Saturday with the DC Tri Club, which she said is a good ride, so I think I will try to go this weekend, if I can get myself a helmet which I just realized I left in Seattle. Kurt is going to send it to me, but we'll see when it gets here. Didn't get alot of work done today, but hopefully I will tomorrow.

Day One of a New Era

2009-06-16T10:54:00.004+08:00

I don't have any pictures from today, so I am putting all pictures from graduation. I was back in Seattle for 24 hours for graduation, but it felt like so much longer. And now I am really done with school. It's weird because I feel like I have already started the next part of my life, here in DC. It was like going backwards to go back and be a student again. But I will definitely miss my friends and being a part of UW ChemE. My flights went well and I got home pretty easily and went straight to bed. I even slept in, until 8, which was wonderful. I had a good day today too. We started out with a meeting about energy policy with a guy from ASME, which was a good broad overview of the important policies that have been passed or are currently in congress with respect to energy and what each of them do. Then I went to the tailor to get some pants tailored and stopped at work before going to the gym. They had a pilates class at the gym that I wanted to try, and it was ok. Then I did some reading on the elliptical machine and did my shoulder exercises. I got back to work at about 2:30 and worked until 7 or so tonight. I was really productive, but definitely realized how much stuff I have to do and how long it will take. I am way ahead of all the other interns because I started beforehand and I know alot more about energy in general, but it will still be a push to get something I feel good about by the end of this summer. Time is going to fly by. I want to have a draft done by the end of next week, so I'm going to work hard to get that done. I came home and all the interns were in my room, apparently they had just had an impromptu group dinner. I missed it, but that was ok. I ate a quick salad and then we all went for ice cream. It is perfect ice cream weather here, so it was really good. I had peach. Now I'm just at home doing non-work related things, like writing thank you cards. I'm going to go to sleep soon though, because we have to get up early tomorrow to go to the National Security Agency where we are going to learn about national security and cryptology. But I'll tell you about that tomorrow. Good night!

Learning new things

2009-06-12T11:40:00.004+08:00

I learn so much hear everyday, it's amazing. Talking to people is by far the most effective way to get information and I do so much of it everyday I barely have time to collect my thoughts! Today we started out at MN mornings. I talked to both Amy's energy staffers and will set up a meeting with Charley next Friday I think. I learned alot about political opinion of nuclear and the battles any sort of nuclear commitment will face in Congress. I didn't get to meet or get my picture with Amy, because she was really busy, but Joe and I decided we would go back another Thursday and do it, this meeting was about getting meetings with the staffers, so mission accomplished. Then we had WISE meetings about "how to meet your senator", which was less interesting and more common sense. But still had good tips, like make sure to emphasize WHY this is important to their constituents, not to you the scientist. It's just a completely different way of thinking about issues. Then in the afternoon I went with 2 of the other interns to meet with their mentor, a guy from the American Nuclear Society and that works for Avera, the main nuclear plant contractor. He also serves on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so we talked alot about nuclear regulation, the old system and the new system and possible changes for reprocessing. I also learned alot about what is feasible from an industry perspective what would make that happen. Then I came home and went out to a whiskey tasting with a couple of the other interns. All in all it was a great day. I'm excited for tomorrow though, when I can sit down and put some of my thoughts together and type up some notes. Tomorrow should be mostly working in my office, so not as interesting. Then I'll be back in Seattle on Saturday! Can't wait!

Library of Congress and Resource Overload

2009-06-11T10:02:00.007+08:00

Today was another crazy day. We started out at the Library of Congress, which is beautiful! It was amazing the amount of knowledge there and the respect all of that knowledge received. This first picture is of our faculty mentor, Dan Deckler, who hoped behind the reference desk and checked us in for our meeting. We were ushered into the Science, Business, and Technology wing and shown around. Then we met the head librarian of this wing, who was the cutest little old lady I have ever met and served us homemade cookies and lemonade. Then we went into a conference room and two of the reference librarians had gathered special materials for us in a folder full of resources, made a special shelf of materials reserved for us about science policy, and we had a 3 hour-long overview of all the resources available to us at the Library of Congress. It was thoroughly overwhelming. It felt like even if I spent my whole summer researching, I would never finish, much less writing. But they did offer for us to come back individually to talk to the main reference librarian, John, who gave us the presentation. He said if we emailed him our topics in advance, he would hunt up useful resources for us and we could come in and talk to him and he would always be available to help us find anything we need. He was so excited to help us, I have never met anyone so excited about looking things up and researching. He was literally giddy. Then we got our library reader cards, so we can come back. So now I am a card carrying member of the Library of Congress, and they are good for life.

Then a few of us went to a briefing by the Brookings Institute about Carbon Cap and Trade and the Need for Technological Innovation. It basically talked about the need for a whole new scale of investment in R&D for energy innovation to really happen on a useful time-scale. Congressmen Inslee and Wu from WA and OR, respectively, were also there and some professors and congressional fellows. It was a very interesting presentation about steps in the right direction that are happening right now (in the Fiscal Bill, the Stimulus Bill, the Energy Bill, the Climate Change Bill), but alot about how this is not nearly enough.

After that we went to the House and Senate galleries and watched them both, which was not as interesting. There were just a few people debating in the house, although they did call a House Full Committee while we were there. There was only one guy talking in the Senate, but he was talking about universal healthcare, which was interesting to hear about. Then I finally went to the grocery store, so I can stop eating out, and Steven, a guy from Cornell, and I went to get memberships at the gym and workout. Now I am getting ready to go to MN mornings tomorrow and maybe finally get some work done! Raining again tonight and very humid. Night.

where change is possible

2009-06-10T09:54:00.010+08:00

Another day in the center of the action. That is really what this place feels like, so much is happening all the time and there is so much information everywhere, it is amazing. I ran this morning around the mall and to the Lincoln Memorial, where I ran the stairs. I read the Gettysberg Address and Lincoln's second Innaugural Address and stood in the spot where Martin Luther King gave his I Have A Dream speech. It made me think about all the things this country has gone through and that this country can change. And about how that capacity for change is what really makes this country great. Then we had a doom's day presentation about all the problems this country faces that no one is talking about, like water and health impacts from nanotechnology, and lots of other problems. It was from a very interesting guy who works for the Office of Science and Technology Program, which oversees science advising, in a sense. He also talked alot about the different organizations that exist for science advising and what their roles are and how we could make the process better. Then we had lunch and another presentation from a guy who lobbies for IEEE, the Electrical Engineering organization. He wasn't an engineer, but he just talked about how democracy is an amazing system that works best if everyone (politicians and voters) act in their own self interest (partially true), but the most important part was speaking up (totally true). He also had a lot of good resources for the softer, public policy part of my paper and is helping me hunt them up. Then we went to the Hill and I visited all my congressmen from MN and WA, or some of them. The picture is of some of the WISE interns walking in front of the Supreme Court House, betweem the House and Senate Office Buildings. I went to congressmen Ellison and Insley, and Senator Klobuchar and Cantwell. It was important for me to go to the WA congresspeople because they are both very active in energy. I am trying to set up meetings with all of their respective energy staffers, and so far am 1 for 4, but it has only been one day. And Jay Insley's staffer called me back personally. I will also get to talk to Amy Klobuchar's staffer on Thursday when I go to MN mornings with Joe, the other intern from U of M. After that I headed back sans the rest of the WISE interns and though about how self-important Washington DC seemed, but yet how amazingly effective in the true sense of the word. In DC, every action has an equal or greater reaction on the entire nation in some instances. This is the place for real change and it is exciting to be a part of it. I also realized I forgot to give my address, which is:

Sarah Widder
George Washington University
Dakota #201
2100 F St. NW
Washington DC 20052

Now I am trying to work at my desk and make sense of all the new information and experiences I have been inundated with today. And get ready for another day of more tomorrow. Good night!

The Nation's Capital

2009-06-08T21:29:00.006+08:00

So today I begin a new chapter. I finished my last day of college, ever, last Friday and promptly boarded a plan for DC on Sunday. I am living in the dorms on George Washington campus, which are....dorms. I haven't lived in dorms for so long, but all my roommates are awesome, so it will still be alot of fun. We have 2 doubles off a central living room with a kitchen and our own washer/dryer, so I guess I can't complain. I live with a girl named Caitlin from the the University of Miami that is also interested in energy stuff. I love all the interns, everyone is so interesting and smart. There is a guy from U of MN too. I will do formal introduction in another blog, otherwise this one will get too long. But they are all great. Today, Monday, was our first day. I woke up and went for a run in the morning, which was awesome. Washington has alot of great bike trails and a ran along the river for a lot of it. Tomorrow I'm going to go running on the mall and do sprints on the Lincoln Memorial Steps. How cool is that. At 10:30 we met at the IEEE office, which is about a mile walk from our dorms. We got a brief orientation and got to meet our sponsors. Mine is this cool guy named Dave Richmond. He worked for the Atomic Energy Commission and the DOE and is very smart and funny, and not too serious either. He is older and retired and really wants to help me, which is awesome. He is already setting up more meetings for me with people from the American Nuclear Society and energy people from AIChE that he knows. After lunch we walked down to our offices. There are 2 other AIChE interns, Jenn from Texas and Steven from Cornell, and we have offices in the American Chemical Society Building. Our building is about 4 blocks from the white house and right in the thick of things on Capital Hill. It is also an amazing resource. There are people working on energy there and also an extensive library and librarians to help us. Everyone we have meet so far has been so nice and welcoming and ready to give us whatever resources we need to work on our papers. The amount of material available is actually overwhelming, I feel like I'll never have time to read it all! We had an early day today, left work at about 4, and heading home to go to Target and pick up some essentials that we had all neglected to bring. We had dinner at a cute little bar by our dorms called "Quincey Pharmacy". I'm getting some stuff together for graduation this weekend and then will go to sleep to get ready for a busy day tomorrow. I'll tell you all about it after. All in all, I am so excited for this summer, it is going to be great!

Copenhagen

2008-08-31T02:58:00.014+08:00

So today we went to Carlsberg Brewery which was so awesome! It had a really cool museum with the Wolrd's Largest Bottle collection and the history of beer making, as well as the history of the Carlsberg label and lots of cool interactive exhibits about historical beer making technology and techniques compared to today. Then you got to have two glasses of different Carlsberg, Jacobson, or Tuborg beers. I had a Hefeweisen, which I didn't like that much (it was a banana beer) and the Carlsberg Brown Ale, which was delicious. Then I walked over to the National Museum which had alot of cool exhibits from the middle ages and the renaissance. It had alot of rooms set up like what they would be in that time period and lots of cool outfits and crowns and swords. It was all very regal. Then I went home, read for a little bit and we went to dinner as a group at a vegetarian buffet. It was so good to eat vegetables again after two weeks of bread, cheese, meat, and more bread, all of which I barely ever eat at home. The next day I spent all day walking around the city by myself. I really like my group, but I’m getting sick of being in a group all the time, so it was nice to have some freedom. I went to this art museum that was really pretty. It was a really old building that had been completely re-done inside. It had a nice garden in the center and some cool exhibits of Danish paintings, some nice Monet, Degas, and Rousseau. They had these neat sculptures of Degas ballerinas too, which I had never seen before and thought were really beautiful. They had a lot of really nice sculpture, including Danish, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and other older pieces. Then I wondered over to the Danish Architecture Center which was having an exhibition on Sustainable Design. They featured a lot of new age international buildings. I wish they had had more information about what made the buildings sustainable, but the woman working there said there was more information on the website. One really interesting one was this woman who had designed a Mobile School on a trailer that would follow around these poor kids that had to move all the time because of the monsoons in India. The design folded out of the trailer and was very efficient.
Then I wondered around a neighborhood called Christhavn along the canal and everyone was outside with their boats and sitting by the water on this beautiful Sunday, it was really pleasant. I walked over to Christiania, which is a hippy community kind of like People’s Park that started in the 70’s. It is a little more permanent than People’s Park though, it is in some old army barracks and people actually live there, as opposed to just squat. They were having a fair though, with this band that was playing CSNY kind of stuff, but they weren’t that good. After that I walked back through Christhavn, which you can tell is the yuppie part of town with lots of cute little cafes and stuff all around the big canal running through the city. They have a park running along it where everyone was laying out in the sun. I happened on some people playing lawn bowling and seemed to be on teams and have jerseys and be rather serious about it. By this time it was 5:30-ish and I headed back to the hostel to meet the rest of the group for a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant by our hostel and ice cream after.
The next day we went to the Greenlandic House, which is like a cultural and resource center for Greenlandic people living in Copenhagen. They had these cool pictures in the café downstairs done by Greenlanders. Then we went to the University and got to see the ice cores they are working on there. They have 7 miles of ice cores stored in Copenhagen. Then Gerard, our professor, gave a talk and we had cake with some of the ice researchers working there. Danish people have coffee and cake pretty much every afternoon, it’s very civilized. Then I walked back to the hostel and went for a run to look at the little Mermaid. That night we went out to a restaurant that was all you can eat and all you can drink for 45 Kronner, which is quite a deal. And surprisingly it was good food too and Carlsberg and red and white wine on tap. We are getting ready to get on the plane now and I will be back in Seattle this afternoon. It has been a great trip and I hope this not the last that I see of the ice. Talk to you soon. Love, Sarah

The Much Delayed Greenland Part II Post

2008-08-30T15:18:00.019+08:00

We had an amazing time in Disko Bay. The research station was so homey and the kitchen was amazing. Our third day in Disko Bay, after another lecture in the morning, Michelle, the grad student who is leading the trip, Girard, the accompanying professor, a few other of the more adventurous students and I went on another hike to attempt to reach the glacier near to town. We couldn’t find anyone who knew the route to get there, so we looked at the map and picked our way up a river to a boulder field that lead up the valley to the glacier. We got pretty close when we decided we should turn around, but it was a very fun hike. It was a little more intense than our previous hikes and involved some route finding, back-country, and boulder hopping and it was nice to get away from the WHOLE group and do something a little less planned. When we got back Lindsey, a girl on the trip who also went hiking and leads climbing trips back in Seattle, and I made mulled wine by heating red wine and adding a little honey and cinnamon. It was delicious and really hit the spot after a cold windy hike. That night Christian, a guy from Arizona on the trip, made burgers and I made curry vegetables and garlic potatoes for dinner, YUM! The next day we got back on the ferry to Ilulissat, which was a little rough. A lot of people felt seasick and we didn’t get back to the hostel until midnight. The next day back in Ilulissat I took a hike by myself down to the Jacobshavn Glacier south of town, which is the most active glacier in the world. It drains 10% of the Greenland Ice sheet and it literally a river of ice coming out of the fjord. It is magnificent. I hiked out and marveled at the massive ice bergs cascading like an assembly line out of the glacier for hours. The next morning we had to Ilulissat, which almost feels like leaving home since we had been in and out of and around that town for so long, and get on the ferry to Nuuk, the capitol of Greenland. The ferry is a lot like the ferry Mike and I took back from Alaska. We are in nice little bunks with 8 people to a room, but not too crowded and there is a cafeteria and a really nice seating area in the back that has lots of windows. We saw whales off the boat and the sunset was beautiful as I sat in the back and read. It was so nice to sit and read and enjoy the water and the ice and the beautiful colors. We spent two nights on the boat and got off in Nuuk, the capitol city, at 7am this morning. After being out in the tundra, Nuuk seems huge. It has a population of 5,000 and busses and bustles like a little city. It is also full of all these apartment blocks that were built in the 70’s where people live. They house 1% of the population and are a little depressing. After breakfast at the Seaman’s House, a cafeteria for fisherman which was pretty neat, we walked over to the National Museum and had a guided tour from a guy who worked at the University here. It was interesting to learn about the history of Greenland and how it was colonized. We even got to see the first rock house ever built. It was built by Hans Egede, a missionary who came in 1728 to colonize and convert (very successfully I might add) Greenland to Danish rule and the Lutheran Church. The Greenlanders used to live in turf houses in the winter and then move to seal-sink teepees near the sea in the summer. We also got to see their traditional outfits at the museum, which were very colorful and made of fur and beads and some colored cloth after the Europeans came over. After lunch we went to see another aspect of Greenland politics and hear from the President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. It was a very interesting, passionate presentation and a point of view we hadn’t heard before. The next day we went to see the new Parliament meeting room that was under construction and heard from an under-secretary there about Parliamentary procedure for the Home Rule government and the upcoming referendum this November to move to Home Government (another step towards Independence, basically more responsibility moved to the Greenland government). The new construction project is to make the Meeting room for the 31 Parliamentary members larger, with a public seating area, and outfit it with microphones and capabilities to broadcast the sessions on national television. Then we went to the new University and heard from the President of the Home Land Rule Commission about the new Home Government Act and what that would mean for Greenland. The conclusion was basically that Greenland can and probably will become Independent in the future, but first needs to internally grow their economy by focusing on education. The University is the only one in Greenland and has a long history, dating back from 1845, but this building, as well as the associated Institute of Natural Resources, is new as of 1998. They are very beautiful architecture, all large cedar panel with huge South-facing windows and passive solar heating in the concrete floors. The woman who talked to us at the Institute said they don’t have to heat the building for a large portion of the year or use lights, which is a no small accomplishment in Greenland. At the Institute of Natural Resources we heard from a biologist who was working on monitoring the shrimp catch. It seems our host professor knows EVERYONE here, which is very nice since we get to have the insider’s tour. That evening we went to a Thai restaurant in town, which had surprisingly good Thai curries and I “Greenland Sushi” which I had to try. It had sashimi cuts of Salmon, Greenlandic Halibut, shrimp, whale, and whale skin, and a few maki rolls. It was very interesting to try raw whale, and not as bad as I thought, it was actually pretty good. The whale skin was a little weird, but mostly it just had a weird aftertaste. Anyways, then we flew back to Kangerlussuaq and got in this morning at 9am. After dropping our stuff at the hostel and eating breakfast, a few other kids and I rented bikes and rode 50km down this HORRIBLE bumpy, rocky, washboarded dirt road to a glacier. Even though the road was bad and the bikes were nothing special, it was a beautiful ride and it was nice to see the ice again. Apperantly it is the “musk ox road” too, and we saw a bunch of vans of tourists on “musk ox safaris” but we didn’t see any ourselves. The next day we just had lectures and I went for a run and then had an all night flight back to Copenhagen, fun. Unfortunately I couldn't sleep at all, but now I am here and get to email all you fine people, which is awesome. Some kids on the trip and I are going to go to the Carlsberg brewery. On Tuesday I fly back home and am on to other adventures. Sorry it took so long to get this one out, Internet access has been spotty. Hope you are all well and talk to you soon!

Disko Island

2008-08-21T07:29:00.011+08:00

So I am blogging much more than I imagined, but we have free internet here and I thought I'd give you all some new pictures. We took the ferry from Ilulissat over to an island right off the coast called Disko Island this morning. The ice was beautiful, again. And the amazing thing is that they look different every time. The water was calm and new sea ice was starting to form on the surface of the ice. It's amazing that it already seems like winter is beginning here. And it makes me kind of excited. We came into the town and walked to the research base in Disko Island, which is amazing. I want to live here. We each have our own little bunk and it has a beautiful kitchen and a wooden

spiral staircase. This afternoon we went on a hike around the pennisula around this awesome basalt cliffs with crazy rock that looks like all these bricks. The rock goes like that because it is a special kind of volcanic rock that is magnetic. They make caves everywhere and are really fun to climb around on. We spent a few hours playing on the rocks, and when we got back several of us decided we should jump in the ocean. Which I thought would hurt alot, but actually felt very refreshing. I can't wait to spend a

few days here. We will be here for 2 days before we head back to Ilulissat to catch the ferry to Nuuk. I'll update again if anything interesting happens, which I'm sure it will since it just seems like each day is better than the last here!

Greenland: the Coolest Place on Earth

2008-08-20T00:59:00.010+08:00

Hi everyone. The saying is lame, I know, but it really is true! We flew from Copenhagen to Greenland on 8/15. First was a 5 hour flight to Kangerlussuaq (Kang-gar-loo-sack), then a 45 minute hop to Illulisat where we would spend the night. As soon as we landed in Kangerlussauq it was like being back in Alaska or northern Canada. The same wind-swept, barren tundra, brown tuft littered with exposed granite. By the time we got to Illulisat (ill-lool-eh-sat) and to the hostel we were staying in, it was late. KJ, another girl on the trip (I’ll give a better cast of characters later), and I walked to the grocery store to buy some provisions. Most of the others in the group went out to one of the towns 4 or 5 restaurants. The town is very small, but the 3rd largest in Greenland at 5,000 people. The airport is a 3km drive away and the town is clustered around a small harbor. All the boats in the harbor are swarmed around the small docks, sometimes 2 or 3 rows deep so everyone can tie up. Nearly everyone in Illulisat has a boat. The other thing nearly everyone in Illulisat has is dogs. It is common practice in Illulisat to yield to dog sleds in the winter because once they are close to home, the dogs won’t stop. The town is very cute, all the houses are bright primary colors, which we imagine is to keep spirits up in the dark winter months. The hostel we are staying in is pretty nice, it has showers and a kitchen and everything. But we did not stay long, the next day we caught a boat at 7am to a camp a few hours north of Illulisat near Eqi Glacier. Along the way we stopped to see a Humpback whale and watch the Glacier calve (have new icebergs fall off). Watching the ice was amazing. Before it calved it would give this deep rumbling sound then loud cracking as it finally gave way. Then it would crash into the water, sending huge 10m waves decending on the boat. I was struck by the massive scale of everything. The face of the glacier we were looking at was 100m tall and that was a smaller one. Many of the ice bergs we saw along the way were the size of a cruise ship or larger. When we arrived at the camp we pulled up to “dock” by dropping a car tire off the bow of the boat and lining the boat up so the bow and tire pressed onto the outcropping of rock, where a metal bridge was held in place while the ship captain gunned the engine to keep us in place. But we made it off and hiked with our two guides about 7km to the place where we would be staying near the inland ice. Our guides worked for a tour company owned cooperatively by the Greenlandic government tourism department and a Danish tourism company. They were both Danish students and very nice and knowledgable. The camp we had landed at originally was the first camp of a French explorer named Paul Emil Victor who had come to the area in the 1950’s to survey and study the ice. The camp we hiked to and stayed at was near his third camp. Amazingly, many off his things, the wood he used to build his cabin, the caterpillar machines he used to drive around his equipment, etc, were still around and in pretty good condition because it is so cold and dry. After the hike our guides prepared whale stew for us, which was amazing. It tasted just like beef stew, but the meat was tougher and a little more flavorful. I liked it though. We set up our tents and went to sleep at 10:30 as the sun was dropping behind the mountains, although it was still very bright. It was very cold and windy, because the wind blows off the ice in the night, but I slept well in the cold air. The next day after breakfast (it was so much like luxury camping, being served all our meals) we hiked to the edge of another glacier about a kilometer from our camp. We talked a lot about the features of the glacier and surrounding landscape and how they had come to be that way. We stopped for lunch near a beautiful waterfall draining water from the inland ice. After lunch, of bread and various canned fish products, we hiked up the near-by mountain onto the inland ice. It was amazing, ice as far as the eye could see, but all bumpy and crevassed. Everything I saw reminded me of Alaska and the glaciers I had seen there, but going out onto the ice was a whole new experience.

Hello From Denmark!

2008-08-15T04:13:00.009+08:00

Hi everyone! So we made it to Denmark, and Copenhagen is amazing. The buildings are so colorful and I love all the bikes! Everyone bikes here, which is so nice. You see them riding around with their little baskets. We saw this huge group of people in the park both days and apparently young kids all just ride to the park and hang out and drink beer. We tried a danish hot dog and nachos here which were very good. And very yummy bakeries. We went to the Greenlandic Studies Department of the University of Denmark and the Arctic Geological Center here and had lectures from people at each place, which made me very excited to go. It should be so interesting to see all the research up close. Other than that we have just wandered around. Everything has been very fun expect for somehow (I don't really know how), I lost my wallet at dinner tonight. We all went as a group and when I got back to the hostel it was gone. I have no idea, but it sucks. Thankfully I still have my passport and I cancelled my cards and I'll figure everything else out when I get back. But, we are leaving for Greenland tomorrow and I can't wait! I'll try to blog sometime in Greenland as well. Love you all.

It's a love hate relationship, and right now it's love!

2007-06-29T00:04:00.000+08:00

As my time in China comes to an end, my feelings about China seem to be much more extreme. I oscillate between loving China and loving my life here and being so sad that I have to leave and getting so aggravated with some "China moment" that I can't wait to get out of here. It changes probably daily. Like on Sunday it was a beautiful, hot, sunny day. I went to church with Laura, which was interesting to see the community there. It is all foreigners from all over, but alot from the US, alot of whom I had never seen before. We sang songs for the first part, which I liked, then it was coffee break with free coffee, which I also liked. Then was the sermon part which was about fathers and disciplism. It had some good parts that I picked out, but it's always nice to go to church and just use it as a time to reflect, which I did. Then I went to rugby, which was HOT but also very fun. People kept asking me when I was going home and it made me think about that I actually am going home really soon. It doesn't seem possible. I kept thinking "I really am going to miss it!" Then I went swimming and hung out with Huangjie a little before going home to do some homework. It was a good China day.
Then some bad things happened, like on Monday I was making Bruschetta for a dinner we were having and I burned my hand really bad on the spatula. The dinner was fun though. On Tuesday morning I went for a run and on the way back I started across the street and a motorbike hit me and knocked me down. I just scraped my hands and knees, but I was OK. As I was getting up out of the road, the lady who hit me is just smiling and laughing and then she drives away. That just put me in a bad mood all day. Then you just get annoyed with all the people yelling "hello" at you and laying on their horns, and cutting in front of you in line, and having absolutely no decency at all. Chinese people are so nice to you face to face, but aside from it's like they have tunnel vision and they can only think about themselves and seem very rude. Then something good will happen, like I'll eat some really good Chinese food and I'll feel better and not want to leave again. It's all very crazy. I think I'm starting to get more annoyed because I know I am going home soon so I am finally letting myself get annoyed. Before I knew that whether I liked it or not I had to put up with it so best not let it get to you. But now I'm almost done and all that pent up frustration is just coming out.
However, right now I have had a string of good China days. I have just been taking them one at a time, enjoying myself, I think by Friday I will be ready to go home. Like, last Wednesday, Fourth of July, was Matt's 21st birthday. We had a party for him on the 3rd because his mom had to leave on the 4th. Matt and his mom made ribs and we made make-shift pizzas, which were really good! And I made a birthday cake, lemon with chocolate frosting (Matt's request). I wanted to make a good cake, so I made a lemon layer cake with lemon filling in the center, homemade chocolate frosting and candied lemons on top for decoration. It turned out being really beautiful and delicious! I was so proud of it, definitely the best thing I have baked in China so far.
The thing that I will miss most about China is the newness of it, there is always opportunity to try new things and go on an adventure. Yesterday, after almost 11 months in China, I was still getting to try new things. Yesterday for lunch I had frog legs and they were actually pretty good. Alot like fish meat, very tender. Then I had sushi for dinner, which I thought I didn't like, but was delicious! I think China is expanding my taste horizons, which I am very excited about. The UW kids and I also went on a field trip to Zigong, the Salt Capital of China to go to the Salt Museum and the Dinosaur Museum. If you have not read Mark Kurlansky's SALT, do. It is an excellent read and it talks all about Sichuan and this place, Zigong, which has been producing salt for millions of years. The Chinese people were salt pioneers and alot of cool inventions and innovations came out of the Ziong salt wells, like using natural gas to heat the evaporation pans or new well drilling technology. We went to see the Shenghai Well, one of the only remaining old wells, which is still functional and producing salt. This well is just over 1000 meters deep (amazing for how old it is) and they drop a big, hollow iron pole down that has a catch at the bottom to hold the brine in. Then they reel the pole back up and release the catch to get the brine out, then they do it again. The brine is then transported up to the processing area where natural gas burners still heat giant stone evaporation pans. There was salt in different stages of completion and salt grime was everywhere! It was really cool to see though.
Then we went to the Dinosaur Museum, which was less cool, but very fun. Kind of like a really hastily done dinosaur Disney land. There were lots of fossils, but with the usual Chinese hilarity. They named all the dinosaurs funny things like "Sichuanosaurus Zigongensis" and "Giantspikosaurus". The best part was this giant rubber mechanized triceratops that you could put 5 kuai coins in and it would move and poop out this little egg. Laura and I paid to do it, but it wouldn't poop out the egg so the lady came over and gave us a bunch more coins, but after like 3 tries and still nothing she reached her hand up the dinosaurs butt and pulled out the offending egg. The egg could be folded out into a dinosaur transformer sort of thing, very similar to something you would get in a Happy Meal.
For the rest of the time in China I am just trying to take it one day at a time and have fun. My mind literally cannot handle thinking about going home right now.
But, whether I'm ready for it or not, I am coming home in no time at all and really I can't wait! I'm so excited to see everyone! I just know I'll miss China when I go, which is a good thing.

Cupping, yes that's a verb

2007-06-28T23:21:00.000+08:00

I thought I was running out of new things to do in Chengdu, but fortunately I was wrong. China is a place that never ceases to surprise and amaze me. So tonight we went out to dinner with Andrea, Barb, Matt, his Mom (who is visiting for a few weeks), Deborah, Ben, Laura, Eddie, Eddie's fiance (who is originally from Chengdu but is studying at ASU getting her PhD), and myself at a good Sichuan place by Andrea's house. While we were eating Matt's mom mentioned how they had seen someone with all these weird circular bruises on their back and we explained to her that they were a type of Chinese massage that uses cups and heats up the air with fire inside and then puts them on your back to pull all the toxins out of your body. Laura started saying how she wanted to try it and Andrea mentioned how there was a good place just around the block that she goes to occasionally. So before I knew it Deborah, Laura, and I were heading over to get cupped. Andrea came with us, but she just got a massage. There were several beds squeezed into the small room off the street, but they lead us outside and into their house above the shop where they had another room with three beds in it. Andrea stayed downstairs though. We all laid down and it started with a very intense full-body massage, including forehead, feet, everything. Matt's mom, Matt, and Ben came in to watch as well after grabbing some stuff from Barb's apartment. Following the hour long massage, the cups came out. After preparing our back they took this little piece of wood or something that looked kind of like a pottery carving tool and rubbed it up and down our backs rather forcefully. It made red marks, vertically with the strokes on Deborah and Laura and patchily on me because it hit my ribs. After our backs all looked they had been ravaged by wild dogs, they took out the cups. Mine came first. They take a piece of cloth or something and light it on fire and put the fire in the cup to heat up the air and then quickly take the fire out and put the cup face down on your back, causing your skin to be suctioned up into the cup. They do about 10 or so cups until they are all over your back and, as Matt said, it looks like if you were electric, you would light up. They stay on for about 10 or 20 minutes and when they come off they leave big red circles on your back. It felt so weird, but at the same time exactly how I thought it would feel. Anyways, that was my Chinese adventure for today. It was very interesting. And now Laura and I feel like our China experience is finally complete and we can go home.
On the bike ride home from the cupping experience it also started to POUR and thunder and lightening and we got soaked, but it felt so nice after the hot couple of days we have had here, plus I love thunderstorms!! I took it as a good sign.

Final Thoughts

2007-06-28T00:09:00.001+08:00

I am writing this on the plane as I fly over Korea and Japan. It still hasn’t really hit me that I am gone, I am leaving, I am going home. People kept asking me all week if I was excited and I would say yes, and I was, but I was also really sad. I am conflicted. Chengdu has been my life for the past year, for better or for worse, and I was leaving at a time when I felt like I was just starting to get settled in and find my place there. Maybe that means its time to go though, or maybe it just means I’ll be back. I am sure as soon as I am home I will be so excited to be there, but right now I can only think about all the things I am leaving behind; friends, China adventures, bad air, good food. However, now I can make Chinese food and I will keep in touch with all the great people I met here and no more China adventures just means on to new adventures.

This last week was amazing and crazy. I was hanging out with the Marines a lot and their house is really Western, so it was a little bit of transition. I made cookies and peach pie and got to watch ESPN and the Simpson’s on TV. I had all my finals, all 7 of them, last week which was a little stressful. I didn’t study as much as I usually do, but fortunately they all went pretty well. I also just decided that I was not going to let myself get stressed out about this last week, so I made sure I did a lot of fun things too. It was weird because all week I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that I am going home. I just couldn’t believe it or even start to think about it. I just had to take it day by day. Enjoying every minute and soaking it all in. I also had a lot of goodbye events that I had to go to. Huangjie and I, of course, had one last dinner together. She also told me she wanted to buy me a present so before dinner we went to the Shopping Street, Chunqi Lu. She took me into a jewelry store and told me to pick out a necklace. I couldn’t believe it. I started refusing adamantly saying that it was too much and I couldn’t accept it and she could just buy me dinner and I would feel too bad if she gave me something so nice. But she, as usual, would not be dissuaded. So in the end she picked one out and gave it to me. It is very pretty, but all those things about feeling really bad receiving such a nice, expensive present were true. I wore it that night when we went to dinner, which thankfully she allowed me to pay for. I also went to the pool to say goodbye to all my swimming friends. We took lots of pictures, which hopefully someone will send me, and they were all so nice. I really was sad to say goodbye to all these people who have been so good to me. Then we had one last goodbye dinner with the UW group and associated teachers. We went to a restaurant that Andrea picked out called Da Rong He that was literally one of the best restaurants I have been to in Chengdu. It was a twist on regular Chuan cai, so new dishes and done perfectly. Delicious! A perfect send off. Then Laura, Deborah, and I went to the Marine house for some of my peach pie. After that I went to Shamrock Bar to have a goodbye party with all my expat friends. It was really a wonderful night and I am really going to miss it.

Now after a LONG flight, I am sitting in the San Francisco airport waiting to get on my next flight to Seattle in a few hours. I walked into the terminal and saw Burger King and Peet’s Coffee and I just couldn’t stop smiling. I’m here! It’s a very weird feeling, I guess I don’t really know how to feel. Tired and relieved a little bit. I had to ask one of the airport people if I needed to re-check my bags or if they would be checked through and as I was walking up I started thinking about asking the question in Chinese and suddenly realized, no, I can just ask in English. Everything is so much easier here, that’s what I notice most so far. Like tap water. If I want water, I just walk to the tap and put it in a glass. No boiling, no finding a water machine. It is no longer the coveted substance it was for an entire year. But I am home, so I am signing off here. Thanks everyone for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Daily Dose of Daoism

2007-06-28T00:00:00.000+08:00

Today in my culture and society class we talked about Daoism. It was especially relevant because thinking about re-entry makes you think alot about where you are going in life and your goals, etc. Although I don't agree with everything in the Daoist school of thought, it makes a very good base for thinking about how to find happiness in life, it is very good at cutting through all the bull shit and helping you remember to think about where you are, not just where you are going. There was a story i particularly liked that goes.....

There is this millionaire walking on the beach in Hawaii. As he's walking he comes across this man lying on the beach in the sun. He starts chatting with the man and asks him what he does for work. The man says he is a fisherman.
Then the millionaire asks "why aren't you out on the ocean fishing right now?"
The fisherman responds, "why should I be?"
"Because the day is still young, you still have a long time to catch more fish."
"Why should I want to catch more fish?"
"So you can sell them in the market and make more money."
"Why do I want more money?"
"So you can buy a bigger boat."
"Why do I need a bigger boat?"
"So you can go deeper into the ocean and catch more fish and make even more money."
"Why would I want to do that?"
"So that one day if you work very hard you will have enough money that you will not have to work anymore and you can just sit here on the beach and enjoy life."
The fisherman said, "but I am already doing that."

I like being busy and working hard, that is what makes me happy. But i still like this story because it makes you think about how skewed society has made the purpose of life. People make it seem like you must have money and success to be happy, but its not true. You just must find what makes you happy. Actually, its more like you must learn to be happy in what you find. there is no holy grail perfect life. I think people who go searching for happiness will never find it. The thing is that THIS IS LIFE, right now, and its going by faster than ever. Maybe you get another shot and maybe you don't, but either way you should definitely make the most of the time right now and find a way to be satisfied with the things you are doing. I think I am doing pretty well too, which is why I disagree with other Daoist teachings. Daoism is so passive. I agree that you should live simply and naturally, but I don't think that means you have to live "without action", because many times it is that action (successful or not) that gives me happiness. I am so happy with my life right now, I wouldn't change a thing. If anything, I just wish that I had more lives and more time so that I could take advantage of all the opportunities I am confronted with but don't have time to experience. Life is full of choices and I just wish you could get a few more goes so that the choice changed from yes or no to when.

Being in China has changed how I think about life and it has broadened what I view as "options". People say as you get older you have less and less opportunities and I don't know if that's true, but I feel like right now that life is full of endless opportunities which makes it impossible to know how your life is going to go. I know for the next two years I will be in Seattle finishing school. I am also am starting to work on this internship as an engineering consultant for big companies helping them figure out how to be more sustainable, which I'm really excited about it. But after that I have no idea. Maybe take a little time off school. Maybe go back home to U of M for grad school, maybe go to Iceland for grad school. Maybe start working as an engineer for a while before going back to school. Maybe something I can't even fathom right now, who knows. But that is too far in the future and life will probably change alot before then, no it will definitely change alot before then.
I came up with a metaphor for life the other day that I kind of like. Life is not a path, whoever came up with the metaphor that life is a path is lacking the imagination and sense of adventure that makes life worth living. Life is not even a bunch of paths that you have to choose from, Life is like bush whacking. Think about that for a while. I think it fits pretty well. Sometimes there are thick bushes, but the vistas make it all worth while........

3 weeks!!

2007-06-21T21:30:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone! I am back again and I have just 3 weeks left until I am back in the United States! I also bought my ticket from Seattle to Minneapolis and I will be back on July 17th at 11:00pm. It's very exciting but very scary too because I have a ton of stuff to do before I leave and no time at all. But, I'm not too far behind and going to Juizhaigou and traveling with Alex was definitely worth it! Back in Chengdu, Alex and I spent a fun-filled afternoon with Laura at the Wholesale market in the north. We explored the Chinese medicine market and stalls upon stalls of the same little stores selling bulk toothpaste, Chinese snacks, tea, alcohol, and various other amenities. We then wandered into the hotel supply store where we found the wholesale restaurant supply stores, a gold mine. Of particular interest was a watermelon knife that Laura bought which we had to try out that night, but we all left with loot. The next morning, on the 12th, Alex left and hopefully made it home OK and in time for jury duty, oh the American Legal System. I went to school that Tuesday, went to rugby, ran some errands, and wrote a ten-page paper for my women's studies class about Women in Ancient China all before hopping on a bus to Juizhaigou the next morning at 8:00am. The main road to Juizhaigou was taken out by a landslide so we took another one-lane road and were stuck in a tour bus traffic jam for the first 6 or so hours of the trip. 12 hours later I arrived in Juizhaigou and found the rest of the UW group. The next week or so flew by in a whirl wind of field research and I was so happy to have the opportunity to participate. The research is a collaborative effort between the park science department, Chuan Da, and UW and there were professors, students, and park employees all working together on interdisciplinary projects focusing on understanding past, current, and future human impacts on the park and surrounding natural environments. I helped out mainly with the ecology and geology teams; other teams were wetlands - mapping the wetlands in the park, anthropology - talking with people about preserving traditional practices, especially in relation to the environment, archeology - self explanatory, and bamboo - trying to understand the regrowth of bamboo in the park, which is also a habitat for the giant panda. I helped set up plots to record plant presence and diversity with in the park and helped map terraces that have been occurring in the park, possibly as a secondary result of human activity. I learned so much about different fields of research and really enjoyed working with everyone. It was a great experience all around. In other exciting news, I came home to discover Laura's sister gave birth to her 3rd child, Cruz Emmanuel Lopez who is cute as a button. Congratulations are definitely in order! Also another reason to be excited to go home and another reminder that time, in fact, does not stand still while we are here and many things can happen in a year.
I got back tonight and am starting on my mile-long list. Blog, check. Write more later if anything else interesting happens.....i mean when :)!

Yunnan: Part 2

2007-06-11T15:29:00.001+08:00

PART 2:

We left Lejiang via minibus on Friday morning for Lugu Hu Llake. The bus ride was crazy - it was supposed to take maybe 7 hours according to our book, but I am guessing that if you measured the distance as the crow flies from Lijiang, it was probably 60 miles away. We had to take this small road winding up and down mountains the entire way and most of the time it was all cobblestones, which made for an interesting ride (read: longest and bumpiest bus ride ever). The scenery was amazing though, we drove through some of the poorest parts of China, through the mountains, and it was crazy to see where people were trying to farm. We also didn't realize that the bus we took was going to stop all the time - at scenic overlooks, for lunch, etc. When we got to the lake but not all the way to the town we were going to, Lige, we stopped for 2 HOURS while two couples from our bus wanted to go out in a canoe type boat to some island. Sarah and I were pissed because the entire bus had to just wait for these people and the driver wouldn’t just take us to the town and come back. Sarah says that's just China for you, and logic isn't really one of the Chinese strong points.

Lige (lee-guh) was also a little weird - we read about it in our book as one of the quaint little towns on the shore, but it seems like in the time since that was written, Chinese tourism has taken over and they tore down the entire town to build a newer version of the same thing. So that means that the ENTIRE town was new buildings and everything seemed half finished, but already open for business. The scenery once again, was its saving grace. The lake is very blue, and surrounded by mountains and not much of any development.

We had one of our best meals in China on Friday night, of traditional Mosu dishes. Alas, something in it didn't seem to like me because I spent all day Saturday being sick. It wasn’t very fun, especially since Sarah and I wanted to spend the day playing in the lake. For some reason Sarah didn't get sick, but she's been living here awhile so was probably immune. Sarah did go out and explore while I tried to recover, and she also did some swimming in the lake. I picked a good day to get sick though, since the next day we would be traveling again.

Sunday I felt better and we set off on kind of an adventure to get back to Chengdu. We asked around and were told to go stand on the road and wave down the bus on its way to Yan Yuan, which comes by “some time after 10am.” We were a little nervous about making the bus, since it all seemed so chancy, but sure enough, around 10:20 we flagged the bus down heading to Yan Yuan. Three hours later we boarded another bus to Xichang, where we planned to catch the overnight train back to Chengdu. Sarah knew someone there who had reserved us tickets for the train, so we just had to pick them up when we got there. Everything worked out surprisingly well, and our timing was perfect – we got back to Sarah’s apartment around 6:30 this morning. Sarah made it to class for the first time in a couple weeks while I went back to sleep! It is my last day in China, and I’m not sure yet what we will do, though tonight we are going out with the UW students for one last supper that will hopefully not make me sick!

Yunnan: Part 1

2007-06-11T15:01:00.000+08:00

This is Alex again, I am going to divide this final blog in to 2 parts since apparently I made my last entry too long! (sorry Taylor).
Part 1: We left Chengdu last Sunday on an overnight train to Kunming, in the Yunnan province. The train was quite an experience - we slept in hard sleeper which is a bed, but they are stacked 3 high and not in private cabins. It wasn't too bad - we had the top bunks so we kind of could escape from everyone staring at us, though we couldn’t sit up all the way. We got to Kunming on Monday morning and immediately found a bus to Dali, which was our final destination for the day. The "bus" was more like a packed van and it was a LONG five hour trip. When we got there, we actually got dropped off in “new” Dali, i.e. Xiaguan, and we had to take another bus to the old part of Dali. The town itself was pretty cool - cobblestone streets and nice shops and restaurants. Dali used to be surrounded by a wall but only really the gates are left.

There were a lot of westerners in Dali and they looked more like they belonged at Woodstock, sporting long dreadlocks, shapeless clothes, bare feet, etc. I'm not really sure why they were there...maybe preparing for a sojourn to Tibet? Obviously the residents of Dali had taken note because all the shops sold things you expect in some pot shop. Furthermore, all these old women dressed in Bai (an ethnicity) clothing keep asking us if we wanted to buy pot from them. It was very disconcerting; don't worry, we passed.

From Dali we took another bus to Lijiang and this one kept stopping at random places and letting people off/picking them up. The old part of Lijiang was cool as well, full of winding cobblestone streets and old buildings. However, yet again, Chinese tourism at its best, the place was packed with shops selling the same thing and had a lot more Chinese tour groups there then Dali. This means that Sarah and I felt like zoo animals whenever we were around them because they all stare and try to take our picture. One day we got a ride to Baisha, which was supposed to be a cool town north of Lejiang. It was pretty cool, just another little old town, but still touristy and people trying to sell us stuff all the time. Sarah wanted to see some frescos we had read about in the book, so we went to see those in Baisha – they were probably really pretty once but had been pretty much destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

We decided to walk home from Baisha by wandering around through the countryside in the general direction of Lijiang. I think that has been my favorite part of China, walking through the country where there is no tourism. All the farmers were threshing their wheat, and they seem so shocked to see a westerner off the beaten trail. It is interesting that here you only see old/middle aged men, but mostly women, in the fields working the crops because all the young people have gone to the cities to find jobs. It makes me wonder who is going to farm when these people are too old to keep farming.

The pictures do not have anything to do with what Alex wrote, I just like them so here is a short explanation of each: (1) famous three pagodas in Dali, (2) Alex walking/wandering outside Dali, (3) our hostel called "Tibet Lodge" or something like that on one of the busiest streets in Dali, very good people watching, (4) Alex and I in front of the famed ancient water wheel in Lijiang, (5) Naxi script, one of the last pictographic scripts left in use today, (6) batik (a special kind of one-color dyed cloth) being made in Lijiang.

Hong Kong is Another Country, Literally.

2007-06-02T10:24:00.000+08:00

Hey everyone, this is Alex contributing to Sarah's blog while I am here in China. I have been here almost 2 weeks now, and am having a lot of fun, though it could stand to be a little cooler!

Before our trip to Hong Kong, we went to see the Chengdu pandas, which was pretty exciting. I have seen pandas at the National Zoo in DC, but it was really fun to see so many pandas all at once, and all the babies as well.

We left last Friday for Guangzhou with Sarah's rugby team to play in a tournament and I was immediately amazed by all the white people in China. There were 6 men's teams there and 3 girl's teams, though the Chengdu girls didn't have enough for a whole team so they mixed in to the other 2 teams. It was POURING rain all day, which helped with the heat, but also made the rugby pitch a giant mud puddle. I of course couldn't play, but I had a lot of fun taking pictures and watching them all play in the mud, though I was a little jealous! The men's Chengdu team did really well, placing 2nd overall.

Sarah and I left the rugby team and Guangzhou the next day and took the train to Hong Kong. We stayed at the YMCA for pretty cheap and were really close to the water - look up a map of Hong Kong and it makes it more clear. We were right next door to the Peninsula, a fancy hotel that is the place where people used to stay before heading out on the Orient Express. Hong Kong was definitely different from Chengdu and Guangzhou - there were designer stores EVERYWHERE and the prices were much more expensive. There were also a lot more westerners so we didn't feel so stared at. On Monday we walked down the "Golden Mile" which is the main street in Kowloon, and wound up at the Jade market. We knew there would be lots of fake jade but we did our best to look for some quality jewelry. They are always willing to bargain though, which is interesting, and we ended up making some purchases that we hope are real. But you know, real or not, it is still pretty.

On Tuesday we set off for the beach on the eastern coast of Hong Kong, north of the city (Kowloon). We had read about this beach in our book, and it involved taking the train, then 2 different buses followed by a lengthy walk along the Machelhose Trail, so we figured its description of "remote" was probably accurate, and something that appealed to us. The directions from our guide book were really good, and so we made it to the trail pretty easily. The Machelhose Trail runs across the entire width of northern HK, and total is 60 miles - we walked the very last bit, which we guessed was a few miles and through the mountains, which made for some hilly walking. The entire trail, however, was paved in cement and had street lamps every so often, which struck Sarah and I as extremely odd since we didn't see a single person and the "towns" we went through consisted of a couple groups of abandoned and dilapidated houses in the middle of nowhere.

It took us about an hour and a half on the trail to get to the beach, and once we got there it was worth the extremely sweaty walk (the temperature was probably in the 90s). The beach was in Tai Lan Wan and was amazing - it is the kind of beach you dream about - white sand, blue ocean, green mountains, not a sign of civilization in sight, not even other people. Plus it was hot and sunny! The strangest thing was that we kept seeing these bulls running around, apparently without owners? They even showed up on the beach while we were there, and looked like they were enjoying themselves.
We spend the afternoon at the beach and then walked home in the evening so the walk was cooler and didn't seem so bad. We had to switch buses in a town called Sai Kung, and we decided to eat dinner there before catching the next bus back to the city. Sarah and I thought that there were probably a lot of rich Europeans who visited/lived nearby the town because the harbor was filled with Yachts and the restaurants along the water were really fancy seafood places. The did have cool huge fish tanks outside every restaurant with all of you choices for dinner I suppose. We chose a smaller restaurant that had Italian-ish food and ate outside - the food was actually really good and satisfying after our day at the beach.

Wednesday we woke up and took the "ferry" to Macau. I say "ferry" because we soon realized it was more like a boat airplane with assigned seats inside an air conditioned (i.e. ICE COLD) cabin. Regardless, we got to Macau in about an hour and once again got more passport stamps. Macau was not quite as we expected - after getting off the ferry you are greeted by the Asian Las Vegas strip - endless glitzy casinos. We wanted to go to Macau because we had read about its Portuguese colonial houses and Chinese/Portuguese food. We got out of the casinos and wandered around until we found the old part of town, which had a nice big square and some pretty buildings, more like what we expected. We also had to get new money, because like Hong Kong, Macau has it's own kind of money.

After exploring a bit we walked along the water to this hotel Sarah had read about that was a former army fort. We had been told to "have a drink on the terrace" and so that was what we did - we had iced coffee because once again, it was HOT and we were sweaty from walking around. After our refreshing drink we did some more walking, visiting the Ah Ma Temple, and afterwards picked a restaurant to try the famous food. Sarah got Bacalhau, Portoguese dry salted cod and I got "African" chicken, both specialties in Macau. We were also very excited about the warm bread, since good bread is scarce in China.

Thursday we spent the day across Victoria Harbor on Hong Kong Island where most of the skyscrapers are, as well as more designer stores. We first sought out Dim Sum, which the region is known for. They walk around with trays of little Chinese hors d'ouvres type food and you just pick what you want to eat with your tea. The place we went was really good and Sarah and I tried a lot of different kinds of food, all of which was delicious.

After eating we visited the longest escalator in the world, which if you didn't know, is outdoors and goes uphill in the middle of Hong Kong. We rode all the way up to the top, and it really is long, though I was somewhat disappointed because it is not continuous, it is more like a bunch of normal escalators in a row.

Once at the top we decided to head over to Victoria Peak, which is one of the most famous places in HK and to get to the top you take this really old funicular. On the way to the tram we went through the HK zoo, which was small but OK, we saw a bunch of kinds of monkeys and apes, and they all looked pretty healthy. We rode up the funicular to the peak and it was fun but kind of scary since it was REALLY steep but they've been doing it for over 100 years so we figured they knew what they were doing! The top of the peak was a little touristy for Sarah and me, I have learned so far in China that any chance to put a mall and shops somewhere, they will. We took a walk along the old loop road that circled the peak, and it was a nice way to get away from the tourists and enjoy the view.

We wanted to leave Thursday afternoon because Sarah had a presentation Friday morning that she wanted to be home for, so next we took the train back to Guangzhou. I guess now we should have been more suspicious of all the stamps we got in our passports, because on arriving to Guangzhou and going through customs, I was told I was not allowed to come "in to China." Since we had a flight from Guangzhou to Chengdu Sarah had run ahead to try find a cab, so did not realize I had not made it through customs. See, we were under the impression that when they say HK is now part of China (it has been 10 years now since it came back from Britain) that by going to HK we would not be leaving the country, and therefore my VISA would still let me back to the rest of China. However, arguing with customs officials, especially in China, is pointless and they told me I had to immediately go back to HK. They also said that if I was from another country, like Canada, I would be allowed to stay and apply for a new VISA there, but because the USA doesn't let the Chinese do this, that the Chinese do not let Americans stay and apply there. So at this point i was freaking out because Sarah had no idea what was going on and I had no way to go find her. They kept bringing me around to other people and to the train, saying I had to buy a ticket and leave, but I kept trying to relate to them I wasn't alone and had to find Sarah. Finally Sarah came back and saw us and found out what was going on. We really couldn't do anything though and so had to get back on the train we had just gotten off of, and go 2 hours back to HK, where they welcomed us with open arms. By this time it was 11pm, and all we wanted to do was go to sleep, so we found a hotel close to the building where we would have to go in the morning to see about a VISA.

We got there in the morning and all I can say is thank god this happened on Thursday because otherwise we would have had to wait in HK over the weekend. We got there early enough in the morning so I could choose the rush service and go back in the afternoon to pick up my new VISA. Sarah and I spent the day just hanging out - it was really hot and sunny again, and after I picked up my VISA we once again attempted to go "back" to China.
We successfully made it through, exactly 24 hours later, and took a cab to the Guangzhou airport, where we knew we would have another potential battle awaiting us over missing our previous flight. We got there around 9pm and the lady told us the next flight to Chengdu was not until the following afternoon, at which point we wanted to cry. But then she asked some other guy and said they could get us on the 9:10 flight with only an extra supplemental fee. The lady was really excited and so were we, because we just wanted to get home - we got our tickets and SPRINTED through the airport - thank god airport security is not so strict in China because we just carried our bags full of shampoo and other liquids without a problem and made it on to the flight. 2 hours later, we were back to Chengdu, and soon after we were asleep at Sarah's apartment.

This is China.... the photo collection

2007-05-21T21:24:00.000+08:00

After the unfortunate-ness that was Friday night, this weekend was great and this week looks like its only going to get better. Saturday I slept in (with the lack of an alarm because it is on my phone) and was semi-productive in the morning. At noon I decided to reward myself and go for a run, then I met Deborah and Ben at the Bookworm for a Photo Scavenger Hunt that my friend Ashley organized. There was a long list of things we had to find, including best pet fashion statement, elevator without a 4th floor, biggest crowd of gawkers, most bicycles being ridden in one picture, best decorated 3-wheeler, busiest Internet bar, "Cheng ren yong pin" ("Adult Items") Shop with the most customers, most exotic fruit, nastiest shao kao (street-side grilled meat and vegetables), most outrageous item being transported by bike, license plate from the most distant province, best "Chinglish" sign, an ear cleaner in action, best Chinese slogan on public display, most absurd photo of your team, craziest/weirdest thing you see today, a building that (according to national statistics) was erected in 1680 and serves a local population of 40,240 people, an object around which security was heightened after an incident that occurred in Beijing a week ago, and the "best" example of the public service that Chengdu Municipality recently stopped charging 0.2RMB per use for. We only had 2 hours to get all the photos and we did not get all of them, but we had an excellent time. See if you can guess which picture goes with which category.
After we got back I had to run before they could announce the results (we didn't win I now know) because I told Huangjie I would come to swimming. When I got there she asked me "Where's your phone?" and I started into the "I still don't know, I'm going to try again on Monday, blah, blah, blah" and then she says "In my bag." I was so excited I could have kissed her. Apparently she had tried to call my phone again this morning and the guy answered and she went to pick it up for me. I told her I was SO grateful and so sorry I couldn't go out with her to pick it up and that she was the best friend ever and that I would have died in China long ago if it wasn't for her, which is all true. So I have my phone back! Yay! It was a beautiful today, and although it felt good to get in the water, there were A MILLION people there so it was really annoying to swim. After swimming Huangjie, her friend from the bank, her friend's husband and three friends of theirs, Andrea, Laura, Deborah, and I all went to Huangjie's friend's coffee shop for Spaghetti and coffee. We couldn't all sit together because the tables weren't big enough, but it was really fun to just hang out with the girls and all the food was delicious. They even served us steak! Deborah also told us that you could rub the white part of the watermelon rind on your skin and it would make your skin nice, which (to her dismay) we all took great pleasure in trying for ourselves at the table. And it does feel excellent, I highly recommend it. Deb recommends it in the privacy of your own home. I feel like its up to your own discretion.
The next day I went with Laura to a performance put on by the disabled association in Chengdu, which some of her sign language friends were performing in. Different groups performed Tibetan dancing and signing, Kung fu, contemporary dancing and signing, and the like. I was really impressed. However, it was REALLY HOT. Just sitting and watching (it was outside) we were sweating buckets! Then we went to a tea house for some study time before I went to rugby and she went to sign language class. I played scrabble after rugby, like always, but I didn't win. I didn't lose either though, so that's OK.
Now I am just looking forward for Alex to come tomorrow night! I am going to try to go to the Orthodontist as well tomorrow because my bottom retainer came loose on one side last week and I found out the location of a good Orthodontist here in Chengdu, so wish me luck. Well, now I am going to sleep in this sweltering heat. I need to buy a fan. Good night.

Some days are like that, ESPECIALLY in China

2007-05-19T09:00:00.000+08:00

So maybe today wasn't a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day", but it wasn't that good either. The rest of the week was pretty good. I have been getting my midterms back this week and have done reasonably well on the ones I've seen so far. Some better, some just OK. But they are just midterms, so I'll just do better on finals. This week some of the other rugby girls and I have started to learn contact rugby, which is really fun! Penny (the little girl in the center) and I were thinking about trying to play on some of the other girls' teams that will be playing down in Guangzhou. The guy who is teaching us, a really nice guy named Mike, says he thinks we'll be ready. This is us setting up a scrum. My job on the side is just to push against the other teams front line to give Penny (as the hooker) position on the ball. I can't say I understand all the rules yet, but I'm going to watch some rugby on TV with Mike and I'm sure some other guys on Saturday night so they can explain while we watch. It's hard to explain unless you are watching at the same time.
I worked at DeYang for the last time on Friday. I am just too busy the rest of the two month I am here. So Matthew is going to go instead of me for the last time or two. Plus, I'm kind of sick of it. I don't really like teaching. The weather here has been hot, but beautiful and sunny everyday. And there are butterflies everywhere! I have never seen so many butterflies so frequently ever. It's really nice, it just makes you smile. These are some pictures I took in DeYang on the playground during lunch.
So now for the bad news. It started as soon as I got out of the car after teaching in DeYang. I realized I left my cell phone in the driver's car. I should be able to get it back because I have the same guy drive me every time, but it is just really troublesome. I tried calling my cell phone hoping he would answer it and we could arrange for me to get it back, but I'll just have to go to the foreign school office on Monday to see if they have his phone number, since of course I didn't write it down, it's only on my phone. After they drop me off at the bus station I take the bus back home to my house and when I got back to my house I realized I had also forgotten my house key today. I take off my house key when I run in the morning (to take it with me) and I had forgotten to put it back on my key chain this morning. No one was home so I also had no way to get into my house. And I had no way to call anyone, like Laura, to let me in or even see when she would be home. Before when this has happened I have asked our neighbors to let me walk through their house, jump over the fence separating our back patio areas, and then climb through Laura's window to get in, but I decided since I had my bike and swimming locker key I would go swimming first before I resorted to that. Also, I still hadn't called my phone at this point and I wanted to find someone's phone I could use as soon as possible to see if the driver had found it and would pick it up to see if I could get it back tonight. I got to the pool and used Huangjie's phone, but as I said before he didn't answer. I went swimming and thought about what I should do. To make matters worse, I was supposed to go to a birthday party for two of the SU students that evening but I didn't know where it was and I didn't have anyone's phone number. After swimming, which made me feel much better, I decided to go home to see if Laura was there. When I got home Laura was not there, but luckily Li Juan was so I didn't have to ask our neighbors to let me climb through their house again. I made myself dinner are because I wasn't going to get to go to the birthday party tried to get some stuff done last night. Unfortunately, that also didn't really work. But, today is another day. Because my phone is my alarm clock, I slept in this morning, which felt good. Although that only means 7am for me, it felt good to wake up naturally. Now I am actually being productive and listening to the twins, who are WINNING! So hopefully this weekend will be fun and I will get my phone back on Monday. Also, this picture just makes me smile. The right is the baby of a family we met in Tashkurgan when we were in Xinjiang. The left is obviously Maggie's nemesis on the Simpson's. The resemblance is uncanny. Eoin made this picture and sent it to me and I just thought you all would enjoy it. I do.

Post Office Adventures

2007-05-14T20:21:00.000+08:00

For the past few weeks Laura and I have been working on sending boxes home with winter clothes and some other things so we don't have so much to take back home on the plane. As most tasks in China are, this has proved to be much more difficult than we originally thought. First we went to the post office by our house and bought big boxes. However, the biggest boxes they have are only about 14" x 8" x 20" and I have a big bamboo basket that I wanted to send home that would not fit. I told them that I wanted to send the basket back to the US and it would not fit in any of their boxes and asked them what I should do. They said that if I found a box big enough I could just pack it in that and it would be fine. Satisfied, we took our boxes home. After searching for a big enough box for several days I finally got one from Deborah that her washing machine had come in. So we packed our boxes up and Saturday morning set out to the post office to mail it home. I was a little worried about how much mine would cost because my box was pretty big, about a 2' cube, and kind of heavy. We carried our boxes all the way to the front gate of our living area and got asked by two people if we were moving. We said no, we were just sending things home.
At the front gate we asked the guards to let us borrow the rusty shopping cart that they have for people to use to cart things from the gate to their houses. When we told them we wanted to bring it outside and we would bring it right back they looked utterly confused, but said OK and we walked quickly away before they could change their minds. So here we are, two waiguoren (foreigners) with a rusty shopping cart full of two giant boxes rolling down the bike lane. Everybody was starring, i am surprised we didn't cause an accident. They all thought we were nuts, even more than usual. We finally make it the 1/2 a mile or so to the post office and carry our boxes in just to be starred at in disbelief and then told that we couldn't send our boxes at this post office because it was only a domestic post office. I couldn't believe it. I think they just told us that because they didn't want to have to deal with us. But even if it was true, why didn't they tell us when we came in to by the boxes? I guess in China you have to ask the right questions, people never offer helpful information of their own accord. They were probably just trying to mess with us and had a good laugh about it after we left. It's just one of those things that is so absurd you can't get upset about it, you just have to laugh about how ridiculous it is. We asked them where we could go to send our boxes and they did manage to tell us that the Jiuyan Bridge Post Office could send international packages, so Monday afternoon we continued our quest. We again carried our boxes down the stairs, past all our confused neighbors, to the gate where we again borrowed the cart. This time the guards were a little more hesitant to let us borrow it and reminded us many times that we had to bring it back. So then we rolled our packages the mile or so down to the bridge post office. This time we almost did cause an accident because people kept slowing down to stare at us. I kept getting this passive aggressive urge to ram the cart into their cars, but I was able to control myself. We finally made it to the post office and carried our boxes in. The post office workers, at first, didn't know what to make of us. They told me that my box was too big and there was no way to send it. I explained that I had a big basket inside that didn't fit in their boxes and another post office told me if I found a big box that would fit it that would be OK. They told me that the other post office didn't know what they were talking about and there was "mei you ban fa" (no way). I kept arguing that I had to send all the things home because I couldn't take it all back on the plane and they asked me if I really wanted the basket and I said of course otherwise why would I be going through all this trouble to send it and finally they decided that they would have to turn my box inside out since there was writing on the outside, but then it would be OK. So I unpacked my box in the middle of the post office and they took the box apart and rebuilt it inside out. Then I repacked it and we sealed it up. So I ended up being able to send it and it was alot cheaper than I would have thought, only 531 kuai for a HUGE 22 kg box. I just hope it makes it. Laura and I left feeling very proud of ourselves that we finally accomplished this surprisingly daunting task and argued our way to get exactly what we wanted. It just goes to show that the rules in China are flexible. "Mei you ban fa" really means "I don't really want to" and if you argue long enough they probably are able to find a way. Now Laura and I want to go back and argue with the people at the post office by our house to see if they really can send internationally and were just messing with us. I hope this argumentativeness doesn't come back with me to the States though, because I don't think it would go over very well in our culture. So, after alot of mafan (trouble) we finally achieved success, which is the way it usually goes in China. Things may be 8 times more complicated and confusing, but in the end you will find a way to get it done.

Mother's Day

2007-05-13T23:37:00.000+08:00

I had a week full of midterms this week, which was a little stressful but all in all turned out OK. I don't know any of my grades yet, but they all seemed like they went OK. I had three tests and one outside essay that I had to write. The essay was for my Chinese Studies class (in Chinese) and was on China's Population Problem. It was only 400 characters but it is still the first essay I have ever written in Chinese so it was kind of exciting. This Saturday we also had a rugby game, the Shanghai "Hairy Crabs" came over for a match. We played at a really nice pitch with real grass and it was a beautiful day to be outside. First there was a men's contact game that we watched, which was cool to see. It was the first time I had ever seen contact rugby being played up close. There was only a split lip and a twisted knee, but other than that no injuries which considering everyone's fitness level, is a blessing. The Chengdu Black and Whites won by a long shot, but the Shanghai guys were actually two teams, Shanghai and Nantong University, and even then they only had 8 men, so they had to borrow some. The Shanghai team didn't bring a women's team either so instead we had mixed touch rugby games after. They were short (10 minute halves) and you played with a team of people who had never really played together before so it was a little chaotic, but fun none the less. I just wish it would have been longer and more competitive. The women's team, the "Ruckin' Reds" (Reds for Red Panda) also got new jerseys for the occasion (even though we didn't end up having a real game). But the jersey's are sweet anyways. After the games we all went over to Shamrock Bar for dinner, prizes, and celebration. Apparently there are rugby songs that some of the guys were singing and it was very re nao (loud and exciting). The next morning the UW crew and I left for SanXinDui museum. SanXinDui is the counterpart to the JinSha Museum that I went to earlier with Huangjie. It is an archaeological site in SanXinDui town (hence the name of the find) that uncovered these marvelous ancient Shu relics that no one had ever really seen before. On top of that everyone thought for a long time that Chinese history originated on the banks of the Yellow River and spread outward, but these relics are from way earlier and very different from other pieces found along the Yellow River from the same time period so it seems like the two places may have been developing simultaneously. The most striking things at SanXinDui were these bronze cast masks, some a meter across and some as small as a thimble. They also had beautiful bronze cast statues of different kinds of animals and trees (that look alot like coat racks to me). The museum itself was really nice too. Beautiful, new, interesting buildings set in a lovely park with a lake. After we got out of the museum we spent some time just sitting in the grass by the lake because that is something you don't get to do alot in China. It was really nice and made me realize how much I miss nature.

Xinjiang: Journey to the Desert

2007-05-07T09:40:00.000+08:00

Xinjiang was amazing. The culture was so different from the rest of China, it was like a whole different country. Most of the people we ran into were Uygur (Wee-ger), who look much more Middle-Eastern, speak the Uygur language which is a Turkish-based language that is written in an Arabic script, and are Muslim. We flew out of Chengdu Sunday night and arrived in Urumqi, which is the most land-locked large city, around 9pm. We took a cab to our hostel, which was dorm style with 5 bunk beds to a room but nowhere near full. I purchased a map from the guy at the front desk and we set off for the night market in the center of the city. The night market was alot like the one we went to in Xi'an, very lively and delicious. There was grilled everything, lots of dried and fresh fruit, nan, and noodles. Most people there didn't speak Chinese as their first language either, and although we felt more like tourists than in Chengdu, we definitely felt less haggled too, which was nice for a change. We slept well that night and got up early the next morning to go meet up with Heather and Rodney Gale, Barbara's (the UW PhD student here working on livestock in Yangjuan) aunt and uncle who we met one time and are in Xinjiang on a 5-year project with the Canadian government also working on livestock and veterinary medicine. We met them at their house and on the way back to the city decided to stop at the train station to see when we could get tickets out. It turned out the fast train leaving that evening was sold out but we could get tickets on the slow train leaving that afternoon at 1:30pm. We had just enough time to go back and get our stuff from their house before getting on the train, but we were ready to be on to the next part of our journey. Although Urumqi was interesting, there isn't alot to do there and compared to the rest of Xinjiang it is alot like any other Chinese city. Before leaving this grad student of Heather and Rodney's who was helping us buy the tickets took us to lunch of a Uygur staple, polo and lamb kabobs. Polo is like fried rice with carrots and lamb and is very heavy and rich. So the four of us embarked on our 30-hour train journey to Kashgar on the other side of the Taklimakan Desert. The train was long, hot, and dusty. The Chinese people on the train kept closing the windows because of the dust and we kept re-opening them because we just needed the air flow. It was a constant battle. But it was really interesting to see the desert stretching out for miles and miles, it really gave you an idea of how remote you were. We arrived in Kashgar the next evening at about 8pm and found our way to the "foreigner hotel" that used to be where the British Consulate was. Our building was under construction and the 4 of us shared a 3 person room, but it was fine and inexpensive, as well as convenient since it was the place to organize tours outside of the city. We also had big windows that opened to a wonderful view of the city. You can see the brown, brick construction of the old city behind our hotel. Everything here looked different. That night we went to get dinner at the Kashgar night market. As we walked the streets, you could see the difference in the cities and culture right away. The Uygur culture was so vibrant here, there were practically no Han people and even less tourists. Everyone wore head scarves or hats and these beautiful sparkly outfits with long sleeves. We wore long pants and t-shirts and felt comfortable not covering our head when we walked around (since we were so obviously foreign). The night market was so much more fun than the one in Urumqi as well, since it was really active for the local people, not tourists. The merchants all had these carts of food and then would set out benches around their stand where you could sit and eat. Everything was served with real glass plates and cups that you would return when you were finished. The array of food was amazing as well. Aside from nan, grilled meet, and assorted varieties of dried fruit and fresh melon, there were also cold noodles, fried fish, a hand-made vanilla ice cream, pomegranate juice, and a variety of yogurt based ice drinks sweetened with honey or plain. There were also a variety of shops along all the streets selling spices, Muslim hats of all shapes and sizes, as well as fur hats. Laura and I felt compelled to buy sheep hats which I think will be perfect for winter and still smell like sheep a little.
The next morning we headed off for the "Sunday market" area of town, which is like a farmer's market and whole-sale market in one. Kashgar is located on the old silk road and has developed from a trading village were people from all the surrounding countries would gather together to buy and sell there wares. This tradition still continues today and you can see things that have come from all over eastern Europe on sale. On Sunday is the biggest day and tens of thousands of people will come from all around the silk road to buy and sell there wares. This was just the weekday, but still the range of things was amazing. There were Oriental rugs, carved wooden trunks and furniture, lots of wrought iron things, kitchen utensils, clothes, drapes, more wool, scarves of every shape and kind, and the famed Uygur knives. I bought a few scarves and helped Ben pick out some Uygur knives for Matt, who had sent us on a quest for them since he couldn't come himself. Then we wandered our way through the old town back to the Mosque, which is the largest in China. We decided to cover our heads to go in here and took off our shoes to walk inside the building itself. Although it was not that big, it was a beautiful building set in lovely grounds with trees and a pond. I particularly liked that some of the praying areas were outside. I think if I were to pray, I would like to pray outside too. Then we met up with two friends I have from rugby, Eoin and Megan. They both work in Chengdu for this plastics manufacturing company and just happened to be traveling in Xinjiang for this holiday as well. After 15 minutes of walking around we were told that we had to leave the Mosque because it was time for prayer. As we were leaving we saw a group of people carrying in what looked like a casket, so it may have been a funeral, though I am not sure. From there we made our way to the People's park which (of course) had a giant statue of Mao and then to a large tomb on the outskirts of town. The tomb was a complex of a few buildings with beautiful tile work with a cemetery behind. On the way out of the tomb we stopped at a tea house on the side of a man-made pond to rest in the heat of the afternoon. We sat on these wooden bed frames with a small table in the center and drank Green tea laced with rose petals and nutmeg, a Xinjiang specialty. That afternoon we went back to the hotel and made plans for the 6 of us to go to Tashkurgan and Karakul Lake the next day. Excited for our travels the next day, we went out to get dinner at a local Uygur restaurant. We ordered a personal favorite, Da Pan Ji (literally translated big chicken plate), fish, and Doner kabab. We were told by Eoin that Doner kabab, in Europe anyway, is something that sounds very similar to a gyro. This, however, was not that. It was large hunks of lamb that were roasted on this weird cast-iron sculpture thing. It was very hot in Kashgar and we decided the perfect thing would be to find a place where we could sit outside on the street with some cold beers. Most of the restaurants here are Muslim, so do not serve alcohol, but we managed to find a sweet yogurt place that also served Xinjiang brand beer and sat down. Several minutes after sitting down on the benches surrounding the little cart, the owner guy turned on this 80's techno music and one of the Uygur men frequenting the place started dancing. So of course, Eoin, Megan, Ben and I decided to join him. When the techno tape ran out, they switched to Uygur music and taught us how to dance Uygur-style, which is an arm-waving, belly-dancing type of dance with lots of walking around in circles. Before long we of course gathered a crowd and other guys started joining in the dancing. It was not too hard to learn and so fun! After an hour or two the owner guy decided he wanted to close and so we walked home after many goodbyes to our new Uygur friends.
We left early the next morning towards the Pakistani border to the Tajik town of Tashkurgan. The Tajik, Uygur, Kazak, and Kyrgiz people who reside in this area were all formerly nomadic herdsmen who lived in yurts. Today, this practice has developed into living in the summer in a yurt out in the pasture with the animals and in the winter returning to the city where you have a regular stone house. So still, white yurts of the herders dotted the landscape as we drove into Tashkurgan. The people here spoke Tajik and some Uygur, but no Chinese. Luckily, we had a guide who helped us communicate. In Tashkurgan we toured the ruins of an old stone fortress and went to a Tajik family's house. The stone fortress was cool and fun to play on. Laura and I both found cool rocks. The Tajik family house, however, was a little more like "look at this quaint little Tajik family" and felt a little exploitive. I asked our guide if the family "felt Chinese" at all since they didn't even speak Chinese, but still had the customary picture of Mao on the wall. His response seemed equally dictated, "of course." Then we drove back to Karakul Lake, which was absolutely stunning. It is high up in the mountains (3600m) and you pull off the road to an area where there are about 7 yurts and a bunch of horses and camels situated on the side of lake. We decided not to ride the camels and just to walk around the lake. We made it half way and I talked Ben, Eoin, and Megan into climbing the mountain on the side of the lake. It was a pretty steep climb, especially at altitude, but we all made it and the view was worth it!
We stayed in a yurt that night and they served us dinner and breakfast. It was cold at the lake and we slept curled in piles of think warm blankets on the floor. In the morning we had delicious milk tea and bagels, yes bagels. We decided we wanted to walk all the way around the lake that morning, since I had cut our last walk short with the mountain climb, but as we were leaving a guy asked me if I wanted to buy some hats. I was wearing my sheep hat, so I said I already had one, but Laura said she wanted to buy some more for presents for her sisters so we went to look at his. We sat down in his house and he pulls out this hat that is made from cat. His was too expensive, but Laura thought is was hilarious so he sent his little brother to go get some more we could look at. She ended up buying two lovely cat hats, one that apparently looks like a cat she had when she was a little girl. It's a little creepy, but they are pretty and soft. But I had to at least take a picture wearing one. We walked some more around the lake and then Eoin, Ben, and I decided to go for a swim. Everyone thought we were nuts because the water was really cold, but it felt good. The guy at the hotel had agreed that if we stayed in for 5 minutes we could have a free meal. We didn't get a free meal, but it was worth it anyways. Then we drove back to Kashgar. We got dinner at the little "Western" restaurant buy our hotel that wasn't that good but you could sit outside in this vine-covered veranda which was really pleasant. We got Chinese food, which was actually a welcome break from the Uygur which is good, but does not offer alot of variety. They also serve beer there, which was another plus. The next day was Ben's birthday as well, so we had to celebrate. The next morning Laura, Ben and I caught a sleeper bus back to Urumqi. Carly decided to fly, as did Eoin and Megan. The sleeper bus was not that bad. It was only 22 or so hours, so shorter than the train but you had to stay in your little bed and could not walk around. The beds were rather small as well, just big enough for me so if you are bigger than me I would not recommend it. But we made it back safely, got to the airport and flew back to Chengdu. Xinjiang was really one of the most interesting, amazing places I have been so far and really made me want to travel more. As soon as we got off the airplane I also noticed the difference in the manner of the Chinese people, yelling and staring and slightly brash. But none the less, I am happy to be home.

Money Matters

2007-04-26T14:27:00.000+08:00

Thank you all for your wishes of speedy recovery. I guess they worked since Matt is now out of the hospital and back at his own house, which is a relief for all of us. He was supposed to get out yesterday afternoon, but there were more money problems and he ended up having to stay another night until it was all worked out. The problem was, his insurance company faxed over the guarantee of payment and it asked if the hospital wanted a check or money order for payment and the hospital is only equipped to handle cash transactions. China seems so developed sometimes and then you run into problems like this and you remember what shambles their financial system is in right now and that they still have a ways to go. This is one of the best hospitals in Sichuan and our bill was upwards of 40,000 yuan and it still can only take cash. Luckily, the school was able to authorize payment (in cash) to the hospital, Matt's family will wire money to reimburse the school and then hopefully file a claim to get reimbursed from the insurance company. But at least he's out and on the way to recovery. However, unfortunately he will not be able to accompany Laura, Carly and I to Xinjiang this break. His doctors think it would be a bad idea because if it got infected there is nothing he could do in Xinjiang. He is inclined to listen to them and will be giving his ticket to Ben, another classmate who wanted to go but didn't know if the money would work out.
Yesterday my bike was stolen as well from outside the soccer field where we play rugby. There have been alot of bikes stolen recently because it is spring and I guess I just wasn't careful enough. Now I will always keep it where someone is watching it. Anyways, Laura and I went back to the stolen bike market today and bought a bike. It was, if possible, even more sketchy this time. We were approached right away by a guy who asked if we wanted to buy bicycles. After we said yes he lead us behind a building and through multiple back alleys and finally though a locked door where there were 5 or 6 nicer bikes set up. I told him that these bikes were too expensive and I just wanted to spend 100 kuai. So then another guy went out to find me a 100 kuai bicycle. It looked a little bit like my old bike, but is orange and has the word "GBBDP" - Laura and I think it stands for "Got Bike at Back Door Place". I still haven't thought of a name though. We got them to throw in a lock as well and then they convinced me to by another lock to put on the front wheel as well because that would make it harder to steal. I thought, they would know, and it was only 8 kuai so now I have two locks as well.
Other than that, it has been raining alot here. On Tuesday we went to quiz night again and Matt played from the hospital. We got 3rd place, which was pretty exciting.
But mostly I'm just excited to go to Xinjiang on Sunday!

The Broken Arm

2007-04-24T12:54:00.000+08:00

So this blog has a crazy title, but a lot has happened so let's start at the beginning. Saturday Huangjie and I went to a new museum that just opened up in Chengdu called JinSha. It is in northwest Chengdu and is the second archaeological site of an ancient civilization that has just been discovered on the banks of the Yangtze called the “SanXinDui” culture that is supposedly related to the Shu. The new culture is named after the first site that was discovered a few years ago not far from Chengdu. It is well known for large bronze and gold masks that are distinct to the culture. The museum was set in a little park and was very well done, and very Chinese. It had one building that was like a lot of the museums in Xian, where you could see the excavation site. The other museum was of all the things that had been dug out of the holes. One of the most amazing things was a solid gold disks that had four cut out birds around and sun in the middle. It is called "Sun Immortal Bird" and is representative of the importance of the sun in their culture. Some other really amazing artifacts were a beautiful gold crown , lots of carved jade and bronze things, some pretty rocks, and pottery. My favorite was elephant tusks that they found at the site as well which were huge and very impressive. I just love elephants and it makes you think about how much larger of a spread animals used to have in this world since there are definitely not elephants in Sichuan anymore and have not been for a very long time. They also found preserved wood in the ground that was 3000-10000 years old. It had all these little holes in it, but other than that just looked like really dense drift wood. They dug up some of the pieces and made this little "forest" thing that was really cool. After touring the museums we walked through the garden and I found another 4 leaf clover! I guess I just wasn't looking hard enough before. Then Huangjie took me out to lunch at a "bone soup" place that was actually really good. We got one that was like tomato soup with some little veggies in it and big shoulder socket bones. We also ordered this corn and egg thing that is fried and really crispy and light and looks like a wreath that I thought was really interesting. After that we went swimming then I went home. On Saturday night I met up with Mike and Dave again at the Sultan, which is this Middle Eastern restaurant a Pakistani guy I know named Jimmy owns to see a Turkish DJ and belly dancers. There weren’t really belly dancers, but another of my friends taught me how a little and it was really fun. Mike and Dave were leaving the next day for the next leg of their journey to Hong Kong and then back to the States. Sunday I went to play rugby as always. We got to the field at 1pm and after some drills split into guys and girls so we could practice playing as individual teams. At about 2pm we see a few of the guys run across our field back to where everyone's stuff is and we look over the field the men were playing on and everyone has stopped and gathered in a circle. I hear someone say "someone's hurt" and I look over and it's Matt. A minute later two guys are helping Matt walk back over to the bench and it is obvious Matt has broken both the bones in his right forearm (his arm is bent in a way that bones don't typically bend and it has broken the skin). Garth, who has a car, drives Matt, Eoin (an Irish guy that was the guy tackling Matt when it happened) and Xiao Mei (a Chinese girl going to translate) to Huaxi hospital and we all don't really know what to do, so we keep playing. After another hour we finish practice and I hop in the first car going back. On the way back we stopped at this guy Mike's factory. He is in China helping set up a factory to make MRI machines so we saw them making and testing the first MRI machine ever made in China and I learned how MRI's really work, which was very interesting. However, I was really worried about Matt this whole time and I just wanted to get to the hospital and make sure he was going to be OK. I finally got there and Matt was in a room on a bed and X-Rays had been taken (which they had to wait an hour for to be developed), but nothing besides that had happened. The arm was still in a cardboard sling that a guy on our team had put on when it first happened. By this time it was probably about 4:30 already. In the next hour three different doctors came by to look at it. The first doctor took off the sling and looked at the arm and the X-Rays then put it back on and went away. Then the next one came and took off the sling and looked at it with some nurses and then without putting anything back on just walked away. So I am standing there holding Matt because it really hurts and I don't want him to look down at his arm which has the forearm part hanging alot lower than the hand which he is holding with his other hand. It feels like we are waiting forever like this (maybe a few minutes in reality, but WAY TOO LONG) until someone finally comes back and they wrap it up again. Then the last doctor comes and says that he is just going to set it in a cast for now and then Matt will need surgery to re-set the bones in about a week. By this time many more people have arrived, one of them being a Western doctor who a guy from the rugby team brought over to help out. The Western doctor says "no, this surgery should happen now" and goes to talk to the doctors. We find out the whole reason they want to wait is so they can make sure that we pay before they perform the surgery, they essentially won't do anything until we pay them upfront. So I call Matt's mom (in the middle of the night in Seattle) and get Matt's insurance information and we try to get that rolling and decided we will do whatever it takes to have the surgery happen now. In the end it turns out the Western doctor convinced them that money would not be a problem and by calling the insurance company we were able to open a case as well, so at 7pm Matt finally went into surgery. It took 3 hours to finish and they screwed a metal plate to each of his bones to stabilize them. After the surgery I felt alot better, but it was just a very scary, stressful experience because you felt like you couldn't trust anything the doctors were telling you. Thank god the Western doctor came to help, but he left again after like an hour so we were on our own again (Andrea being the next most qualified person to make decisions). The level of care was just so much lower than anything you would ever receive in the States and whenever you tried to ask anyone a question they would never give you an answer. Like when we tried to ask how long Matt's surgery would take, they just said when it's done you'll know, which was the kind of responses we were getting all night. But after the surgery was done and we were back upstairs in a recovery room (with a few other patients too of course) I felt alot better because at least the break was secured now and I felt like the hard part was over. Andrea stayed the night with Matt and I got home at like 12:45am or so. The next day, Monday, after class I went right back to the hospital with some things for Matt, like movies, his computer, etc. Surgery in China is not like in the States and we had no idea how long he would have to stay there, so we were preparing for the long haul. When I got there that afternoon Matt was looking alot better, but very uncomfortable because his arm hurt alot and was swelling like MAD and they also had to put in a catheter. I stayed with Matt all afternoon. We had to have someone with him all the time because, aside from the fact that he doesn't speak Chinese and it's good to have moral support, in China it is BYO nurse. So while I was there I was in charge of alerting the nurse attending to our room when his IV was getting low and emptying the catheter every two hours. I also keep asking every doctor that came around (all two of them) if the swelling was normal because the wrapping seemed really tight and when we could take out the catheter and of course getting no answers. Matt asked me to take that picture of his arm, he has wanted me to document this for some reason. That evening I was relived and left for our customary UW meeting and to get dinner and then went back to stay the night. By the time I got back we had gotten the catheter out and the bandages changed (and loosened) so Matt was in much higher spirits. Plus he was finally sleeping, which was really good. He slept alot of the night, but unfortunately I did not. That's OK though, I didn't really expect to. I did homework and read and we watched a movie, "Time Bandits". Andrea came to relieve me at 7:30 so I could go to class. I just got home and ate lunch and now, although I am exhausted, I can't sleep. But I am laying in my bed as I write this and will hopefully try to get some rest, or at least go to sleep early tonight. I know I will crash at some point. We also just found out the Matt will be getting out of the hospital tomorrow, which is great. He has been so brave and great through this whole thing, I am so proud of him. It's scary enough to have this happen to you in the states and I remember how much it sucks. Having it happen in China I can't even imagine. Anyways, it has been an intense few days but it seems as though we are out of the woods. That's all for now, I'm going to try and get some sleep and I'll talk to you later. Bye .

......craziness........

2007-04-20T22:58:00.000+08:00

Summer has arrived in Chengdu and it is hot! On the plus side it has been clear and sunny as well, which more than makes up for the 27 (80) degree days and humidity. I'm just worried about it getting worse (i.e. hotter), but hopefully that won't happen for a while. And I went swimming on Wednesday which felt wonderful. People are already starting to talk about my dark skin because pale skin is the fashion here and my skin tans so fast. All the girls walk around with these weird visors and sun umbrellas, plus they are still wearing long sleeves. It's crazy!
I've been really busy since I got back from Xi'an too, compounded by the fact that Huangjie keeps inviting me to do all this stuff and I've started to feel bad about refusing all the time (the Minnesotan in me, or maybe just the people-pleaser). I made it through the week though (YAY!) and today i just got back from teaching again in Deyang. I decided that because last time's lesson went so well, I didn't have that much time to prepare, and they told me I would be teaching all new students I would just teach pretty much the same class. With the exception of singing "Old McDonald had a farm" because it uses our animal vocabulary. It was going really well until I get to the last class of the day and I realize that I have already taught this class, last time. I think the school just told me I would be teaching all new classes every time because that was the easiest answer and now I know not to trust a word they say. I tried to bide time while in my head scrambling for what I was going to teach them and in the end just decided to alter the lesson with as much new material as possible and say we were "reviewing". So we reviewed animals, sang Old McDonald, and then played animal BINGO (again), but all told I think it went OK. The students all seemed to have fun.
Another highlight of the week was going to buy tickets for the May holiday to Xinjiang. Laura, Matt, a girl from my Chinese class named Carly, and I, and possibly Ben are all going to Xinjiang for the "Labor Day" holiday coming up the first week of May (soon!). They ended up being a little more expensive than we expected, but I am so excited to have them and I have heard Xinjiang is such an amazing, different place I am sure it will be worth it in the end. For those of you who are not familiar with Xinjiang, it is the often down-played Northwestern-most Province in China that is inhabited in large part by the Uighur nationality. The Uighur's are a Muslim people who in actuality are more like Middle Easterners than the Han Chinese, they speak their own language, which is most similar to Turkish, and they have tall noses and generally more Western-looking features. Xinjiang , literally translated as "New Frontier", is also known in China for having the same separatist tendencies as Tibet and Xinjiang-Beijing/Uighur-Han ties are very tenuous. Uighur people living in Xinjiang often refuse to learn or speak Mandarin as a symbol against Han Chinese oppression. Xinjiang, geographically, is a large desert with small oasis towns scattered throughout, congregating mostly along the former "Silk Road" that runs through the Southern part.
That's all I can think of to write about for now. I am going to a museum that just opened with Huangjie tomorrow, but we are going to be back in the afternoon to go swimming and then I should get to go home pretty early, so hopefully I will get some things done tomorrow evening. Tonight didn't work out because after dinner of HotPot (why people eat this on a hot day I will never figure out) Huangjie and her friend wanted to take me to this coffee shop that their friend opened last year. I had some things I wanted to get done tonight and I was kind of tired so I tried my best to say "I'm really tired," "We have to get up early tomorrow," "I still have some things to do tonight," and anything else I could think of to politely excuse myself. Huangjie's response was "We'll just go for a little bit" and "you can rest there." I stopped short of straight up saying "I don't want to go, I want to go home" because I just felt like it was too impolite, but maybe it's not because she definitely didn't take the hint. But, as usual, although I didn't really want to go I ended up having a great time and am glad that I went in the end. The friend wasn't there, but her husband was. The friend went to Italy to be a tour guide for 10 years after graduating from college and then came back to China a few years ago. Last year she and her husband opened this little coffee shop which was really cute and the coffee was imported from Italy, so of course it was delicious. He also gave us popcorn (which is common at coffee shops and they are actually starting to go together in my head, which I thought would never happen) and a homemade Italian-style lemon alcohol, which was sweet but also pretty good. If you are wondering, my Chinese friends didn't like coffee. Huangjie gave me hers and the other friend drank hers with lots of sugar to be polite.

Living it up in Xi'an

2007-04-18T00:38:00.000+08:00

It's late Tuesday night and I just got back from an exciting trip to Xi'an with my Archeology class. Two of our teachers, one of their wives, 4 SU students, and 6 of us UW students all departed on Thursday afternoon for China's ancient capitol, the center of all things archaeological in China. The trip started out well when we received English "China Daily" newspapers on the plane. I hadn't realized how much I missed reading the newspaper, but I got so excited to read one again. We landed that night and were off exploring right away. We took the bus to the center of town where the ancient city wall still surrounds the Bell and Drum Towers. Enclosed within the city wall is also a Mosque, "Muslim" tourist street, and countless malls, restaurants, etc. We first went the Muslim street to try some of Xi'an's specialty foods. We got a special kind of noodles that are really more like little cubes of bread in broth that were delicious. They also had a wide array of all sorts of different dried fruits for sale in the outdoor market that we could not resist. Then we wanted to go and walk on the city wall, but it had just closed, so we walked home and vowed to come back the next day.
We were not too disappointed to return to the hotel because our hotel TV's got National Geographic Channel, the first American television any of us had watched in 7 months and we were addicted for the rest of the trip.
The next day we went to the History Museum of Shaanxi Province in the morning, which had a really nice collection of artifacts from all different time periods in China's history. My favorite things on display were these "Tri-color" glazed pottery and statues from the Tang dynasty. You can tell this statue is Tang dynasty because in the Tang dynasty it was attractive to be fat, so all the statues of people and horses are pudgy. I especially like this one, I think she looks very graceful and content. After lunch we continued on to the Banpo Museum. The Banpo culture is one of the earliest cultures ever discovered in China (4500-3500BC) and is thought to be matriarchal. The museum is built on top of the archaeological site and many of the dig sites are on display in the museum, which was very interesting. The clan was very advanced for the time and were already using tools such as fishing hooks with barbs. This is a pottery bowl they found at the site with the Banpo "symbol" on it, which reminds me alot of Navajo symbolism.
That night, as planned we returned to the city wall and got to go on top this time. On the wall you can also rent bikes, so we all rented bikes to ride around the whole wall (about 20km or so). Laura and I rented and tandem bike, which made it that much more fun. One of our Chinese friends who is from Xi'an had told us not to rent the bikes because it was "the most ridiculous bit he has ever seen" but we decided it was ridiculous in a good, hilarious way and had a great time. Then we returned to the Muslim street to try every snack the street had to offer. With all 10 of us, one of us would buy each snack and we would all get to try it. With the bikes and delicious food combined, it was undoubtedly one of the best nights I've had in China so far.
The next day we visited the famed Terracotta Soldiers of Emperor Qin (China's first emperor), which were absolutely amazing. There are literally rows upon rows of life-sized stone soldiers and horses. Before touring the museum, we were "received" by the people at the museum, as we would be "received" at every place we went to, because we were with the Archeology professors. The up-side of this is that we never had to pay for admission. The down-side was that at each place we went we would have to sit quietly in a room and look attentive while the professors and our host would go through the customary "you're the best," "No you're the best," "No you're the best," routine, always finished off with "well you simply must come to Chengdu and we will go to dinner." Another undeniable plus to being "received" is they often treated us to lunch or dinner as well, as was the case after we finished touring the Terracotta Soldier museum. That evening we went to the Yang Mausoleum. A mausoleum is a huge burial site for emperors and other important royalty that consists of a huge (usually man-made) hill with the tomb and other treasures buried underneath. The Yang Mausoleum Museum was the coolest museum yet. It was underground and was designed like an "underwater world" where you walked on glass and got to see all the excavation sites under your feet.
The next day we toured several more mausoleums, each one being different. The first one we went to didn't really seem open to the public but I think we got to go, again, because of our professors. It was a little out in the boonies, but beautiful and SOOOOO windy. Ben and I climbed the to the top of the mountain that was used to house this tomb. We went to the Tomb of Princess Yongtai that you could walk into and had beautiful Tang Dynasty paintings on the walls (if you haven't figured it out already, the Tang dynasty was a very arty dynasty). Then we went to possibly the most famous mausoleum of Emperor Gao Zong and his Empress Wu Zetian, who is the only woman to have ruled China. The most memorable feature of this mausoleum is the long paved road that leads from miles away to the mountain where they and their treasure are buried. The stone walkway is lined on either side by statues of people and horses.
The next day we visited the Archeology Institute and Northwest University and were able to see their personal collections, as well as some things that had just recently been discovered and archaeologists at work. It was really fortunate that we got to go with the professors because we got to see alot of things that we usually wouldn't have been able to and see how archeology really happens in China. It was very interesting, although I realized I am happy I am not an archaeologist. That evening we walked to the Little and Big Goose Pagodas; large multi-layered towers that are holy places for people of Buddhist faith. The large Goose Pagoda also has a large fountain park (100 meters by 20 meters) in front of it that does a water show to music every evening. We stayed to watch the water show, which was worth it. You can stand in the middle of the fountain while all the fountains are going off around you and it is really cool, and wet. There were hundreds of spouts of water all choreographed to the music, as well as lots of neon lights because nothing in China is complete without neon lights. The more the better.
Today we didn't have any archaeological excursions planned so we walked to a park near our hotel. The park had a beautiful tulip garden and pond, as well as an amusement park. I couldn't resist (sorry mom) and Deborah, Matt, Ben, and I risked our lives to try out a few of the Chinese rides. It was definitely scarier than rides in the States, but we luckily made it through unscathed and I have a new appreciation for life now as well. Then we made our way back to the Muslim street (undoubtedly the best part of Xi'an) for lunch and do to some souvenir shopping.
It was a really fun trip, definitely one of the best. I even found a four leaf clover!! but I am glad to be back in Chengdu. Now I am just trying to get caught up.

Off to Xi'an

2007-04-11T22:07:00.000+08:00

Just for a quick update on a crazy week:
My friend who took Chinese class with me at Seattle Language Academy arrived in Chengdu on Monday with his two roommates. He had been working in Beijing for like a week (he works for Microsoft) and now they are traveling around the country. We went to hot pot and had tea and I've been sending them around places since I am really busy right now and cannot accompany them. Tuesday night Laura, Andrea, Matthew and I hosted quiz night. We had written the questions before (we each picked a category or two and did 10 questions for each - I did a food category and a science category) and Matt emceed while Andrea, Laura, and I collected, passed out, and scored the answer sheets.
My bike has also started to make horrible noises when I ride it, like it's about to fall apart. The weird thing is it still rides fine, it just makes this rally loud, constant clacking noise that sounds like popcorn being popped, but more metal on metal. I am going to try and get it fixed again, but I haven't had time yet so for now it just makes me and Laura laugh. For some reason it is so funny and we will ride down the street cracking up, drawing even more attention to ourselves than usual. Laura says that I should keep it because it acts like a constant bell (my real bell broke awhile ago) and people always know I'm coming. And I probably would keep it if the noise wasn't so disconcerting, and annoying.
I have been trying since Monday to get in the lab and finish my calibration to no avail. Monday the grad student who is helping me had something come up, Tuesday we went but then they didn't have what I needed in the lab and they said they would find one and I could come back tomorrow. So I showed up this afternoon after History and Culture class at 5pm and they had found me the thing I needed. However, the problems had only just began. After struggling with this supposedly simple test for hours I finally finished well enough to use the data and decided to call it a night (as they were locking all the doors and I did not want to be locked in).
I had also told a Chinese friend who will be going to UW next year that I would go participate in her English corner on the new campus tonight, but I had to end up cancelling because I really needed to get my research done this time. It was actually kind of a blessing in disguise because I didn't want to go, I was just doing it to be nice, and I still have a lot of stuff to do tonight and the new campus is a LONG way away.
So tomorrow we are leaving for Xi'an for an archeology field trip for 5 days. We is Laura, Deb, Matthew, Ben, Tabitha, our two archeology teachers, and 4 Chuan Da students. I am really excited about the trip, it should be really interesting and really fun.

Easter Greetings

2007-04-08T10:28:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone! Happy Easter! The festivities were not too exciting here, but that's OK. I get twice the holidays anyways. And I got to celebrate with the kids on Friday too. Saturday morning Laura, Deborah, and I went to Grandma's Kitchen to get brunch. We had heard the breakfast there was pretty good and thought it would be fun. It was fun to get breakfast, but as usual the food left something to be desired. I had blueberry pancakes, hash browns, sausage, and coffee. I would describe the quality as hotel Continental breakfast quality, but not free. It has just renewed my resolve to stay away from Western places and enjoy the Chinese food while I can. The coffee was good though. After breakfast we went to Trustmart to buy vinegar and eggs to dye eggs. Outside of Trustmart was this weird game that you paid a few mao (cents) to throw Snickers bars into the mouth of this big cardboard head. I didn't understand it really because it didn't seem like you got to keep the candy or anything, you just paid to throw them in with no prize. After we bought supplies, we over to Deborah's house and died Easter eggs with dye my mom sent me. Deborah also had some chocolate that her mom had left her when she came to visit during the New Years break. So we even got to have some Easter candy. Laura and I were amazed she still had so much left, the candy fiends that we are, but were happy to partake. The eggs turned out beautifully as well, most of them anyways. I had one color combination that ended up being a green-brown color but they can't all be perfect.
That afternoon I went running and then was going to go swimming, but my swimming friends said that I shouldn't swim until my leg scabbed over. I decided to listen to them and so just went home. When I was at the pool Huangjie had more things to give me. The first was a fan that her father had written the characters I picked before on, strength 力量. She also gave me this tracing paper book to practice writing my characters because she was criticizing my characters last weekend. I thought it was a funny present, but if I have time I might try it and see how it goes. Everything is good practice.
Today, on real Easter, it is sunny and cool and I am going to play rugby. Slated for today are also homework and possibly scrabble.
Well, I hope you all have good Easters and eat a chocolate bunny for me!

Time flies when you are having fun, and even when you're not

2007-04-06T21:22:00.000+08:00

Another week has flown by. I can't believe how fast it is going. It has gotten alot cooler again (50's) and started raining, but after that hot spell I am welcoming it. I am really worried about when it is going to get hot, I hate hot. We are learning about the origin of Chinese names and the naming system in one of my classes and I was talking to Huangjie about it and her family still goes by the ancient system that not alot of people use anymore. It is where your middle name is your "generation name" or bei, so everyone that is in the same generation will have the same name. In order to tell when you meet someone if they are in a higher bei than you (and thus you need to show them due respect) the bei's follow a poem or story that is different for each family. Huangjie's dad wrote the family history down in a book a few years ago (all by hand with a brush, old style) to revive it because people stopped keeping records during the Cultural Revolution in case you had bad blood in your family. Huangjie gave me the book her dad wrote to look at and she told me that he would also write me a character of my choosing if I want (as a sort of wall hanging). I thought about it for awhile and when I went out to hot pot again with Huangjie and two other students we swim with on Wednesday I told her that I had chosen 力量 li liang, which means strength. Huangjie thought this was a good choice. Her dad will even teach me how to write calligraphy if we can find time.
I played rugby again on Tuesday and Thursday. On the Thursday the pitch was slippery because of the rain and I got a big, ugly Astroturf burn. And this Astroturf is the dirtiest yucky Astroturf you could ever imagine, so even though I tried to clean it out as best I could and have been trying to take care of it, it is still really yucky.
Today, Friday, I also went out to teach again. I thought I was having 1st graders because that is what they told me last time, but I got there and it turns out I had 5th and 6th graders again (all new classes though). But I adapted and it was a lot of fun. I decided to do an Easter class so we reviewed animals and colors that have to do with spring time and then we played "springtime Bingo." I had made all the Bingo cards by hand with the help of my wonderful roommate Laura (who is a saint for helping me and I need to buy her a present). I took us all the way through "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" (a horribly funny sci-fi flick) to finish them. But it was worth it. The game worked really well and it was alot of fun.

QingMing Festival

2007-04-01T23:40:00.000+08:00

QingMing Festival (or the Festival of Pure Brightness) is one of the 24 seasonal division points of the Chinese calendar. The Festival usually falls on the 4-6 of April and marks the time when weather starts to get warmer and rainier and thus is the best time for spring plowing and sowing. But this Festival is not only to commemorate the coming of spring, it is also a time to honor passed ancestors and is also known as "the grave sweeping festival". On this day families will gather together and go to the grave sites of their ancestors, sweep the grave, put flowers and food offerings in front of the grave, light fire crackers, and burn paper money for the deceased to use in the after life. The fire crackers are to scare away the evil spirits, who are scared of loud noises and bright lights. Nowadays, people also buy paper cars and houses to give to their relatives in the afterlife. Traditionally, only cold food is eaten on this day as well. This is because a long time ago there was a king who accidentally killed one of his most loyal servants in a fire while he was trying to find him on a mountain, so in order to honor this servants loyalty he made this day for him where no one could use fire. However, cold food day is not always followed anymore. Today, QingMing Jie is also not always celebrated on the actual day and can be celebrated anytime the family can all get together around that day, usually before.
This weekend I had the opportunity to go with Huangjie back to her home town in a place called Rong Chang, near Chongqing, to celebrate this holiday with her family. Rong Chang is about 3 and a half hours east of Chengdu. We took a bus there on Friday afternoon where her "younger brother," but actually her younger cousin, met us at the bus station. We found a hotel and then went to meet with her other cousin and his wife for dinner. We had Chongqing Hotpot, which sadly I could not enjoy because I had a really bad stomach ache. I am not sure where it came from, but I had to ask to go back to the hotel after dinner because it hurt so bad. Luckily, her younger brother/cousin is a Chinese doctor and went to the pharmacy to get me some medicine. A half an hour after I took the medicine, I felt much better.
The next day we got up and went to her father's family's house which was out in the country on a farm right next to the railroad tracks. We walked along the railroad tracks to get there because there are no roads. The family grew all sorts of different vegetables and had a lovely house right next to the river. They also had pigs which lived in the bathroom (in between the pig stalls). We waited for everyone to arrive, maybe 50 people, and then made our way across the tracks to another house (though still in Huangjie's family) where the graves were located. The graves were above ground, Han style graves with stone embankments in the front (although Huangjie's family is of the Kejia, or Hakka, ethnic minority group). In front on the graves themselves were plaques with family trees written on them. The largest grave had three people buried in it. The plaques were all carved by Huangjie's father. The ceremony consisted of lighting fires with the paper money, lighting candles, incense, and fireworks, and praying in front of the graves by bowing three times. Some people participated while others just watched.
After that we all went back to the first house and ate a huge lunch, which was delicious. It amazed me that they could prepare that much delicious food without any modern convenience.
That afternoon Huangjie taught me how to play Chongqing Majhong (a different version than Chengdu Mahjong) and we played with her family until dinner time. After dinner we drove back to the hotel. We ate light because the night before her older cousin had given us goose feet to eat, but I couldn't because my stomach hurt, so he insisted we take them back to the hotel for later and we decided to eat those for dinner instead. The goose feet are prepared with a special sauce and smoked and are a Rong Chang specialty. So we ate goose feet and watched the swimming world championships on CCTV5 (the sports channel) and talked. I had never thought that I would enjoy eating goose feet, but they actually weren't that bad, much better than chicken feet.
The next day we went to her mother's side of the family's house which is also around Rong Chang and did pretty much the same thing. In the morning we first walked around and looked at her younger brother/cousin's new house that he had just built. It was three floors and although it was built out of concrete, had alot of big windows, was very clean, and had good lighting. I liked it. Then we looked at her uncle's new house he was building, which was HUGE. It was only half done though. After our stroll we had another ceremony of firecrackers and paper burning. This time food was also put before the grave, which was then taken away again after the ceremony was finished presumably to be eaten or at least fed to the pigs.
Then we went back to her younger brother/cousin's new house to have lunch. There was a much more manageable number of people this time, maybe 20 or so at the ceremony and only 10 or so (including the inhabitants of the house) stayed for lunch. Everyone in her family was really nice and I had a really good time. Aside from the honoring of the ancestors, there were also alot of older grandmas and grandpas around who were treated with alot of respect and graciousness that sometimes I think our culture is lacking. Not always, but it was just nice to be part of a big family. It made me miss my extended family and our big gatherings alot, especially my grandma.
After lunch I sat out on the porch and looked out at the surrounding fields and rice paddies while we waited for the car that would take us to the bus station. It was very peaceful and quiet.
We got back to Chengdu this evening and I had homework and things to do before starting another busy week. But I was very happy to have the opportunity to experience this part of Chinese culture and be accepted so warmly into her family. It was very inspiring towards how grateful we should be for the family we have and the support they give us. Someday I am going to have to figure out a way to repay Huangjie for all the wonderful things she does for me.

Weekly Events to keep you amused.

2007-03-26T21:47:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone! I just got back from another rousing night of Quizzing. We didn't do half bad this time, 5th place out of 10 or so teams, especially considering there were just four of us and we are all under 25. Do you know what three horse races make up the Triple Crown? I know Alex does. It was also a beautiful day today, the best weather we've had since winter. 65 and sunny, but it made me a little afraid for what's in store this summer since its supposed to get into the 80's this week and its still only March. I'll just start living at the pool.
Not much else has been going on here in Chengdu. This is a picture I took of Laura in front of one of the many weird European style buildings they have here. They are so over the top and just look so out of place. There is even a "European Street" that is done all in this style. Its like European Disney Land in China.
Saturday night we also went to a fancy tea house that is located on top of a hot pot restaurant. The building is beautiful and it has all these statues and relics from old Chengdu, which is pretty cool. But the best part is they brew their own beer, which is delicious. They have a dark beer that is Guinness-y and a lighter beer that is a very tasty approximation of a Hefeweizen. Definitely best Chinese beer I've had so far.
Sunny's boyfriend also just bought her a new puppy, which Deborah was puppy-sitting and brought to the restaurant in a little bag. The puppy's name is Shuai Ge, which means handsome boy. He is so small and so cute. Very well behaved also, Sunny brings him to class with her and he just sleeps in her desk. She'll give him back to Kayo (her Chinese boyfriend) when she goes back to the States.

On Sunday I played a bit of rugby, did homework, and played Scrabble. I even won at Scrabble, my best word was riddled.
Monday Laura, Deborah, and I went to a Korean restaurant near school for lunch. We had rice with all sorts of sauteed things and a flavored paste and a sunny-side up egg on top. After lunch they gave us little coupons for a cup of coffee across the street as a promotion for a little Korean convenience store they just opened. The coffee was OK, just like bad gas station coffee in the States. The most exciting thing was all the other Korean things. My favorite was this "CRUNKY" bar, which I had to buy and try. It tasted just like Nestle CRUNCH, but was named "CRUNKY" which made it infinitely more hilarious.
That afternoon when I went to the pool I also received some interesting gifts from Huangjie that I thought I'd share with you. She said her friend gave her all this stuff and she didn't want it. One was a Nescafe coffee set, complete with instant coffee, instant creamer, cup, saucer, and gold-plated spoon. The other thing was a set of belts with 4 belt buckles from China Southwest Airlines. I really didn't know what to make of either of them, but I guess they will be useful.

Kids are loud in every language

2007-03-23T18:38:00.000+08:00

I arranged to meet someone at a hotel in Chengdu so they could accompany me to the school (location still unknown). I arrived at 7:40am and met the guy and we drove ONE HOUR to Deyang (德阳） Primary School. I was told the school was in the outskirts of Chengdu, but this was stretching outskirts a little far I think. As I saw when we finally arrived, the school is not just a school, it is a complex. There are about 8 or so huge 6 story red brick buildings all over the place. Apparently 2000 children attend class here, grades 1-6, and 1500 live there on campus, so some of the buildings are housing. I was handed my class schedule for the day and learned that I was to be teaching 5 classes of 6th graders for 40 minutes each. I walked in to the first class of 40 students and just went with it. I had been thinking about what I was going to do for the past few days and was really nervous about it, but once you get there you just do it and it all works out. And it did. I started out by introducing myself and then having each student introduce themselves by saying "My name is....., I have # people in my family, and I like......". Then I had them name off some of the things people had said they liked and then do that exercise where you find one person who likes each activity and write their name down. Then we played pictionary where I divided the class into two teams and picked a drawer from each team and then whoever said the word first won. After playing with the first class I realized that with 40 kids this way was WAY too loud and also the kids didn't really get the game, they would draw some scribble as fast as they could and then run back and tell their classmates what to say, no matter how many times I said they couldn't. So the nice thing about teaching 5 of the same class in a row is you can work on it and get better each time. So then I tried one person from each team drawing and then when someone knew the word running up to the black board and writing the word down, but that was still loud because people would yell out the word to the person who ran up to write and then everyone would just stand by the blackboard and the person drawing was STILL telling the person writing what to write. So the next class I decided I would draw and would pick one person from each team to write and whoever wrote it first got a point, still a little noisy because the rest of the team could help, but it worked much better. Finally I settled on me starting as drawer with two pre-selected writers for each round and the person who won that round would get to draw the next time. I guess 5th time is the charm, or maybe each group of kids is just different. Probably some of both.
The weirdest thing was that at the end of class all the kids ran up to the front with their English books and wanted my autograph. I still don't understand it, but almost every class did it.
There was also this woman teacher who asked me to call her Judy who doted on me so much it was almost annoying. When I would come into the office between classes, she would tell me to sit down and if I would say I didn't want to she would stand there insisting that I sit until I did. Whenever my water bottle got low she would ask to fill it up and I would say "No that's ok" or "I still have a little left" or "I can do it myself" she would just say "No, I will help you" and take it away and fill it up. Then at the end of the day she walked with me all the way to where the other guy was waiting with the car to take me to Chengdu at one of the gates of the school grounds even though I assured her many times I knew where it was and that I would be fine. She was scared I would get lost (hard to do).
But everyone was really nice and the kids were all really fun and I am excited to come back next time, when I have a day full of 1st graders. Through this experience I did learn that I do not want to be a teacher, but I am having a good time right now and I am really glad I decided to do it. Plus I made 500 kuai in a day which I can live off of for a good couple weeks.
That's all the exciting news for now. School is still school. We started some more classes this week; another, different, History and Culture class with a really good professor and a really interesting book ("Understanding China" by John Bryan Starr; much better, easier read than the last "Governing China" book for those of you who didn't make it through...ahem) and a News Listening class that will just be really helpful because of all the vocabulary. Alot of the things they talk about on the news are very patterned and they use alot of fancy, non-colloquial words that you just have to learn in order to understand what is going on at all, so hopefully the class will be really helpful too. Next week we also start our Women in China class with Pang Laoshi (one of the woman teachers of the SU-UW exchange program) which I am really excited about and should be really interesting. Plus Pang Laoshi is a really cool lady and I think she will be a really good teacher.
Have a happy weekend and I'll talk to you all again soon. Cheers!

我当英文老师

2007-03-20T21:30:00.000+08:00

So I don't have alot of pictures, but alot of interesting stuff has happened to me in the past day so I'll try to catch you guys up to speed. I should have known something was up when I woke up and it was sunny, or as close to sunny as it gets in Chengdu. I decided to wear the new red sweater that I bought yesterday for 59 kuai (like 6 dollars). It looks hand made. During the break between classes a teacher who works in the foreign office called me to see if I would like a job teaching English. She said it was for one day every two weeks in a school a little outside of Chengdu. I would teach kids from ages 7-12 English conversation and each day I would get 500 kuai. I decided that I could not pass this up, it's not that big of a commitment and it's alot of money. Plus it will be fun! So then another woman called me that afternoon to arrange a time and I will be teaching my first classes on this Friday. Then we will decide the next time on a day by day basis, based on my schedule. So I have now joined the rank of thousands of foreigners in China who teach conversational English, but I'm okay with that.
Then this afternoon I went to attempt to calibrate my equipment in the lab, but it didn't work like I had hoped. The burette was there and was exactly what I needed. There was just the problem of getting the burette to be in-line with the sampler and having that be air tight. My solution was to stick the sampler and the end of the tube going to the burette in a nalgene and tape a plastic bag to the top of the Nalgene and to both the tubes to make it air tight. Turns out it wasn't really air tight, but by then it was getting late and I couldn't really think of a better idea so I decided to pack it all up and go home and think it over. So if you have any suggestions, let me know.
Then I went swimming, since that is the place I think best, especially when I'm frustrated. I swam 3000m and when I got out I felt much better and even have a few ideas for the burette-sampler connection problem.
After swimming I went to with Huangjie to eat fish head hot pot. The name of the restaurant was 三只耳(three ears) which I thought was ironic because fish don't really have ears. The restaurant was actually named that because the owner's name is a character that looks like 3 ears (耳）together. The fish head hot pot was actually really good, much better than regular hot pot I thought. And the one we ordered wasn't all fish heads, it was just a half a fish including the half a head. The fish meat was delicious and picked up the spice rally nicely. The flaky, delicate meat was a really nice contrast to the strong mala flavor. Huangjie said I could have the head if I wanted because she had eaten it tons of times before, so I decided to go for it. I ate the whole head (or all the not-bone parts), even the eye. There was some weird gelatinous-y parts and the eye had an interesting shell-like covering on it, but all in all not as bad as I expected, not that I'll be rushing to eat it again anytime soon. The worst part was the intestines, which I also tried out of posterity and to say that I tried everything. It was rubbery and chewy and I couldn't eat it. So I just tucked in my check so it looked like I swallowed it and went to the bathroom and spit it out. It was one of the grossest things I've had in China, and that's saying alot. So that was my exciting day. Beat that, new sweater, new job, and new food all in the same day.

The Commonwealth Games

2007-03-19T14:45:00.000+08:00

This weekend was spent in other foreign cultures, besides China. On Saturday I went to play rugby again, which is always fun. There were alot of people who came out this weekend too. For those of you who don't know, rugby is like weird football. You have an olive shaped rugby ball and two teams and the goal is to score goals, or "tri"s by running into the endzone. The main difference is you can only run the ball forward, there is no forward passing, only lateral or backward, and play never stops like in football, you just keep going until someone scores a tri. We play touch rugby (which is much different than tackle) because there are all sorts of people of all different ages and levels playing together so it's just easier and less dangerous and more fun this way. In touch rugby the only other important rules are that when you get touched you have to roll the ball through your legs (like I am doing in the picture) and someone else, called the "dummy" picks it up and has to toss it off to another player right away before getting tagged or its a turn over. You get 6 touches to score a tri or it's a turn over and it's also a turn over if someone drops the ball. That night was St. Patrick's Day. Everyone met at an Irish bar in town called Shamrock's and a great time was had by all, need I say more? This is a picture of one of the guys dressed up like the pope, obviously. Johnny, a guy I play rugby with, also dressed up like a Leprechaun.
Sunday I went with a guy named Dan, who helps organize rugby, to play cricket. Cricket is another crazy Commonwealth game that is like baseball, but much lazier. The ball is kind of like a baseball, but there are no gloves and the bat is just a flat stick that you swing more like a golf club. I'm not as clear on the rules of cricket yet because I only played that once, but here is the jist of it: there are two teams, one batting and one in the field. The pitcher is called the "bowler" and the ball is "bowled", which is like over hand pitching, but has to be done with a straight arm. If you bend at the elbow it is called "chucking" and it is against the rules. You, as the bowler, are standing beside a set of three orange sticks that are one set of wickets and the batter is standing in front of the other set about 50 feet away. The ideal pitch goes straight down the middle and bounces on the ground once before reaching the batter who then can hit the ball anywhere, including behind them. There is also another person from the batting team standing next to the pitcher at the other set of wickets. To score points you and your partner (the other batter) run back and forth between the wickets. Once down is one point. Once you hit the ball in play, you can decide whether you want to run or not, it's not forced like in baseball. If you don't think you are going to make it to the other set of wickets, you don't have to run and you are not out. The only way you can get out is (1) if you run and someone fields the ball and hits the wickets with the ball before you get to the other side; or (2) if the pitch hits the wickets or (3) if the ball is a pop fly and is caught. One bowler bowls for an "over" which is I think like 6 bowls and the game is played for a certain number of overs. We played 10 overs for each side, all in a row. Which took like an hour and a half. Then we played another game of the same length. Our games both had scores into the 70's and 80's. I still have not figured out the scoring AT ALL, but I figure one thing at a time. But here is a picture of the score board and Pedro, who is from New Zealand, sitting next to it. A regulation cricket game is 5 days long. One of the guys told me "cricket is like going to the beach", meaning people just go to hang out, not necessarily to watch the whole time. Cricket was fun too, but there was alot of standing around. It's not exactly that active of a sport. I played for 4 hours without breaking a sweat. I got to play with a bunch of people I hadn't met before, although they were all older men. There were 4 Pakistani guys who were really good and this guy from Canada who reminded me of George Risch-Boody. That night Laura and I made this Mexican Tomato-shrimp soup that her brother in law (who is Mexican) taught her how to make and it was delicious! I miss Mexican alot. We had chips and salsa to accompany it, yum. We had it again for lunch today and I made grilled cheese sandwiches (with real cheese!!) too. Well, it's Monday again so another week of class. But I know it's going to fly by and soon it will be the weekend again. If anything else interesting happens, I'll keep you posted. Cheers!

Back to School

2007-03-16T21:14:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone!
Sorry I have been MIA for the past week. I have been without Internet and it just got turned back on today. Yea! I started school again on Monday and it feels good. I really like all my classes and teachers and I am happy to be learning Chinese again. I am in class with Laura and Deborah now, so that's fun too. Other than that I have been working on my research. I weighed all my filters again so am now starting to accumulate data and will be calibrating my equipment (post-sampling...oh well!) hopefully next Monday or Tuesday before sending it all on its merry way back to the UW. The reason I had to wait to calibrate it is because they had to make me a special burette. It's not really that special, but SU didn't have one, so I had to pay for the supplier to make one special and it was supposed to be delivered today (Friday) but was not, so hopefully it will be here early next week.
Laura and I have been craving Western food this week, so we made ourselves fried egg sandwiches for dinner, which were delicious.
Not alot going on, except Li Juan trying to make us eat weird food and us covertly throwing it away when she is not home. Although, we did meat a vacuum-packed duck the other day which wasn't that bad.
In other news, Laura got hit by a little yellow mini car while she was riding her bike one day. Thankfully she wasn't hurt, but she was thrown off her bike and onto the ground. The guy who hit her just waved and drove away. I wish he would have rolled down his window and said "Hellooooo" in the sing-song-y way only Chinese non-English speakers can. That would have really completed the hilarity of the whole thing. Best be careful. I can tell I am not used to riding my bike because all the dodging seems alot more perilous again.
Above are two pictures I just got from Deborah from Xilinxue Shan (the ski mountain) when we went during Christmas. The top is the ski map, professing lots of beautiful runs and snow. The bottom in the "real" scenario, where there is this little patch of man made snow/ice that is not even worthy of the description "bunny hill" and alot of brown, dead grass. They say pictures are worth a thousand words, well these are worth about a million each. No, there are no words.

I will also leave you with the Serenity Prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous, which was originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr, a pastor of an Evangelical & Reformed Church in Detroit in the 1920's, and seems especially fitting to China:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Back to and from Yangjuan

2007-03-11T18:41:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone! I just got back from Yangjuan yesterday morning and it was a wonderful trip. I had a lovely group to go with this time. I went with Barbara Grub who is a PhD student at the UW here researching livestock in Yangjuan, Fagun who is a girl from Yangjuan who traveled back from Chengdu with us because she had to start school in Xichang that week, and Andrea who decided to come along for fun. We got on the train on Friday night and arrived safely in Xichang the next morning. Then we took the bus to Yanyuan and Fagun’s brother picked us up in Baiwu to drive us and all our luggage to Yangjuan. This time when we arrived at the school all the teachers were back from break and it was much livelier than last time. There were baby animals everywhere too; water buffalo, pigs, horses, sheep, goats, dogs.

The first day I woke up early and did my test in the school kitchen. Then Barbara, Andrea, Fagun, and I hiked around to grazing areas where Barbara had set up enclosures to see what effect grazing was having on the grasslands. We sat around and chatted a little too and it was really nice to be able to hang out and talk to Fagun, who is one of the nicest and most inquisitive people I have ever known. That afternoon it was a little quieter at the school and I finished my outdoor air test. Then we went to Fagun’s for dinner because she was, unfortunately, leaving the next day for Xichang to go back to school.

The next day we accompanied Apu again herding sheep because Barbara wanted to see where he went. There was a lot of sitting involved again and I wandered around a lot which was nice. I climbed down into two sink holes (bigger ones, so I didn’t need rope or anything) and Apu got a real kick out of it. There seem to be more and more sink holes forming all the time. I think it is a combination of the limestone rock eroding underneath and the top soil eroding on top. We talked a little about the caves Matt and I had explored on our previous trip and I told them I would take them all there tomorrow if they wanted. I invited Apu too, but I couldn’t tell if he wanted to go or not.

Sometime in the afternoon, we all got a little restless from all the sitting around and decided to hike off on our own. So we left Apu and Ama and their sheep and hiked across the valley to HeiShan, the little mountain right behind the school. Apu told us there was a grove of sacred trees on the mountain that were not allowed to be cut. We found the grove easily enough, as the rest of the area is horribly deforested because of all the agriculture and over-grazing. Andrea kept saying “I just wish I could see it when it was completely forested.” The deforestation was even more noticeable now because the climate was so dry and dust was flying everywhere. The view from HeiShan was still beautiful though.

That evening we arrived back to find that Ma Erzi, a Yi man who is Apu’s son but also helped to build the school and is a colleague of Steve’s, had come to Yangjuan for a few days, which is cause for celebration. He had also brought new clothes for all the teachers and students. To celebrate, they killed a young pig and we had rice, soup, and pig meat for dinner. We, as guests, had to eat with Ma Erzi and the other important cadre men he had brought along, but at least the three of us were together. Barbara helped me get a much better picture of the Ma Clan family tree. The Ma Clan is the family clan that is centered in Yangjuan and almost half the people at the school are related in some way to the clan. The clan system is very important in Yi culture and is the main way people relate to one another within and outside of their clans. Apu is the senior member of the Ma Clan, along with his second (I think) wife Ama. He had nine children, ZheZhe, Ma Zipo, Ma Ahja, Ma Erzi, and some others that I do not know. Many of his children now have children but I don’t think he is a great grandfather, yet. Barbara told me Steve was thinking of buying Mormon genealogy software to be able to map out the complicated links everyone has to each other. It would be very interesting to get it all down on paper.

The next day Andrea, Barbara, and I left early after breakfast to check out the caves. We climbed around in them and it was really cool again, though not as fun as the first time. But it was really nice to be around some girls that weren’t afraid to get dirty. In China, I feel more of a tomboy than I ever have in the States. Then we walked to Baiwu to pick up some oranges, tea, and sugar. We also got some beautiful tin ware that Barbara is going to use in her house. I got a pretty bowl that has fruit and vegetables stenciled on it.

That afternoon we left again and hiked up the mountains on the north side of Abilada (the alluvial plain of the Gangu river that flows south through Yangjuan) and along a ridge path that Barbara had discovered before. The path led to a wonderful meadow between two mountain peaks where we sat and read books and looked out over the surrounding mountains, enjoying the sunshine.

When we got back that evening we went to Apu’s house after dinner to hang out with everyone. We found out that Apu really had planned on going to the caves with us and had waited in his house and not gone herding that day. Although he had been before and just wanted to accompany us, we all felt terrible and apologized effusively. I think everyone else just thought it was kind of funny. Aside from that, the mood at Apu’s was very jovial and there was one guy who was a little drunker than everyone else who would sing us Yi song’s and then want us to sing an English song in return. We sang “You are my Sunshine”, “Yesterday” (on request), “California Dreamin’”, and “the Star Spangled Banner”, among parts of other songs we could not remember all the words to. We decided next time we have to bring a song book. Even the little kids sang songs and it was a really fun evening.

The next day Andrea, Barbara, and I hiked again out Abilada and then followed a stream up the mountains south of the Abilada valley. We found another ridge path on the top of those mountains that led us back to HeiShan where we climbed down back to the school. That afternoon I walked back to Baiwu to pick up some more oranges and walked back along the palisades along the river instead of the road, which was really interesting.

I got back just in time for dinner, which I was actually hungry for. This trip we all backed each other up and refused food as strongly as we could while still being polite. We were often gone for lunch and would bring fruit and little snacks along on our hikes instead. For once in Yangjuan I was hungry for food every time I ate and it was nice to not feel so overly stuffed all the time.

The last day in Yangjuan ZheZhe accompanied us to Zala Shan, the mountains far behind the school that Steve, Matt, Fagun, and I had hiked to the first time I came to Yangjuan. We didn’t hike as far as we had gone the first time, but still hiked almost 1000m up to Yak pastures where we found some people herding sheep who invited us in for lunch. They had chickens, pigs, a dog and her two puppies running around the farm. Andrea and I kept trying to pet them but they were all scared of us and would run away. They are probably not that used to people being nice to them. They people who lived at the farm were ZheZhe’s husband’s older brother and his wife (as well as another older man, I don’t know who he was). ZheZhe used to live up in Zala Shan before she moved down below the school. Her husband, Lili, still goes up there regularly to tend the school’s Yaks. The hike was beautiful again and we got back to the school just before dark. We had eaten a late lunch and tried adamantly to refuse dinner, but they would not have it so we ate a little something before reading and going to bed.

The next day we drove into Yanyuan with Ma Ahja, Vuguo (ZheZhe’s daughter), and Liu Laoshi (another teacher from the school) because they had the day off. The previous day had been “Women’s Day”, March 8^th, but they had waited until Friday the 9^th to take the holiday so they could take a long weekend and come to Yanyuan. We took a new road into Yanyuan that none of us had been on before (I don’t know why). It was interesting to see the new scenery; we even passed a place where they were growing grapes, which I didn’t know they grew there.

When we got into Yanyuan we bought bus tickets to Xichang and then had about an hour to walk around before our bus left. I bought a woven backpack/basket that everyone wears hear (I’m going to give it to Virginia) and a really cool cow bell that has a really pretty sound and I thought would be fun for ski races. It seemed like a longer than usual bus ride back because there were three men in front of us chain smoking and a woman behind us who was car sick and started throwing up 2 hours into the 5 hour trip. I was happy to get off in Xichang. There we went to the hotel Deborah, Matt, and I had stayed at before and walked next door to pick up our tickets from Liu Ayi. We had decided to fly back because train tickets were IMPOSSIBLE to buy and in order to take the train we would have had to wait a few more days, which we couldn’t do. It ended up being pretty expensive to buy tickets for the next morning, but we didn’t really have a choice and it was fun to have the evening to hang out in Xichang.

I had paid for all three of the tickets because I had the cash, so our first destination after leaving Liu Ayi’s office was the bank. However, Barbara’s card wouldn’t work and may have been shut off by her bank and Andrea’s work hadn’t deposited her pay check yet even though her pay day should always be the 9^th. Oh, China. So after a frustrating hour of going to different banks and China Mobile to recharge Andrea’s phone, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice, relaxing, Western cup of coffee. We stepped into a really nice coffee shop where Barbara and I each had a cup of coffee and split a Banana Split. Andrea had a good Mohito and slightly more disappointing egg sandwich. I am always disappointed by Western food here, which is why I usually never order it. We sat and talked and it was really nice to recharge. Then we walked back to our hotel and met Fagun and a friend of hers for dinner.

We flew out of the miniature Xichang airport (one terminal) the next morning and arrived in Chengdu at about 10am. After about an hour cab ride home (the taxi driver got lost) I arrived home to find that my Internet doesn’t work, but it is still nice to be home. I went and played rugby in the afternoon and I feel like I’m getting better all the time. It was a lot of fun. I wore my Favre jersey in honor of him deciding to come back for another season.

Now it’s Sunday morning and I am getting ready to go get some things done before starting school again tomorrow. Among them, buy a new bike because my bike broke completely yesterday and I am sick of fixing it, if it can even be fixed. Plus go to the store, buy books for school, go to the Bookworm to use Internet so I can post this, and other regular stuff.

Keep me updated on news from the States, I’ve been thinking about you all a lot. Also, this is Andrew. I tried to take a picture of all three of us, but obviously it didn't work.
till next time… …

Serendipity in the Springtime

2007-02-28T21:51:00.000+08:00

Spring has arrived! The warm, balmy weather continues in Chengdu. There are flowers blooming everywhere and all the plants are turning green again. Even the swimming pool is hovering around 14C, a good deal warmer than the 5C we had all winter. These are some beautiful flowers that are growing on the tree right outside my window.
Last night was also quiz night again. Matthew, Laura, Andrea (recently returned from the States), and I were joined by Barbara Grub who is a PhD student from UW who is doing her PhD work on animal husbandry in Yangjuan, and Eddie who is a recent graduate of UW and participated in this program several years ago and is now back in China to work for a few years. In the middle of the second round, serendipity strikes again. I got a call from Andrew, a guy from Northern Ireland who was on our train to Tibet and then we randomly ran into again at the hotel we were staying at in Shigatse. He was stuck in Chengdu for the next 6 days because he couldn't get a train back to Nanning where he is an English teacher until then. I, of course, invited him to join us and, as fate apparently wanted it, he helped us get first place. All I could think was "of course" because it was just too much of a coincidence to question it. He is now staying with Matthew for the next few days. On the 2nd of March, I will be leaving with Barbara, Andrea and Fagun (a woman from Yangjuan) to return to Yangjuan for about a week to finish my research there. Other than that, I am just regrouping from travel with the family and getting ready (and excited) for the upcoming semester that will begin on the 12th. Sleep tight everyone and I will check in again later.

Home again, home again

2007-02-25T20:27:00.000+08:00

I am back from my long absence. I just took my family to the airport this afternoon. It was a wonderful, crazy trip and the best part was really seeing my family, they are great (start cheesy music now). And as sad as I was to see them go (sadder than I thought I would be actually, I almost started crying at the airport) it is nice to be back in the groove. Which means all my lucky fans will have something to do when they are procrastinating on the computer (by the way there will be a prize when I return for most devoted blog-reader). However, tomorrow I am off again on another swimming adventure with my swimming grandpa for two days. I decided I owe him after he tried to organize a trip for me and my parents that we had to (ungracefully) back out of, but I have also decided this is my last trip. After this I am going to be "too busy" because I don't really want to go anymore. But it is really hard to say no here, especially for me. I am just going to practice being straight-forward about it or I am going to wind up doing even more things I don't really want to do.
The thing I can't believe is that I only have 4 months left! Well, 4 and a half, but it seems so short and I know it is just going to fly by. I'll see you all in no time! Love you all.

Traveling in Tibet

2007-02-25T20:06:00.000+08:00

These past few weeks with my family have been very busy and very fun. We just returned from a week long trip in

Tibet

. We left on the train on the 16^th in the evening and after a beautiful, but long train ride arrived safely in

Tibet

. None of us had altitude sickness really, although I did faint once on the train for a second. The thing you notice most about

Tibet

is the vastness and remoteness. It’s like Montana but bigger and more mountainous. Our tour guide Kashi picked us up at the train station and took us to our hotel. Originally, I had had reservations about booking a tour guide because I usually don’t like tours, I like exploring by myself, but I was really happy to have done it here. We would have never been able to see so many cool places if it hadn’t been prearranged and our tour guide was really nice. We got to sleep in until about 9am every day because the sun doesn’t rise in

Tibet

until 9 or so and nothing is open before then. The first day we went to the Potala, which was built by the 5^th Dalai Lama. Because it was Tibetan New Year and Chinese New Year on the same day (Feb 18^th) all the temples we went to were very crowded with Tibetan pilgrims coming to pray for good things in the new year. The Potala was very big and empty and had an amazing amount of rooms. It also had the tombs of many of the Dalai Lamas who have died. The tombs were very big and gold. Then we went to the Summer Palace, which is where the Dalai Lama lived in the summer. It had a beautiful garden outside and the rooms seemed much more homey and lived in. They had a radio that was a present from the Pakistanis. We also went to the second biggest town in Tibet, after Lhasa, called Shigatse. There we toured another monastery that is the largest functioning monastery in Tibet and has 800 monks who live there. Mom and I also walked the kora around this monastery, which is a path all around the outside of the monastery that pilgrims walk in a clockwise fashion. It had prayer wheels and prayer flags all the way around and a magnificent view of the monastery, town, and surrounding mountains. Shigatse was more of a trading town than an actual city and seemed much smaller than Lhasa, which itself seems much smaller than most Chinese cities. When we were at the hotel in Shigatse we also ran into an Irish guy who is teaching in

China

who we met on the train. It was quite a coincidence. He had found a group of 3 other Western people and 2 Koreans who were all traveling to Mount Everest. However, none of them spoke Chinese so I helped them book rooms at the hotel. When we got back to Lhasa we went to see the Johkang, which is the oldest monastery in

Tibet

and, I think, also the coolest. It has a ton of statues of different kinds of Buddhas inside representing the 4 different Buddhist sects that are in

Tibet

. You can also walk around on the roof where you have a beautiful view of the square in front of the monastery where the pilgrims gather and Potala with the mountains in the background. It was an amazing trip and like nowhere I have ever been before. The thing I thought was most amazing, besides the incredible scenery, was the degree to which the Buddhist faith was integrated into the Tibetan culture; it was like they were one and the same. I am amazed by the strength of the Tibetan people, both physically and spiritually. On the way back the plane ride was bumpy, but also beautiful. You could see the entire Himalayan Mountain range outside the plane window; Dad thinks you could even see Everest in the distance.

Exploring around Chengdu

2007-02-15T21:17:00.000+08:00

We've spent the last 2 days exploring Cheng du and the area around the city, with Sarah as our guide/translator/all-around-good-sport. Chengdu is in the southwest part of China. We went to a tea house and played Mahjong, which drew a large crowd to help us learn how to play the game. We went to a temple where there were many many statutes of Buddha and we ate lunch at the teahouse there -- which was really good -- we even managed to eat mashed potatoes with chopsticks. Outside the temple, there were many shops (there are many shops everywhere in Chengdu) but also women working on what they hope to be the world's largest piece of embroidery. One of the days we took the bus (another experience) to see Dujiangyan, an irrigation project over 2,000 years old and Qingcheng Shan, a Daoist monastery and beautiful park. At the monastery, there is a lake where people take a boat across. There was fog that hid the tops of the mountain but it was a very tranquil-feeling place.

The Family Arrives in Beijing

2007-02-15T15:07:00.000+08:00

Sarah has let me borrow her blog to write about the family arriving in Beijing. The adventure for us began at the airport when the driver from our hotel met us with a large sign "James Widder" but we could not leave until we found Sarah and we could not tell him this very well -- not being able to speak a word of Chinese. Fortunately, Sarah arrived through the crowd and we got to go together to our hotel, which was in the western part of the city. The hotel was wonderful -- it was a traditional hutong which is several stone buildings all centered around a courtyard. While in Beijing, we hiked the Great Wall - a section that was not so well traveled and very beautiful. We also went to Tiananmen Square, where there was this sculpture next to a mausoleum for Mao. The square was filled with people, many of whom we think are in the city for the New Year holiday. We took a tour of the Forbidden City with a young Chinese woman named April who was very nice and had just graduated from a local university and was trying to earn money to travel. When Sarah told her that her name was "Sarah," April said, "oh, like Prison Break" -- we unfortunately have never seen "Prison Break" but it is a very popular TV show in China. The lions are from the Forbidden City. We met a friend for dinner who has moved to Beijing and his wife is from here -- they picked out many (it seemed like a dozen to me) things for us to try and we tried everything. It has been a great introduction to China. I think my favorite thing was the drum tower -- it is very old and they had 24 or so drums that they would sound to tell the time. They had a demonstration of just 3 of them and the sound was wonderful. There was a great view from the tower of the part of the city where we were staying and the many people, cars, bikes, and pedicabs that are part of city life. It is so much to take in at once and the best part is seeing Sarah.

Jiuzhaigou

2007-02-13T22:12:00.000+08:00

The research adventure continues... ...
I arrived in Chengdu off the train bright and early with just enough time to take a cab home to grab my Jiuzhaigou tickets and then meet Huangjie at the bus station. Huangjie had graciously agreed to help me buy my bus ticket to Jiuzhaigou. I took the bus all day and arrived in Jiuzhaigou around 7 or 8pm, where I met Andrew. After dinner with Andrew another woman named Dawn who is from Australia and there working on an Environmental Education program in the schools, we went back to Andrew's house to sleep. He just moved into a new house that he rents from a Tibetan woman who lives buy herself because her husband died and her two sons are away working and at school. The house is beautiful. It has a nice little courtyard in the front and very intricate painting and woodworking, typical of Tibetan buildings.
The next day Andrew took me into Zhongcha valley, a valley next to the park, where I would be doing my tests. This valley is a Tibetan village (about the size and urbanization level of Yangjuan) that is protected because it is near the park, but not actually in the park itself. They have had a little contact with foreigners, but nothing like in Yangjuan, so it was a very interesting experience and I was really happy to have Andrew there to make introductions. We first dropped my stuff off at a little "lodge" the Party Secretary Biajie runs. Then we walked down to the house of a family that Andrew knows. We sat around and chatted for awhile and I did my indoor test that afternoon while they made lunch before Andrew had to leave. All the kids watched and helped me and it was actually pretty fun. Then Andrew went back to Jiuzhaigou to finish a report and I went out to play with the kids. Just like Yangjuan, everyone was so nice to me and so welcoming. After dinner (they made me have two bowls of noodles before I would leave, also just like Yangjuan) and several cups of Yak Butter tea, a Tibetan specialty made from Yak butter melted in tea with Barley flour, crushed seeds, and a little sugar and salt. After that, I walked back to Biajie's house to sleep. The next day I woke up and went for a hike up the valley because I wanted to explore a little bit. I followed a path of footprints past several stands of trees that they had cut out of site of the road because they are not technically allowed to gather firewood in this area. I wanted to see where the path led, but after an hour and a half I had to turn around to go meet Andrew at noon and the footprints kept going. The hike was beautiful though, and I was really glad I went. After I met Andrew back at Biajie's house he had to leave again to take Dawn to the bus station and I did my outdoor test at Biajie's house and his daughters helped me. Then I went back down to the other family's house because I had promised them I would come back that afternoon. The little girls were out playing, but the older daughter (my age) was there with the mother. The older daughter is studying English in school, so we sat and practiced English for awhile. Then I gave them some presents that Andrew had brought up and said that I really should be going. They wanted me to stay for dinner, but I really did have to be going, but they would not let me leave without eating, so I told them I would go get my things from Biajie's house and come back and eat dinner with them on the way out. Everyone I said goodbye to seemed so genuinely sad to see me going and I was only there for two days. I really want to go back and hang out with them soon. But I did have to leave then because Andrew had left me his bicycle to ride back down the road to Jizhaigou and it was starting to look like it was going to snow. So I hopped on the bicycle, to discover that the breaks were a little unreliable and it was getting dark soon. I had no choice but to navigate the bumpy dirt mountain road on the "shoddy-braked" bike, praying for my life the whole way down. Finally I reached the paved main park road again and I thought I was on the home stretch, with time to spare. Little did I know it was still a half an hour bike ride from the mouth of the valley to the hotel where I would be staying. By the time I met Andrew at the hotel, it was dark and starting to rain.
The next morning I went into the park. Even though it was winter so there wouldn't be alot of visitors today, I wanted to get to the park nice and early so I could see everything because I only had one day. I took the bus from the park entrance up to the very top of the valley. It had snowed the night before at the higher altitudes and the high point where we stopped was absolutely breath-taking. The rest of the park was beautiful as well, quite possibly the most beautiful park I have ever been to. You are supposed to take buses from "scenic lookout point" to "scenic lookout point", but there is also a boardwalk you can walk on. However, some of the boardwalk was closed due to fire danger, but I decided to walk anyways. When the boardwalk was closed, I just walked on the road all the way back to the entrance (maybe 30km). It was a long day, but it was worth it. Here are a few pictures of the park, there are many more and they do not even begin to do it justice.
The next day I got up early and went to the airport and flew back to Chengdu. After a hectic day and a half in Chengdu getting things ready I was off again to meet the family in Beijing. But that is the next chapter... ....