This is China.... the photo collection

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

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

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.