Traveling after Teaching (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

I’ll first start by saying that I wish I had been able to spend some more time in Malaysia because I was limited just to Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Lumpur was ultimately just a big city, but you could spend a day just people watching. Malay, Indonesian, Chinese, Indian, Western-this was definitely one of the most ethnically diverse places I have ever been to. Frankly speaking though, there just wasn’t a lot to do there but party.
As we were walking up to the door of our hostel, my friend, Nate (a Shijiazhuang American student at my school) was in front and I just heard him exclaim, “Noooo way!” I tried to see what he saw inside. From behind, I recognized a familiar head of shaggy, brown hair. We walked through the door and Nate exclaimed again, “Noooo way! What the f--- are YOU doing here?!” Sure enough, the shaggy head of hair turned around and revealed itself to be none other than our Scottish friend, Mike, from Shijiazhuang. Just as surprised as we were, we had to get over the initial shock of seeing each other in the same city in the same hostel when we had parted our separate ways almost a month before. If anyone else has experienced something like this, you know how crazy it can be.
While we were there we smoked a lot of sheesha (flavored tobacco) and drank a lot of mango shakes that were excellent. We went out a couple of nights and one night this guy who was only to us as “Captain L.A.” joined us rather spontaneously. He just sat down next to us outside of our hostel. Now this guy seemed a bit full of himself, but I wasn’t going to pass judgment on him so quickly. However, after hearing him speak at length, I realized he was just some jerk from L.A., hence the title that we bequeathed unto him. The breaking point is when we were all ordering rounds of beers at a club when Captain L.A. ordered a drink that was far more expensive than the beers we had been ordering were…and it wasn’t even his round. So Nate’s friend Sam called it out on him and he compensated him (by buying Sam a similarly priced drink). All the while, our sweet French girl friend was uncomfortably trying to enjoy herself (I can’t remember her name, but she was too much of a sweetheart to be hanging around the likes of Captain L.A….and probably us as well).
Despite what seemed to be the shortcomings of not only Captain L.A., but every person from L.A. that I met abroad, we ended up having a good time in Kuala Lumpur by just walking around and seeing some of the sites. Before becoming autonomous, Malaysia had come under the rule of the British empire for a while (and maybe some others as well), so the mix of architecture was fairly interesting. Again, though, there was not much to do in Kuala Lumpur and I really wish I had had the chance to go elsewhere in Malaysia.
Sadly, the next day Nate and Sam decided to take off for another part of Malaysia while Mike and I decided to go on a Firefly trip. This Firefly trip took us about two hours outside of Kuala Lumpur to a river. We ate a seafood (riverfood?) riverside dinner at sunset and then took a boat tour down a river to see the many thousands of fireflies that lit up the night sky.
That night Mike and I went out on the town and it was the last time I was to see that crazy Scot. The next morning, I woke him up before I had to catch my flight. He turned to me, hair disheveled as if he was doing his best impersonation of a mad scientist, eyes blurry, voice bruised and cracked, and said, “It’s been emotional,” and quickly returned to his drunken slumber.

Traveling after Teaching (Krabi, Thailand)

My first stop in Thailand was flying into Krabi. Hilariously enough, when I walked out of the airport, there were three stands all situated right next to each other. One was for an airport shuttle and the other were for private cars or taxis. They were each telling me to come to their stand with equal fervor. After looking over the prices, I decided to go with the airport shuttle. In Krabi, I stayed right next to Aonang Beach. I decided to explore a bit. I went to the edge of the beach where there was a huge cliff. Monkeys were hanging out and people were trying to feed them. However, the monkeys kept on getting chased away by four dogs. One of the monkeys was big enough to actually stand up to one of the dogs and they exchanged advances. There was a trail around the cliff that led to a private beach on the other side. The pictures I took are off to the side.
The next day I made my way to the beach almost as soon as I woke up. Unfortunately, it started to pour right as I got to the beach and I took shelter in a nearby restaurant. After it cleared up, I went in and enjoyed the warm, blue waters. After a little while I felt a sharp sting on my knee. I looked at it and it was turning red. I was pretty sure I got stung or bitten by something but I wasn’t sure what. I got out and went up to a group of Thai masseuses that were taking a break. Most Thai people in touristy areas can speak a little English, so I said to them, “I think I got stung by something, is anything in the water poisonous?” They didn’t look too alarmed, but one of them said, “Jellyfish.” Another woman said, “Come with me” and brought me just a few meters away. She sat me down, uprooted these plants, crushed them between her hands, and then rubbed them on the sting for about five to ten minutes. Afterwards, she said, “Now if you get stung again, you know where to go!” I noticed the wound itself had practically disappeared and about half an hour later the stinging feeling went away. After that, I went back into the ocean, but was more than just a little cautious of wading too far out.
That night I went to a bar called Hippies Bar who touted free drinks from 9:00 p.m.-11:00 or something like that. I’m sure it would have been crowded during high season, but it being low season there was barely anyone there. I stayed there just long enough to hear the cover band finish up their set.
The next day I rented a motorbike and biked around the area for a while. I guess I had never really gone motorbiking before either…this was definitely a trip of firsts. Riding the motorbike next to the ocean side was a great feeling. Even though I had paid the insurance, the thought of my crashing the bike and having to pay the exorbitant amount of money asked by the company was a bit disconcerting. I didn’t bike too far but made it to a couple other beaches, which was nice.
That night, I met an Austrian guy, Martin, who was traveling back to Thailand with his Thai girlfriend. He brought me to his girlfriend’s cousin’s family’s bar, which was along a strip of bars. As we walked into the bar, he pointed at one of the girls that was working and said, “Dis ees my friend, don’t even theenk about touching heem!” His accent was pretty entertaining because he talked about his family a lot and would say, with heavy emphasis, “My Fadda…” or “My Mudda…” We just BSed for a few hours but it was nice talking to him. It was also crazy just sitting there while people watching.
The next morning I road the motorbike a bit more and then left on a boat to the island of Ko Phi Phi, where I met one of the most eccentric people I have ever met

Traveling after Teaching (Yangshuo)

Unfortunately, I have to begin this entry with one of the stupidest things I think I have ever done. After I got out of Guilin’s airport I took a taxi to the bus station (Yangshuo is an hour south of Guilin by bus). As soon as I got to the bus station, I paid the taxi cab driver and got on a bus to Yangshuo with my backpack. As soon as I stepped on the bus, I yelled a series of obscenities-I had just realized that I left my suitcase in the trunk of the taxi. A man that seemed to be a manager of the buses told me to come with him. We went to a taxi cab company and they said there was nothing they could do about it. We went to talk to some other taxi cab drivers and they gave us a number. We called the number but it didn’t seem like it helped much. Finally we figured that since it was an airport taxi that someone would be in charge of them at the airport. The man told me we had to go back to the airport to see if we could talk to someone. After the 40 minutes it took to get back to the airport, we found the woman in charge of the drivers. In true Chinese fashion, as soon as we began to present my predicament to the woman, a crowd of taxi cab drivers gathered around, each wanting to put in their two cents, each sounding as though they were the authority on the matter. At one point, while trying to explain something to the man, I had to turn around to shush the taxi cab drivers to make myself even audible to the man.
(sidenote: this is a common characteristic among Chinese people-any public situation that seems even slightly out of the ordinary is met with a crowd of people. Furthermore, any such situation that necessitates some sort of assistance or information on the part of the second party can easily be met with not one, but many other parties. I’ll present you with a few examples. Just today while I was eating lunch, a woman dramatically dropped her tray of food just as she was walking away from the counter. Now, normally, one would expect people to turn around to see what the commotion was about. However, people did not just turn around from their seats. People actually got up OUT OF their seats to stand around the mess…just looking at it. A few days ago at the airport, a woman was throwing a tantrum and seemed to be having some sort of mental breakdown. Two men were trying to get her under control but to no avail as she continued to scream, throw her cell phone against the ground, and kick her legs. A crowd of at least fifty gathered around to stare. I’ve even seen people watch and stare at men working on the light poles on a street.)
The woman made a call to her taxi cab drivers. Amazingly, a minute later one called back and said he had it. We got his phone number and taxi number. We had to take the airport shuttle back, which was another 40 minutes. Before the man called the taxi cab driver, he sat me down and basically said that he wouldn’t call the driver unless I paid him 100 yuan. I was like, “What…the…fuck.” I just spent 85 on a taxi cab ride to the bus station, and then 80 for our tickets to the airport and back. I tried to reason with him…partially because I knew that he didn’t make 100 yuan in maybe even a few days worth of work, but he would not listen or bargain with me. Then we had to take a bus to the place where we were going to meet the driver. After I got my luggage, he had the gall to ask me to call him if I was going to stay in Guilin longer. “Yea, you just screwed me out of 100 yuan, I think I can really trust you to show me a good time in Guilin, you fuckhead.” What’s funny is that when I came back to Guilin, I saw him leading some other foreigner around. I was really tempted to come up to him and tell the foreigner to watch out for him.
After visiting Yangshuo, it very well may be my favorite city in China. It is in south central China and has become a popular destination for backpackers in the last few years or so. Yangshuo has one of the most recognizable natural landscapes that China has to offer. Thin lime stone mountains, covered in vegetation, jut up jaggedly from the ground. Although it is fairly touristy (as any place of interest is in China), it was still a pretty small town/city and there was so much to do there. I didn’t arrive until later in the afternoon because of my ordeal. As soon as I stepped off the bus in Yangshuo, I was greeted by a young man who came up to me and said, “Do you need hostel? Hostel?” I said, “No, I’ve already booked with Monkey Jane’s Hostel.” The man replied, “No! Monkey Jane’s will f--- your money! They will f--- your money!” I said, “I don’t care, Monkey Jane’s was recommended to me by many people and I intend to keep my reservation.” Then he said, “OK…well I can take you there.” So I got on the back of his motorbike and he dropped me off not far away. On the way, he told me, “How about you come to my hostel today and then if you like, you stay.” I said, “Nope!” That guy charged me twenty for which should have been a five yuan ride. After that, he pointed me in the wrong direction to Monkey Jane’s. Yea, see if I stay at your hostel, you jerk off.
I was first told about Monkey Jane’s after some teachers from my city went there over the Spring Festival holiday. They said it was some of the most fun they ever had staying at a hostel. Monkey Jane is owned by the woman of its namesake. She might be the most untraditional Chinese woman I have ever met…which actually goes for every woman who worked at Monkey Jane’s, but Monkey Jane in particular. She would swear at guests, get drunk with her guests, and openly talk about her sexual escapades with her guests. Her rooftop bar is infamous for its beer pong. Monkey Jane guests can win free t-shirts by beating her at beer pong. Every single night of the four nights in Yangshuo, I stayed on her rooftop bar. Great fun had by all!
Two of the most interesting people I met at Monkey Jane’s were two guys who said they were working in Bali, Indonesia. Both were in their mid to late twenties and said they had planned on going to a few different countries, spending some time working at each one, but they have stayed in Bali for the last 9 months. They have the ultimate bachelor’s pad and are getting into some real business there.
But back to Yangshuo itself. The first full day I had, I went biking with my roommate, an American named Richard, and a guy I met at the bar the night before, Daniel, from Costa Rica. Richard didn’t end up striking the right cord with me by the end of the day, and you’ll see why, but Daniel was one of the nicest, most laid back people I have ever met. We decided that a good route would be to go to a town north of Yangshuo called Xing Ping, because apparently they had a good weekend market. Also, we would have the option of taking a raft down the river back to Yangshuo. As we made our way to Xing Ping, we stopped at a run down convenience store and noodle place to avoid the few minutes of torrential rainfall. I don’t know why, but it was a fairly striking moment being on the side of this road with some poorer Chinese people, eating some tasty noodles while the rain was coming down. You just had to be there, I suppose.
Afterwards we continued our trek. After another 45 minutes or so we got to Xing Ping. It was relatively touristy, but the main streets were definitely alive with the market. However, merchants and people trying to get us to do boat tours on the river constantly hounded us. One woman would not leave us alone. I told her that we didn’t want anything and to go away, but she persisted. What makes me even angrier in these situations is when the other person smiles, as if they think you are joking…which is what this woman was doing (again, I think this is a Chinese characteristic…where as we do it to intentionally piss someone off more, they do it to say, “Hey, nothing is wrong.” But nevertheless, I always interpret it in the former). I finally got the woman to go away.
After leaving Xing Ping, we began to follow a trail on the map. The trail was along the river and we had to cross by ferry at one point. Just beautiful scenery, as you can see from the pictures.
Finally at one point, we realized that we were on a walking trail and it was impossible to go any further on our bikes so we had to find an alternate route. This alternate route snaked all around and on top of the mountains…and it was a dirt and gravel road, which made it particularly to pedal on. We stopped at some points just to take in everything around us. Finally we got on an actual paved bike trail (yes!) and it was basically smooth sailing from there (the last 15 km being almost entirely downhill. We stopped at a beekeeper’s tent to see if they had any water for us. They did, but then Richard asked if they had tea, and they did. Then, Richard asked if they had honey, and of course they had loads of it. Note that all this time Richard is speaking English and is making no effort in trying to use me to translate (which may not have helped THAT much) or to use body language to get his point across. He was also doing it before at the noodle place. Clearly, they were poor and assumedly not well educated. I said, “They don’t understand English, man,” but he continued. Finally he asked if they had any bread, which I thought got past a certain point and got into the realm of taking advantage of their already generous hospitality. So finally I lit into him a little bit, but he didn’t see what the big deal was. Later I talked to Daniel and he said, “I think you and I were on the same page…but Richard…”
In any case, we had pure honey and it was amazing.
By the time we got back, the sun had already set. We estimated that we had road our bikes somewhere between 60 and 70 km. Needless to say, we were all exhausted.
The next day, I decided to go out to a cave, which is a popular destination spot for tourists. I decided to bike out to the cave and it only took about half an hour or so. I had never really gone spelunking (cave exploring) before, so it was a good experience. At one point, there was a mud bath that had really thick mud that we bathed ourselves in. Of course, our great tour guide didn’t tell us anything about the geological history of the formations, but she expressed concern in showing us formations that looked like recognizable objects or people. “Look, it’s Santa Claus!” “It’s Buddha! See the belly!” “Take a picture of this! It’s a toothbrush!” It reminded me of my tour guide in Pingyao…”Look, a chair!” In any case, the cave was really cool. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera because I knew it could have easily gotten broken, muddy, or wet. After we left the cave, we hiked around the mountain and jumped in a pool at the entrance of the cave to get cleaned up.
My final day I decided to try something else I had never done before---rock climbing! It was hard as hell! I went with a guy from Jerusalem named Ayer, who was my roommate after Richard left. I was able to do about three and a half climbs, but by then, my arms were spaghetti. I literally had trouble tying my shoes without my arms shaking. It was fun though. The hardest part, along with constantly using your upper body strength, was positioning your body in such a way was sometimes the only way to get past a point. The only way to know how to position your body in a certain way at a given point was from experience.
The morning after that I left Yangshuo to spend the night in Guilin for my flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Luckily, my trip back to Guilin and the Guilin airport was completely uneventful.

Qingdao and soccer updates

Well, in true China fashion, the server I use for my blog, www.blogger.com, has been blocked as well as other frequently used sites such as Twitter and Flickr. Luckily I found a proxy (an anonymous server that can bypass such blocks) to access my blog. As my Scottish friend, Mike, put it, "This censored internet shite really does my tits in!"

Since I wrote last, I have traveled to two more totally sweet places in China. The one I will relay to you now is from Qingdao. Spellbinding stories abound...

The place we traveled to in the middle of May was called Qingdao which is famously known as the "Beer Capital of China", producing China's most well known beer, Tsing Tao, as well as another beer, Lao Shan. Qingdao is also particularly interesting because of its German influence (it was colonized by Germany many moons ago). After some false starts, I was finally able to round up a few people to come with me. James, an awkward and awkwardly tall Scottish bloke, Amit, and Willie. Now for some reason, there are only a few ways to get from Shijiazhuang to Qingdao directly. One is by a bus that leaves at 8:30 and 11:30 in the morning, the other is by a train that leaves at 10:00 p.m. As a result of conflicting class schedules, our only option was the night train. Now, before going to buy the tickets I knew that the train did not have sleeping cars (cars that have beds) but rather just had seats. This made James a little hesitant to come, but everyone was still in. Even when I went to buy the tickets two or three days earlier, they told me they were sold out of seats. Dumbstruck, I bought four standing-only tickets. The train takes about 8 hours so I knew at least James would not be happy. I actually thought about not telling them that I could only get standing tickets until we met at the bar right before leaving to get on the train, but I thought better of it. I sent out a text to all three of the other adventurers with the best reply being James' which simply read, "haha, good joke." Willie and Amit were down (even with Amit's still healing broken toe) and with a little coaxing James was aboard again. Come Thursday night we meet at the bar and have a few beers to prep us for what could be a really really crappy night. When we arrived at the train station we bought two small, Chinese, fold out seats and two 9 packs of big beers and had a couple before it was time to get on our train. Amazingly enough, as we got on the train and people settled down, we noticed that there were a few seats open and we were all able to take one. However we all were sitting in different places. A female college student we befriended sat next to me as she translated between an older man and me. As I drank more my tongue began to loosen and the Chinese man sitting next to me (who could actually speak much better English than the college student) cut in on some of my answers by saying, "That's not an appropriate answer" or something along those lines. I think one of the questions the older man had asked was, "How long have you been in China?" and my response was, "9 months, but it feels like 2 years." I didn't mean it in a negative way really, I have just seen and experienced so much while I've been here! In any case, I passed out after a little while.

The next morning I woke up bright and early at around 7 or so...and guess what, still on the train! Still a bit intoxicated from the night before, I cracked open a beer. The breakfast of champions! I picked up two more and brought them to Amit and James who were also awake while lucky 'ol Willie had taken advantage of an entire row being open and laid down and was still passed out hard. Still drinking on the way to our hostel, we had possibly the nicest Chinese hippie ever set us up and give us our room keys. After being settled in and taking some showers, we decided it was high time to grab some lunch (with some beer, of course!) and then mosey on down to the Tsing Tao brewery.

The brewery was what one would expect: information on the founding and history of the brewery, the basic ingredients of beer, how it is brewed, etc. Halfway through the tour we got to a "resting point" where we could try "raw beer", right before it goes through its last process of being brewed. It tasted a bit different, kind of liken cold, stale beer, but it was alright. While enjoying our fine brew, I noticed a commotion to our left and several westerners (British I was assuming) were taking pictures of something. I looked again and saw that a Chinese toddler was drinking some beer. This girl could not have been any older than four years old and her parents were watching her drink beer while being photographed by a gaggle of the Commonwealth. After a while, the girl realized she was the undeniable center of attention and started to cry as her father took her away. "Man," I thought to myself, "that shit would never fly in the States."

At the end of the tour, the hallway opened up to a huge beer hall where we got a free pitcher of beer. Following the pitcher we downed several cheap pints. Behind me, I noticed a girl, who could not have been more than 12 years old drinking some beer. She did not have much left in her glass, so I looked directly at her, held up my glass, and firmly said, "Ganbei!" 'Ganbei', which literally translates to "dry glass" is the word you say to signify that you and your drinking partner(s) will chug the entire glass. She did and I did, and her parents immediately wanted pictures of her with me.

After this we ate dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant and then went out clubbing. The cabby totally screwed us on the fare to the Tex-Mex restaurant. Although it was rush hour, it took 20-30 minutes to get there...but later we realized that it was about a five minute ride from our hostel. He definitely went the long way. Oh! After the Tex-Mex James got mad at me because these two Chinese teenagers were staring at us and I drunkenly followed them for half a block. In his rather thick Scottish accent, James yelled, "What the fuck do you think you're doing!?" I really didn't have a good answer for him.

The next day we decided to go to the beach which was a five minute walk from our hostel. The weather was really the best, so we just walked along the beach and made a poor excuse for a sand castle. We also visited one of the highest points in the city that gave us a panoramic view of the city. It was a great view! Later on we went to a German restaurant and I ordered a huge plate of sausages with beer! It was to die for.

That was about the extent of our Qingdao trip



Other updates:

- My football (soccer) team played a match two Fridays ago. The team we played was a rematch against the only team that we have ever lost against. The other team was playing cheap the entire time, especially one or two players. One older, larger gentleman pulled on jerseys, kicked people when they were down, and pushed. After one penalty shot and a couple excellent plays by our forwards, we had a comfortable lead of 3-1. At the end, of the game, one our midfielders was guarding the big man on the other team and our midfielder simply kicked the ball out of bounds. The big man literally turned around and kicked our midfielder square in the shin, making no attempt at even going for the ball. Our midfielder, Patrick, put his hands up as if to say that he was innocent and had not done anything wrong before the big man started yelling at him and pushed him. At this point, both teams swarmed the situation and we had to hold Patrick back from beating the crap out of the big guy. Patrick is shorter than I am, but considering his muscle mass, he could've probably taken the bigger guy. Anyway, the game unfortunately ended on this sour note with a lot of yelling and obscene hand gestures from our side. What pee'd us off even more was that the manager of the field (the guy we had to pay to use the field), who also seemed to be doubling as the other team's coach came over to us and said that the big guy was going for the ball and that we should not play so hard when we have a lead. He said this with a huge grin on his face pee'd me/us off even more (side note: one thing I think I have figured out is that Chinese people will smile when there is a potentially volatile situation to show that nothing is amiss whereas in the West we take that as a real jackass thing to do). If I spoke Chinese a whole lot better than I do now, I would have told them that 1. We all saw what happened clear as day so you can go to hell and 2. Next time, when we have a lead, we'll just walk off the field and let the other team knock a few goals in. One of the other guys on our team, an African said, "If I would've been in Patrick's place, I would have killed that man."

- After losing what we thought would be our last soccer match, we decided that we had to play-and win-one last soccer match. So Hugo set up a match with a student team from one of the universities in Shijiazhuang. We played the game and were giving them quite a thrashing (the score being 9-1 towards the end of the game). However, towards the end of the game, the ball was out of play for some reason and so I started walking back towards our goal when I heard a huge commotion behind me. I looked behind me and some spectator from the sidelines had run onto the field (while the game is still on, mind you), had tackled a player on the opposing team and started punching him mercilessly in the face. Everyone on my team just began to feel dumbfounded when ANOTHER spectator from the sidelines ran with his shirt off, screaming something in Chinese, with what appeared to be a knife in his hand. He ran after some other guy on the opposing team and a big brawl ensued for about 10 minutes. At this point, our team just walked off the field and called it a day, still very confused about what just happened. We tried asking around to see what they were fighting about but no one had any clue. We assumed it was something personal. After the game, a friend of mine who was unable to play that day called me and asked me how the game went. I told the story about the fight and he replied, "Sometimes it's a very very bad idea to lose."

The other day I was dumbfounded by the amount of reading I have been able to accomplish while I have been here in China. I don't think I read more even while being an English Major in school (but let's face it...how much reading did I ACTUALLY do in school?) Partly because of the free time, extensive amount of traveling, and being relatively geographically isolated from my friends.

The Sound and The Fury
Being There
Death of Salesman
Ulysses
Mind Into Matter
God of Small Things
The Great Gatsby
Lolita
Geronimo Rex
The Heart is Lonely Hunter
Atonement
100 Years of Solitude
The Stranger
Stuff White People Like
The Road
Profiles in Courage
Sperm Wars
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Confederacy of Dunces
Veronika Decides to Die
The Devil and Miss Prym
The Three Musketeers

I would highly recommend Lolita, The Perks of..., and Sperm Wars, while also recommending Profiles in Courage and 100 Years of Solitude. Sorry for the boasting, but I couldn't help being proud of the accomplishment...ESPECIALLY with Ulysses.

Pingyao/Taiyuan Trip and Various Things

Sorry for the big gap since I last posted, but not too much that has been that noteworthy has been happening lately. I'm this is mostly due to the fact that the environment that surrounds me has become quite normal to me. I'm sure once I come back to the States, I'll think to myself, "Wait, where are all the babies pooping and peeing on the street?" or "Why can't I drink alcohol in this taxi?"

As my time here in China winds down, I feel as though I'm ready to complete this experience and move on to the next step. However, I have about two months left and I'm definitely going to keep on living it up.

- We formed a foreigners' soccer team and we usually have at least one match every weekend. There is no league, per se, but our captain is well connected enough that he can arrange matches against teams made up of students, co-workers, etc. Our team is made up of Africans, Canadians, Koreans, Indians, Scottish, and English among others. Tyler, our field captain (as opposed to Hugo, our managerial captain), is incredibly competitive and likes to make a competition out of most things...not to mention something he has a lot of passion for (soccer). In fact, he is the one that regularly won all those drinking competitions at Seven Club. The first few times we played he would yell at people and be a general jerk. We nicknamed him Tyrant Tyler. Finally Francis had enough of it and ripped into him. He still yells a little bit, but most of it is positive encouragement. In any case, it's been lots of fun so far playing a game that I haven't really played since I was 8.

- I played my first game of cricket! It was a pick-up game but it was good fun. It's not nearly as confusing as I thought it would be, but it's like the imperialistic, aristocratic version of baseball (at least on some levels).

- A couple weekends ago, my school took us on a trip to a mountain outside of Taiyuan and then to Pingyao, which is one of China's only remaining ancient cities (meaning that it hasn't completely modernized and still has some structures from hundreds of years ago). We had one guide for both places and he was absolutely awful. It wasn't that his English was terrible (but it was bad enough that the Chinese people that work in my foreign affairs office were making fun of him), but it was that he didn't explain ANYTHING to us. To me, the job of a tour guide is to explain the cultural/political/religious/etc. significance of a whatever it is that one is taking a tour of. The entire tour, we had to ask our guide to explain most everything. Oh! But he did explain some things: "This is a tree trunk." or "This is a wooden table with wooden chairs." (I am 100% serious). One pretty odd experience we had during this trip occurred when we were on top of the city wall in Pingyao. Within the city wall is a prison and we could see the prisoners waving to us from their barred windows. So we waved back. We probably gave them the most amusement they had all day long.

The pictures above are all from the trip.

- Considering the recent weather we've been having (80s mostly), our classrooms can get fairly toasty without any air conditioning. So I come in with shorts, birkenstock sandals, and a t-shirt already sweating while some of my students are wearing two or three layers of clothes. I turn on the fans and my students begin to whine (Chinese girls universally have this annoying whine that makes them sound like they are spoiled 7 year olds). They say, "We are going to catch colds!" Then I usually go on a rant for a few minutes about how no one in the history of the world has ever caught a cold from a fan.

Despite the advent of modern medicine in China, there is still a firm belief in some traditional, pseudo-scientific fact views on sickness and health. One of them is that you can catch a cold as a direct result of being exposed to the cold weather (even just wind) for an extended amount of time. This, of course, is not true. However, one is infinitely more likely to catch a cold from lack of sleep (proven), lack of vitamin D (proven), or change in behaviors such as a result of winter weather like spending more time inside and being in closer proximity to others (proven).

I asked one of my students about this and they said there is an old saying in Chinese that basically translates to "Don't take off your winter clothes too soon in the spring and don't put your winter clothes on too soon in the fall"...didn't really answer my question...but OK.

In any case I am going to do a mini-presentation on "How One Actually Catches the Cold" in my classes this week. Terri thinks I'm mean for doing it, and I may be a jerk, but it must be done! I will be merely providing them with scientifically proven facts concerning the common cold...with a fair bit of biting sarcasm thrown into the mix.

- This weekend I am FINALLY going to Qingdao, which is the beer capital of China (producers of TsingTao beer, one of the worst beers I've ever had in America is considered the best beer in China! Who would've known!) I'm going with Amit and this Scottish guy named James "Jimmy". Good stories shall abound...I think we are going to go for a hostel that is right on the beach! Woo!

- Also I am visiting my Norwegian friends, Bjorn and Hanne, in Hainan (the Hawaii of China) at the end of May. Speaking of, I don't think I mentioned this but at their going away party back in the beginning of April, Bjorn, me and a few others went to a restaurant at 4 or so in the morning. Basically we made a mess of things and starting using our chopsticks as drumsticks and the various dishes and glasses as percussive instruments. I can't imagine what kind of racket we were making, but one of the waiters commented that it was "very good." Every once in a while during our jam, Bjorn would yell, "YI PING PIJIU" which means "one bottle of beer." After a while of repeating this phrase, a waiter came in, which stopped all the music for a moment, and said, "Yi ping pijiu ma?" Which essentially means "You want a beer?" I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard, but I think you kind of had to be there.

- I am beginning to plan my travels for after I am done teaching...top of the list is Thailand! We'll see how my finances are looking at that time, but I wouldn't mind just chilling three weeks in Thailand.

Updates

- A couple weeks ago, Megan had her going away party at OK Pizza, the pizza buffet in Shijiazhuang that is just "OK". The plan was to eat a minimal amount of pizza and drink a shit ton of beer while playing drinking games such as quarters and flippy cup. Not only is OK Pizza an all you can eat buffet, it's also all you can drink. As I came in, Bence immediately offered me a shot and I took it immediately. He told me it was "Hungarian baijiu." It was definitely similar to Chinese baijiu and had the same burning sensation. After a while of eating and drinking casually, Bence became very intoxicated. Bence face became red and blotchy, then his neck, and finally his shoulders. It was hilarious to compare his level of drunkeness with how red and blotchy he was (we would later find out that he is allergic to beer). Bence has a really weird sense of humor but he was incredibly entertaining to Andy and me. Bence told us of the problems that gypsies pose in his country. He said, "The worst thing ever is a gypsy flying on pegasus, because he will come down and stab you in the back with a knife!" He also mimicked the shaking of a bee hive while yelling, "Are you bees?! Will you follow me?!" After everyone had had their fill of pizza and baijiu jello shots were consumed, we cleared the table to play some rousing games of flippy cup. The Chinese in the restaurant either looked at us like we were crazy or they were trying to figure out what the hell we were playing. The restaurant was supposed to close by 9 and we ended up being there until after 11. I posed the question to our Drake friend, Jason, whose Chinese is quite advanced for how long we have been here. He said, "They have asked me to leave a few times, but I just pretend I don't understand them." Jason's girlfriend is Chinese so he added, "We just say that she is Chinese American." The entire time that we are at OK Pizza, these Russian girls that are attractive, but take total advantage of Bence call him non stop. They basically wanted him to come to the club to get them free drinks. He kept on telling them that he would be there later but they would not stop bothering him. Bence is too nice, so finally Megan, myself, and a few others got on the phone with the Russians and told them very bluntly, to "STOP CALLING!" as well as some other requests. Finally, we left OK Pizza and went to 7 Club where, of course, all the Russian girls were waiting outside...fucking bitches.

- On a similar note, the night I met many of these Russian girls, Bence had been hanging out with them beforehand. Bence came up to me and said, "These girls are crazy! They drink me under the table!" His animated face was bright red and his English was noticeably poorer. He said, "I chase baijiu with coca-cola, and they chase it with beer!" I looked over at these tiny Russian girls, and they are acting completely normal, and look back at Bence, who is a pretty big guy and has trouble standing up at this point and just laughed. Fucking Russians...I still firmly believe that there are no water pipes in Russia, only vodka pipes. Not only do they drink it but they also bathe and wash their clothes in that shit, I swear.

- There is a new bar that opened up recently called the 80s Cowboy Bar. Despite having the most unoriginal name possible and sounding like a stereotypical gay night club, the place is actually really cool and reminds me of dive bars in the states (something China seriously lacks). We've dubbed it the "music bar" (not much more original, I know, but it's the only bar in my city that has live rock music). I'd have to see it a little less crowded, but the place has all sorts of decorations covering the wall...a weird mix of Pacific Island and cowboy kitsch.

Last weekend I went to a Chinese deathcore show there. Our Chinese friend, Nigel, is one of only a few Chinese people I've met that actually has a decent taste in music and he was the one that informed us of the show. Every few weeks they have a concert and last week it was a Beijing deathcore band, Suffocated.

Recently I've been hanging out with a group of foreign teachers from No. 43 Foreign Language School which is considered the best middle school/high school in the city. There is Ben (English), Francis (Australian), Kevin "K-Fed" (Australian), Mark (Canadian), Mike (Scottish), and Dave (English). Ben and I have some similar tastes in music. We both grew up on metal and are both still into it to a certain extent. Anyway, Ben was totally down with going to a metal show. Right before the show Ben tells about four other teachers from his school (Mark, K-Fed, Dave, and Ben's wife Christine) to come to this concert...without telling them what kind of band was playing. As we are walking up I get the feeling he purposefully didn't tell him and ask the four others, "Do you know what kind of concert this is?" They said, "No...". I told them, but they seemed just as enthusiastic as before.

The opening band played a total of three songs. A little different from warm-up bands elsewhere. They were OK. A lot of standard metal riffs, but they had some lengthy Iron Maiden solo harmonies that sounded great.

The headliner, Suffocated, was very tight musically and you could tell they had been at it for a while. Both guitarists had hair down to their shoulders and the vocalist/bassist looked like any other tough guy you would see in the metalcore scene...except of course, he was Chinese. The band had some nice solo work and a really heavy sound. There were mosh pits galore as young, skinny-as-a-twig Chinese boys collided into one another. There was also Bence...out weighing and out muscling everyone else there, shirtless and head banging. Bence brought two Russian girls that have recently moved to Shijiazhuang as students as Bence's school and went CRAZY head banging with Bence. Ben and mild-mannered Dave ended up moshing which was hilarious. The crowd did this one thing that I have never seen at a metal show before. At the beginning of a song, two lines of people lined up on opposite ends of the mosh pit. As soon as the song kicked in they broke rank and ran directly into each other. It was a great time and the PBR flowed aplenty. At the end of the concert, the owner insisted that Dave make an announcement IN ENGLISH for the next concert. We were the only ones that probably even understood one word of it.

According to Dave's announcement, the bar will have a Norwegian punk band soon, which should also rule.

After the music bar and grabbing a bit to eat, we went to McDonald's Bar to meet up with the others. After being there for half an hour or so there was a near consensus of people wanting to go to Mazzo (a night club). Not particularly being in the mood, I practically had to be dragged. Levi (American teacher/student who we also hang out with) insisted he could get us free drinks there. At Mazzo it was taking us a while to get drinks. Francis, the other one of our group who was adamant about not going, became very pissed off. Finally, we got vodka and coke (?) delivered to our table which is around the time that the shit show began. After slamming back several glasses, Levi, Ben, and especially Mike became extremely intoxicated.

After a while we decide it's time to go so we're getting all our coats back from the coat check. All of a sudden there is a big commotion behind me. I look back and Francis is literally holding Mike with all of his strength. I search for the other focal point of the soon-to-be confrontation and it is quite an attractive Chinese girl, probably in her early 20s. She is surrounded by men who seem to be trying to lead her out of the club. Not knowing what is going on, but knowing how volatile Mike can get in these situations, I tell the one or two Chinese people that I somewhat know in their group to get that girl the fuck out of the club.

Afterwards, I learn that Mike had been hitting on this girl for a while. Francis explains to me that this girl has a reputation for luring in men and then having her security beat the shit out of him. Don't ask me why, but it sounds like some sort of power fetish...kinda hot if you ask me.

After this ruckus, we evacuated the premises back to McDonald's Bar. Kevin, the bartender, was not happy to say the least when he saw our stumbling, drunk asses mosey back in because he had just finished cleaning the bar (it was about 2:30 a.m. by this point). Francis insisted that we would just stay for one beer because we were trying to calm our friend down.

As soon as we sat down, Mike passed the fuck out on the table. Two minutes later, he lifted his head up, grabbed one of the ashtrays and through it against the wall causing it to shatter everywhere. Francis was ordering beers at the time turned around and said, "Who the fuck was that?!" I replied, "Who the fuck do you think it was?!" Francis came back and put a beer in Mike's limp hand. Jokingly, I pretended to remove it a couple of times and each time Francis and James (along with me, the two most sober of the group at this point) said "No no no no!!!" As we all know now, during times like these, a beer in Mike's hand is almost as important as his having a still functioning dick (sidenote: when they were traveling during the Spring Festival Holiday, Mike was in a similar condition and passed out on the bar with a beer in hand. They literally could not remove Mike's hand from his beer. They coined it "The Scottish Death Grip"). The beer never even touched Mike's lips and after the rest of us enjoyed our beers, Francis, Sandy (Francis' girlfriend), and James took Mike home, and I waited for Ben to get some McDonald's. By this point, Levi had disappeared like he tends to do when he is drunk at the end of the night.

Ben comes stumbling out of McDonald's with a huge bag of food, a cup of coffee IN A BAG, and a full beer. I said, "Ben, do you want me to carry any of that for you?" Now Ben has a quick, mumbly English accent that at times is difficult to understand anyway, but it is compounded when he is drunk. All I heard in reply to my question was, "No, shiva douba lan to ra dabba." After we got into a taxi I insisted that I hold something for him but he replied more or less the same. Ben also insisted that I have some french fries. "Here, take some fries shiva douba douba shuda." I replied, "No thanks." He got more insistent, "Here, c'mon! Shuda buda nava." Ok, I took a few, but he soon insisted I have more which I denied.

When we got back to their school, we saw Francis leading Mike upstairs to his room. Ben immediately went to his room while mumbling something incoherently. I went to Francis' room where James was lounging and drinking. Francis came back and asked where Ben was. I said, "He went to his room but I think he'll be over in a few minutes." Francis said, "He's not coming back." James, Francis, and I ended up staying up until 5:00 or so drinking and shooting the shit. What a fucking shit show of a night.

- There is a student of mine that I regularly see at the gym. She is a short, innocent girl whose English name is Madeline. A few weeks ago I saw her at the gym and she approached me a couple of times to ask how things were going. She approached me a third time and said shyly and hesitantly, "Josh...I have a question...about relationships." "Oh, God," I thought. She explained to me there was an Egyptian man who came to the gym a while back but left the city at the end of SEPTEMBER...now keep in mind it is February by this point. She said she only talked to this man once, but got his phone number before he went back to Egypt. She said she texts him semi-regularly. She then asked me...now get this..."If it's true love, do you think he will come back to Shijiazhuang?" I was so shocked that I could barely answer. I answered as calmly and collectively as I should, "Well, you know relationships are...blah blah blah" and "When two people love each other...blah blah blah." After I broke it to her as nicely as possible she said one of her friends thought she was silly for thinking such things. I said, "Well, I wouldn't be so blunt, but yea, I don't think you should bet on him coming back." She took it well, but then mentioned sometime later in class that she had an Egyptian boyfriend. I just don't know how a 20 YEAR OLD (I suppose she does look like she is 14) can be this naive. Incredible.

- One thing that I've gradually noticed is that Chinese men will look over at my dick when I'm taking a piss. I'm assuming they want to know what I'm packing. They are not too inconspicuous about it. After talking to other foreigners, this a completely regular occurrence. When I notice this, I usually say in English, "You like what you see? You can't have it" or "I know it's bigger than your's, are you jealous?" I can't wait for the day when Chinese man actually understands that.

- On a similar note, I was at McDonald's Bar about a month ago and I was waiting for the bathroom to open it up, as soon as it did and I was about to head in, the Chinese man behind me looked at me and said, "Together? Together?" meaning that he wanted us to take a piss together. Not knowing exactly what to think of this proposition, I quickly replied, "Um...no", went inside the bathroom and made sure to lock that fucking door.

- On another similar note, Francis (who I mentioned earlier) is pretty fucking crazy. Although he has calmed down quite a bit since he has a pretty serious girlfriend now, some of the stories he's recounted surpass even some of my college stories (hard to believe, I know). He said that one time, he was walking around a mall with his girlfriend and these Chinese men were following him and talking shit (Chinese men sometimes don't particularly like the fact that foreigners date Chinese women). Ignoring it to the best of his abilities for a while, he finally turned around and said, in Chinese, something like, "Do you know why she's with me and not with you?" He then proceeded to pull out his junk in the middle of this mall and then said, "Now show me your's." The Chinese banters apparently became silent and walked away.

- As I've mentioned before, restaurant experiences for Chinese men can turn into insane shit shows. They get really fucked up on baijiu and just yell a lot. As a result, the bathrooms in the "classy" restaurants turn into vomitoriums, especially on the weekends. My favorite experience concerning this is from one of the first weekends we were here. I don't think I've told this story but if I have, it bears repeating. I stepped into the men's room of a really nice restaurant only to see all of the urine stalls filled with puke...except for one. The only one void of vomit was occupied by an older gentleman who was literally seeing how far he could back up from the stall and still get his piss in the stall. I decided I would leave him to his fun and return in a few minutes but as I was leaving, he ripped one of the loudest, wettest farts I have ever heard. It was awesome.

Chinese New Year Travels (Lijiang, Dali)

Like I wrote before, we did not end up staying in Kunming for very long. After a day and half in Kunming, we decided to take an overnight bus to Lijiang. Basically, Lijiang is what everyone imagines China to look like before actually coming to China. Lijiang has an extremely well preserved Old Town that has the classic winding streets and Chinese architecture (refer to the pictures).

Our bus ride from Kunming to Lijiang was absolutely awful. As soon as we got on the bus and got situated some Chinese guy came around claiming he was the manager and charged us for our luggage based on the estimated weight. The more you thought your luggage weighed, the more he would charge you. Having no idea what the deal with this guy was before he approached me, I ended up paying 100 yuan to him and was not happy afterwards. In retrospect, I should have just refused and seen what happened. Since we got an overnight bus we had beds, but the road was so bumpy I barely slept at all...even after taking some Benadryll to make me drowsy. We got in at about 5:00 a.m., got into our hostel, and promptly passed out for about 3 hours. After breakfast, we decided to explore the city a bit. The city was beautiful and a welcome departure from the hustle and bustle of the larger Chinese cities we had been traveling to. The old city (where we were most of the time) had old Chinese houses with the traditionally made roofs along winding paths barely large enough to fit one car through. There were a couple of streams going through the city with the classic arching bridges over them. Refer to the pictures for more detail, it's a little hard to describe. One great thing was that there were a lot of merchants on the streets, but none of them were nagging us at all. I could tell that in a few years Lijiang could have the potential to be an overly touristy spot, but now it's not bad at all.

There is a famous lake just outside of the Old City in Lijiang. The name escapes me at the moment but the scenery was gorgeous. It's a little hard to tell, but you can see a very large mountain in the background of one or two of the pictures. The area is well renowned as one of the most pricelessly beautiful areas in China. A stone path lead us all around the lake.

As beautiful as Lijiang was during the day, it was spectacular at night when the only light in the city came from hundreds upon hundreds of Chinese lanterns.

While the rest of our group was headed for Tiger Leaping Gorge the next day (also considered one of the greatest destinations in China), Billie and I realized we couldn't logically go there, come back to Kunming, and get back to Shijiazhuang to teach by Sunday, so we elected to go to another nearby city called Dali. I really wish we had spent more time in Lijiang, but I definitely wish we would have been able to spend more time in Dali. Dali was completely untainted as far as western or corporate businesses are concerned (i.e. McDonald's). We stayed at an amazing hostel which was run by an older Australian man. The day we got there, we decided to go on this mountain hike. It was more than a few miles but definitely worth the peace of mind garnered from it.

That night we ate dinner with an extremely nice couple from Australia and as we returned to the hostel we saw that the party had already started! We were greeted with shots of a locally made blueberry flavored liquor which was nothing like I had tasted before, but not bad at all. As we started conversing with more people we realized that most people were indeed from Australia. As the night progressed, old AC/DC music videos were projected onto the wall. I stayed up until 3:00 sitting and talking with a fairly interesting guy who had married a German woman. The Australian guy and his wife were on vacation and he was teaching English in Germany. The next day we went back to Kunming and then the day after that we went back to Beijing and then back to Shijiazhuang! What an amazing month and a half...

It's been a while (almost two months), so if I have forgotten anything on this part of the trip, I'll add it later!

Sidenote: the one time we did not book a hostel or hotel in advance throughout the entire trip was our return to Kunming before our flight to Beijing. We got there and they told us that they were booked. However, they also told us that we could stay in the employees' room. While a little strange, it was just as comfortable as the dorms (if not more comfortable considering there were two less people able to stay in the employees' room than the big dorm rooms).