The coming days

Even though I don't have much class left, I feel like I've got a billion things to do and no time to do any of it. Of course, when that happens to me I often sit back and do things even more slowly. Not the best reaction, I know. So why do things feel so hectic? Why am I so rushed? Well I don't know if I announced this before, but I'm not coming back to Shiyan after this semester. That's right, that wasn't a typo. So even when I don't really have anything to do, I feel like there's something I'm forgetting. That always happens when we're leaving a place, though.

In the past when people asked me how long I would be here, I would always answer "until I don't want to be here anymore." That was the only answer I knew to give. I didn't really plan to come to China for long before I actually came. I had some friends introduce the idea to me, I called them crazy, they pressured me into going to a meeting about it, and then it just sort of hit me and stuck. If you had told me a year before I graduated that I'd be in China, I would have laughed in your face. It just shows how quickly a path can be revealed in your life. Well, after coming here I always figured I'd stay until I felt like I should go home. I've been told by others who've come and gone that sometimes you just suddenly know that this is your last year. Last semester I fully planned to stay here another year. I really like a lot about being here. I also really dislike a lot about being here. I don't want to make any lists or anything, I'm just saying that suddenly it just makes more sense for me to go than to stay.

I will leave Shiyan on July 7. I'll be at the Nashville airport on July 9. At this point I have no idea what I'll be doing in terms of a job or anything like that. I don't know if I'll be spending the rest of my days in the States or what. I've considered the idea of coming back for language school. Increase my skill set, that sort of thing. At this point all I know for sure is that I hate teaching English here. I'm not going to miss it. I'm not going to miss having 23 hours of free time every day. But I'm going to miss my friends. And I might even miss the 11pm false alarms when my friends think there's a prowler.

Breaking the silence

I haven't blogged in about a month (I'm sure I didn't need to point that out), and it's not for lack of things to say. A few very interesting things have happened in the last month. I'm not sure why, but it seems the more I have going on the less I blog. So when I go for a month without blogging anything, you can probably assume that I'm mulling over a lot of things in my head. Anyhoo, I'll try to let you in on just a few things and get back on track here.

First thing first. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but if you'd like to read an exciting story involving me, prowlers, a folding chair, and intention to make a daring leap from the fourth floor balcony to the third floor, just click here. For a little background, you should know that about a month ago, while Michael was here visiting, someone broke into the third floor apartments in the middle of the night and stole some money from Trip and Jessica.

Now, on to other news. Of course you know about the May 12th earthquake in Sichuan province. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to get out of your bubble. I wrote a brief blog entry the day of the earthquake just to let everyone know I'm okay. At the time I didn't realize the extent of the devastation and for some reason I haven't come back to comment more on it until now. It's been an incredible experience to see the reactions of the people here. The sorrow and despair, the patriotism and unity, the surge to donate anything including blood, supplies, and money. On the 19th, exactly one week after the earthquake, the country began a three day mourning period. It began at 2:28pm, the time of the earthquake, with 1 minute of silence. That's how I was told it would begin. Actually, when the clock struck 2:28, every train, truck, and taxi in the country blew its horn. That's a lot of noise. My first thought was "that's a strange way to have a minute of silence." Then I learned that it was meant as a wail of grief. A nation wide wail of despair after so many tens of thousands of people were killed. That's intense. For the next three days, all places of entertainment were closed, color was removed Chinese language websites, online entertainment was blocked, the only available media online, on the radio, and on TV was about the earthquake. For 72 straight hours. It seems strange to a foreigner like me to have such an enforced period of mourning, but if you know the culture here it seems fitting that they would honor the people of Sichuan as one big family and in such an all-encompassing way. There's still so much happening in Sichuan and so much work to be done there in the months ahead.

Now it's time for me to go. I actually have to go to class. Boo. On the upside, I've only got three more days of class over the next two weeks, so I can't really complain. Anyhoo, I'll write more later. I know that my own blogging doesn't quite cover all the events that take place here, so I'd suggest that everyone check out the links I've provided to other Shiyan blogs. Angelyn and Jessica's blogs will probably provide insight into any events at my school, while the others may or may not mention me but should still be interesting and thought provoking.

Earthquake Mania

Seems like every time I turn around there's another earthquake around here. No, I haven't gained weight! Let's see, there was the earthquake on the border of Xinjiang and Tibet that everyone thought was in my backyard, then a week later there was the one in my backyard that no one apparently knew or cared about. Now there's been a rather large earthquake near Chengdu that was felt near and far. I'm sure you've probably read or heard about it, so I'll spare you the scientific details. I will let you know that we felt it here but we're all okie dokie. Around 2:30 when we were leaving for our afternoon classes, Angelyn and Jessica asked me "Can you feel that?" I just kind of looked at them like they were crazy for a second. Once I stopped moving, though, I felt like I'd been drugged or something. Everything was swaying ever so slowly. It was a weird, trippy feeling. We realized it was an earthquake and though "Cool!" then left for class. Of course we got outside and all the buildings had streams of students coming out, afraid that everything including the trees were about to collapse into piles of rubble. If anything fell off of anyone's shelf in town, I'd be very very surprised. We couldn't even feel it unless we stopped moving! Anyhoo, we survived, don't worry about us in Shiyan. Don't forget to pray for those closer to the actual quake, though. It seems there was quite a bit of damage and they're pulling a lot of kids from under piles of rubble at some schools. No one's better at rolling out the masses of emergency workers than China, though. It'll be cleaned up within a week.

Whirlwind tour

Apparently some of you don't appreciate it when I say things like "Beijing so far" and then don't post anything else. Almost as if "Beijing so far" implies there will be more later. Alright, well I'm finally back to post more. But Michael's already on his way home now, so I guess it has been too long since my last post, after all.

We had a pretty good time in Beijing. We didn't get the train I wanted coming back to Shiyan, so we arrived at the station at 1:30 and had to rush home for my class that started at 2:10. Thanks to no line waiting for taxis and a good driver, I made it with time to spare. I just had the one class on Monday, but then Tuesday I had class from 10 to 5:30 except for lunch. Of course, lunch is 2 1/2 hours here, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds at first. Then the rest of the week I had off due to the fact that some old classes ended and the new ones that began were all on Tuesday. Yay! Lucky me. Basically the whole time Michael was here I was whisking him around from one park or mountain to another. He made a comment about wishing he had a step counter to count the number of stairs he walked up here.

There's a lot to write about, but I'm dead tired from spending 19 of the last 24 hours on a train taking Michael to the airport and then coming back home. Every train I got on with Michael, we seemed to get stuck next to some guys who sounded like they had chainsaws stuck in their throats all night long. I think if there was a snoring event at the Olympics, China would be taking home an extra gold medal this year. Anyhoo, I'll fill in the details and pictures tomorrow. Right now I just want everyone to know that Michael was dropped off at the Wuhan airport this morning and should be somewhere over Russia on his way back to Newark as I type this. Hopefully he'll sleep well on the plane and be ready to greet the American day when he lands. That's all for now, I'm off to bed.

Beijing so far

Well, both Michael and I made it to Beijing. It was a little bit of an adventure getting together and getting to the hostel. My train got in about one hour before Michael's plane was supposed to land, so I got outside and hopped on a bus toward the airport. A guy working the newspaper stand told me that if I took a certain bus to a certain stop then I could get off and find the airport shuttle bus. That matched up with what I had read in my guidebook (it was just helpful to hear it from a real person instead of reading it in a book possibly 2 years out of date) so I hopped on the bus. I opted for the bus because I could save over 100 yuan compared to taking a taxi and still get to the airport before Michael got through customs. Well, apparently 1pm is the time for every car in Beijing to come out and park on that particular road in the largest traffic jam ever. It took quite a while just to go the 5 stops to where I wanted to get off. Of course, once I got off I had no idea where the airport shuttle bus was and I was feeling pressed for time. I finally just hopped in a taxi and off we went, into yet another slowly moving river of cars.

We got to the airport at 2:30, about 35 minutes after Michael's ETA. I wasn't TOO worried because 1) I'd told Michael this might happen and he should just find a seat and wait for me if I'm not already there waiting for him, and 2) Sometimes it takes an hour or more to get through customs. Well, there we were arriving at the airport, me being not too worried. I ended up only saving about 9 yuan by taking a bus before getting in the taxi, so that part didn't work out as planned. But the taxi took me to the new Terminal 3, which is a good 15-20 minute ride away from the other 2 terminals if you have to go through the loading area to get back to the road. Well, the driver got out and asked for me if this was the right terminal and he told me it was, so I ran inside to find Michael. After 20 or 30 minutes of asking around, pacing back and forth in front of the arrivals gate, and looking at different screens with flights on them, I finally realized that Michael's flight was coming in at Terminal 2. At that point I was more worried. It was after 3 and I figured Michael had been sitting around for about an hour already. I found the shuttle to the next terminal, had to wait about 7 minutes for the driver to decide it was time to leave, sat through the 10-15 minute ride, and then rushed through the departures area to find the escalator down to Arrivals. As soon as I got off I saw Michael sitting in the seating area. Apparently it took almost no time at all to get through customs, so he'd been waiting about an hour and a half for me to get there. He didn't mind too much, I think jetlag had muddied his brain activity a bit.

We took the airport shuttle into town and then walked past Tiananmen Square and up a few blocks to get to where we're staying. It was about twice as far as we thought because Beijing is hugemongous and things are just further than you think. On Friday we climbed the Great Wall and hunted up the Bird's Nest and Bubble, two of the venues for the Olympics. Today we toured the Forbidden City and Tiananmen. Tonight we're planning to go back to the Bubble and watch some freestyle swimming events that are being held. It'll be pretty cool to be able to go inside and watch some world-class athletes. And without the crowds of the Olympics. We hope.

City of Brotherly Love

This afternoon I'm off to the City of Brotherly Love. No, I'm not going to Philadelphia, I'm just going to Beijing. But I'm going to meet Michael, my oldest brother! I may have only mentioned it once or twice in my blog, so if you missed it then I want to tell you that my brother is coming to visit. I'm pretty excited about it. My mom came to visit my first year here and it felt good to have a piece of home come visit me in China. It's also nice to have someone in the States who can identify with me a little when I'm talking about China. At the current rate of visitors, I only need to stay here another 4 years to get Billy and Jennifer to visit. I think I'll have to stay about a million years before my grandmother would get on a plane, so I guess I better not test that one out. Michael and I will be staying in a hostel across the street (or down the street) from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. On Friday or Saturday we'll make a trip to the Great Wall and hopefully we'll be able to see a few Olympic venues as well. Then Sunday afternoon we'll head back to Shiyan for 5 days of local flavor before I take him to Wuhan to catch a flight home. I'll keep everyone posted on our status. I hope I didn't forget to pack anything!

P.S. - I'd like to give a special shout out to Angelyn, the greatest friend a guy could ever wish for. She's covering my classes while I'm gone to Beijing. You're the greatest!