Our naivety exposed - expectinging things to go well in China

Well, it's 7am CST on July 9th. My flight from Chicago to Nashville will leave soon and should land around 9:20. You may be wondering how I'm able to blog while on an airplane. Has American Airlines suddenly become the coolest airline ever? Hardly. I'm able to blog right now because I'm sitting in the Hong Kong airport, enjoying their free WiFi internet connection. I just finished enjoying their overpriced bacon cheeseburger. Now I suppose I should tell you WHY I'm in Hong Kong when I should be practically home. It all started with a dream.

Angelyn and I always dreamed of being treated well by our school. So to pursue this dream, we pestered them until they agreed to drive us from Shiyan to the Xi'an airport. This was a big deal for us because this meant we wouldn't have to bother with buses, trains, or taxis, which would be a big deal with our luggage. China has been changing quickly. Just last year a car ride to Xi'an would have taken 12 hours. Now there's a highway scheduled to open in December that will cut that down to 3 hours (thanks to about 100 bazillion tunnels they dug straight through 350km of mountains). Now the drive is expected to take 6 to 8 hours, depending on traffic and road conditions. To make a long story short, we took the opened portion of the highway for almost an hour, off-roaded on a dirt/gravel road for two hours or so, and spent the rest of the time mostly on two-lane paved roads winding through the mountains of Shaanxi province. While the view was breathtaking and our driver was fun and friendly, the drive ended in disaster. We got to the Xi'an area around 5 (about 3 hours later than expected), and got on the expressway to head to the airport. Somehow (I still don't know how because I saw with my own eyes the signs we were following toward the airport) we ended up on the wrong side of Xi'an. By the time I figured it out and showed the driver where we were on the map (ironic that I used a Chinese map better than the Chinese driver could), we were 70 miles away from where we wanted to be. So we turned back and sped towards the airport. The driver didn't seem too concerned when we saw a sign saying we had another 30 minutes, even though our flight was scheduled to leave in 60 minutes. Plenty of time, he said. Well, we pulled off the highway at 7, found the right terminal and pulled up to the door at 7:10, jumped out, barely said thanks to the driver before running inside, and arrived just in time to get totally lost inside the Xi'an airport. We were flying to Hong Kong, so we had to go into the international terminal, which was set off from the rest of the terminal by a frosted glass wall. We couldn't figure out how to get in. People in there had us running back and forth down the terminal for 30 minutes, handing us off from one person to the next, all of whom had no idea where the international terminal was. Finally, at 7:40 (the exact time our flight was taking off) someone let me through into a roped off area so I could ask his boss. It seems he couldn't ask himself. Turns out, the guy was guarding the rope blocking us from where we needed to go to check in. And he didn't even know it. Even though I said "where is counter 52?" (because that's where we needed to check in) and it was ten feet around the corner where he could SEE IT. Airport employees are smart sometimes. So we missed the flight to Hong Kong, which means we missed the 3 flights after that.

All in all, we arrived at the airport 5 hours later than we were told we would arrive. We spent 400 yuan on phone calls, expensive airport hotel rooms, and expensive airport hotel ramen noodles because we had to rebook tickets and stay the night. I really don't know what to say except that it's a lot easier to enjoy speaking with airport employees when you're NOT running around with over 100 pounds of luggage flopping around you. On the upside, it seems we would have missed our other flights even if we had made it to Hong Kong because American Airlines and Dragon Air are dumb. But I'll have to blog about that another time. There's so much more to this story, you should expect at least one more installment. You won't be disappointed.

Last Day

Well, today's my last full day here in Shiyan. I've spent most of the past two days packing, repacking, and sitting around thinking about how if I would get out of the chair then I could finish packing in about 20 minutes and be done with it. I'm just about done packing now. I think I might have about 20 minutes left.

I've had such a long time to think about leaving and it's been such a long process saying goodbye to people over the weeks, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it anymore. Angelyn and I originally stayed longer to attend a friend's wedding, but the friend's visa to America didn't come through so the wedding was postponed. (it's a Chinese girl marrying an American guy and they were trying to time the wedding so she could go back to the States with him) Now that the wedding is postponed, I find myself wishing this whole leaving process had been taken care of three weeks ago, when I finished teaching. But I've been able to enjoy some good summer weather here with my remaining friends, so it hasn't been a loss.

Today I walked up the hill behind our apartment building and took a few pictures. The sun's out today and the sky is really blue, so it's a great way to end my time here. I don't feel like wrestling with the internet to load pictures right now, but I'll do it when I'm in Nashville or Cleveland with a better connection. I'll even post those pictures from Michael's trip that I was supposed to post 2 months ago. If you're keeping track of me, I'm leaving here at 6 in the morning tomorrow (that's 5pm CST Monday night), I'll get on my first plane in Xi'an at 7:40pm Tuesday (6:40am Tuesday morning), and eventually reach Nashville at 9:40am Wednesday (9:40am Wednesday). Drop me a line if you're in the area!

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July everybody! This is actually my first 4th in China, I'm usually home by this time. Americans like to celebrate by grilling out, eating watermelon and homemade ice cream, and shooting fireworks, but I had to put a slight Chinese twist on it this year. Since Angelyn and I weren't invited to the 4th of July grilling party downstairs at a certain other American's apartment (we're not bitter) we celebrated by going down the street to a Chinese restaurant that serves grilled things. So we had the spicy grilled fish! Not quite a hamburger or hotdog, but it sure was good. We also had a watermelon as appetizer/dessert and ice cream on the way home. Oddly enough (since we're in China) we didn't have any fireworks to shoot off. But that's okay because we see fireworks shooting every other day of the year. We ended our evening by trying to pick out an "American" movie to watch. We couldn't really decide on one from our massive collection, so we decided to use a trusty Chinese website to watch Independence Day. I'm sure it breaks every copyright law there is, but there are numerous Chinese websites where you can click and watch just about any movie ever made instantly. I mean, what better way to celebrate America's independence than to illegally watch a movie on the internet in a communist country? Well, we didn't even get to anything exciting because the internet wasn't being cooperative. We settled for watching an episode of Monk and going to bed.

I'll be home in a few days! That's weird. Our school agreed to drive us to the Xi'an airport Tuesday morning, which means we won't have to wrestle any bags onto trains or buses. That's an incredible blessing! They were very reluctant to do it at first, but Angelyn is awesome and gave them a good guilt trip about fulfilling their obligations and 15 minutes later everything was approved by the proper authorities. We'll leave Xi'an Tuesday night (Tuesday morning in America) and I'll arrive in Nashville after four flights. If you happen to be at the Nashville airport around 9:20 on Wednesday morning, make sure to say hello to me. I'm sure I'll be a little too tired to notice you unless you initiate contact. Big banners help. So do brass bands. And ham sandwiches with mustard, a slice of American cheese, and a crispy piece of lettuce. And a cold root beer. Or just waving and yelling my name.

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.