May I please have some dysentery? Surely, coming right up.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. I’m just feeling like I’m always biting off more than I can chew. Again, too much stuff I want to do. My Chinese language studying has been slacking because priorities and time have been spent elsewhere. Besides tonight (7/14/11), I hadn’t touched my guitar in a couple weeks. My excuse for that, though, is that it’s just so damn hot. I did, however, finally purchase a fan. It beats air conditioning in my mind, and I’m much more comfortable when going to sleep. It also uses little to no power, so it’s a nice alternative. You’re welcome China/world. Yes, I’m aware that using a fan is not much of a going green gesture, but it’s something. I just don’t know how to go about studying Chinese sometimes. I have a couple programs, and of course the internet can be your best friend at times. Maybe my motivation has just been lacking for whatever reason. It’s always tough when you’re learning and studying by yourself. This is what I do with most things. It’s challenging, more sometimes than others. My reasoning with that is, why do I need someone else? I can do it myself. If other people can do it themselves, so can I. The problem with that logic is I could probably learn 20x faster if someone just showed me. That’s how I learn best, by watching. It is what it is, though.

Yeah, it’s hot. But you know what? I’ll take it over the cold any day, so please ignore my minuscule complaints. I happen to love warm summer nights. You can walk outside at 2 in the morning and still be perfectly comfortable (though it can be a bit uncomfortably hot here at times). It’s nice. But man, no stars whatsoever. Between the ambulant lights and the pollution from them and the city, I can hardly see any stars. Most nights, I can count the number of stars looming over my head. On a side note, there’s a pretty awesome storm brewing right now. I turned off the lights for a few minutes and sat by my window eating a mix of nuts and raisins that I put together. Really challenging, I know. Awesome to watch, though. I’ve looked up so many times into the buildings surrounding my own to see if I see anybody in their windows. No, I wasn’t creeping. I just noticed that I never see anybody when looking up in the past, so I’ve searched for people a few times. I never saw anybody until now. I saw a girl standing on the top floor of a building looking out her own window, admiring the makings of the storm. Quite the lightening show. Don’t be fooled. That’s not the only thing going on. The wind is super strong and the thunder is raging beside it. Rain just started as well.

So dysentery?  Yep. Dysentery. As many of you already know, I caught myself a nice little case of dysentery. What a lovely experience! Seriously. Ha, good one Jeff. It’s a nightmare. I’ve traced it back to what I believe came from raw salmon that was eaten during a bit of a seafood feast I had on the 23^rd of July. I didn’t feel great on Monday night following that Saturday. It wasn’t much, just felt a little sick or perhaps like I was going to be sick. I hate being right. The next morning, I felt terrible. I wanted to take off of school, but did not want to lose my bonus or pay for the day. So after much debate, I decided to just stick it out and go to school. That was not fun. I suffered from a headache for the entire day. My head was throbbing. I was also able to enjoy fevers and stomach pain throughout the day. I had no appetite, so I came back up into my apartment during my break and slept for an hour. Despite all this, I went to the afternoon school anyways and fought my way through that. Another terrific experience. That was a long two hours. I came home and slept for another 4 hours. Woke up and still did not feel great. That was about the time when bathroom troubles began. Without getting into much detail, I probably went to the bathroom more than 40 times in 4 days. You do the math. I took off Wednesday. The unfortunate part about that day was that my afternoon school wanted me to go in to meet parents that were considering sending their kids to the school. They simply wanted to see the presence of a foreign teacher. The only reason I did that was because they covered my taxi fares (which I have yet to get reimbursed for) and I got paid for the entire 2 hours despite only being there an hour. I only talked to the parents for about 5 minutes. The school even wanted me to tell them that I was sick, but had come out there just to meet with them. Taking advantage of my illness, awesome. I did feel a little better in the evening, so I attempted going to school on Thursday. Not my brightest idea. I only made it through 3 classes before I had to retreat home. Fevers and other discomforts forced me out. I actually was feeling better Thursday night, but decided it would be best to take off Friday as well. I didn’t want to go in just to have to leave again. I figured some rest would be the best idea. Good thing. Long story short, I caught a fever later that did not subside. I was burning up for hours before going to the hospital. My fever was recorded at 40 degrees Celsius, so about 104 Fahrenheit. I forgot my passport, but fortunately, my fever was high enough that they had to treat me. This blog is about honesty, so despite how embarrassing this was, I’ll post it. Prior to be given a blood test, I was asked for a stool sample. I did not want to do this. The thought alone was disgusting, and I was given a small little plastic container thing. Great.  After arguing about my desire to do such a thing, I manned up and started my walk of shame. I stepped outside to enter the adjacent bathroom which contained none other than the classic Chinese squat toilet. I had never used a public bathroom in China for going #2 and my first experience involved collecting a stool sample to boot. I don’t even use public bathrooms in America for the bodily function referred to as #2. I’ve maybe done that a maximum of 5 times in my life, and when doing so, I use a lot of caution. Aka, covering the seat in toilet paper. Anyways, it was a humbling experience.

It’s a good thing I went there, though. I was in complete disbelief when I found out I had dysentery. Dysentery? What is that? I thought that was some kind of old age sickness that I read about in history books and stumbled across in the old pc game, Oregon Trail. Well, it’s very real. After taking one of the 4 meds I was given, my fever subsided pretty quickly. I came home and sat in my bed wrapped in my blanket to sweat out anything remaining fever-wise. I got soaked in about 20 minutes. Disgusting.  Despite all this, I had plans to go to Qing Dao the following morning. We proceeded. I got zero sleep that night. This was possibly from anticipation of a trip, or possibly something I began to experience which I found out to be restless leg syndrome. It’s quite strange. I would be lying in bed at night and get this strange almost tingling feeling in my leg which results in me having to move my feet and or legs. It can be quite annoying. I attributed it to a lack of nutrients/vitamins due to my lack of eating for the past few days. Believe it or not, ignoring it and putting it out of my mind did help me. I also trapped my feet under a blanket, which seemed to help. I thought I was going crazy, but looked up what I was experiencing on Google and knew instantly that had to be it. It’s lessened since eating regularly again and hopefully will continue to do so. I just put it out of mind best I can.

Qing Dao was interesting. Not the best place to be, but nice to get out and see another part of China. I took the express train there, which just started up in Beijing about 2 months ago and has experienced many problems. Fortunately, I had none both to and from. It was a lot like taking an airplane. The train station was massive with lots of people. The train travels at about 185 mph. Took a little under 5 hours to get there I believe.  Qing Dao is a coastal city, so the aroma of seafood and sea floods the city and constantly fills your nostrils. It was a bit of a dirty city. Trash lies all over the streets. LLLLLAt least where we were. I just can’t understand the logic. People just throw their garbage on the streets. I wish someone could explain it to me. This is your city; don’t you want it to look nice? The answer is simply a lack of any kind of thought behind it at all. They just don’t care. I’ve witnessed this kind of thing in Beijing too, so don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen people throw garbage on the ground plenty of times without a care in the world. Ignorance is bliss, after all. The streets are kind of cool though because there are lots of hills, so you’re constantly walking either up or down. The drivers there completely ignore this, and drive like Nascar is watching their every move looking for their next prospect. Kind of wild. Oh and how could I forget, I was a celebrity over there. More so than Beijing. People stared like no tomorrow. They would turn their heads, turn around multiple times, look me up and down, whisper to their friends, and so on. They weren’t even discreet about it. Some tried, but they had no idea what they were doing and it was so obvious. The tactic I employed was to simply stare back and force them to turn away or just maintain eye contact in attempts to make their staring more uncomfortable. It didn’t work great, but it made me feel better. It was kind of annoying at times and quite rude. Luckily, I got used to it previously in Beijing. This was much, much worse though. People would even call out foreigner or American in Chinese right in front of me.

The coolest part of the trip was simply walking amongst the rocks during low tide and discovering all the little sea creatures residing in the tide pools. I found lots of crabs, fish, snails, hermit crabs, and even sea anemones. Pretty cool. The difference between high and low tides at this one place was ridiculous. The rocks that were once naked to the eye stretched on forever during low tide. They were covered in crustaceans and many people walked on them to catch creatures of their own. Old women were out snagging snails and clams for a meal. They had all kinds of tools to do so too. I thought it was neat. It reminded me of Acadia in Maine. Unless you’re immediate family or have been there, you won’t understand the reference. I’ll sum it up quickly. My siblings and I had visited there and wandered among the tide pools and discovered lots of cool things there as well.

The worst part of the trip was probably the mountain adventure. After seeing photos online, I was pretty pumped to do some serious hiking and discover some really beautiful looking scenery. This did not take place. I mean, it wasn’t terrible, just not very exciting – especially since I had already built it up in my mind. Went to a few different areas and none contained what I was there for. There was an area that could not be accessed because the road was closed and I’m led to believe this area held all the beauty I was in search of. Too bad. I was quite frustrated and angry that I was not able to see what I had planned on seeing. That was the whole reason I wanted to go hiking in the mountains. Things never go according to plan, do they? My fame did travel up the mountains as well, though. At one point, I was asked to take a picture with a few people.  I was pretty annoyed at first and kept saying no and in Chinese asked, ‘Why, because I’m American?’ They finally backed off, but then I felt bad so I decided to take the picture with them and another group. Haha. Whatever. Oh, and I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before. Hiking in China, unless you’re far out in the country, is quite a different experience. It’s nothing like it is in America. You won’t get a real nature experience and find some solitude to enjoy the experience and take it all in. There aren’t rugged hills and terrain that you need to trek through. No, no, no. Nothing like that. Instead, most hills are covered in nicely laid stairs for your convenience. Forget seeing any kind of animals that might live there. No, there are far too many people for that sort of thing. I was even boosted up towards the top in a chair lift before doing some stair climbing of my own. It’s just slightly disappointing, but you still get some amazing views.

I went to an aquarium that was decent. It was no San Diego Zoo (I’ve never been, but I know what it looks like), but I saw plenty of cool things. I even got to feed seals. They would clap and spin in some cases with your encouragement and make lots of noise in order to get the precious food you held onto.  Got there a little late, so I avoided the first show that was taking place there and went and looked around instead. The next show was at 1:30. I started to wait in line around 12:45 prior to and was probably about the 5^th one in line. I thought people were bad in Beijing about lines. Man, what a bad experience there. People are ridiculous. I take my lines pretty serious, but they hardly exist here. On the Beijing subways, they exist until the doors open, and then people just flood the doors from every direction without any regard to the people around them. I get such joy out of blocking people and stopping them from cutting the line, and I do it quite frequently. Sometimes I make it obvious, and sometimes I do it subtly and simply come off as an annoyance. Learn what a line is and we wouldn’t have this problem, people. But this aquarium was my worst experience by far. Once it got closer to the time when the doors would open, people started to disregard the long line that had formed and simply stepped up and waited on the sides or forced their way in the line. Not on my watch. I had waited early and got there specifically to get a good seat in the front row, and I was going to get it. This one woman really irked me. She was trying to get in front of me. Ha, I don’t think so. I do my part to enforce lines, lady. So you picked the wrong guy. After attempting to block her out with my leg and body, I finally said ‘ni hao’ a couple times, which she ignored for the first few, until I tapped her on the shoulder. I then attempted in Chinese to ask if she could see everyone else while gesturing to the rest of the line. She didn’t care. I then took other action and just used my body to really force her out and make sure she was not in front of me. She resisted, but that was a battle she was not going to win. She kept pushing and started to say something; luckily the woman in front of me told her she was wrong. She still didn’t care. The pushing continued, but I conquered. The doors were going to swing out from the center, so I was hoping a lot of the people that decided to sit on the sides would have a hard time getting in. Man, once those doors opened, all hell broke loose. I felt like I was standing in a mosh pit for a rock concert. I’ve been there and done that many times and it’s not really pleasant. Had I not braced myself on the one door, I would have been pushed right out of the center to the other side and missed the entrance completely. It was full-on madness. People were screaming, fighting, pushing, etc. I lost my cool and let loose some vulgarities of my own. It was just so ridiculous. The beast within me reared its ugly head. In the end, I got a front row seat. Unfortunately, that stupid woman did too – not too far from my own. I wanted to drop kick her. I felt bad for her little girl who was crying. She got squashed in the midst of that mob and it was that mother’s own stupid fault. People. I’ll never understand them.

The show was only about 30 minutes or so, but it was pretty cool to watch. I got a lot on video. I had no idea you could train belugas like that. They were amazing. I also had no idea dolphins could jump as high as I witnessed. They reached crazy heights. At one point, the announcer picked a girl from the crowd and asked her to hula hoop. This girl was crazy. She was decent enough at it, but watching her was a little weird. You’ll have to just watch the video. The sea lion was also great. He was quite skilled. There was also a little show that we got to watch afterwards too located in a different area. Not nearly as good, but amusing to say the least. The clowns were kind of funny. One was pretty decent at throwing knives and demonstrated his skill. After that, they picked someone from the crowd. He was asked to stand against a moveable wooden wall and they led you to believe the one guy was going to throw knives and attempt to avoid hitting the person. In actuality, they would cover his face with a hood and quickly stick the knives in the wood, then take off the hood and reveal to the person what supposedly took place. It was interesting.

Overall, not a bad trip. Stayed in a hostel that wasn’t half bad. The food was actually really good. It was mostly western, but that’s what I needed after finally being able to eat following the dysentery. My diet consisted of bland rice soup and rice for a couple days. I was so hungry and all I could think of was food. When I finally began to return to a normal diet, it was amazing. I ate most of my meals there and I’m ok with that. I had my first real breakfast in China there; eggs, bacon, a hash brown and toast. Thank you. I only real ate one local type of food in Qing Dao. It was squid on a stick (squid chuanr). Delicious. Had to eat it before I left. I was worried about the local cuisine on my stomach and also didn’t trust a lot of it, which was probably for the better. Again, not a bad trip, but I’m happy to be back in Beijing. I used to think Beijing was dirty, but after returning from Qing Dao, it looks ridiculously clean.

I have a month off before returning to work. The good news about returning is that I won’t have to attend my afternoon school anymore. I’m now full time at the morning school. I’ll miss some of the kids over there and may go visit, but ultimately, I’m happy about that. I didn’t really like that school or their methods. I can enjoy the rest of this week to myself, but next week, I have a job lined up with a library. I’m not too enthused about it, but I’ll be making 2 months’ salary in 10 days (10,000 yuan). Yes, please. The job is a day camp sort of thing in which teaching will take place as well. I’ll be there all day from 9-5. Again, not crazy about it, but the money will more than cover my trip expenses (about 2,000) and give me plenty of extra. Perhaps I’ll use that for future travels here. Regardless, it’s not a bad thing. I can also get some more experience and see different methods of teaching that I can adapt and use for my own. It’s important to take advantage of the opportunities you’re given. I was recommended here by one of the mothers of my one of my students that I was tutoring for outside of school. Networking and making contacts. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

There are a lot of things that I wanted to include previously, but may or may not include now. Some of the stuff seems irrelevant, but we’ll see. A lot of this is old news, but you might find some of it interesting.

School had been starting to go slower the closer I got to break. The days were longer. I wasn’t as enthusiastic, and I was getting bored with things. The kids were getting worse and worse too; typical of kids nearing summer holiday or anyone for that matter. I just started to ask the kids what they wanted to do so we ended up playing the same games quite often. I only have about 4 or 5 good ones anyways, but they just seemed to want to play one or two of them. I didn’t care. I figured, as long as they’re learning, what difference does it make what game we play? Let them play what they want if it helps. I still liked to play Bei Kou Bei (back to back) at the end of the week when I could and separate the classes into two teams. I could only do this with my older classes for the most part, but I enjoyed it. I like the competition amongst the kids. Some take it pretty serious, occasionally too serious. Kids would cry from time to time or just refuse to play. I dragged some up despite that, but it didn’t always go well. In my one class, the kids always fought with each other whenever we played it. I found it quite comical. One of my favorites in the class, Dunny, would always antagonize some of the kids on the other team and showboat after he won. His team only lost once to my recollection and he cried. Poor little guy. I did my best to get him back on his feet after the loss. The mute kid in one of my classes actually started talking with me one day and did pretty well for a little while before reverting back. Little Yoyo, who is pretty shy in another class of mine, got better and better. She just kind of mumbles most of the time, but at least she’s trying and she was always enthusiastic to participate when I called kids up to interact one on one verbally. Many times, she would just stand up there even after completing her own and wait to go again for another round. I allowed it because I figured the more help she had the better. She came a long way and still has a long way to go, but I’m happy with the progress she’s made. She reminded me of our family dog, Goober. No, she’s not a dog. I just found commonalities in her social behavior. You just have to be gentle and take your time with some kids. Do your best to encourage them and eventually, they’ll start to come around.

Well, yesterday I decided to venture off to somewhere. Beihai Park ended up grabbing my attention when I was looking for parks to visit online. Great choice. It was beautiful and fairly large to boot. I had looked up directions on how to get there including numerous buses I could take to get there prior to leaving my apartment. They sort of worked. I ended up asking someone in Chinese where the park was. Fortunately for me, he spoke English. He directed me across the street and ended up crossing and joining me with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather eventually. They were headed in the same direction, so it was impossible for me to get lost or so you would think. We did, however, miss our bus stop because we were talking and not paying attention. Haha. Go figure. Upon arrival, the first thing that grabs your attention is a big lake that rests in the center of the park. Boats are scattered all over it. I glanced at the map of the park (I stress ‘glanced’) before heading off. Let’s be honest, I’m more of the jump in and go type. I don’t do a lot of reading when it comes to manuals and that kind of thing. (I tend to ignore my Pop’s gentle prodding with ‘RFM’). I was curious what this place had to offer, though. I picked a great day. The weather was with me and a gentle breeze continuously cooled me off. Like Beijing itself, the lake was surrounded with weeping willows. And I happen to love weeping willows, although I couldn’t give you a logical reason as to why, I just do. They’re cool. I chose a side of the lake that seemed to get to things that were more appealing faster, and I picked the right side. There were lots of old buildings and things of that nature, not to mention the giant White Pagoda.  I’ll put up pictures of it as well as the sign that gives you a little more insight on its history. You had to climb up to see it and it was quite interesting. The thing that interested me the most here was actually something that normally wouldn’t interest me so much. Upon entering the ‘Round City’ within the park, I soon came across a giant jar known as the Jade Jar. It wasn’t too exciting, I suppose, but for some reason it caught my attention. It was just interesting reading about its history and imagining the emperors of the past utilizing it. The sign had mentioned one had used it during his feasts and had it filled with wine. I just found the whole thing kind of neat. I got some great pictures of the place and it’s probably not what you think of when you hear the word park, but nevertheless, I enjoyed it. Most of the parks are that way here in Beijing.

Today (8/4/11) on the other hand was not nearly as fun. I knew prior to even going to sleep that today was going to be spent cleaning. My other temporary roommate departed to his new apartment last night. So being alone here for the time being, a cleaning was long overdue. I spent about 4 and a ½ hours cleaning most of the apartment. The only thing I have left to do is clean my room, which will be easy. I’ll take care of that tomorrow. The kitchen was the hardest part. The sink alone was cleaned with 3 or 4 different stages. First, I used some kind of all-purpose kitchen cleaner, followed by disinfectant soap, and then regular soap and water. I repeated the soap and water usage later. On the counter top, I utilized the multi-purpose cleaner and soap and water. I cleaned the rice cooker, the interiors of the refrigerator, a large portion of the walls, and the stove top. The final step was sweeping and mopping the floors in there. I then had to lay out some cockroach traps to get them good and poisoned. Yep, I’ve got cockroaches. Not a lot at this point and they should be gone after this. I don’t really think I’m to blame, but I probably didn’t help. My worst offense was leaving my dishes in the sink to wash the next day. So sue me. Getting the oil from cooking off the walls was good and time consuming. But I must say, I’m proud of my work and it looks good. After my rendezvous with the kitchen, I then swept up the living room. Disgusting. The amount of dirt on the floors was ridiculous. Had I left it there any longer, I probably could have started growing plants straight from the floor boards. It just builds up from leaving the windows open. I had piles of dirt lying around. I didn’t bother mopping that because it’s pointless. Nobody cares. I then cleaned the bathroom. Disinfectant soap was also used there, followed by a bathroom multi-purpose cleaner and some mopping as well. I know you people love reading about my cleaning escapades so I had to include them. I just want to give you a glimpse of what I’m dealing with over here. Being the only one that cares about cleanliness and sanitation is a tough situation. I’m looking forward to having my own place someday. Then the messes or lack of will be my own. But all in all, the cleaning is probably building some character. I like doing the work myself because then I’m assured it’s done the right way. And it feels good and somewhat rewarding when you’re finished. I sat down to some food I ordered and a nice big bottle of beer. Beer always tastes better when you’ve accomplished something in the day. And this is my week of relaxation.

I wanted to share with you some facts and observations of my own about the city of Beijing and perhaps China in general to paint a better picture for you and allow for a greater understanding. I’m sure you know that there are a lot of people in China. I mean a lot. In Beijing alone, I was informed that nobody knows how many people actually reside here. The number of people most likely lies somewhere between 22 and 24 million people. With that being said, there are a lot of jobs that are necessary to keep the majority of people employed. For example, there are machines that do street sweeping here like many cities in the U.S., but there are also manual labor workers that do additional sweeping as well as picking up trash and general maintenance of the city. On one trip to Houhai (If you forgot, it’s an awesome lake here), I noticed huge piles of weeds sitting near the edges of the lake. People had tools to manually cut and remove the weeds. At the time, I had questioned this. I said, “Why don’t they just use machines to do this kind of work?” I was given the answer about people needing jobs. It makes perfect sense and just hadn’t occurred to me. I hadn’t even considered that prior to asking the question. The United States is constantly utilizing machines to do the work that humans are capable of doing in order to cut back spending in the long term and even work more efficiently. I guess that China understands that its people have needs. In that aspect, bravo. I’m sure I’ll think of more things to include later on.

I’ll tell you one last funny situation that I dealt with last night. It’s sort of funny now, but I was not happy at the time. I decided to go buy myself a bottle of wine. I bought a nice, cheap bottle of Great Wall wine; a dry, red wine. When I say cheap, I mean cheap. It was less than $4.00 USD, 21 rmb. I bought a cork screw, and headed on home. Later that evening, I began to prepare dinner. I then realized I had forgotten to thaw the chicken meat I was planning on consuming. Lucky for me, I had witnessed this technique before. I just boiled it for a little while before cooking it. It was one of my better meals, actually. I let it sit, and began the process of opening the wine bottle. I thought it would be fairly easy, I mean I’ve opened wine bottles before. It’s not that challenging. Wrong.  After lodging the cork screw in the cork, I soon came to realize that it was just turning and stripping the hole I had made. The cork was just crumbling. Great. I played with that for a while before searching on the internet how to handle this situation. It was recommended that I try a different angle in the cork and if that still doesn’t work, shove it in the bottle. Well, I tried about 4 or 5 different angles and nothing worked. I then attempted to cut out the cork with a knife. I did get some of it out, but that wasn’t working too well either. I then reached for a different blade and just stuck it in that fricken cork. It started to move down towards the contents of the bottle. Victory seemed near. I continued to press. I didn’t think that one through too much. Because of all the pressure of me pushing the cork in, the wine ended up bursting in my face and all over the kitchen. Awesome. What a lovely, sticky mess. I couldn’t eat until it was cleaned up, especially after all the effort I put forth in there cleaning the other day. I wiped everything, ran a mop over the floor, and rinsed off in the shower. Fortunately, my food was still warm. I sat down and enjoyed that, and poured myself a glass of the wine. Yes, you better believe I was going to drink it after that – cork pieces or not. There were a few tiny pieces of cork floating around in my first glass, but after that it was ok. Terrible experience and the wine wasn’t that good. Lesson learned. You get what you pay for. I paid for cheap, crumbling cork wine. I got it. I did, however, consume the entire bottle and got a little tipsy. Nothing major. It was a pleasant drunkenness.

Hope you enjoy the reading.

-China man