A Change From What We're Used To

There's less and less Winter outside now.  The background image of the blog is becoming less and less a reflection of what I see on the streets.  It's a high of 53 today, basically full-blown Summer in comparison.  Basically, not actually, Summer; let's not go crazy.

As it warms up, I'm taking off my peacoat.  I'm giving serious debate to wearing my scarf.  My gloves and hat sit in my bag, unused.  In the same way, I'm paying more attention to shrugging off the weight of all things heavy as we make a return to the seasons of growth, of warmth, and (at least historically for me) of travel. 

Once you've moved around enough.  And often enough.  And liked it.  There is a general mindset of being in perpetual motion that settles itself into your perspective of life.  There is a sweet spot I like to live in between concerns of having too little to survive and having too much to survive.  Any item that fits form over function I look at warily: are you a talisman? a paperweight? an anchor?  Everything needs to be light, durable, distinct, difficult to replace (though mostly only sentimentally), and also easy to replace with something equally distinct and durable (it's a contradiction, but it makes sense if you think about it a bit). The worst mental place to be is stuck between the thoughts that you can't win the fight to keep what you have and you can't give up the object of the fight itself.  One or the other has to happen.  Or you at least need to believe in one or the other.  

I don't mean literally always moving physical locations; what kind of a life is that?  I've loved Chicago and have been here for nearly 2 years.  Will I move from here one day?  One day soon?  Will I stay forever?  Not so important.  Primarily, I mean simply moving through Life.  Life is neither a lazy river nor a rocky hike through rough terrain.  It's whitewater rafting.  You are absolutely guaranteed to run into peaceful sections and dangerous sections.  Some fast, some slow.  It doesn't matter what you do, you'll get both...and more.  Either way, you keep moving forward.  Even if you don't want to, you are being carried towards something new and next, better or worse.    

I have tons of things I don't need.  Redundant coats, redundant bags.  I just checked a work email that rang up on my tablet as I'm typing this on my laptop.  Ridiculous.  It doesn't change my core belief though.  I just struggle to keep it in the center.  Sometimes, I lean far too ascetic.  The technological era has helped out.  The "cloud" makes it easier to keep photos and memories safe and tucked away, though I still have a paper journal that I'd be sad to find missing.  But what do I have that I couldn't leave behind in a fire (literal and figurative)?  I'd like to be able to brush off the ash and soot (literal and figurative) and walk away only inconvenienced rather than inconsolable:  loyal to what is (and should be) truly important to me, and agile in all other moments.

Kind of a preachy tone to this post, huh?  Feel free to preach back in the comments.  These posts go better when stories are involved, but I haven't been consistent enough to write down all the new ones that pop up.  Maybe with a more cohesive theme, I could stay a bit more on topic.  Until then, it's a going to be an inconsistent peppering of quick-writes.  Let's keep this thing going with an overall humor to the tone.  I'd like that; I think you're gonna like that.   

And we're back!

Back.  Back from the travelpod blog.  We had some fun there, we had some laughs, but now we're back to the beginning.

Things are going to start taking place by way of Chicago from now on.  After returning from China, I've relocated to the "The City That Works."  This post is just a quick primer to set the context for any subsequent posts.  The timeline's been a little hard to follow since I've had to switch between blogging websites.

So here we go:
-We are back to blogger.
-We are in Chicago.
-What's this blog about? I'm not sure.
-Does this blog have any defined topical direction?  No, it doesn't.

Great, we're all caught up.  If you missed out on the previous posts you can read up on the China time at the initial posts of this blog, or the posts at this site:  http://blog.travelpod.com/members/tony.wong

Let's start moving forward.

Moving to a new blog!

I'm finally succumbing to the China Firewall.  It's too difficult to get to blogger.com anymore so I'm switching over to a different site.  It's a lot easier to use for the sheer fact that I can actually access it.  This means that posts will be more frequent...so hooray! 

Here's the new address...http://www.travelpod.com/members/tony.wong

Try it out since I'm starting to post on it immediately, meaning that the last two months of Spring Festival adventures are going to be on there. 

The Longest (read: Best) Winter Break

Our Winter Holiday lasts from January 8th to March 8th.   That is a long time for holiday.  Some students are happy to go home and see their families (though most admit that two months with just their families might be a bit much) and some students are trying to find jobs so that they can stay in Loudi.  Kirby and I on the other hand are finishing packing for our trek around China.  We're starting out in Hong Kong and then we're gradually making a misshapen circle all the way around China.  We're going Loudi -> Hong Kong -> Guangzhou -> Guilin -> Yangshuo -> Loudi (so my parents can see it) -> Fenghuang -> Dehang -> Hengyang -> Harbin -> Beijing -> Lhasa, Tibet -> Chengdu -> and then home to Loudi.  Basically we're going southeast to east to south to far north to far west and then back to south.  This means the blog will be pretty barren while I'm gone, though long stretches of no updates are pretty common on this blog.  But it also means there are going to be a thousand amazing pictures when I get back.  

Just to get everyone in the mood for this trip, I'm gonna leave you with a little anecdote my friend sent to me.  It's a positive message about travel and hopes for the future...
      So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice...

Apartment Fun

      Finally my apartment has water again!  I haven’t taken a full-fledged shower in days and I certainly haven’t washed any of my clothes in probably the last two weeks.  A couple of days before Christmas the toilet in my bathroom began to have problems so I deemed it “out of order.”  A few days later, Emily was taking a shower and leaned on the pipe accidentally cracking it.  Now it’s no toilet and no shower. Since the pipe was cracked and was spraying water everywhere, I had to shut the water off in my bathroom.  What I didn’t know is that shutting off that pipe also stops any water from getting to the rest of my apartment.  Kirby figured that little tidbit out only after putting her dirty clothes in the washing machine (which is oddly located on the balcony outside my apartment) and pouring soap all over them.  This means walking six stories up and six stories back down every time I want to use the bathroom.   It also means that when I do want to wash up a little in my apartment, I have to shove my head underneath a loose hose hanging off my bathroom wall, turn on the valve, and release freezing cold water to wash out all the soap and shampoo.  It’s a rough process. 

     So why in the world has it been broken so long?  It’s not for lack of attention to the problem (though it does seem to be lack of effort to actually fix it).  At least once a day I will either get a call saying the maintenance man is coming to my apartment or he will just randomly show up…usually with one or two other guys in tow.  One of these guys was a specialist there to deal solely with the shower problem.  He came three times before finally realizing that the brand wasn’t the kind he usually worked on and so refused to come back.  One man was there to fix the toilet.  He worked for about 30 minutes and then walked out the door telling me that it was now fixed.  After days of this routine, people coming in and out of my apartment and me running home from meals and class to try to meet them, I finally came to today.  Today, the college maintenance man came alone since everyone else had either given up or refused to come anymore.  He worked, he drilled, he tested, he smoked in my bathroom (jerk), and finally he got the shower working.  Looking satisfied, he threw his cigarette into the toilet and pressed the flush button to send it on its way.  The water filled back up the brim of the seat.  Still broken (thanks for the help toilet-oriented maintenance guy from before).  But now at least I have a working shower and water running in my apartment.  It’s still an arduous six stories up and six stories down for bathroom breaks but I’m just about used to it by now. 

Plans for the Winter Holiday

Why do we need new coats you say?  Maybe we just wanted to treat ourselves to something nice.  We work hard, we deserve it…back off!  Just kidding, we need new coats because we have a long, cold trip planned for February.  And we have an equally long but not so cold trip planned for January.  Our college gets out for Winter Holiday on January 8^th, usually this holiday is about 40 days long but this time it’s closer to 60 days long.  We’re planning on traveling over to Hong Kong on Jan. 8^th for a few days before heading back into mainland China and to Guangzhou, Guilin, and Yangshuo.  Then I’m taking Mom and Dad on a tour of Loudi, the place I currently call home.  After that, Mom and Dad will head north to Beijing and I will head south to Dehang and Fenghuang.  Then Kirby and I will meet up with Emily, who will be freshly returned from America, and begin our trip north too.  Our first stop is Harbin, so called “Icy City” since it is the coldest city in China with an average annual temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  It’s a perfect location for the Ice Festival which is when the city basically builds another city made entirely of ice.  Ice buildings and ice slides litter the landscape.  But it’s cold…really cold…freezing cold.  So that’s why we bought new coats.  After a few days in Harbin, we take the train (we always take trains, I haven’t been on a flight in China yet) over to Beijing for the Chinese New Year.  Chinese people like to repeat a quote by Chairman Mao in which he said “If one has not been to the Great Wall, then you are not a real man.”  Erik flies into Beijing on the night of the 12^th, so we four will become “real men” on a rugged, unrenovated section of the Wall called Simatai.  After squeezing all the sights and fun out of Beijing, we’ll take a 45 hour train into Lhasa, Tibet.  We’ve got a 4 day tour booked there.  The only way travelers can get in is to join a tour.  In fact, they only just recently opened up the border to travelers at all, it was previously completely blocked off.  We’d like to go to Everest base camp but we don’t have the time or money.  The closest we get to that peak is Nam-tso Lake, the highest salt water lake in the world standing at a little over 4700 meters above sea level.  When we leave Tibet, we’ll go back to China and into Chengdu.  From there, we plan on visiting LeShan Mountain and seeing the massive Buddha that sits on the river shore there.  Its toe is taller than the average man and it took 90 years to build. 

                Just to reiterate the need for the coat…Harbin will be about 10-12 degrees, Beijing will be around 25 degrees, and Tibet will be about 11 degrees.  We’ll be gone for two months.  It’s a long, cold trip.  We’re all very excited.  Extremely excited actually.  I’d like to leave to tomorrow morning if I could. 

Christmas and New Year's

   The thing about this blog is that you’re really not getting every story.  I wish you were because there are a lot of really good small ones but I can only remember the more major events since I don’t write regularly.  If it’s any consolation, I’m writing more regularly in a journal I’ve got going but that doesn’t help you much.  Maybe when I get back I can fill you in on the little things.  I say that because I’m having a little trouble remembering what all happened during December.  There was this…and that other thing…and that thing or two in Hengyang…plus that place that we went to with that person that time…lots of stuff really. 

                Most of December passed with us doing work.  My schedule for the last 4 or 5 weeks has been 25-30 hours of classes every week.  Not a ton but enough to take up a significant portion of my time.  It’s good though since my new classes were all English majors.  Their English is miles above the students I had prior to them so it made my classes a lot more fun.  We work out of the textbook sometimes (but it’s boring).  We do classroom activities the rest of the time.  Anything from movies to discussions to playing tag outside (I have videos).  I’ve made a lot of little student buddies from these last few weeks.  Last week was finals week.  My final was easy, really easy I think.  All they had to do was write a 1-3 minute speech and present it to the class.  Some were great, others not so much.  It’s surprising how much stage fright Chinese students have.  It’s really evident how much emphasis is placed on rote memorization rather than creativity.  If you walk outside of the rules a little bit, they freak out.

                I’ll try to do this in mostly chronological order.  On December 23^rd, our friend May from Hengyang had her wedding ceremony.  For her wedding, we all met in a large hotel reception area.  The decorations were nice and the people were happy, but the ceremony itself was nothing too religious.  It seemed more like a collection of people speaking about how happy they were for the couple and then the couple themselves speaking about how happy they were to see everyone.  A couple of kisses later it was all over.  But the customs surrounding it were pretty cool.  As soon as we walked in, cigarettes were shoved into our hands.  They love cigarettes over here!  I’m not kidding…love them.  The entire wedding party continuously handed them out to us in celebration.  When the bride and groom came around visiting the tables, every guest received at least two cigarettes from a man following them who was carrying a tray full of cigarettes.  In the center of our table was a large bowl.  When we sat down it was filled with candy and boxes of cigarettes (apparently expensive ones).  I left that wedding with 18 cigarettes.  The meal was the standard multiple courses with all of the dishes brought out and placed on the lazy Susan for everyone to pass around.  I don’t know a whole lot about Chinese weddings, but the meal seemed to be a very nice one.  The MC (because that’s really what it was, no priest or anything) was the hotel manager I’m pretty sure.  There were some elements about the wedding that almost made it seem like a game show.  Bright lights, lots of people taking the microphones, and loud noises all the time.  It was fast too.  Two hours after we arrived it was all over.    

                Christmas came along soon after that.  Emily came from Hengyang to spend the holiday with us.  Kirby’s mom sent her “The Christmas Story” and we watched “Home Alone” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” on the computer.  It really sets the mood, especially since we didn’t have a tree.  The Wal-Mart here has a few Christmas decorations but we decided against buying much since we’re planning a trip for the Winter Holiday.  This time Kirby’s mom was the one who mailed over the holiday food.  But we didn’t buy the chicken for this meal.  Just stuffing, potatoes, and mac n’ cheese.  It was all delicious, except that for 3 days I was terribly sick.  I had to lie in bed during the entire 27^th…just awful.  On top of that, my bathroom pipes burst.  And the heater in my bedroom went out.  So every time any of us needed the restroom or a shower, we had to climb six stories (which meant that I got to make that trip weak and nauseated…woo hoo!).  The heater’s been fixed since then but my bathroom is still broken and my apartment has no water.  The maintenance men keep coming but there’s always one little detail that they miss and have to return the next day.  At least the college is paying for it and not me.  I lied in bed hurting for a few days until I made a partial recovery on the 29^th and resumed my classes to administer the finals.  However, on the last day of finals I somehow lost my blue folder that contained grade sheets and all of the finals for one of my classes, so that’s fun.  I’m working it out but that’s just annoying. 

                I skipped over this a bit but on December 24^th, we attended (and performed in) our school’s Christmas pageant.  The students had worked months on preparing dances and skits complete with costumes and music.  They were great dances too.  They seemed to come from all over China and the neighboring countries…the costumes alone crushed our pathetic rendition of Jingle Bell Hop that Kirby and I sang.  Twenty-one groups performed in front of us, all of them impressive.  Plus, some of the groups were our students so that made it even better.  I’ll post a link to the Christmas pictures at the top.  It’s worth mentioning the dinner that we went to right before the pageant.  A couple of hours before we had to be at the school, our Dean invited us to a dinner at a semi-nice restaurant.  We all crowded into a private room (they always use private rooms here) and took a seat.  The President of the school and some of the other top officials had decided to join us, and I was sitting to his left.  Now for some reason the officials of the school are obsessed with knowing how much Kirby and I can drink.  That would be somewhat fine in a regular situation but the Chinese are not good drinkers.  Their technique is all wrong.  Every drink is a toast and a full glass…of something like red wine or white liquor, not just beer like regular people.  So after a full meal and several alcohol-related challenges, we impressed the leaders enough for them to relent and we soon left for the pageant.  Still though, the President continued to ask me if I were feeling alright from the drinking.  To which he gave a slightly disappointed nod when I reassured him that I’m just fine.  Seriously, they cannot drink over here.  But you do have to respect the fact that they persist.  They complain that their “head is swimming” after two drinks (by which I mean Dixie cup-sized glasses) but they keep right on chugging along. 

                New Year’s Eve came quickly after.  The “Eve” part really isn’t that important to the Chinese.  They prefer to celebrate on January 1^st rather than the night of December 31^st.  For New Year’s Eve we went out to KTV (karaoke) with our American friend Dan and his students.  Dan is a teacher at the other college in Loudi.  After singing and dancing in an awkwardly intimate setting for a while, we made our way down the street back to the infamous Night Impressions and Vogue Club.  The place had a sizable crowd so I bought us a round and we took a table to settle in and get ready for the countdown (it was about 11:20pm at this point).  We drank, we laughed, and suddenly the DJ started the countdown from 10 (or “shi” in mandarin, the whole thing was obviously in mandarin).  No one passed out Champagne, which I can forgive.  But literally three minutes after yelling out “ONE!!!” and confetti bursting from the ceiling, the bar was empty.  I am not kidding…12:03am the place was empty.  I have photos.  Everyone just got up and left.  What were they celebrating?  “Alright we made it into 2010, let’s get out of here and get into bed.”  It was a really weird sight to see the mass exodus of previously partying people.  So we did as the Romans did and left too.  We met back up with Dan’s students at a small restaurant down the street.  Starving, we devoured 6 bowls of soup and about 80 dumplings between the 7 of us who were there.  The cops came in and laughed and played with us for a while.  Police seems like a very relaxed profession over here.  We soon left and went home…honestly, a little disappointed.

                Today we did a little bit more traditional celebrating though by making dumplings with our friend Helen.  The Chinese make dumplings for New Year for good fortune and luck.  We got there just in time to help roll the outer coverings flat with small rolling pins (which I’m terrible at) and to fill those coverings with the pork mixture they had made and fold them up (which I’m much better at).  The whole family was there.  Helen, her husband, her daughter Francesca, Helen’s best friend and her husband, their son, Helen’s parents, and Helen’s husband’s grandmother.  It was a big gathering, really fun too.  Right in the middle of it though I had to run, literally run, home because the maintenance man had finally come to fix the water in my apartment.  False alarm though.  He had brought the wrong part.  I returned back only to find that everyone had just finished the meal.  Not to be deterred, I resolutely ate the leftover dumplings and drank the homemade wine while playing guns with the two younger kids in the living room.  Afterwards, the three of us (Helen, Kirby, and me) went out shopping for a purse and some coats. 

Catching up November

                   It’s late night now, 12:23am.  Not so late I guess, but late enough that the VPN I have to use in order to connect to my blog is up and running smoothly.  You have to wait until the rest of China is sleeping if you want the internet to work the way the internet should.  I’m gonna skip the part where I talk about how long it’s been since I’ve posted anything.  By now I would assume you’re used to it.  It’s been a fairly busy couple of months though so maybe you could forgive me this time. 

                When we left off last time, it was the beginning of November, we were well into autumn, and I was trying to figure out our Thanksgiving plans.  Well, autumn here is a weird season.  The weather gets colder and people start to wear their coats and sweaters.  Although, it seems like the Chinese almost think their coats are a part of their clothing.  No matter how hot it gets in a room, they refuse to take their coats off.  Especially the girls.  And they love to fret over how we’re either “not wearing enough clothes” or else wearing too thick of a jacket when all along the boys are wearing thin track jackets and the girls are wearing hats and mittens complete with multicolored, plug-in hand warmers in the shapes of small teddy bears; both genders have on layers of thick, woolen long johns.  Those are the fashionable types.  Some people just give up and walk around in obvious (at least to me it’s obvious) pajamas.  Full-on pajama outfits; the kind that is like you’re wearing a suit made out of a quilt.  Who needs dignity when you’ve got comfort?  Also, never put your coat on the classroom floor.  It’s apparently far too dirty there…no place for a durable jacket to be lightly laid down for a short period of time.  My students freak out if you sit on the ground or lay anything on it.  I rolled on my classroom floor once just to spite them.  They were all greatly spited.  The Chinese have a very odd perception of what is and what isn’t “dirty.”  However, they also have some pretty awesome ideas on the cold.  From time to time you’ll see a table that looks like it has a blanket as a tablecloth.  Most of the time these tables hide a small bucket of burning coals underneath.  People scoot up to the table, cover with the blankets, and warm by the fire.  The coals are cylindrical and short with holes bored in the center.  I see them everywhere from food stalls on the street to a huge stockpile of them underneath the stairs in my apartment (which seems a bit unsafe).  It’s apparently a common heating method.  The cold really didn’t come about until winter though.  The weird thing about autumn is that the trees in Hunan don’t change color.  They don’t even lose their leaves.  They stay permanently green.  It’s a strange feeling to not see the colors change and the plants around you die out for the season.  It’s the same scenery with different weather. 

                Thanksgiving was actually better than expected.  We received a package in the mail stuffed with mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and, well you know, stuffing.  We toyed with the idea of butchering a chicken, then we moved onto a duck, before we finally decided on just buying small rotisserie chickens.  So that was our Thanksgiving dinner.  Instant food and small chickens as we sat in our living room/dining room/front door/sitting room/hallway.  It was good though.  Delicious really.  Sometimes we get a little sick of Chinese food.  I want some heavy Western food.  And don’t be fooled, the Western food over here is as far off from actual Western food as the Chinese food in America is from real Chinese food.  We ordered pizza from a so-called “Western Restaurant” once and it came to us lacking both tomato sauce and real crust.  Don’t lie to me…this isn’t pizza.  Actually, we didn’t even get to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday because I had to teach 8 hours that day.  We had to wait until Saturday.  We still had leftovers for a couple of days in true Thanksgiving fashion though.  That pretty much caps November so I’m going to start a new post and start into December.

Now into November

So that last entry brought us up to about October 10^th.  Not a ton happened during the rest of October.  It was mostly just work and making new friends.  We’ve really become comfortable here in Loudi though.  We have our favorite restaurants now.  We just tell them the general category of food that we want and they bring us a dish.  It’s working out pretty well.  And we have our favorite bars.  Since that nightlife in Loudi post, we’ve actually found a much more relaxed place named Free Bar.  The owner and everyone else loves us there so we can’t help but go.  We’ve learned some Chinese drinking games and taught some American ones already so we’re doing our part to contribute to the poor Chinese drinking culture.  The Chinese are sad drinkers.  Kirby and Emily are phenoms to these people.  Yes, it’s unbelievable that mere girls can drink a whopping 6 ounces of beer in one night.  We’re basically superheroes to them…it’s good. 

Halloween came and went.  We didn’t do much to celebrate besides show the college classes the Thriller music video and hand out ridiculous amounts of candy to our primary school classes. 

That basically brings us up to November.  Emily’s birthday was this past weekend so she came out to Loudi to celebrate.  We took her to the circus…a Chinese circus.  Of course the circus followed the long tradition of zero safety measures here in China; which is risky since the circus still consisted of tigers and other dangerous animals.  We’ve got a great photo.  We also took Emily to Free Bar where the employees instantly loved her.  So much so in fact that they bought her a hideous hat as a gift…they tried though.  Plus, they made her a birthday cake out of watermelon, apples, and tomatoes.  They love to eat fruit when they drink over here.  Emily just went home yesterday; we went with her to Hengyang to seek out American style pizza.  We found a restaurant that came pretty close (they had everything but tomato sauce on it), so we settled. 


Now it’s November, it’s about 70 degrees here today but it’s supposed to snow on Friday.  The weather here is all over the board.  We’re gearing up for Thanksgiving in China (we’re going to do what we can).  That’s it, guys.  I’ll try to get some more photos up soon. 

The Golden Week Holiday

Has it really been since September 22^nd that I’ve written anything here?  That’s no good.  At least I added the pictures of Golden Week so you could check those out.  So let’s do a quick run-down of what happened in October and we’ll try to catch everyone up to current.

October went very quickly.  October 1^st kicked off National Day and marked Day One of our Golden Week vacation.  It was a rocky start because Kirby and I changed our plans about ten times.  We constantly had to make allowances for not knowing exactly how much time we had off (thank you University faculty) and not being able to book train tickets (thank you poorly put together Chinese rail system).  But eventually we did manage to put ourselves onto a 20 hour train bound for Xi’an, the former capital of China.  When I say “former capital,” I mean the real deal ancient China.  In fact, Xi’an is the only Chinese city with a fully intact city wall surrounding its center.  So on our first day there we biked around the wall to take in the city.  On bike, the whole trip took a little over an hour and a half.  The wall was built with rough brick but it looked like it could easily weather another thousand years if it needed to.  How did the wall survive so long you ask?  You probably didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you because I asked.  Xi’an has never been attacked by an invading force.  Lucky. 

So that’s what we did on the first day.  On the first night, Kirby and I put together a motley crew of travelers and backpackers and we took off for dinner and the bar.  It turns out that Kirby and I know more Chinese now than we thought as we ended up ordering the dinner for the table…which is a pretty impressive trick among basically strangers.  Then we asked the hostel’s reception for advice on nearby bars.  The best bar in Xi’an was located two blocks from the hostel.  Even with the unimpressive name of “Club 1+1,” it was one of the most impressive clubs I’ve been to.  Complete with lush sofas, choreographed shows, live statues, and a swimming pool (that’s right), Club 1+1 lived up to its reputation.  After a long time of soaking up local color, the group decided to head home.  Luckily, we were all sharing the same home that night.  On the way back, a few people decided 3am is a good time for food (which, to be honest, it is).  College drunk food means Taco Bell or pizza to me, but evidently Xi’an has a different idea.  Everything was closed except for food stalls on the streets (during the day time these stalls crowd the streets and frequently take up full roads).  Tonight, there were just the two that we passed.  Just the two greatest food stalls ever.  One offered up delicious fried rice, complete with a huge leg of chicken.  The other offered perfectly stir-fried vegetables with your choice of sauce (I went with the peanut Thai sauce, I have no regrets).  The only sad part is that these stalls seem to only appear past midnight.  Look for them during the daylight hours and you’ll find nothing there…no traces.

That’s ok though, because the next day we went to the Muslim Quarter (read: greatest gauntlet of street food ever).  Given that I’m not entirely sure about the names of the foods and the fact that you wouldn’t know what I was talking about anyway, let’s just say that the buffet of kabobs, flour cakes, boiled/stir-fried/flame-kissed vegetables, and wide array of mystery meats mixed together to create a tiny pocket of ecstasy in central Xi’an.  To make it even better, the main tourist shopping alleys are located in the Muslim Quarter.  When I say shopping alleys, I don’t mean the overpriced Rolex galleries or Louis Vuitton stores (they’re there too).  I mean the shady, “where did you possibly get this stuff?” type of markets.  It gave us a good chance to practice our Chinese bargaining skills and the ever-sharp (and previously mentioned) shopkeeper deathblow technique.  We bought a few gifts along the way but nothing too big; it’s still early in our trip.  If we buy souvenirs now then we’ll have to hoard them for 8 more months until the long road home. 

On the next day, we were forced to leave our hostel and move to another part of town near the city gates.  No big deal; it’s Golden Week and the place is crowded.  The second hostel is much more cultural and had a nice, traditional look about it but the atmosphere didn’t allow you to meet too many other backpackers.  Still, the Xiangzimen Hostel was worth seeing.  We then traveled to another hostel the day after that; one much farther outside the city.  It was located near Da Yan Ta…or Big Wild Goose Pagoda.  The Pagoda is surrounded by a huge park which includes the largest music fountain show in Asia, as well as the second greatest gauntlet of street food ever.  At this new hostel, which had changed names causing us to walk an extra 20 minutes in a circle, we discovered a whole new set of friends including two Irish girls, two English guys, and three Americans.   It was a good group and, because the hostel wasn’t well-located, we spent the nights talking and drinking until the late hours in the lobby.

Kirby and I had meant to stay for 4 days in Xi’an.  Due to the trains and the crowds though, we ended up staying 6 full days.  The first 4 were great but the last two dragged on.  The weather became cold and wet.  Our friends left for their next destinations.  It was as sad as a vacation could be (which is still pretty happy).  Near the end, we visited the Terra Cotta Warriors.  It’s an impressive sight and unbelievable to think that such a thing existed under people’s feet for so long without ever being found, but it was just a little bit disappointing.  More because you tend to build it up in your head before you get there.  One cool fact though…the main tomb of the Emperor still hasn’t been opened because the traps that have been set are too dangerous.  The slaves and engineers who built the tomb were killed and buried in it to preserve the secrets.  Think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  You know at the end when they have to go through the gauntlet of traps (how many times can I use the word “gauntlet” in this post?). 

Finally, we boarded the train at the end of the week and began the trip home.  One quick story about the ride home.  As Kirby and I were walking along towards the dining cars, we met two British foreigners and sat down to talk with them.  As we were there, a Chinese conductor passed our beds (we were in a sleeper car) and picked up Kirby’s cell phone so that it wouldn’t be stolen.  Seems a nice enough gesture.  But then he passed us and began to question if we had lost our phone (this was being translated by some nearby Chinese).  Not having been back to our bunk, we said no.  He never even showed us the phone, which would have cleared up the whole thing.  We had to return to the bunk, realize the situation, and then find the guy to beg the phone back.  And he was irate!  What was he mad about?  The punk stole our phone!

Alright, so then we arrived home safe and sound.  And exhausted.  But happy.  Let’s call this the Golden Week Entry.

Nightlife in Loudi

  The Chinese aren’t big drinkers. Don’t get me wrong, they do like to drink but not like the Western culture. That being said, the bars here can be pretty fun; I didn’t realize that until Emily came to visit last weekend. After taking our advisors out to dinner, one of them (David) took us to one of the “fun” bars in Loudi. Just to set the right tone for this story, the bar was called Night Impressions and Vogue Club…swanky. We walked into the decorative and decent bar but it was still early so the mood was calm. Though I was struck by the huge Donald Duck portraits on the walls and the very American rap music. After looking at the beer bottle shaped menu we decided we would go with what the server recommended…the “buy 12, get 6 extra free” deal. There were 4 of us so it seemed right. About 8 bottles in the place suddenly became very crowded. All at once people were everywhere dancing….on the speakers, in front of the DJ booth, on platforms near the walls. In China it is perfectly acceptable for guys to walk around shirtless due to the heat so a number of guys were dancing bare-chested. It felt like Spring Break Cancun. The whole night was a whirl of meeting people, making friends, dancing…it is a side of Loudi that I never knew existed. A great side. So good in fact that it’s hard to describe. I’ve got an entire photo album dedicated to it so maybe you can check it out. I’ve done a bad job at getting across the full experience because you really had to be there. There will be more nights like it though so look for more details in the future.

Gearing up for National Day

  Ok, this is the third of three installments I’ve written in a row today so bear with all of the rambling. I’ve been sitting in a pagoda-shaped gazebo outside of my apartment and enjoying the cool weather so it’s a good writing atmosphere. This one is about what’s coming up instead of what’s happened though so it should be pretty good. October 1st marks National Day in China, and with nationalism being a hammered into the culture, it’s a big deal. This year is especially important as it marks the 60th Anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. The streets are exceptionally decorated in every city.

Loudi is decked out in red lamps, China flags, and elaborate works of flower art (a pagoda made entirely of flowers is being built in Louxing Park 6 blocks away from my apartment). National Day marks day one of the Golden Week holiday. It’s 7 days of holiday for the Chinese people and it is usually celebrated by people traveling to see family and friends. Our plan is to visit Xi’an and the Terracotta Warriors. That’s the final plan, it’s gone through a couple of revisions but hopefully it’s set now. On top of normal travel difficulties, China has no central reservation system for buses or trains. This means that we can buy a ticket to Xi’an but can’t buy one back until we get there. Risky. Alright, that’s inconvenient but we can work past it. Also, our Dean’s daughter works and Xi’an and she warned that Xi’an has experienced a couple of cases of Swine Flu. Big deal? I don’t see the problem. In fact, even Loudi has had a couple of cases of Swine Flu break out. And by “break out” I mean symptoms appeared in some younger kids and they were immediately treated. As a precaution though, our Dean advised that we may want to just stay in Loudi during the 8 day vacation while everyone else leaves and has at least some degree of fun. She clearly doesn’t know Americans very well. We’ll risk life and limb just to say we did. In a country of a billion people, 2 cases of swine flu in a city aren’t gonna scare me.

  This is in no way related to this post, but as I write, another inexplicable fireworks session is going on. I call it a “session” instead of a “show” because no one can really see them. They occur all of the time (maybe 4 in a day) and are always inexplicable. Someone knows why; someone probably got good grades or married or found a lucky penny or something. China would be a much quieter place if they’d just give cards like Westerners do. That’s it for today. Tune in next time for the more thoughts from the far end of the world.

Changsha (The Quick Version)

And now, for your reading pleasure…Traveling in China…so far. I could write all day long about the quirks, annoyances, and joys of traveling in China but I’m going to limit it to our recent experiences and immediate plans. I was just in Changsha two weekends ago. Changsha is the capital of the Hunan province (the one I’m in) and houses one of the best museums in China, the Hunan Provincial Museum…which we didn’t get to go to. We were on a bit of time crunch since we got there Saturday morning and were then told we had to be back by Sunday night. Let’s cover the bus trip for a minute. The bus system in China is reasonably good, but weird. Of course there are main bus stations in the cities but buses will also stop for people along the road in the countryside. Basically anyone can flag down the bus and jump on as long as there are seats available. Otherwise, they have to flag down the next bus. On top of those stops, buses will seemingly stop for any whim, seriously anything at all. We stopped to let a man pee on the side of the road. We stopped so someone could buy a water. That being said, oftentimes the bus is faster than trains because of all the mountains in the region. We arrived in Changsha and made it to our hostel only to find that the electricity was out due to construction and no one knew when it would be back. Awesome. It was 5pm by then so the museum was closed but the park next to it, Martyr Park, was still open. Martyr Park is a sprawling, beautiful area with tons of gardens, a permanent carnival, and a huge monument in the center. We wandered around the monument, which was under construction (like everything else in China), and eventually ended up in the carnival. Feeling the urge to ride at least one thing, we chose the Hot Air Balloon ride. You step into a metal cage shaped as a hot air balloon and slowly rise up high enough to see all across the park. Then you suddenly drop towards the ground, and as the pavement hungrily speeds toward you , you suddenly stop and begin to rise again. It’s basically a safe way to experience the worst hot air balloon scenario possible. After the park we went back to the hostel, still no electricity so we went to eat at a nearby KFC (don’t let the “Kentucky Fried” part fool you, it’s all still pretty Chinese tasting). Finally, at 9pm the lights make a miraculous comeback and Kirby and I are so excited about it that we go to bed about an hour and a half later….come on, it had been a long, hot day. Next morning we woke up to tackle Yuelu Mountain. Nothing overly special about the place except that there is a chute that lets you slide down the mountain from about ¾ of the way up. Kirby was too scared to do it, so I chivalrously abandoned her to go slide. Well worth it. The real struggle though was the bus ride from Yuelu back to the hostel. All of the station signs are in Chinese and apparently the way there isn’t necessarily the way back…which we learned after an hour on the bus. After a corrective taxi, we race into the hostel, grab our stuff, and hail a taxi to try to make the 25 minute taxi ride and catch the bus that leaves in 30 minutes. Good luck with that one. Our taxi driver stomps on the gas and ignores all traffic laws (which is the standard behavior for all drivers in China apparently) and manages to get us to the station with 5 minutes left. We rush to buy the tickets and God smiles down upon our sweaty, worried faces by allowing us to catch a 3:50 bus that we didn’t know existed. Temporarily relaxed, we crowd onto the bus. Two and half hours later we reach Loudi only to bombarded by phone calls from our Dean telling us that we will be having dinner immediately after arrival. So sweatily, smelly, and tired we enter the nice restaurant and politely apologize to everyone for them making us cut our trip short and show up to dinner with our bags in tow. Sorry, mandatory dinner guests. But then again, it was free food.
So that was the whirlwind trip to Changsha and I left out some of the details about the heat, the dust, and the 15-20 people who came up to us for the sole reason to yelp that we were American and that their English is “so poor.” It really is like being a B-list celebrity.

Hungry?

Where did this blog leave off last time?  I’ll just start in the middle of things.  Lately Kirby and I have begun to get sick of rice and noodles all the time.  Of course we’re branching out towards rice with eggs, noodles with chicken broth, rice with eggs and vegetables, whole wheat noodles…yeah, it can be dietarily boring.  So instead we decided to launch into the wide, strange world of Chinese restaurants. 

   The quick description is this:  Your basic Chinese restaurant is comprised of a bottom floor featuring a number of small tables set with a few chairs and, generally, washed and shrink-wrapped dishes.  Evidently there is a service that goes around, picks up these dishes, shrink wraps them, and delivers them back the next day.  Handy.  The upper floors are usually private rooms complete with a large, circular table, a couch, and always a television.  I’m not sure who goes there to sit on the couch and watch TV but apparently it’s a common thing.  One of the quirks of these private rooms though is the fact that the seat directly across from the doorway is the seat of honor.  It completely ruins the Western ideal of equality with a circular table.  There is a lazy susan that spins food in the center of this large table and the food comes at you Italian family style with everyone sharing the huge dishes.  In China, vegetables are really the main dishes with splashes of meat thrown in only to spice things up.  And in Hunan, they truly mean “spice.”  This province takes a ridiculous amount of pride in their peppers and spicy food.  The word “la” means spicy so it can be pretty amusing when people cry out how hot their meal is with a “la, la, la, la, la!”  Kirby and I have been sitting in the bottom floor s.  We’ve found a few favorite restaurants now and are fully employing the “point and pick” method successfully.  We know enough Chinese to delineate categories of food and after that we just point at an item on the menu.  It’s working well; we’ve had some delicious stuff.  Though at the same time, we’ve encountered some terrible dishes too.  No problem, you can always just orders something else since a general meat dish here is about 18 Yuan or less than 3 American dollars.  Vegetable dishes are only 10 Yuan, or about $1.50.  Recently we’ve been big fans of the Beijing Jiaoziguan, or loosely the “Beijing Dumpling House.”  It seems to be the Chinese equivalent of a surly American diner.  I’m pretty sure that our waitresses are all single mothers just trying to get by.  The food is great though. 

   This post seems to be all about restaurants so I’ll throw this last bit of trivia out there.  We recently ate at a restaurant called Maojia.  It’s a franchise restaurant in China started by the former personal cook to Chairman Mao.  For those uninitiated, Chairman Mao was the leader of China during the Cultural Revolution and is revered as basically a demi-god.  There is literally a small shrine to him in this restaurant, complete with offerings of his favorite dishes at the altar.  Again though, it was delicious.  Alright, enough for this post; this blog format is so narrow that you probably feel like you just read War & Peace so I’m breaking it up a bit.  Next installment:  Travel in China.

End of Week One

  It's Thursday today which means tomorrow marks the last day of our first full week in Loudi (pronounced Loh-DEE).  After talking to Emily, it seems my college prefers the "do it yourself" approach to settling into a new town.  We've been cooking, cleaning, shopping, and doing everything else so far basically on our own.  Our contacts are more than happy to help us if we have any questions but as for the actual action, that's all on us.  Which is good; makes us feel more a part of the city.  Though it does make for slightly more complicated situations frequently.  We've been to KFC twice (which I think are the only true Western fast food places in Loudi).  That's right, we broke down and decided we needed something at least vaguely similar to home.  After a series of gestures, pleads, and pointing fingers we managed to order some chicken sandwiches and french fries.  No soft drinks though.  Soft drinks in the bottle here are great.  In the can are great.  Out of a fountain drink machine?  Awful.  It's like they never had carbonation added to them, completely flat and lifeless.  It's like drinking coca-cola flavored kool-aid.  No problem though, gotta push through.
  So in that spirit of "do it yourself" we bought our bus tickets today to see Emily tomorrow morning.  So far, if we're not walking somewhere in Loudi then we're taking a taxi (we're working on getting bicycles).  I'm pretty good at telling them where we want to go, but not so much at telling them how to get back.  I must be messing up the word "college" or something because they just aren't getting it.  Every time I try though.  So we got to the bus station, asked a local to point us in the right direction, went up to the gate and bought two tickets.  Evidently, two tickets that left in an hour.  Whoops.  So we paged through our Chinese phrasebook to find the words "tomorrow morning" and wrote down the date we wanted to travel "2009-09-04" on a sheet of paper.  Amazingly it worked.  Our luck has been holding up on things like that so far.  So now we're the proud owners of two tickets that leave tomorrow morning at 8:30am to where we can only hope is Hengyang.  We still have to open a bank account and set up cell phones though so that should be fun.
  Alright, I wanted to wait to write about this later when I have some good pictures and maybe a video but this has to be shared.  I can post some media later but maybe this will serve as a good preview.  There are a number of parks near our college.  One is called "Shima" or "Stone Horse" Park.  It's a cool park; a big pond stands as the center with trails all around.  The equivalent of a small carnival takes over one corner of the park with bumper cars, a skating rink, a haunted house, and a very rickety ferris wheel among other rides and games.  The first day we went we even saw pony rides and men with long brushes drawing water calligraphy on the stone tiles.  Ok, all of that seems relatively normal for a park.  We were also told that people go there at night to "dance."  They didn't say it with those quotation marks but once you've seen the "dancing" then you have to say "dance" like "dance."  We're walking home from Wal-Mart (one of only 3 in China) and stop by the park to be greeted by the most unlikely sight I have seen so far in this country.  At least a hundred people had gathered in the main stone entrance of this park to "dance" what seems to be some kind of line dance.  Everyone in the group was doing little skip steps, then a turn, and then waving their arms side to side above their heads.  Not waves like "hi!" waves, waves like "Throw your hands in the air like you just don't care!" waves.  Very weird.  And they knew multiple dances; music (whose source I still haven't found yet) would change and these people would all begin "dancing" another "dance" in unison.  So strange.  I promise I'll put up a video soon since it's a sight you have to see.  And the strangest part is that this isn't a weekend event, it's an every night event.  Nightly, people say to one another "let's go 'dancing' at the park. Let's just get out there and let loose with completely uniform boogie-ing."
  Last thing before I post this.  Kirby and I finally found what is always at the heart of every Chinese community, whether it's a Chinatown in America or Loudi in the China motherland.  We discovered the seedy back alleys that sell everything from imitation leather belts to Victoria's Secret clothes to cell phones to dvd's. Basically, we found where all of that stuff that "falls off the truck" ends up.  There it was, right across from the bus station.  It was subtle though; you take a few steps toward and all you see are fruits and vegetables.  But then the glint of a necklace briefly catches your eye on a table.  Wait? Is that what I thought it was, that doesn't belong in a farmer's market.  Then you move closer and you begin to see the outdoor stalls filled with cheap toys, cheap watches, and cheap souvenirs.  Ok, cheap trinkets, no big deal.  But, oh wait, is that the open garage door of a large, seedy warehouse filled with stalls of knock-off and possibly stolen goods?  I think so.  Heck, I hope so.  ...and it was.  Don't get me wrong, it's not the junk I love, though from time to time you can get some good stuff in those back alleys and dark warehouse/flea market type places.  I love the people who work those things.  Most are either bored with blank looks on their faces or just flat-out sleeping (which is strange, are they not worried about theft? I guess they assume the stuff is already stolen, what more can happen to it.)  But the people who are awake and alert have completely unassuming looks on their faces.  As though it's totally natural to have a complete inventory of Adidas wear just hanging up in this no-name shop.  Needless to say, we had to buy at least one thing so we bought a watch for Kirby.  We haggled some but in the end we used the shopkeeper deathblow technique...the "walk-away."  Only the rare and incredibly stubborn shopkeeper can resist it.  If you walk away, you'll either get the price you're asking for or at the very least you'll re-open negotiations.
  So that's it for today; I know there were no pictures, that must be disappointing for you.  Next time though.

Breakthrough!

I finally found a way to get through what locals call "The Great Firewall of China." Facebook, Blogger, Youtube, and a variety of other sites have been blocked for months now. It's alright now though. After figuring out how to get internet on my computer (no easy task in my apartment) and then figuring out how to get past the internet blocks (an even less easy task), I now can roam free in cyberspace.

This may be just a quick recap of what's happened so far. Our flight was delayed arriving into Chicago from Nashville so we were forced to frantically run around the airport trying to find another flight going to either Toronto or Shanghai. Everyone we talked to shared two things in common: (1) agreement on the fact that we had no time to waste and (2) the inexplicable desire to make time-wasting small talk with us. Finally, we managed to find the last flight out to Shanghai from Chicago which left in 40 minutes. We stood in the back of a huge line to show our passports and then just hoped our baggage would meet us in Shanghai. But we had seats and we didn't have to spend the night in Chicago so it worked out.

We landed in Shanghai around 2:00pm. For weeks we have been told horror stories about people being checked and quarantined due to swine flu. But the truth is that you hardly even notice them checking and it's a simple process that really didn't delay us at all. What did cause us trouble was the amount of baggage we brought. Everywhere you go in this country you can expect to push and jostle your way towards where you're going. Now imagine pushing when you have a backpack, a rolling bag, and a duffle bag (or in Kirby's case, two rolling bags which made her three times wider than anyone else). We took the Maglev train; it's the world's fastest commercial train...and seemingly the most unnecessary. It travels 430km/hr but the track is only 30 km long. After that, we packed onto the subway and pushed and shoved our way all the way to Luban Rd and miraculously into the hostel.

The humidity and heat here are unbelievable. It's like a hair dryer blowing in your face instantly and all the time. Sweat is a fact of life. Not just a little either; sweat like you just walked out of a rainstorm. That's how it was all the way up until today. Suddenly the weather dropped from high 90's (sometimes over 100) with 80% humidity to a cool, fresh 60 degrees. Amazing.

So Shanghai was an interesting city to start the trip. It's definitely a metropolis with somewhere around 20 million people packing its streets. There seems to be no build up either; all of a sudden at 6am, there will be hundreds of people on every street. The traffic here is crazy too. Lots of cars, sure, but we have that in America. It's the pure disregard for traffic laws. Red lights? Don't care. Turn signals? Don't care. Lanes? Who needs them? It seems to be the only law is once you start moving, don't stop. Everyone seems to be operating on a single track mindset of "getting there." Crosswalks are an extreme sport. Even with all of the people here though, we didn't get the feeling that we were in that big of a city until we went up to Jin Mao Tower. 420 meters straight up sits the 88th story of Jin Mao Tower. To look out over the city, you can see where it continues to extend well beyond the horizon on all sides. It is a huge and sprawling city. We met some really great people at the hostel in Shanghai so it was sad to leave. But we did have an entourage around us as we hailed the cab for the train station.

The train ride was 14 hour marathon to Changsha. Again, it wouldn't have been too bad had we not had way too much luggage. So much in fact that we had to use one of our three beds solely for our bags. We rode what is called a "hard sleeper." It's basically two sets of three bunk beds in a single, open compartment. Not bad, the beds were hard but apparently all beds are hard in China. Across from us was a young Chinese couple with a cute baby so that passed the time. We arrived in Changsha about 7:30am and met our contact Ms. Li outside the gates. From there, they took us to a restaurant for lunch. It was noisy and crowded so Ms. Li suggested we go somewhere else. A loud, obnoxious hostess yelled at us for trying to leave saying they had already killed the fish we had ordered. So after a lot of pointing and yelling, we bought the fish, took it to another restaurant, and asked them to cook it. It was a great lunch. Afterwards, our separate schools picked us up and we went to Loudi.

As soon as Kirby and I arrived in Loudi, we threw our stuff down into the apartment and headed back out the door to go to a dinner with the heads of the school. We were dirty, smelly, and sweaty...the best way to meet your employers. The dinner was great again but this time was complete with Mao Tai...and incredibly strong Chinese liquor. They called it "wine" but I kind of doubt that. The first drink we all had a toast together. After that it was like a group of old friends playing together. Every time one of them took a shot, they would choose some one else to toast. People were constantly reaching across the table. Near the end, Kirby and I decided to toast the whole table with the small amount of Chinese we'd picked up. Everyone cheered but maybe that was because they wanted to drink. At one point, the Dean (who was sitting to my right) asked how many drinks of Mao Tai it would take to get me drunk. What is the right answer there? Drinking must be one of those cultural differences since I was asked at least three times if I could drink. Not if I "do" drink but if I can, like if I'm allowed to. They said many people cannot, especially girls.

After the dinner, we went back to the apartment. It is definitely modest. Both of ours have the same set up: a bedroom, a bedroom/office, a living room, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom/shower. Most of it is decent, I'll put up pictures later. But the kitchen isn't too much more than a cupboard, a sink, and a stove top connected a propane tank...nice. The bathroom door forms the right wall of the kitchen. The shower is directly above the toilet....again, nice. The piping is like a putt-putt golf course. Water flows down the drain in my kitchen sink, through a loosely connected hose (which sometimes spills over), and into a large, open tile basin that sits to the right of my kitchen counter. There, it swirls around until it reaches another "drain" which is really just a long pipe that reaches outside of my kitchen window and pours water out into a concrete drainage ditch. Once more...classy. The bathroom is about the same. There is a lot about the apartment that is nice but the bad stuff is funnier to talk about. Surprisingly though, the computer they gave me is really nice. Unfortunately I don't need it since I have my laptop. They tried hard though to make it comfortable and did a pretty good job. I can't complain much though since I live in the middle of about 7 other apartment buildings and I get the feeling that I have it the best.

We don't start teaching until September 7th so I'm going to spend the time working on lesson plans. Should be fun considering the only Chinese I'm good at saying is "I don't speak Chinese." Also, we're going to visit Emily in Hengyang this weekend so we can see how the other half lives.

And so he walked out of our lives...

Alright, so it's 12:53am, day of. We leave for the airport in just 3 short hours, we leave the country in just 5. For those of you following along at home, we are taking off for the eastern hemisphere with no intention to come back for another 365 days. I'm all packed up with a backpack, a duffle bag, and a rolling bag. Honestly though, I'd feel more comfortable with just the single backpack; any more than that and I feel like I've over packed. All of us are trying to stay under the weight regulations that the airlines are setting on us. Turns out you can't have anything over 5o pounds. I was well under the limit until I packed up my shoes. Size 12 is not a light size. I'm choosing to stay up until we leave for the airport since being tired enough to sleep on a 20 hour flight seems like the best idea; however, since everyone is asleep right now, I may just lie in bed out of a lack of options. But tomorrow I'll get up, throw on sweat pants and a comfortable shirt, and settle in for the duration. Next time you visit the site we'll be in Shanghai.