Stranger No More

I met with Teresa yesterday at 3:30 to go to the office to sign the contract. Like all streets in China, Chengdu is filled with weaving traffic but the drivers here seem more polite. In Datong and even Beijing drivers are constantly on the horn which isn’t as true here. We got to the 10th floor office and were finished in about 15 minutes. Teresa asked me if I would like to join her and her girlfriend in playing cards. I have seen this crazy Chinese card game and despite having no idea how to play I first told her that she did not have to entertain me but that I’d be willing to try.

We took off to the Good Wood Coffee House. You really can’t make this up. It appears to be a chain as I’ve seen others. We met Helen and Mr. Yuan which as far as I can tell means Mr. Money. The money here is referred to as kwy, RMB and it is all marked with yuan as the unit of measure. I watched the three of them play without immediately grasping it. It mattered not to Teresa as the next hand I was in while she helped me. I won. Then I won again. I won three straight. Too bad I had no idea what I was doing. I even told Teresa it was like she was getting to play with a designated card holder/sorter. Pretty soon money was on the table and my winning ways came to an end. The game is called Landlord and Tenants or something like that and Teresa mentioned it can be played on the internet so I’ll have to improve my comprehension and maybe my skills.
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So far so good but I’ve only been here a couple of hours.

I left Datong on Thursday morning with the help of Ping who rode with me to the bus station. She has been such a wonderful friend to both Jed and I. I was able to catch a 0700 bus and arrived in Taiyuan around 1030. I trudged with all my bags to the train station, a long couple of blocks. Along the way an old man with a taxi-trike was trying to get me to go with him despite my ‘boo-yow’ reply so I finally said, ‘ling kwy?’ which elicited laughter from those around us. Ling means zero and kwy is like dollar. I continue to crack me up. With the note Ping had written me I was able to buy a soft sleeper for 176RMB for the 27 hour trip.

With a couple of hours to kill I trudged back up the street and found a phone and called Kevin and Vivian to see if they wanted to have lunch. They met me back in front of the train station about 40 minutes later and we went to McDonalds. Yup. I don’t like McD’s in the states but a burger was sounding good. That is about how it was but the fries really hit the spot. I bought a couple of cheeseburgers to put in my bag for the trip. I’m a genius.

I got back to the train station in time to walk right onto the train where my soft sleeper was the top bunk of three. A low ceiling met me. I crawled my old-feeling ass up into it and stayed for a couple of hours before I climbed down and looked out the window for a few minutes. Nothing great so I climbed back up and read until nearly 2200 before sleeping all night. There are straps to keep you from falling out. In the morning I went back to the window where I felt like I was home. The magnificent scenery reminded me of both Oregon and Alaska. With a mist hanging the mountains were covered with brush were there weren’t terraces for farming the land. They have been farming these mountains longer than we have been a country. Awesome. I cracked a smile the first time I realized that those were bamboo trees!

I met a nice guy whose English name is Brett that goes to university in Taiyuan and was going to meet a friend in Chengdu for a day before returning on the 27 hour train ride. He told me he has had a girlfriend for two months but that I made him feel ‘like I am no more’. I laughed and told him that was about my average; two months. His only English studies were what he learned in middle school. He was pretty impressive.

I was met at the train station by Teresa who took me to the Datong Hotel. Yeah, no kidding. They weren’t accepting foreigners so we went around the corner to the designated foreigner hotel where she registered my and paid for my room. After helping me up to the room she took me out to dinner. Real Sichuan food and it is spicy. It took her about two seconds to tell me I had poor kwhy-zuh skills. I laughed because she is right. These type of bosses here are more like agents but she expressed her confidence in me and I told her I looked forward to doing a good job for her. Tomorrow she is going to take me to meet Ray the full-time foreign teacher in Chengdu. We will drive to Santai on Monday.

Since it is getting late on Friday, I’m going to go clean up and hit the hay. I took a lot of pics of the Dr. Seuss landscape. I’ll sort through those and send y’all some tomorrow.

I am taking off for Taiyuan tomorrow by bus, a seven hour ride and then hoping to be in time to catch a 5pm train for the 27 hour trip to Chengdu.

So if I am out of touch that is the reason and I expect to have stories and pictures. With any luck the stories won’t be too crazy. A nice smooth trip is just what I need.

So we had a scheduled Chinese lesson from Ping yesterday that fizzled. Jed worked at being a bad student as he wasn’t feeling it and I just sort of lay there. Jed even made the suggestion that we might be better students in an environment other than our pad. So after a short time struggling to get us to pronounce correctly while her friend Sunny sat and listened to music we successfully took the wind out of Ping’s sails. Well, that and Vivian arrived. So the new plan became to go to Hualin Mall to go ice skating. I’ve never ice skated. As we began our trek Vivian’s mood went South as she indicated she was hungry but we didn’t really stop to feed her. Once we finally arrived at the mall and got to the fifth floor ice skating rink she went to the food court, (imagine a row of Panda Express), to get something to eat and then join us on the ice. Jed had decided against getting on the ice and at 6′4″ I imagine it was a ‘harder they fall’ concern. It initially turned out to be just Ping and I on the ice but Sunny joined us after a bit. It was a pretty small rink and had lots of kids and beginner skaters. Now, since I used to go roller-skating back in about ‘78 I was optimistic that some of those principals would apply. They did. After an initial spill that convinced me I wasn’t as good as I hoped I’d be I was able to take it down a notch and skate pretty well. I had to be careful not to cause a major pileup as I was surrounded by kids. One kid who was really good, (apparently he was also a youth coach or something but looked 12-14), skated around near me shoo-ing kids off of me and generally just watching out for me. For a brief moment Jed and Vivian appeared up in the observation area but never joined us. The kids were a blast chasing me around. One small girl stepped right into my path and I was able to scoop her up and put her down without either of us falling. Whew. Ping had only skated once before a few years ago and Sunny seemed as if maybe it was her first time so we all got a pretty good workout. After about an hour we decided we’d had about enough. Ice skating is tough work but I can also see the appeal as it was a lot of fun.
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So Patrick from Colorado got here yesterday. He was warned that several teachers had not been picked up at the airport with any consistency so when he wasn’t met he was prepared for it. Another big tall guy. Jed is 6′4″ and Patrick is 6′5″ or even 6′6″ so I’m feeling pretty short, even in China. Patrick has lived in Mexico and traveled in India so he should be fine in China. Oh yeah, I’m not the old guy anymore as he is 46. The three of us joined Rian, our boss, for a large banquet style lunch yesterday with many of Rian’s influential contacts at the table. Great food but having to toast every couple of minutes can get out there pretty quick. Don’t worry, I behaved. Naturally there was karaoke right in our room. Rian sang karaoke to a scene from the Peking Opera going completely falsetto to handle both roles. Funny stuff.

The weather yesterday was pretty awful with a very cold rain being whipped about by constantly changing winds. Jed and I decided to chill for a bit at the pad and once the weather calmed down we took Patrick down to the Square and watched some live music at The Habitat. We’ve come to enjoy the smooth stylings of the house band. Or whatever it is they do. Different place but another drunk cop. It was someone’s birthday and they were making pitchers with entire bottles of Chivas with ice tea. I didn’t even order a drink there instead just had the server bring me an empty glass. I managed to have about three or four of this incredible waste of good Scotch. My favorite drink is still a free one but, of course nothing is free and we had more handshakes and hugs than we wanted. Jed and I have gotten good at knowing when to say when and generally as they close in around us we bail. Too bad, missed some of the best stuff the band has. Got a great picture of me with a police badge.

We were finally given physicals and it looks like we are very close to being placed. The physical was quite an experience. I’m weighing in at 72 kilos, whatever that is. The word right now is Beijing or at least the greater Beijing area. Beijing is so western but will be teaming with opportunities. I think I can safely speak for Jed when I say we are just looking forward to getting somewhere. This has taken long enough that I have put out feelers to other jobs in China and have a couple of great leads. My patience and my bank account are wearing thin. I’m extremely optimistic that I can find work whether with Rian or with someone else. I’ll keep you posted at every turn.

Thanks for all the great emails. It really is nice to know that I have such great friends supporting me from afar.

- O