Just a bunch of pictures from Beijing

I just gave you gold below, so these will be mostly just pictures. I had to head to Beijing to get my new passport. I took the overnight train from Xi'an to Beijing Monday night at 8 pm. Didn't sleep much, so I was pretty strung out most of the day. I took a taxi from the western train station to the U.S. Embassy and it cost 7 dollars US which is unheard of, most taxi's in Xi'an cost at most 2.00 US. The picture on the right is the US embassy in Beijing.

I arrived in Beijing at around 7:30. I was completely finished with my passport business by 9:45 a.m.. After dealing with the Chinese government, I have really begun to appreciate the efficiency of the US government.

The US embassy is located in more eastern Beijing and the Western train station in located in western Beijing. I decided to just walk the 10 miles back to the train station from the US embassy and hit the forbidden city and Tiananmen square on the way. It seemed like a great idea at the time.

More on Xian

Since some people were so kind to post comments, I will answer them here. The first question that I was asked was, "what are the weird things that you are getting used to?" There are a few things that are different. First off people spit everywhere. You constantly hear people hauking loogies. Kind of gross at first but you get used to it. Another thing is that there are a lot of trees that line the roads in the cities. The area around the base of the tree where there is a break in the cement is often used as a public toilet. In the evenings it isn't uncommon to see someone taking a leak in the tree well and occasionaly you find a log. Another thing that was shocking is that a lot of small children do not use diapers. The parents just cut a slit in the clothes in the crotch region and let their children pee and poop on the ground/shopping cart/bus when the urge hits them. Another thing is that women always walk in a group of two and they are always holding one anothers arm. Men are sometimes overly touchy. Give a chinese man a few drinks and he is hanging on you like a frat boy on a sorority chick when the bartender makes the last call. The Chinese sense of personal space is much different than the western idea. They often will get 6 inches from your face to talk to you. It takes a while to get used to. Most of the food in Xi'an tastes about the same. A few vegetables some meat and a lot of cooking oil.

Kit asked, "How many kids are in your classes? What kind of stuff are you doing in class?". The Freshman don't start for another 10 days. In my sophmore classes I have 31 and 32 students. I have 3 boys in one class and 4 in the other class. Right now we are working on communication. This past Thursday we went over the quiz from week 1. I read 2 articles about smoking in China and the flowers from the olympic games. We are working on communication and understanding. The class that I am teaching is a communication class, but the students and faculty want me to focus on English skills, culture, and business practices. So rather than doing a management class, we are working more on listening, writing, and oral skills. The homework that I gave the students was to write a 2 page paper on the Olympics for next week. They must also present this information to thier classmates orally. Kit also asked what I do after class. Generally I take the bus from Lintong back to Xi'an. The univeristy that I teach at has a satellite campus about a half hour away. There are nice greyhound buses that pickup the faculty and transport them to the campus. The new campus is actually much nicer and newer than the traditional campus in Xi'an. I just feel bad for the students, becuase they are trapped in a small

town with almost no social outlets. Kind of like living in Manhattan :). Kit asked what I did after work. Well this past Thursday, I was taken to lunch by a professor that I met on the bus on the way back to Xi'an. We went and had some Korean food and talked for about 3 hours. I went home and had to go first find where to pay my phone bill and then pay my phone bill. Then I went home emailed students from my class. Walked up to Aijia (shopping store) and purchased some hangars, an iron, and some durian fruit. I came home and my neighbor banged on my door and asked me to come over for dinner. We had some pasta and watched the first two new episodes of Heroes (I don't think they have even shown the second epiosde in the US yet. *****Heroes Spoiler (there is another petrelli) *******. My canadian neighbor Rory has a 42 inch HD T.V. so when ever I want to watch a movie or a T.V. show, I head over there. In fact we bought a cord to hook the computer up to the T.V., so now I get to watch the Chiefs games on the 42 inch TV over the slingbox connection. It is great, except he is a Bills fan. At least he isn't a Broncos fan. So this is the long answer to Kit's short question. In far greater detail than I am sure that he intended. I am really getting settled in. Things I miss: good coffee, a soft bed, good bread, clean air, a good sandwhich, turkey, good bbq, Gates sauce, Rock Star, a cell phone, fast internet, people who speak English, clean bathrooms, a mode of personal transportation, and most importantly friends and family.

I got class, yo.

Today was my first day teaching. I was suprisingly not nervous. For the past few days I have been preparing lesson plans for my students. I went through 4 classes worth of lessons today with my students. They are much farther along then I was expecting. The students are very attentive and eager to make a good impression. One thing that I am worried about is the concept of "face". Students are worried about making a mistake and losing face with their fellow students. If they are unsure of an answer they seem to just remain silent. My freshman class doesn't begin for another 3 weeks. They go 3 weeks later into the semester. The freshman have to do military training for the first 6 weeks of the fall. It is funny to watch them on the soccer pitch across the street doing exercises and military drills. They are 17 and 18 year old kids more interested in socializing then doing the military exercises that the commanding officer is barking at them. I had to get up at 6:00 a.m. today to catch the bus to the satelitte campus. For a guy who hasn't been working for 6 weeks, my sleep schedule hasn't exactly had me getting up before... 10 a.m. most days. The school has decided to give me my first paycheck early, so it looks like I will be heading to beijing in the next few days to get my passport. Good times, 12 hours train ride each way. I think I might go on Sunday night and come back wednesday. there is a "white" party for expats at club 3F on Friday (white meaning clothes not skin color you racist kansan :) ). there are a few people from the University going to this party so it should be fun. Xi'an is really starting to grow on me. The culture shock the first couple of weeks is starting to wear off and I am getting used to the little things that seemed so strange at first. Hope all is well in your world. Somebody put up a comment so that I know this thing is being read.

Xi'an

I have been trying to upload this video for the past 5 days. I just learned last night that i had to go through a proxy server to upload this type of content. Once again thank you Chinese government for making everything so easy. I tried to upload a video that follows my path from the campus to my home, but it is too large. I have some pictures that I have taken recently. I will upload these in the next few days. Xi'an is starting to grow on me. The people and the customs are quite a bit different than what I was expecting. Unlike the dodo bird I am evolving and adapting.

Chaing Saen to Kunming

Ok I know that you know I am already in Xi'an, but I will tell you about my trip getting here. I left the hotel in Chaing Saen at 4:00 a.m. to catch the tuk-tuk that I had previously arranged. He showed up on time thankfully. Otherwise I would have had to walk a few miles in a Southeast Asian monsoon. I met a french guy the night before at the hotel that was taking the same boat up the Mekong river to China. Since we were the only white guys we developed that superficial bond that happens so often while traveling. The trip up the river was amazing. We went past villages that were 100 miles from the nearest major road. These people really lived off the land and the river is an integral part of their existence. I tried to take a few pictures, but generally they came out blurred due to the boat shifting and rolling on the water.

The mountains rising straight from the river was a magnificent sight to behold. The Mekong starts in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains. The river carries a lot of silt, so it looks very dirty. When the river breaches the banks during floods it deposits rich soil onto the flood plain which is how many of the people living on the river make their living. The picture below was taken near the official golden triangle area. This specific picture was great because the mountains are completely covered in clouds. This was taken right after dawn. The area where this picture was taken is known for the massive amounts of opium grown. Beautiful, but also a very dangerous area to be wandering too far off the beaten path.

The boat were taking up the river is a "speedboat". The trip took about 12 hours to make it up the river. The original boat according to one of the passengers used to take 3 days to get up the Mekong river. So I was very thankful for the "speedboat". Here is a video taken from the back of the boat.

During the trip we met a bunch of Malaysian tourists. They appeared to be rather financially well off. They were very chatty and were really trying to make a friendship with me. One man began telling about how when I came to visit him in Kuala Lumpur he was going to take me all around and introduce me to people he had been doing business with before he retired so that I can get ahead. I went ahead and gave him my email address. His son had died 10 years before and he seemed excited to be able to take someone young under his wing. When we finally arrived at the Chinese border, the guards paid particularly close attention to myself and the french man. They spent a half hour in the sweltering heat going through my baggage. Most of the Malaysian tourists were waved through or quickly searched. I am not exactly sure what they were looking for, but we were eventually let through. The boat was supposed to take us all the way to Jinghong. Yet we stopped in the border town on Qinling because it was getting too dark to make the trip the rest of the way up the river. They decided that a bus would pick us up in the morning and take us to Jinghong. This didn't work for me because I had a flight at 10 p.m. on Saturday in Kunming and the bus ride from Jinghong to Kunming takes 10 hours. Luckily the Malaysians were with a tour company who called Jinghong and ordered a bus to come and pick them up and drop them off in Jinghong. My new friend understanding my situation argued with the tour director for 10 minutes until he agreed to let me on the bus to Jinghong. A few of the other ladies who were also on the trip, whom I had conversations with on the boat also came into the conversation and argued in my favor. They basically said that they would write negative reviews and never use this tour service again if they were unwilling to help me out. Thank god for my new aristocratic Malaysian friends. On the way to Jinghong we were on the shadiest roads i have ever been on in my life. I swear I saw 75 Mudslides on the road between Qinling and Jinghong. Some were just little washouts. Others caused the bus to literally drive at a 45 degree angle up and over the uncleared debris. I kept looking at the mountain waiting for the slide that was going to take out the bus.
It was very dark when this video was taken, but it was one of the bigger slides we came across. I am just glad I made it through alive. When we finally made it to Jinghong, we missed the late bus going to Kunming by 10 minutes. So I got a disgusting room near the bus station so that I could catch the early bus in the morning. when the hotel clerk showed me my room there was a cockroach about the size of a golf ball on the bed. When I pointed it out to the clerk he proceeded to whack it with his fist. Killing it dead on the pillow that I was supposed to use that night. I saw no less than 5 cockroaches while in this upscale hotel, but it was only $8 US a night so it is hard to complain too much. The next morning I boarded the bus for a drive through the Yunan province.
I was hoping to get my Chinese visa sooner so that I could spend more time in the province. It was very beautiful with very large mountains and beautiful terraced gardens. I arrived in Kunming at 6 p.m. with my French friend who was going to be a student there for the next year. He offered to let me keep my bags at his place until I had to leave for the airport at 9. When we got there I checked my email and the Ctrip company had cancelled my flight. they claimed that they had tried to contact a day earlier because I had entered the wrong bank on the online registration form. I panicked and ran downstairs to call their english hotline to straighten out the problem. The person on the phone told me that the ticket was cancelled because I had used an international credit card for a domestic flight. Even though my credit card had been charged and I had received flight confirmation and a flight issuance email letting me know I was good to go. They claimed that they had refunded my credit card and told me that I would need to buy a new ticket and that I had to pay cash and it would be about $30 US extra because it was last minute. I was tired from traveling and didn't have the energy to argue, so I just agreed. The only problem was that the refund hadn't posted to my account left and I was short about half the flight cost in cash in my bank account. In fact as of today, Wednesday the 200 US dollars I paid for the flight on my debit card still hasn't been refunded to my account yet. While I was talking on the phone at a newspaper stand on the street a little boy maybe 8 years old ran up shyly and said "hello" and then ran back to his mothers shop across the sidewalk. About a minute later he ran back over again and said "good morning" and while he was still looking at us began to shyly run back to his mothers shop. This time a motorbike was flying down the sidewalk and nailed the kid who wasn't looking where he was going. I dropped the phone and ran over. The kid was crying and will probably have a major bruise, but I don't think anything was broken. During this skirmish, I set down my passport on the newspaper stands counter. I completely forgot I had left it because of the incident with the kid. I was scrambling around trying to find an open bank on a Saturday to convert some US money and Thai money into Chinese so that I could pay for my flight. Nothing was open, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because I didn't have enough. Luckily the french guy I was hanging with offered to loan me 100 US so that I could catch my flight. Which I graciously took and offered to leave my computer or iPod as collateral until I paid him back. He was a great guy and said no need, he had been with me a few days and knew I was an honest person. So this was about 1 hour before my flight was to depart when we finally worked all this out. I quickly took a cab to the airport and couldn't find anyone who spoke english or could help me find my ticket counter. Finally I found it. I had about 30 minutes before my flight was to leave when we began the ticket issuing process. with about 18 minutes to go I was issued my ticket and I headed to the security checkpoint. This is the first time I realized I didn't have my passport. I opened all my bags pulled everything out on the floor. I tried to give them a photocopy of my passport to let me on the plane. The security guard called another security guard over. This person radioed for another security guard and so on until there were about 10 people standing around shaking their heads at me.They took me out of the security line and walked me to the office. I didn't yell, I was polite while I was pleading for a reprieve. Finally in desperation I told them I wasn't a tourist, i was a teacher here to help the Chinese students learn about how the west does business. This peaked the head honchos interest. I pulled out my paperwork issued by the provincial government to show the big dog and he read over it, looked at me, and waived his had toward the gate. I quickly pulled my stuff together. I had 3 minutes before the plane was to depart. The flight staff was all standing at the door to the plane waiting for me and hollered down the hall when they saw me "Sawn Meller". I hurried onto the plane barely and caught my flight to Xi'an arriving at 1 A.M. Katie always says that somehow things work out for me, and after this leg of my journey, I am starting to think that maybe she is right. So I am here in Xi'an. I will update what has happened since arriving here in the next few days.