The First Great Adventure of my Life.

When I received my student visa from China, I also received a piece of paper that was stapled into my passport. It told me that with in 30 days of my arrival into China I had to get my self a residency permit otherwise I would be staying in China illegally. And as it is my way I waited 28 days before doing anything about it, but do something I did. Three days ago I got up early and took to the streets to hail my self a taxi. I handed the driver an address hand written by a man working in the office. The driver nodded his head, which turned out to be a total lie, and we took off.

The cabby tried his best to make small talk with me, and I actually did understand a bit of what he was saying, but soon the difficulty of conversation muted the cab for the duration of the trip until he told me that he didn't know where I was trying to go and could only get me some where in the general vicinity. So he dropped me off and left me to find the police station on my own.

I had been there once before. A week and a half prior I had gone with a group of students and a representative from our school, but there were so many people there that day that they ran out of time, and I didn't get my chance at the desk. So the man from our school told us to come back on our own. So I knew at least what the building looked like, and the area I was in did look familiar, but i had no idea how to get from point A to point B.

I asked a few locals for directions, and not being able to understand there words I acted solely on there emphatic pointing. Now in China the only thing that out numbers police stations are government owned banks, so when I found my self in front of the wrong big blue sign I was not surprised. I walk in anyways, intending on asking directions to the other station. I handed the man at the desk the piece of paper telling me about the residency permit, thinking that might get the message across, but of course it didn't and I ended up spending 20 minutes tying to explain that I was lost and trying to get some where else. The whole time more and more people were constantly being called over to see if they could make sense of my mishmashed Chinese, and soon 10 people where all listening intently, breaking in with phrases I didn't understand to try and help me out. Every once in a while I would reach into my back pack to pull out various props, the hand written address, my passport, the piece of paper from my passport, my dictionary.

But eventually, after my point was finally understood there was a sudden response of “lets go!” proposed in English by one of the male officers in the crowd, as if they had been wanting to take some sort of action for the whole time and were jumping at the chance now.

They led me to the street and put me in the back of a squad car, which I think was unnecessary, though cool, since we only ended up driving 2 blocks and turning left. But never the less I thanked the officers warmly and shook their hands before walking into the large building.

There were few people in today so I very soon heard my number called and found my self sitting across the table from the man that would grant me my permit. As I reached into my pack to get the papers I needed, the officer leaned back in his chair so his blue uniform wrinkled and hung loosely from his shoulders, then took a long drag from his cigarette. I took out my passport and placed it in front of him. He did not pick it up immediately, but waited a second, not long just one second, maybe two, just long enough to look over the small blue booklet as he slowly exhaled, watching the wisps of smoke in his peripheral vision. Unlike most Chinese I've met, he showed his age. He looked like a man that was not defeated by life, but tiered by it. I imagined what he had done as a police officer, I wondered what his life had been like. I thought of the rouge police officer, that had been forced to sit behind a desk as punishment for not playing by the rules, but had the sole secret to taking down the Chinese mafia, if only the pain in the ass boss man would listen to him.

Calmly he leaned forward resting his elbows on the desk and took the passport. He looked it over silently, as he had remained since I first saw him. He typed my information into the computer and stamped three pieces of paper with bright red ink, then pushed one of the paged towards me. He looked me in the eye, pointed at a line and said “sign here,” in English. I signed my name and he took the paper back. And asked for 400 kuai. I handed him the money and he gave me a receipt. He pointed to a date on one of the papers and said, “come back here” the date was for the 30th. “so 3 days?” I asked. He leaned back in his chair again. “is today the 28th” he asked smoothly. “oh yeah sorry, so two days” he nodded his head and I left the station.

Theres something about a person with a story, even if you can't tell what that story is. They move differently, act differently, even if they don't want to tell their story, it shows in they way they eat their food or walk down the street.

Recently 25 new Americans arrived at our school, which is 5 times the number that here here already. When I was meeting a few of them and I told them that I had come here on my own expecting to be the only American, and possibly the only English speaker. One of them asked me what could have possibly possessed me to come to China alone. I simply told him I was a masochist. And even though I was kidding it rang with more truth than I let on. I want to have a story to tell, I want one of the most amazing stories people have ever heard, and stories worth telling don't happen in your living room, in front of the TV. They don't happen at the computer writing spread sheets or in the same old places that you've always been. They come when your in a dark ally, when you don't have money for rent, when you break an arm, or loose a loved one. Stories start with something hard, something difficult to over come, and the best stories end when you survive, and not only survive but destroy the challenge, when you struggle for so long and work so hard that you almost can't make it over the final hill, but in the end you do make it, and you not only make it but you stand up, and you look down on all the things that tried to hold you back, that now are just little artifacts down in that dark valley. Then you see the next mountain even bigger and darker, and your only thought is, “I wonder what this hill top would look like from up there.”

Again I found my self making good friends with my bathroom this week, I'm not sure what the culprit was this week but I have a feeling it was a package of Chinese beef jerky I ate the night before the days of solitude. 3 days I lied in bed with my lap top, luckily I'd just bought a new copy of “war craft 3” that more than sufficiently occupied my time for the duration. And in fact it seems to be occupying a great deal of time in the present as well. But for those of you who think I'm just wasting my time, I'll mention that everything is written in Chinese, I don't know whats going on half the time, but every once in a while I learn something new, like the Chinese characters for manna potion, or night elf, that must come in handy sooner or later.

Otherwise it's been mostly just classes, I took a test to get put in a higher level class, worried I wouldn't learn all I could in the class I'm in now. My teachers said I had scored well enough on the test to advance but it would be really hard for me. So I decided that I would rather stay in the class I'm in now. I've been learning quite a bit, especially since I need to do all the make up for the days I was sick.

Last week me and my friends returned to the little shop where the little old lady gave me the painting of the little bird in the grass. The second we walked in she started pointing at me and talking really fast in Chinese, not that I could understand her anyway. But what my friends were able to gather, she had given me the wrong painting, I think she only sold copies of her work, and that I had taken the original, and she wanted it back. Despite this she was still very kind and said she would replace it with another painting when I came back. We were scheduled to come back next week anyway because my one Australian friend, Wei, had bought a painting of a goddess, that needed to be put on a scroll that wouldn't be ready 'till then.

After that we walked around to some of the other shops filled with Chinese antiques and art, and as it turns out there was a whole other half to the market that we hadn't even seen yet. It's becoming one of my favorite places in china so far. As we left though, a man came up to us speaking broken English, “hello hello” he shouted as he ran from the other end of the hall. “hello” we said back politely. When he reached us and started talking to us he pointed to one of the shops we were standing by and said “this place has all real things, all the other places here are not good” we kept the smiles plastered on our faces and tried to escape the clutches of his verbal kungfu grip.

Another week of classes passed and again it was Saturday, and time for my friend to pick up her painting, but before we went strait to her shop we stopped by the underground market place, a tremendous little place filled with nothing but row after row of little booths and shoppes selling clothes, food and some things that don't really fit into any preconceived categories, such as a hamster playing a traditional Chinese stringed instrument.

I took a few pictures of scary looking mannequins as the girls regularly stopped at each hand bag shop to buy their 6th or 7th of the trip. But I did find one thing I'd been wanting for a while now. A mattress for my mattress. The mattress in my room now is currently as hard as a solid block of wood, and not only that but you can feel each individual spring digging into your back as you lay there, trying to sleep. So I bought this mattress, a thin pad to put over the top of my bed. I talked it down from 80 to 60 kuai and sleeping has gotten much better ever since, though I'm still in the market for some industrial strength ear plugs.

After reaching the end of the mile long spelunking expedition we came out into the light and pulled out our map to find the old lady again. We got our bearings and set off. On the way we passed a little restaurant called “millionaires” and their symbol was a blatant knock off of the McDonnalds arches, I thought it was worth taking a picture of. I clicked off my camera and my friends took out their's to do the same. But just as Wei was redying her trigger finger a man came out, very very angry and started yelling at us in Chinese I'd heard that taking pictures of counterfeit stuff is likely to get you in trouble, but I had no idea the same applied to a huge restaurant on a busy street. After he went back inside, a few more pictures were taken and we walked away.

We got to the building and walked up to the 5th floor where the old woman was waiting for us. She already had a big smile when she heard us coming before she had even looked up to see us. We talked a little while and she told my friend that she could have any one of the paintings done of the goddess she had wanted, and she would throw in a painting of tigers for free if we wanted to wait around. So we waited a round, for a very long time. We sat outside the shop in the hall while Wei was inside talking with the woman.

In the shop are a number of awards hanging around mixed with the hundreds of paintings that paper the walls and floors, and sit in piles in the corners. She is also very nice and willing to take time to help us understand her, even though she has a thick accent and we don't speak very good Chinese at all. She really has taken a liking to Wei, she is the only Asian in our group, and even though her parents are Taiwanese she doesn't speak very good mandarin either, though when ever we're out everyone assumes she is our translator. As she was sitting with the old lady in her shop she was offered the chance to learn how to paint for free. A chance I would have jumped on right away, but Wei, seemed uninterested.

As this was going on though that man from last week who spoke English walked by and again started talking with us very enthusiastically. He was wearing a track suit and a watch that he made us guess the price of, which was apparently 16,000 kuai. He really liked to talk about himself, and after a while started asking what we were doing here. We told him we were buying some paintings and showed him what were were getting, upon looking at the paintings he immediately told us we were being riped off and that this lady was a bad artist. He then took my friend Ryan off to look at some subosedly very nice porcelain, but Ryan returned reporting some rather unpleasant lower back hand placement by the man, so though he sat with us and talked with us a while, mostly insulting the other artists we were talking with right in front of them because they couldn't speak English, we generally tried to avoid any in depth conversation. He had no problem telling me that he thought a religious studies major was a bad idea.

When we finally had our paintings he followed us out, giving Ryan his number and promising him a painting if he wanted to get together some time. We turned down invitations to show us more art and got out of there quickly.

We hopped a cab home and unloaded our goods in our rooms, then went out to dinner. We went to a nice Taiwanese restaurant. Then we went to another market place some other people had been to before. I ended up buying a really nice Chinese suit coat. I like to wear it around my room and just feel generally pimpin. The other thing I bought is generally the coolest thing ever. A belt with a huge buckle in the shape of the Transformers symbol, and when I wear the two things together I feel like the coolest nerd on the planet.

Well thats it for now, I'll have more to write next time in a week or so.

I have a Chinese stalker. Or more like I have a whole school of Chinese stalkers. On any given day you have a good chance of being approached by a total stranger who, in 2 minutes, will ask you any number of personal questions, always tailed by a request for your phone number and a plan to help them study English. Lately I have taken to lying and saying I don't have a phone, but they are quite persistent and don't have a problem with asking you what your room number is. On my first morning here before learning the tricks of the trade I was approached by such a young man, my age, and he is now alway calling me and dropping by unexpected. I believe I have put an end to it for now by scheduling a weekly meeting time to work on his English, I'm hoping this will get him off my back for the rest of the time I'm around here. He's not such a bad guy but he just has a way of saying things like “I sit out in front of your dorm in the morning and never see you come out to go to class” with a little laugh at the end that is just a little creepy in my book.

In the same vein of comfort though, some things that are starting to get on my nerves are as follows. The pollution, which is so bad that for the most part I can never actually see the sky except right after a rain storm. Most of the time one can easily look directly into the sun without squinting and just see a red disc hovering over you in the sky, and at night when it's the worst, the air stings your eyes.

This leads to the next thing on the list, the smell. For the most part I've gotten used to the smell, but on days when I leave my air conditioner on all day then leave my room I get a renewed introduction to the olfactory offerings of China. But most of the smells come right here from the dorm building. Now I've been in dorms before and realize that they smell, as college students tend to smell. But it's much worse here for the main reason that there is no authority on campus, no rules anything like those rules that I would expect in an American college, generally people smoke anywhere they want, though those who don't like the smell of smoke in there things, usually hang out in the halls filling them with clouds. And usually at a certain time of night the smell will change from tobacco smoke to more illicit substances, and on weekends literally you can go stand out side the building and still smell the pot smoke that has permeated all 5 floors of the building.

This again leads to the next problem I'm having, my neighbors, specifically my Korean neighbors. As my Irish classmate said, and as any Korean who understands European culture will tell you, the Koreans are the Irish of Asia. They get tremendously drunk every day of the week, and stay up late yelling and running up and down the halls. Cement floors do nothing to mute the sounds, so most nights I have a lot of problems with sleep quality, and find my self wishing the worst hang overs imaginable on them every morning when I awake more sleep deprived than the day before.

Nearing the top of the list, showers. I don't have hot water. Like I don't mean that the water is room temperature, it's cold, it's really really cold, And it's bad enough now when the weather is relatively warm, but in a month or two it's expected to get well below freezing at times, I was told the weather is similar to Wisconsin, and I do not relish the idea of a cold shower on a day that would warrant a winter storm warning back home. In addition to the temperature of the water I also am held to a schedule as to when I can shower. If I don't shower with in a specific time either in the morning or the evening then there's no water at all. Just empty pipes and empty dreams of a less smelly lifestyle.

Next I come to the people that I've met, the other English speakers here. In fact there not that bad, there pleasant to hang out with and everything, but there not the kind of people I would chose to spend time with if they weren't literally the only people I have to relate with. The girls are the biggest problem, they are very much the epitome of ditsy American girls, they party all the time and we can't walk by a hand bag store with out them stopping to gawk. No one really likes the same music as me or shares my ideas. Even though they speak my language I still feel like I'm with a totally different culture than my own.

The food is actually quite good and the only thing that sucks is that I really miss American food, I miss ribs, or hamburgers, I miss butter and cheese, cookies that are actually sweet, and donuts made with more than a teaspoon of sugar, and root beer, I have yet to find anything other than sprite, cola, or this gross mint soda. And I so miss a knife and fork, the simple pleasure of not making each meal an exercise in muscle control and coordination.

Finally I just miss Oregon. I miss Portland, the best city in the world, the rivers the streams, the fact that the wilderness is just minutes away, rather than hours. Fishing, hiking fresh air, and people who understand what I'm saying to them. I miss my friends, I miss camp, where I could spend everyday in the woods and wouldn't have to see a city for the whole summer if I didn't want to. Where I slept on the the ground once or twice a week rather than on a mattress as hard as a concrete slab every night.

But of course this is why I came, I came to subject my self to a challenge that was harder than any challenge I'd endured before. In high school after doing out door school for the first time it made me feel stronger than I'd ever been before, it made me capable of handling situations I'd avoided before hand. After learning the lessons you can only learn by being in charge of 12 unruly 6th graders for a week 22 hours a day. The most important thing I learned is that the only way we can really grow and learn is by being placed in situations where we are uncomfortable, where we are afraid and where we make tons of mistakes. Ever since then I've been doing hard things and putting my self in situations where there was no way out, where quitting was simply not an option, and I think I have grown considerably as a result of it. And this was my biggest one yet, I can't just go home, I have to see this through to the end no matter how hard it gets, and when I come home, I will be stronger and smarter and more able than ever before. Thats why I did this, not just to learn Chinese but to push my self to the next level, take some maturity steroids and take another step towards that person I want to become.

When I was working at camp if I had a good group of kids I would alway talk to them about. “the person they want to be” as opposed to the person they are right now, and I would tell them that every thing they do every day would either lead them closer or farther from that person, and then I would ask if the things they are doing were contributing to that person they wanted to be or not. And since I gave that talk regularly to each new group of kids I had, and it often became a topic of conversation through the week, it was something I often asked my self, and here I think I can really say I am making my self who I want to be, I'm not just being directed by the strongest forces in my environment, but am actually my own propeller. And that so far has been my most comforting thing.

Well anyway that was my therapy for now, already I feel better about it here. I promise I'll have an actual report soon.

Long one this time.

Well it finally happened, I knew one day, after getting a PC it would screw me over one way or another, and lucky for me it was in china, and even more lucky for me it happened right as I hit “save” on the tool bar, but before I had actually managed to lay the final key stroke in the title. “September 11, 20.....system not responding” off went my computer, with the hope it was just over heated. But this was not the case. When I turned on the computer again it was moving slower than a slug across the great salt lake. 2 or 3 minutes after hitting the “start” button I managed to get Symantec anti virus running, in 4 minutes it had scanned 83 files. I had no idea what to do. Having no real knowledge of windows, and the computer being my only reasonable form of communication with the out side world I couldn't even ask for help.

“hey Ctrl. Alt. Delete” I thought, “aren't nerds alway talking about that?” so I hit the keys and was given a window to look at, it was a pretty window but not much help, I force quit the 70 or so “volume” applications that had popped up on my desk top and started poking around. I found a nice little graph that looked like a heart monitor, though all it seemed to tell me was my computer had flat lined. I found another tab that told be how much memory each running program used. So I started force quiting all the big programs, each time I did so some terrible message would pop up and say something along the lines of, “if you cancel this program your computer may have technical difficulties, the world as you know it may end, Satan could rule the universe and you might kill a small kitten” and each time I would hit “ok” and the world would continue spinning and my computer would remain unchanged. So I again I set about flipping the tabs in the window. I saw that that my cpu was running at 100 percent. “well good” I thought “at least I know thats working fine” having no idea what a cpu was. But running out of options in the “windows task manager” I found my self looking back over the running programs, and found that none of the programs were using any “cpu” save one. Which was using 99 percent of it. Now from a taoist perspective this seems very unbalanced, so I did the other nerdy thing I know about and used the right click. It did nothing and I decided it was time to take a gamble with my computer, and I hit “end process one more time, risking the possible regain of torment and morbid felines. And praise Bill Gates, the virus scanner jumped into high gear, finishing 1000 files in 30 seconds. I laid on my bed and let it run. I got up a while later and saw that it had been restored to it's original crawl, and I saw the program “spoolsv.exe” had turned it's self on and again was sucking the life from my computer, I killed it again, this time leaving to go practice some tai chi. When I came back the virus scan was over and it had found nothing. When I rebooted the computer that same program kept starting it's self up. I looked it up on line and found that it had something to do with printing, but was often used as gate ways for viruses and worms. Have no need to print anything from my computer while I'm here I deleted the files from my computer and now it works fine. Hurray for me, one step closer to geek hood, as playing “Magic: The Gathering” with my friends only qualifies me as a level 3 tech-less nerd. And with out further delay I bring you the new and improved, rewritten from scratch, third installment of my china adventure journal.

(you may now take a 10 minute break for snacks and pop)

Well it finally happened, I knew one day, after eating from street vendors, dirty restaurants, night market fruit and something out of the bike baskets of some guy who was probably named the Chinese equivalent of Ray, the thing that finally got me hold up in my dorm room for a day and a half was a single snickers bar....some Oreo's and a few bags of these marshmallows filled with yogurt....and a few bottles of soda.... for breakfast. But thats all. Now a thing about china is, apparently the western toilet is a relatively new invention, because you find it relatively few places. Instead the most common thing found is a trough, in the ground, over which you you take on a much more “natural” pose. And I discovered this right at the dawning of my chocolate induced illness, at the doctors when i went to pick up my medical forms that I needed to get my Chinese residence permit.
Walking into the bathroom I quickly assessed the situation and made the decision to take a mile walk back to my dorm rather than experience such a new device for the first time with my prediciment. So I got my forms quickly and walked home, and it had as happy an ending as could be expected. And thats all I have to say about that.

So as I said, I got my forms, and the other thing I've managed to finally get is the money needed for my tuition. 9410 kuai. About 900 American (don't check my math). I gave a check to the Bank of China a week ago, and afterwards talked with my master who told me that it would take up to 30 days to get my money, and as I need to get my money immediately I came up with a new plan. I would become a serial bank robber. Or at least thats what it began to feel like it. My plan consisted of walking with my friends who were going shopping and withdrawing my limit from each atm at each Chinese bank that I could find. The limit usually being 2000 kuai, 1500 at the cheap places. Soon I found my baggy pants stuffed with hundred kuai bills, and I felt very rich. I now have it in a pile on my desk, and it looks very cool. At the beginning of my trip I noticed how when money doesn't mean anything to you, like when you see money from another country, it dawns on you that all your holding are pieces of colored paper, and you get a sense of how absurd it is that pieces of paper run so many things. But that feeling is gone now, as these pieces of paper now hold that great emotion of power. And seeing a huge stack of power is exciting.

Though I have yet to turn in my money I have started classes, Monday was my first day and so far there pretty much what I expected. If living with Chinese people has shown me how little Chinese I know, being in the beginners class is showing me how much I actually do know. A lot of it is below my level right now, but I am in the accelerated beginners, so I expect it to get hard soon. I'm already making flashcards, even though I know all the characters there teaching this week, I am making cards for other words in the book they haven't gone over yet, I really want to learn as much Chinese as I can quickly so I can talk with my new Chinese friends.

Bob, I don't remember his Chinese name, is a regular student here at Shandong, he is pretty good at English, and met me my first morning here, I was walking around the campus watching some older gentlemen doing tai chi, when he came up to me and asked if I was an American. He has since shown up to my dorm un-announced a few times, and left a few messages on my phone. He's nice enough and the other day he stopped by to watch Mr. Bean which I bought at a video store a few days ago, it had Chinese sub titles, but there is so little talking any way that I think he would have been laughing regardless. He really wants to practice English with me, though he does try speaking Chinese to to from time to time. At which point I look with a blank stare and an apologetic smile and he translates it into English for me. Today I taught him the word “hard core” and played him six shooter by Queens of the Stone Age.

I also made some other friends that don't speak English at all. Me and my American/Australian friends had gone out shopping, like we did every day since I got here. But we were all tiered so we came home early and went to our respective dorms. But even though I was tiered I had that feeling you sometimes get. Where you suddenly feel like you need to run as fast as you can as far as you can for no reason at all. So I ended up walking to the store. I got some water and cookies, a misnomer as far as cookies go a Chinese cookie is far closer to a cracker than anything sugar related, and started walking back to my dorm. Still with the feeling that my night shouldn't be done yet I took a very out of the way path back, and found myself watching an old couple practicing taichi in the dark, in an open cement tiled area next to a 20 foot statue of Confucius. I watched till they finished then walked up to them and did my best to explain “hi” in mime, then I managed to get across that I thought they were good. I eventually got that they wanted me to practice with them, and we listed the names of the forms we both knew. We did 24, then 42, then 48. It was great to get back to tai chi, I hadn't really practiced much since the summer started, when I started work at Camp Namanu. When I was done my legs were rubber and my breathing was soft, and I had that pain I get in my neck when I don't practice enough and all the extra blood rushing through my veins hurts. At departure they asked if I had a jian, having bought a strait sword the day prior I said yes and they told me to come back the next night at the same time, and I've been back every night since, practicing with them. It turns out only the women really does tai chi and has been practicing for less time than I have, though I think she practices more often. A few times their son has come and watched us, he speaks a little English so there was a little more opportunity for communication. They are very nice people, and I have fun every time I go.

So as I said we went shopping every day up until classes started. I hate shopping normally but it's so much fun when haggling is involved, it makes it a game, and also you are given the chance to look at all the knock offs you can find every where, and read all the t-shirts written in “English”. You know how from time to time a person will get a tattoo with a Chinese character and it will turn out to mean something completely different than he thought it did, or it will be pure gibberish? Well it seems to work the other way around. Apparently having English written on your clothes here is just as popular as Chinese calligraphy on your underwear is back in the US. And boy do some of these shirts have some terrible translations, just walking from one shop to another looking at what is written is hilarious, and it doesn't seem to get old, we've now taken to just saying what ever we see written in English. “one pepper on heavy call”, “mail letters and many years kind” it serves as great entertainment for the passing of time.

But the other thing shopping has done is it's let us see all corner of china, and taken us to some shops filled with some amazing art, and some tremendous pieces of Chinese history. In one area we found an entire square filled with jade shops, and other Chinese arts and antiques dealers. In one store I got a beautiful scroll with a painting of bamboo in red ink and some Chinese calligraphy, I bought it from the artist him self, and he told us all about himself and his teacher, and showed us some of his late masters works. Then we found another store filled with hand made books, each book a Chinese classic of some kind, like “The Art of War” of “The Tao Te Ching” and the most amazing part was that each book was written by hand with a brush in traditional Chinese writing. They were the most amazing books I'd ever seen, but they were way out of my price range. It's made me think about the prospects of being an Asian arts dealer in the US. Having taken on the hobby of attending every Asian antiques dealer in Portland many times and spending hours going over each little item, I know a little about how things are priced, and I didn't see one thing there that I wouldn't have seen priced at least 5 or 6 times as high in the US.

Speaking of jobs and friends though, I met a nice guy in my class from Ireland. He is teaching English to pay his way through here. He gets 2000 kuai a week, and free room and board, and that is far more than is necessary for tuition and food and all those things. He told me that they would be hiring again around January, and that he could put a word in for me if I was interested. I had been planning to teach English in china at some point for a long time, but I sorta thought it would be after I got my degree, but this is a very interesting opportunity. It would be nice to have a regular cash supply, and even more interesting to live off campus in the place they provide. It would get me a whole new experience of China, and I would have had 6 months of Chinese by that point so it would make some things easier. It's an idea that intrigues me, and something I'll consider. He said they would help me through getting a visa and all that, and it wouldn't be a problem, and that there alway looking for Americans. But anyway, I don't have to really worry about that for a few months any way.

Ok, before I go I want to send out a thank you to all those people who have replied to me so far,it's nice hearing from the people I love, when I'm so far away. And the question has arisen weather you you are free to forward these e-mails around, and definitely you can, I love people reading about my adventures, the more the better, so I would encourage you to send this to any and all people you might think would like it. Ok love you guys, until next time, Zai Jian.

A new flame flickers in my room after a shopping spree today. It is from a nice zippo style lighter with Mao's big smiling face on the front of it, underlined by Chinese writing. I got it in the underground market place a few miles from the university, and it is now the second thing I have had the chance to haggle for since being here. I'm rather sure that my skills of negotiation are diminished by the fact that I do not speak Chinese well at all, but today I think I did alright. Initially the asking price was 78 kuai, about 10 bucks American, I offered 50 and they acted like it was an absurd offer, but offered 70 kuai for it. I made a show of looking unsure about it then told them never mind, I was pretty sure I could get the lighter anywhere. But as it just so happened I did hear them calling me back with a new offer of 60 kuai, and a fill of lighter fluid, I made it clear that I was reluctantly accepting the offer and took the lighter for about 7.50 American which I my self am pretty proud of with the 18 kuai I saved I could literally eat 5 large meals.
When we reached the end of the underground market, a long half mile long tunnel that stretched under many blocks, we took some stairs to the surface and found ourselves right out side a very nice looking Chinese antiques shop. Now I have never been able to walk away from an Asian antique shop so we went in to look around. At the back were what I'd been looking for for days, 3 nice strait swords, I went back to look at them and asked the sales lady to hand me two of them, I drew the blades and was in heaven, they were beautiful spring steel blades, with gold painted dragons on them. The sheath was polished wood and there were two red tassels on the hilt, per traditional taiji sword decoration. I looked at the price and again, was made greatly appreciative of the exchange rate that I benefit so greatly from. The sword was 360 kuai, about 45 dollars American, should I have gotten this sword from a shop in America it would have been well over 100 dollars. It was a very nice shop so I didn't bother trying to haggle, they didn't do that sort of thing in upscale places like this.
In China there are a lot of Asian people, as you would imagine. But what they do not have is a lot of white people. In fact once we get away from campus we almost never see another white person. So when we walk down the street one may think we were celebrities. Usually while we go along we have all sorts of people just strait out staring at us. Often if there is some one that is learning English, or even if there not, they will shout out “hello” to us from where ever they are, we've had people literally stop traffic with there cars to pause and shout their American greetings to us. The other day I was walking alone and was held up by a crowd of young school kids, I had about 20 9 year olds shouting “hello” to me all at once, it was very cute and scary.
Today for lunch we went to pizza hut. I know it seems cheesy to go half way around the world and eat at pizza hut but there you have it. Now when you think pizza hut you think of greasy pizza and paper cups with lids and straws, sticky floors and unsavory characters. What you absolutely do not imagine is menus, waiters, door men and women, soups, salads, escargot, beautiful ceramic plates, nice glasses, art on the walls, jazz playing in the back ground, all sorts of gourmet desserts, and people who, once they deliver the pizza to your table, serve it for you as well. I have never experienced a restaurant like this, and I didn't think the first time I did it would be a pizza hut.
Later on after the sword and the lighter we found an indoor shopping center, the first 4 floors were just clothing, but on the top floor we found something amazing, row after row of shops dedicated to Chinese art, antiques, calligraphy, and all manner of Chinese high culture. While there, we went into a little shop that had one woman in it painting, she was making stunning images of all sorts of animals and flowers. My friend, Ryan, saw a particularly beautiful painting of a scene from “journey west”, an old Chinese legend, with a monkey holding a staff leaping from heaven onto a maiden with two swords. We had a long conversation with the woman about the pictures she did. She made a lot of copies of each painting but she copied each one by hand, with only a brush and her paints. Eventually my friend bought the painting for 500 kuai, we are to return in 10 days when she will have it mounted on a scroll. When she made the sale she said she would give us each one of her paintings for free, and I got a lovely painting of a little bird in the grass. I can't wait to return, and to finally start learning Chinese so I can talk to her.
In other news, I did end up going to the doctors, it was stressful not being able to speak to anyone there, but I made it through eventually after getting test after test preformed on me, I have to go back on Friday to get my blood test results and all that. And as far as negotiating bureaucracy go, I have been trying like mad to get money out of the bank but I have no idea what I'm doing. I already missed the registration days. Registration ended on the 5th, but I still need to pay my 9410 kuai for tuition and registration fee. I really have no idea whats going on right now but this is what I think is going to happen. I gave them a check for 15 hundred American dollars from my own account. At some point they are supposed to call me when they have my money ready, and then I can go down and get it. Now thats only a theory and I don't really know if thats how it's going to work but we'll see. Other than that everyday so far me and my English speaking friends, 3 Americans and 2 Australians, have been walking for miles in random directions just getting our selves acquainted with the city. It's quite an amazing place. Today we got a little lost and found our selves in a really old residential area. The roads were more like alleys and the people around there looked even more shocked that normal to see us. There was a stream running down the middle of the maze of houses and walls and there was a well that people were gathering water from with buckets and jugs on ropes. It was one of the most amazing and oldest places I've yet found in china.

Well thats the news so far from china, more surely will follow in due time, I hope all you my friends and family are having your own adventures in your own lives.