This One’s For Everybody Back Home…

This is what I do on The Great Wall: I party pour.

Because you’re just not having fun if you don’t get your hair wet, right?

I Put Onnnn…..

I don’t need no T-Pain on this…..

I put on for my city
so when I’m dead and gone,
I got one last wish
put my SOX shirt on

What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Part V, Dali 1.5

I would like to take this opportunity to officially announce my retirement as an amateur mountain climber. It has been a long and arduous journey (3 weeks) to the many summits (all 2 of them). Though I love the sport of it, the many miles have finally taken their toll on me.

I know, I know, I can hardly believe it either. Who’d have ever thought that I once loved walking up mountains? Oh. That’s right. I didn’t. But in the trip this summer, we did manage to delude ourselves into thinking that it would be a fun thing to do. Twice. The first time was in Dali, when we decided the holy range of Cangshan (“shan” means mountain) sound fun. The 2nd time being Taishan, nearer to Beijing.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about walking up a mountain. They are some of the very few places you can experience “true” nature in China (of course, at this point, both mountains are so inundated with tourists and souvenir vendors that it’s starting to become less so). Always, a nice easy hike is usually not a bad thing. Well, for a variety of reasons, that last statement was just flat-out false for our experiences.

Dali and the surrounding area around Cangshan has an altitude of about 6500 feet. For a couple of people used to low altitudes and who have been breathing in the pollution over here for the past 5 months, that makes a difference. I can’t remember how high the mountain hits, but i do know that we hiked over 13 km that day (though not all of it up, some was just too the side). To put it into a little bit of perspective, the initial 3-4 km UP that we did took us just over 2 hours, and by the end of that we were literally stopping every 15-20 steps to recharge. Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that the mountain had decently carved stone steps? Well it did. And it was still that hard.

After the up, came the over. 4.5 km to the “7 Dragons Maidens’ Ponds”, which turned out to be shallow pools below a waterfall. And then we had another 4.5 km to get off the mountain. Of course, we didn’t actually walk down the mountain. Thankfully, there was a cable car that delivers people up the mountain (WAIT A MINUTE! We could’ve taken a cable car up?!?.. just kidding, that really defeats the purpose of a mountain). As far as having any problems with not sticking it out and walking down the mountain, well, we rationalized it with the fact that we had never ridden in a cable car before, so that made it alright. That, and the fact that we’d have had to cross The Great Cang Canyon if not, and that just wasn’t in us at that point, especially after our adventure to get to Dali just hours before (mentioned in the previous post).

So that was our first mountain “climbing” experience. If by climbing you accept walking. Up stairs. But it was tough. And I’ll never do it ever again. Ever. (until, like I said, three weeks later, when we undertook the devastating Taishan).

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part IV, Dali

While living over here, I’ve come quite familiar with a travel guide by Lonely Planet publishing.  This behemoth is over 1000 pages, and though I haven’t read every page, I have read huge sections over and over.  It is supposed to give you suggestions and hints on what to see and enjoy in your particular country.  This seemed like the perfect thing to lug around while traveling this summer.  Well, it turns out that trying to use a single book for a country this size is not a great idea.  Some of the sections are horribly short, while others have one sentence about great landmarks.  Sure, there are over 30 pages on Beijing, but not most of the other 15 cities we visited.  Many of the book’s suggestions were near disasters, or at the very least had vague descriptions in almost each of the cities (Guangzhou – we searched for the “best food street in the city” for a total of 4 hours over 2 separate occasions, never to find it, even though we must have walked on it or by it at least twice.; Kunming – the Bird and Fish Market; many other examples)we visited.  So our faith in the Lonely Planet (which apparently is the gold standard of travel guides, or at least the biggest one, because we saw these at every one of the hostels or just anywhere we saw foreigners.) was shaken to say the least.

 

What does this all have to do with Dali, our next stop on the trip?  Well because for the first time, the book nailed it.  It described Dali as “China-Light” because there were so many foreigners there, and the locals cater to the tourist and speak English decently well.  And that really what this place is.  There’s an Old Town, and the regular city of Dali spreads out of one side.  Old Town is the tourist area.  Hell, there’s even a Foreigners’ Street that is packed with bars, restaurants and souvenir shops.  But the weird thing is, that’s essentially what all of Old Town has become. 

 

What Dali really has become is about 3 square miles of an outdoor shopping mall (with hostels and small hotels thrown in for good measure).  The entire area is restaurants (many of which are owned and operated by foreigners) serving Western, Chinese, and Tibetan food, bars (with ice and everything!), and shopping.  The stores are there exclusively to sell to the foreigners and visiting Chinese (it’s a very popular spot because of the great weather and it is also near Mount Cang, a holy mountain, but I’ll get more into that later), and they sell everything: clothes, jewelry, carvings, knick-knacks, etc.  Dali is known for its marble that’s mined near the city and fashioned into jewelry and other decorations, and its silver, which is pounded, shaped, heated, cooled and buffed to a shine right on the sidewalks in front of you (though it’s highly, highly, highly, very, quite questionable about the authenticity of the silver).  This is actually fun to watch, seeing the craftsman take a plain piece of metal, stamp it with its design, and then pound it into a bracelet.  Even if it’s not actually silver, it’s still a beautiful skill, and it’s cheap enough anyway that you don’t have to pretend it’s silver even when it’s not.  

 

One dark spot on the otherwise shining time that was our stop in Dali was getting there.  Our bus from Kunming to Dali actually dropped us off in one of it’s suburbs.  Since Old Town was only maybe 8-12 miles away, this wasn’t too much of a problem.  Except for a couple small complications:

1) it was 4:00 AM when we stepped foot off the bus,

2) it began to rain as soon as we stepped foot off the bus, and

3) we didn’t know that we weren’t actually in Dali. 

 

Or more specifically, we didn’t know we weren’t in Dali Old Town.  And that right there was the killer.  Because when the cab driver offered to drive us for 50 yuan, we thought he was full of crap and was just trying to get a nice fat fare from a couple suckers.  So when we could only bargain him down to 35 yuan (and they LOVE to bargain here.  They will bargain the difference of 1 yuan for 5 minutes.  This will be its own story very shortly, I promise), we decided to try to walk and find the place.  See? If we had known that that wasn’t a completely unreasonable price, we’d have been fine.  Instead we walked around in the intermittent rain for two and a half hours, until we were able to buy a tourist map from a street vendor and figure out that we were in the wrong place (and yes, we did have a map in the first place, but so many of the streets were so similar that we weren’t sure for the first 2 hours; plus it’s not like we could stop at the gas station and ask for directions). 

 

So finally we get to Old Town, but the hostel we have reservations at, which is a converted bookstore in front, isn’t open yet (and you know how we figured that out? Because we walked up and down the same street for 45 minutes looking for it, before figuring out where it was).  So we sat outside for 15 minutes, and by then it’s 8am and they were expecting us and still no one has moved.  So we had to find another hostel up the street that ended up being nice anyways. 

 

It just would’ve been nice to have been sleeping in the bed at 5AM when I should’ve been, instead of just finally checking in after 8.  Oh well, a bad start was ok, since Dali ended up being a great place.  Relaxing time all around.  And so much English was spoken that you barely needed to know a word of Chinese (which describes me pretty well) other than “duo shao quian”, which is asking “How much is it?“.  It really was like a light version of China, maybe it didn’t have all of the seemingly “authentic” things I’ve seen in Jiaxing over 5 months, but it has enough of them that it’s still different and exotic enough to visit.  I can completely understand why so many foreigners make this small place a destination when visiting China.  I’ll have a few more things on it next time most likely, probably starting with our glorious summiting of Mount Cang (which comes highly recommended from Lonely Planet).

 

Any bets on whether I’m as happy with Lonely Planet about Mount Cang as I am with Dali as a whole?

What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Part III, Kunming

Kunming was the first place in the entire time I’ve been in China that I can say felt like a normal city.  What do I mean by this? Well, basically that Kunming was not completely covered in pollution and smog, and it wasn’t a complete sprawling metropolis/megalopolis.  Located in the western province of Yunnan, Kunming is a great place.  Even the train ride into the city was beautiful; it’s surrounded by mountains, farms, and lakes.  This was actually a really cool thing to see as you’re whizzing past on the train, terraced farm plots, dirt roads criss-crossing the terrain, TREES. Just wow.  Because the cities are a lot farther from each other out west, the pollution level is a lot lower too.  The city isn’t any smaller than many in the east where I live, but they’re just so much cleaner.

And the city itself was pretty nice too.  There wasn’t a whole lot of exciting or interesting sights to see per se, but it was just a nice place.  Oh yeah, and the weather is fantastic too.  A chinese friend of mine says that Kunming has “Spring weather all year”, and she was completely right.  For the middle of July, the temperature was only about 75 degrees the entire time we were there. I can deal with that for sure.  And Winter only brings a little snow, if at all, so it’s not like you’re dealing with that either.

First thing we did in the morning?  A huge breakfast buffet.  Chinese food (which doesn’t really have food specifically for breakfast, but that’s ok. There’s nothing like eating dumplings and lo mein at 8am.) and Western breakfast food.  The Western food wasn’t particularly great, but they did have toast, fried eggs, and potatoes (no hash browns or biscuits and gravy though, that might’ve made me never leave).

Anyways, we rented a couple bikes to explore the city a bit.  We had 3 main spots we wanted to hit up, all suggestions from our travel book: Chihu Park, the Bird and Fish Museum, and Mandarin Books.  I wouldn’t necessarily say any of these were a great success, but we managed to see all of them somewhat, so we called it a success.

Chihu was disappointing to say the least. “Hu” means lake, so this place was essentially a very small lake with walking paths all around it and souvenir stands and Chinese tourists crowding around.  For me personally, walking around a lake isn’t really the most fun.  Lakes are meant for drinking, playing on the beach, swimming, fishing, and just playing in the water.  Even just walking around it if it’s not too crowded is ok, but this is China, and crowds are everywhere.

We headed up to find Mandarin Books next, which is supposed to have the best collection of English books in possibly the entire country.  If this is the case, then it’s a sad statement on the state of English lit over here.  To tell the truth, I did pick up a book (one of the John Grisham’s I hadn’t read yet), but there were maybe only 100-150 titles to choose from.  Not the best selection.  And I wouldn’t have been disappointed with it except for the fact that the travel guide made it sound as if it were a mecca of books to find.  Put it this way, if we had just wandered into the place, we would’ve been pleasantly surprised to find a store with books in English.  But because it was a destination spot for us, it fell a little flat.  Kind of like seeing a movie that all of the reviews talk it up as one of the greats, but your expectations get so high that when you end up seeing it you just don’t feel satisfied (Case in point: the new Sandler/Apatow movie, Funny People. Not a bad movie overall, but not really funny like I expected and hoped it to be).  (This is really a horrible life lesson to live by, but I’ll throw it out there anyways: “Manage Expectations”.  If you don’t get your hopes up, you’ll never be disappointed.)  One interesting thing about the bookstore is that it was right in the middle of what I’d call a Western District.  Italian, Mexican, American restaurants and bars and clubs.  If we had more time to spend in Kunming, we definitely would’ve spent some time exploring this area.

After the bookstore we looked for the Bird and Fish Market.  This is supposed to just be a few side streets with tons of different kinds of bird and fish vendors selling the animals.  Unfortunately, like so many other places in China, we were unable to locate it.  However, unlike most of those places that we’re unable to find, we’re pretty sure that it was just closed down because of construction on the streets where it’s usually located (the construction certainly made it feel like any other place in China.  We like to say that China could have 2 main images that we’ll take with us: 1) a construction crane, and 2) walls. They love walls here.  Little walls, big walls, crumbling walls, pointless walls, important walls, doesn’t matter.  They love them.).  Whether or not they moved it during this time or simply shut down for a few weeks we’re not really sure, but either way we couldn’t find it. A little disappointing, but it’s not like we were going to buy a pet parakeet with a week of vacation still left.

However, we did manage to find what we called the Dog Market, about 60-75 boxes and cages of small puppies lining the streets.  If I was a person who actually liked dogs, this would have been a cute and cuddly time.  Since I don’t really see the appeal of dogs (oh how I wish the Bears would’ve signed Vick), to me, it was just a side street with a bunch of dirty animals and it smelled liked dog crap (eerily similar to Jiaxing actually. Also, a comment was made which I can’t completely remember, but it was whether or not this was a pet market or a market for the restaurants’ specials that night. Hey-oh! Obligatory Chinese-eat-dogs-joke. (Of course, if the opportunity ever comes up for me (and by that I mean when I finally find a restaurant that serves dog), I’m pretty sure I might have to try it (and by “might have to try it”, I mean will eat an entire dog shank… and then giggle))).

All in all, Kunming jumped to the top of the list of places I wish I lived in over here.  It wasn’t the most touristy place to visit, but as far as livability (weather, size, pollution-level, restaurants, etc.), it was great.

And We’re Off Again

Ok, so after a quick-moving 9 days back in Jiaxing, Kel and I are taking off on the 2nd half of the trip tomorrow afternoon.  We are basically heading up the eastern coastal area to Beijing, with a few cities along the way.  After Beijing, we finally see the Great Wall, and head west towards Xi’an and Terra Cotta Warriors.  Next it’ll hopefully be to see the Shaolin Temple (have to see the fighting monks), and then a little further west to Chengdu.  That’s the last planned stop before the longest train ride of this half (though it won’t be anywhere near as long as the 40 hour ride from last time….. we hope), but if we have time, maybe we’ll stop at a town or two on the way back to break it up.

This is the part of the trip we get to see some of the more famous tourist spots in the country.  Beijing alone has Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and is near the Great Wall, plus a ton of other sights we don’t want to miss.  Tai Shan is a mountain we’ll hopefully be summitting within the first 3 days of the trip (ok, ok, by “summitting” I mean walking up 6000 steps while being surrounded by Chinese tourists).  It’s considered a very holy, and lucky, mountain.  If you make it to the top, you’re supposed to live to 100 years old.  So that would be nice.  And the Terra Cotta Warriors of Xi’an are supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime sight.  Needless to say, we’re pretty excited about this trip.  It’ll be nice to not have to have a full day of travel for every 2 days we’d be in any given city.  Sure, we’ll still have a fair amount of 4-8 hour trips, but most of our destinations won’t come anywhere close to the 20+ hour trips.

The big downside of this trip will be the heat.  I gotta admit, the weather in Jiaxing has been great the last 3 days, like almost a nice fall day.  I know that’ll change any day now, but I feel kind of sad leaving it behind for the certain heat of the coming cities.  Ji’nan, hot.  Qingdao, hot (though on the ocean, so our fingers are crossed).  Beijing, hot. Pingyao, hot.  Xi’an, hot.  Chengdu, moderately hot (it’s a little up in the mountains so we’re hoping again).

So there you go.  That’s a rough look at the plan for the next 3-4 weeks.  I’ve been having a text conversation with my english contact at my school, trying to figure out when the first day that I am needed back is.  And after trading about 6 texts back and forth, I’m pretty sure my 1st day of classes is September 1.

But I might need to be back on the 25th for something.

But that might be for Chinese teachers only.

But maybe I should stay near my dormitory after that day for more information, just in case.

So here we go again.  We’ll probably plan on getting back around the 23rd or so, at least I would imagine.  Who knows, maybe we’ll get calls telling us we don’t need to be back till later.  Not holding my breath on that one though.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Part II, Guangzhou

Guangzhou, Population: Really, really big.  Ok, so maybe it’s only 6 million big.  Or 8.5 million.  Or 15 million.  See, it’s almost impossible to get an accurate number on population of Chinese cities, but all I know is, this place is B.I.G.  To give you an idea, it took us 25 minutes from when we set foot off our train (following an epic 20+ hour ride) at 7:00AM to get out of the train station.  This was due in large part to the thousands and thousands of people who all decided to use the trains at that very time. It was like they all converged to swallow up two, unsuspecting foreigners in a sea of stench, sweat, smoke, and spitting.  Of course, that’s not true at all.  No, the reality of the situation was that this was just another normal Saturday morning at the train station.  That’s terrifying.  Think O’hare right before Christmas, but then make the area 1/4 as big, plug in 5 times as many people, and have them all smoke and spit where ever they want.  Now you’re in Guangzhou.  Oh yeah, and did I mention that it’s notorious amongst the Chinese as a place where you should plan on getting pick-pocketed.  Seriously, in a country known for its petty, non-violent thievery, this city is known as being exceptional at it.  The day before we began the trip, one of my bosses asked where we would go first.  He made a face of pure disgust at the mention of Guangzhou, told me not to stay very long, and to not let anyone cut a hole in the bottom of my bag and rob me that way.  Those were his words of wisdom on the great city of Guangzhou.  I felt reassured.

Located in southern China, the city used to be known as Canton.  The way most of us would be familiar with it is that most of the chinese food we eat in America is Cantonese (there are four main branches of Chinese cooking.  You’ll see some mention of all of them at restaurants in the states: Cantonese (southern), Sichuan (western), Shanghai (eastern), and Shandong/Beijing (northern), but most of the restaurants end up mixing regional cooking).  Of course, just because Cantonese cooking is what we’re used to the most, it doesn’t mean that it’s that close to what we’re used to.  What I mean is, still no crab rangoons.  That’s killer.  But you can definitely see where a lot of the food we eat at chinese restaurants had its genesis.  No egg rolls, but I’ve had some spring rolls that all they need is a little Americanizing and presto! Egg rolls! That sort of thing.  Lots of other dishes have had that same sort of feeling.  A lot of the stir-fried dishes here taste close to back home, the fried rice and noodles have their familiarity, but they’re not quite the same(wow, can you tell I’m a little hungry right now?  At this point I’m just trying to get this typed so I can go get dinner).  After my short time here, I don’t know if I’d choose one way or the other yet.  Both are good, just with their different strengths.  But if I find crab rangoons in any form over here, I gotta think the orginal cuisine will get the nod over the Americanized version.

But of course, in Guangzhou, we couldn’t settle for a decent familiar looking restaurant (of course, by not settling I mean that we wandered around for 2 hours looking for a restaurant that looked like it had pictures or food we could point to), especially when it’s 95 degrees out and we haven’t eaten in 24 hours.  No, we have to walk.  And walk.  And walk.  And then we found it.  The mother of all street vendor streets.  It was a back alley adjacent to the main pedestrian mall, and it had anything you could want.  Booth after booth of meat-on-a-stick, sandwich-type things, seafood, dumplings, and….. roasted insects.

Yes, yes I did eat some baby scorpions.  And better yet, I got Kel to eat some too.  I chickened out on going for the large, full-size scorpions or the beetles or roaches, but I will find them again, and I will eat them.  Oh yes.  But anyways, yeah, the scorpions were actually ok.  They had the texture of shrimp tails (and I eat shrimp tails on the regular), but with a somewhat muddy taste (like how mushrooms kind of taste like dirt.  Oh, am I the only one who thinks that?).  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them as a daily snack, but put it this way: if I was with someone and they said they’d try it only if I had some too, then I’d have some more for sure. Don’t worry though, we didn’t just fill up on scorpions, we grabbed some scallops, grilled on the half-shell, and a couple bowls of dumplings.  All in all, a good light lunch, and a fun way to really see the city.

Unfortunately, the next morning is when we looked for Dim Sum, the traditional meal that’s basically a bunch of different small appetizer/finger foods one after another.  This is Cantonese tradition right here, and I’d be willing to bet that there were 50 restaurants within 2 miles of our hostel. Oh no, we wouldn’t settle for some run-of-the-mill place.  Not us!  We had to be ambitious and look for the best place in all of Guangzhou. It didn’t happen. Instead, we wandered around for 3 hours, before heading to another street and eating at a corner canteen that ended up being great for only 7 yuan.  That’s a life lesson there for you, Don’t Be Ambitious.  Ambition leads you to sweating through your last clean t-shirt by 9 am when you’ve already checked out of your hostel and you will be getting on a train ride lasting for 27 hours at the end of the day.  Wow, I could write an anti-motivational pamphlet, I think.

But seriously, Guangzhou was actually a lot of fun.  There wasn’t any sort of historical sights we saw in our short time there (only about 34 hours), but we got to see a small chunk of the city from the street.  As I mentioned before, the family is originally from Guangzhou, so I made it a game to point out anyone I saw who looked remotely like any family member of mine, and immediately asked Kel if he thought that person was my cousin.  Of course, we play that game in Jiaxing too, so maybe it’s not the city, but just the whole country.  Oh well, who knows. Anyways, I think I have this worked out so I can finally post pics on here again.  Once again, I haven’t gotten any of Kel’s yet, so these are just a few of the ones from my camera.

It actually was a little overcast that day, but a lot of the gray you see is from the pollution, not the clouds.

Scallpops (I think), grilled right in front of us.

On the outskirts of the outdoor shopping district.

Random statue.

3 babies on each stick. Kel didn’t know I was buying one for him though.

What I Did on my Summer Vacation: Part 1, Back in Jiaxing

Well, Kel and I both made it back home from the first leg of our trip alive. We think. Let me explain.

As I mentioned before, the whole reason we had to split up our long-planned, hugely-anticipated trip was because we found out a week beforehand that Kel had to teach a summer camp for 2 weeks. But, of course they didn’t know the dates. Then a few days before we left, we found out it ran from the 13th-28th. So that was when we decided to travel down to the south, Guangzhou, Macau, Xiamen, etc., returning on the 12th. The Chinese school system had different plans.

An hour and a half before our train was going to leave Jiaxing to begin the trip, Kel got a call from his school that the camp was pushed back to the 18th  (this is why I’m so late with the new post even though I promised one by like a week ago. I hope everyone checked all the local Chinese hospitals and prisons looking for me.), and that they were, “maybe, not sure” (their words, not Kel’s) on the end date. So now we knew we had to get a bigger chunk in the trip now, or risk not having enough time on the 2nd leg. And since pretty much everywhere we were going in the south, other than Guangzhou and Macau, were secondary stops on the trip, we quickly threw together a new itinerary. Down to Guangzhou, then onto Macau, and out all the way west, to the last real cities before Tibet: Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang.

After arriving in Guangzhou, we learned we couldn’t go to Macau because our visas, being Z-Class (teachers’ visas), are only good for one-entry. And because of the whole messed up logic of Chinese borders, if we had left the mainland for Macau, Hong Kong, or Taiwan, we wouldn’t have been able to come back into the mainland. I shit you not. They strongly, vehemently, and with all sincerity, insist that it is all “one China”, but it counts as leaving the country if you want to visit those places. That was nice to learn.

But that’s all ok. Because the cities out west were great (stories to come soon). The only problem with this trip plan was that we were covering a lot of ground, mileage wise. In a time of 2 weeks, we had train rides of 22, 27, and 41 hours, with bus rides of 6, 3 ½, and 8 hours (great stories to come about these rides, promise).

It was on the 41-hour trip, the trip back to Jiaxing, that Kel got another phone call. Approximately 17 hours into the trip, Kel finds out that he is no longer needed back in Jiaxing on the 18th. Summer camp has been cancelled. WHAT?!? All of these changes to plans have been for nothing, and we are just finding out now, probably the worst possible to time to learn of it, when if it would have just been 20 hours earlier, we could’ve just continued the trip??? Yeah, thanks a lot.

So what does all of this have to do with us thinking that we both made it back alive? Well, it’s in the very reason of WHY the summer camp was cancelled. Because Jiaxing has finally been discovered by the Swine Flu. That’s right, Jiaxing, the concrete petri dish. The place where germs and bacteria come to learn their trade. The place where, if you asked a scientist what would be the best city for H1N1 to thrive and discover new and even more exciting possibilities in the world of contamination? He would say Jiaxing. And that’s where I was heading in a Chinese steel can on rails at 70 mph. Great.

So when I say that I don’t know if we’ve both survived yet, I really don’t. Who really knows. I mean, for a Chinese city, I’d say Jiaxing probably isn’t that dirty (obviously falling behind the big, touristy places like Shanghai, Kunming, Beijing, etc. in cleanliness, but not too relatively bad). Either way, I’m really not looking forward to ever testing out a Chinese hospital, I’ve seen one, and I never want to have to again. And I just gotta ask, how bad of a person does it make me if a brief flash of disappointment flashed through my head too, because I figured that, since it was inevitable that H1N1 would eventually find its way to Jiaxing, that it would have been much better for me if it had come the first week of September, and the next 3 weeks the schools would’ve been closed, and I wouldn‘t have had to teach then?

So yeah, I’ll probably catch the flu in this short time that we’re back “home”. Oh yeah, and not joking at all, but I have been sick for the last three days. I won’t get into the details, but in my initial prognosis, Dr. Talbert has diagnosed “flu-like” symptoms. That’s not making me feel any better. We’ll see how I’m feeling in a day or two, but I’m not too worried. Like I told Kel, I’ve decided that even if I do catch the Swine Flu, I’m going to beat it. It’s as simple as that. I will physically and mentally not allow it to beat me. I will use good P.I. (Positive Imagery, and now that I’ve explained it, some of you will know why it’s funny. Because if I didn’t explain it, how would you know it’s supposed to be funny? And that makes it double funny… ok, inside jokes, sorry.). And I will “think” (point to head) “positive” (make a plus sign with 2 fingers). And I might just throw in 7 or 8 of the “5 Keys to Good Health”, just for good measure. So no worries everybody, I’ll survive. Scientists will study my blood and DNA and RNA and nuclei and isotopes (can you tell I didn’t take any real science classes in college?) to learn how to prevent sickness in the future.

Of course, I can’t speak for Kel. He’s fragile, frail, and feeble (hey hey, 3 words that all begin with F, and all mean the same thing, that’s spinning a phrase right there). So hopefully he doesn’t get it before the doctors are able to make an antidote from my blood (wow, this sounds like a good movie. I’m thinking Nicholas Cage as me. Not because we look or act alike, but because he’ll do anything. I mean, really, I love a lot of his movies, but I think I could write most of his recent scripts while knocked out on Nyquil and Vicodin, while huffing glue. Seriously. Of course, in the movie, he’d be the doctor trying to make the antidote out of himself too. And Kel’s role would have to be Nic Cage’s either  father/mother, brother/sister, wife, or son/daughter. Oh wow, I am really excited by this now. I might have to sit down and pound out 40 or so pages of dialogue to send along to his agent by the end of the week. I could have next summer’s mildly-entertaining, yet semi-disappointing, somewhat-blockbuster on my hands here.).  Because if Kel dies here, he made me promise to send his body back to the states (and yes, we have had this discussion in all seriousness), and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there’s no way that I’m paying for that.  If he dies, I’m either tossing him into the gutter, into the canal, burying him on the island in South Lake (the “birthplace” of Mao’s Communist Party), or selling him to our favorite restaurant to make dumplings out of him (as long as they wait to use it till after I’m out of town).  And I hate to break my promises, but hey, he’ll be dead. And I’d expect he’d do the same for me. (As I am writing this, a rap song came on. I know most of you won’t know it, but it was “Kinda Like a Big Deal”. There’s a line in it that mentions the swine flu, and also all of those great face masks that you see all of the Chinese wearing in the pictures (and yes, they really do wear them). Kind of eerie, if you believe in that sort of thing (and I do).

Alright, enough rambling. As you might be able to tell, I kind of have cabin fever right now.  Since I’ve felt so crappy, and the temperature consistently hovers around the 3 digit mark with impossibly high humidity, I’ve barely left the apartment in the last 2 days. But I’ll have some stories from the trip in the next couple days, and there’s actually some pretty funny ones.  And they won’t take me 1500 words to tell them either, I promise.