Fall (For Real this Time)

Well it looks like it's fall, for real this time not like that last fake fall which lasted about 5 days, as when I woke up today it was boiling in my room because at some point they had enabled the heat and it must have been set pretty high. It's been cold outside for a few days but looking at the weather it looks like it will actually stick this time. The students have been wearing there fall cloths for a month now but the Americans have been going back and forth to shorts and T-shirts as the weather dictates. Some of the street vendors are also different. I wonder if some just decide the business will be better some place else or if some do some other job during the colder winter months. I doubt that's true though since they don't seem deterred by rain or any other weather. On top of that some has disappeared before only to return later. It's funny though, the vendors all have places they like to set up and when one leaves others move in and set up in the place they used to be in.

Chinese Hospitality

Steve called me up yesterday to invite me over, along with Dave and Ken, to his house for dinner. Steve lives not too far from the school, about a 10 minute ride on a bus. When we got there Steve stopped in at a corner store to buy some beer, he refused to take any money from any of the Americans for it, and while he was waiting I took some pictures of the surrounding buildings. A Chinese guy came up to me and started talking to me in Chinese, a situation where I can only pretty much shrug. Steve talked to him for a bit and told us that he was the security guard and he was new and curious if we lived in any of the buildings around there. We went up to Steve's apartment, which is a forth of fifth floor walk up, through an unlit stairwell. I don't think you'd ever see stairs so dark in America because people would be too worried about being mugged while going home. It actually gave me a chance to use the little flash light on the top of my phone for a second. Steve said that he usually has a flash light with him for the stairs. His home was something like 5 rooms totaling an area only slightly larger then my apartment, there may have been another floor but I think he was looking to rent that out. There are 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a main room with a table and TV. Steve's wife Spring was in the kitchen cooking most of the time and I didn't really see too much of her. In fact through out dinner she'd only appear to put some more food out on the table maybe ask if we liked it then disappear again. Ken and Dave asked if we could wait for her to join us before eating, but while I know only a very little Chinese, even I understood an emphatic no.

The dinner was great consisting of a bunch of different thing put in the middle of the table which every basically communally ate from. Steve's son Mike was also there, I think he knows a good bit of English since whenever Steve asked him if he knew what an English word meant he was able to come up with the correct equivalent in Chinese. He didn't on the other hand like talking in English at all. I'd compare him to a child whose parents insist he has piano lessons, he may know how to play but not really like to. After dinner we played a game of Monopoly which I was told Mike won at last time. It was pretty even in the beginning with no one being very near to a monopoly. About half way everyone started trading fast. I got the first two Monopolies, purple and light blue, which aren't worth so much but I had enough cash on hand to build hotels on all of them within two turns. The result was I controlled a whole side of the board and almost everyone who passed was bound to land on at least one of my properties. I was then able to absorb a huge amount of cash and force people into deal giving away a lot of there other properties to stay in until controlled almost everything. Mike played well again being the last person left before I won. Steve was really funny saying welcome every time some one landed on one of his houses. Mike was incredibly aggressive and mostly made very shrewd deals.

The we played a game that is called either Five in a Row or Gomoku. It is played on the same board as a Chinese game called Go or wéiqí. There are a number of spaces where little black or white stones can be put down with the objective being that a played puts five in a row. Mike is pretty good at it and beat Ken about 5 times went 3-1 against Dave. I won the first game lost the next two but then won two more to be 3-2. It seems really simple at first but has a lot of complexity in where you can force people to move. One of the pictures up here is of me playing Mike in the final game. After that it was about midnight and Ken and Dave had to leave on some sort of hiking trip. We got some taxis out side of Steve's apartment. It was really interesting to see where Chinese people really live and what the place looked like. Honestly it looked like a small apartment in pretty much any place. Beds, kitchen, TV, computer, all looked just like you would see in America. Probably the biggest difference was Spring spending the whole time in the kitchen. The fact that she doesn't speak English was part of it, but gender relations are just different here. I think she may be a teacher also, or at least has a masters in something, but I didn't really get to talk to her much.

Poker Night

We had a poker night last night with three American teachers and two Chinese teachers. The two Chinese teachers had never played poker before so they had to be taught how to play. We played with a buy in of about 10 RMB, about $1.50. We had to use a lot of the 1 joa coins, worth about 1.5 cents for the blinds. On the first real hand I got some pretty good cards, eventually getting a full house and went all in against one of the Chinese teachers. Dave and Ken were in hysterics as I took all 10 RMB from him on the first hand. He was a good sport about it and bought back in for more. In the end Ken won all the money, up about 50 RMB total. Steve who was there drank 3 whole beers which was a lot for him and got a little loud by the end. We actually played till about 1 am which for China is incredibly late. Steve called me up today and invited me, Ken, and Dave to his house for dinner tonight which should be interesting. Steve is definitly the teacher who makes the biggest effort to be friends with all the American teachers, which is more remarkeable when you consider how often the teachers switch here.

Reading List

Despite what you might have heard this internet thing is really taking off. I am in fact not the only blogger from Changzhou. Both Ken and Dave have blogs that are pretty interesting. Sometime it's just funny to see different perspectives on stuff that's happened to you. I know they're both readers of this blog and I wanted to create a list of related blogs, which should be on the left hand side of you page blow the post list, because you should be reading my blog first. I'm also discovered this blog called Jiangsu Journal written by a guy who was in Changzhou for two years ending two years ago. He has a lot of pretty detailed posts and again it's just amazing to see that no matter how far you go there's already someone whose been there. I've been trying to contact the person who wrote it but with no luck so far so I wanted to just post a link to it with Ken and Dave's in the side bar. I remember this scene in the move The Truman Show where a young Truman, who unknown to him lives in a giant TV show about himself, tells his teacher he wants to travel and be an explorer, something the producers of the show don't want, only to have the teacher pull down a map of the world and yelling that see it's already all been discovered. It's not like I thought I was the first American into China or anything, in fact going to China seems to be the new hippy vogue, but it's amazing that in some random town I'm still competing with at least 3 other blogs.

Election Central

Today was the big election day. I got David to take my morning classes so that I could just get up and watch the results pour in. Of course the internet picked today to not work very well. It would work in drips and drabs so that I could connect fine some times but other moments I'd get nothing at all. In the end the election wasn't that close so I spent most of my time looking at my brackets for mom and dad's office pools of election picking. I'm doing pretty well at about 90% correct, since both are winner take all I'm just not sure if that'll be enough to win. My apartment turned into election central in the middle of the day because some unique programs I have on my computer allow me to connect to the internet better during these problems. First, Clark came in and was looking for updates, next Steve arrived looking for Dave who apparently had some appointment with him he forgot before taking my classes, when Steve learned Dave wasn't coming he hung out to see the election results. Finally, Teddy stopped by to give me some mail that was my ballot finally arriving. Since it has to be post marked by election day, and I don't think a Chinese post mark will count, I'm just not going to send it in and I'll show it to some of my students.

This does give me hope though that my backup ballot arrived in DC and that I can send and receive mail from home. Teddy is always really on the ball about getting things done. In fact a lot of time he rushes things over to us when there is no real hurry. Dave locked himself out of his apartment the other day and when Teddy showed up to give him a spare he was out of breath like he had been running across campus. Any time you need water changed he gets some one there in about 15 minutes. I have this image of a team of people waiting by a red phone to deliver water, jumping down a fire pole before peeling out across campus. Steve thought the ballot was interesting also and wanted to borrow it some time to make a copy to show his students also. I'm not 100% sure how interested the students can be, they're unpredictable on stuff like this, but It'll be interesting showing it to them, a ballot from the worlds most famous democracy in a place where they can't vote. I liked the final part of Obama's speech about the changes in the life of the 106 year old daughter of a slave who went from not being able to vote because she was black and she was a women, to voting for the fist black president. I didn't like the speech as much as everyone else did on the whole though since I was starting to wonder if he'd go the whole time without ever mentioning Martin Luther King. I know he didn't want to fixate on it, but whatever his polices the most important part of this election was that 40 years after Dr. King was assassinated a black man can become president of the United States. He'll have huge expectations for his inaugural now, though as dad said it'll be nice to have high expectations for a change.

Never Mind, Back to Summer

Well I thought we had finally shaken the summer off here in Changzhou, the other day we were even talking about skiing, but it looks like the warm weather has returned with a vengeance. From coats and sweaters the day before to a thin sweater this morning to a T-shirt and considering shorts now. Google says it's 71 degrees in sunny Changzhou and that it should be as warm tomorrow. I started off comparing the weather here to DC with the heat and the humidity, but no one can wear shorts after Halloween in DC. They insist that it does snow here, someone said that it actually snowed a lot last year, but I just don't see how when it never drops below the 60's. The elections are soon and I'm excited to get up early and watch the results come in. Since I'm 12 hours ahead of you, actually it's 13 now that you all are on daylight savings, I'll see the results come in starting at around 7am on Wendsday. Usually I have class from 8-12 but I traded with David so that I could watch the results come in. I'm actually interested to teach to his class since I get to do a sort of greatest hits of my events from previous classes. I just really want them to be asking David when that Daniel fellow is coming back. I filled out some sort of brackets for the election but my main predictions are Obama winning, big surprise now, and the Dem's getting 61 seats in the Senate, which pretty much means they win every winnable race. I think Obama will win Virginia and Florida, but not go so far as to take Georgia or North Carolina. No matter who wins the way things are going they'll be wearing a long coat during their swearing in while I'll be in shorts.

P.S. If you want to call me, and Mom and Dad have figured out how so just ask them, just remember the am pm rule it's OK to call as long as it's morning in the US just don't call if it's afternoon there as I've gotten calls at like 2am the night before classes.

Please Vomiting Here

I went with David and Lynn, who is a CIEE person visiting Changzhou, to Dinosaur Park on Saturday. When I heard that there was a place in Changzhou called Dinosaur Park what I imagined was somewhere in between the old kids show Barney and a broken down carnival, but Dinosaur Park is really something. It's not exactly Disney, but it's pretty close to on par with Six Flags. The cost of admission was 120 RMB, or about $18. That doesn't seem like a ton of money compared with the Six Flags and Disney's gorging prices, but for the Chinese that's the equivalent of about 15 dinners in the cafeteria or 24 hair cuts around campus. The Dinosaur theme started right from the front gate which had a big arch like something out of the Flintstones. Inside the first thing you see is a big pond in the middle of the park with gigantic Brontosaurus, the dinosaur with the long neck, standing in the middle of the water. You can't see the whole park clearly from any vantage but they provide Disney like maps to show you where to go. The sections of the park all have poorly translated names such as the main entrance, Happy Street, the carnival like section of the part, Funny Dinosaur Town, or the section with the bigger rides, simply called Lubura.

We went to the section closest to us which looked like a recreation of a jungle, with trees made out of what seemed to be concrete, and some Styrofoam dinosaurs. Some had simple animatronics and moved around a little. The first ride like thing was a climbing wall with hand and foot holds. We waited in what was less like a line and more like a big funnel of people, until we could climb on it. The holds were actually much tougher then they looked and I fell off into a net and had to walk around. Even though I wasn't nearly the only one to fall the guy running the section seemed angry when I did and said something I didn't understand. Next we went over to a big ride that spun you around while dropping you in sort of a pendulum motion. I didn't want ot go on it but Dave and Lynn did. While I waited for them some more kids at the park came over and wanted to get their picture taken with me. Dave told me that at the edge of the seats there was this little plastic bin with the words "Please Vomiting Here" written on it.

After that it was close to the time the park was supposed to close but we wanted to go on one more ride so we waited maybe one and a half hours for a big flume ride. Even though it was pretty cool out and the big water park section of Dino Park was closed the flume was still open. What they did was provide little cheap parkas that you could buy for 2 RMB. I got stuck in the front of the flume, ie the part that gets most wet. First the ride took us through these sort of pretend dinosaur caves with animatronics dinosaurs then up to a big section that looked like primordial earth with a big volcano and lightning. I still don't like rides that drop so I closed my eyes right when we got to the top of the final lift, but Dave said that there was a big T-rex head right before the drop. I got pretty wet as the little poncho didn't really do much and mine sort of ripped. Lynn thought it was funny that I pretty much complained the whole time on the flume.

The park was clearly made by some one familiar with how theme parks are run in America. Every big ride ends in a gift shop and all the prices are about double what you would find anywhere else in China. I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't get any pictures but I'll get some from Dave for another post. I did buy the little unlicensed version on Yoshi that you see at the top of this post. The park was still in Halloween mode also and I think I saw more things relating to Halloween there then the rest of China combined. They had fake pumpkins all over the place and were selling a ton of costumes and even had on Halloween music.