Together at one Table: Cape Town

Arts

2007-07-05T15:36:00.000+08:00

So it turns out the Arts festival was not all i was hoping for. There were many shows mostly dramas every day all for around $20 per show. There were also many little stalls selling crafts and and the ZA hotdog, boerwors. I decided not to stay for several days and caught a bus back to cape town last night. I had an interesting time getting from the arts festival to the bus station some 120km away in a different city.

I started by hitching a ride with some guy, who said he was going near the bus station (Lie number one). T minus one hour to bus departure, We got within 20km of the bus station city, then turned off the highway. I asked what was going on and he said something like we are going to X, you can get a ride from there which would be faster than getting one on the highway(lie two). 30min later we stop somewhat closer to the city and he helps me get a shared taxi to the city. The taxi driver says i must go across town to get a taxi to the bus station(lie three) he then drives across town and drops me under some highway overpass and says i can get a taxi from there to the bus station(lie four). Darkness(night) falls. Taxis at night are no fun, neither are the streets of SA. T minus ten minutes to bus departure, I ask people at the underoverpass stop for directions and they direct me to another underoverpass stop and tell me i must get a taxi first to a big taxi stand and then to the bus station(they turn out to be right). T plus five minutes to bus departure, I get a taxi to the taxi stand which turns out to be back on the other side of the city, where i already was. I then get a taxi to the bus station, 10 minutes after my bus departure time. I frantically search the buses at the station and cannot find my bus. it left, or so i thought, until i started talking to the people standing around. Apparently the bus i booked is always over an hour late. and it was yesterday. waited for about an hour and then got on for my 12hour overnight journey to cape town.

I thought about getting stressed about the whole situation many times while in the taxis. i decided to patiently wait, because being frustrated wasnt going to make the taxis go faster. if i did miss the bus, i could probably get another one the day after with only a long night spent at the bus station(a dirty parking lot). being patient payed off.

So 12 hours later..or so. I arrived at cape town station at about 515am. Found myself a train to to my part of the city and managed to arrive at my front gate at about 6am about two hours before sunrise, it is winter here even though it still feels like a pleasant spring. I should clarify about my living situation. It technically isnt my front gate i was standing in front of. my lease ended june 30th. I fly out July 16th. I arrived July5th. I am squatting. I had to turn in my keys, pack everything up, and store my luggage with friend before I left.

My friend, Wes, was not answering his phone which forced me to climb over the razor wire wall. Most houses here, all houses here are fortified against crime and the bad street people. Our house actually only had a concrete wall until two months ago. We had had a few breakins over the semester, all by the same guy. He managed to break in with people in the house everytime. He made off with a camera the first time, and the other 4+ times just some broken glass. We actually saw him come in and out of the gate a few times. We had reported the breakins to the landlord in full detail. the landlord's response was to put razor wire on the wall. Post razor wire we still had breakins, as our thief came in the gate under the wire.

After conquering the wall and lifting my backpack over, i set about waking wes up. His room is on the back side of the house, and as the front door is far away, I began climbing over our back wall into the bed breakfast place behind. A little sneaking around in the B&B placed me at our backyard wall. More fence climbing and i was looking in wes's window. The combination of Wes mentioning that he may move rooms and the girl shoes at the front door when wes should be alone, forced me to attempt to make out who was sleeping in the room before knocking on the window. I wanted to avoid awkward situations with new residents. While peaking in the window(still dark) I was greeted from an upstairs window by an older brit man. I promptly returned the greeting and explained what i was doing snooping around the house in the dark and managed to convince him i wasnt a thief and in the process woke up wes and doubly confirmed myself. More climbing and i was back at the front door.

I now have a daily task of avoiding runins with the landlord and cleaning ladies. We will see how it goes.

Trekking in Lesotho

2007-07-03T00:26:00.000+08:00

Goats and Sheep! My most common trail companion.

Lesotho!

After a late start I began solo on my three day journey to the Lesotho highlands. The lodge suggested I have a guide and tried to sell me on riding a pony rather than walking, both I declined. What is the use of a horse? It makes you sore in the ass and you still get tired. I would rather be tired and have a happy ass. Who needs a guide when you never leave civilization? Villages and shepards are always great sources of info for questions like which way to the village that is only 2 km away and you have probably been to every week. After asking directions many times and having several young boys voluntarily show me the way, I arrived at night fall or shortly there after at my first overnight location. I was promptly shown to a my hut for the evening and began my dinner of muesli, beef jerky and cookies.

A Basotho local in common winter garb, he is also wearing rubber irrigation boots called gum boots or gumbies. The blankets have unique to each group(tribe?) in Lesotho.

After a nice breakfast of cold oatmeal, muesli and cookies I began my short hike to see the famed water fall. An hour and many corn/ sorghum fields later I came to the cliff with the falling water. I could see that it fell more proliferatous in the wet season, as now it was a trickle.
After returning to my hut village, I began asking for directions to my next destination. I should clarify what asking for directions means. Most of the time it was me saying the name of the village and then there was some pointing. Sometimes the pointing was accompanied with a lengthy explanation in Sesotho, some of which I understood only because of the associated hand gestures. My directions to my next destination appeared to come in two options. Option one. Backtrack some, go down to the river, follow the river, climb to some village, climb to another village then climb much higher over a pass to my destination, this sounds like no fun. Option two. Follow a curvy goat path, around the mountain and climb a little bit to my destination, sounds so much better, but the villagers discourage me because I think they fear me being lost.
I vote for the goat path, and it made my trip. It was truly a goat path and no one had taken it since the big snow a week before, there were no footprints man or beast. A goat path is a small foot path not unlike a deer trail in that it is very narrow and often is over grown with bushes above 1m. I happen to be more than 1m tall and my shoes happen to sink in the snow a few inches too much. Goat paths are awesome. So my feet got wet and cold, not like my shoes are waterproof anyways, and I was constantly ducking, crawling, and fighting branches. Goat paths are still awesome. I had some amazing views, and didn’t pass through any villages or even encounter a single human being all day. There were some stray goats. I crossed some small streams, iced over, and climbed a significant distance.. I would estimate 2000ft. I did eventually reach my destination and was thoroughly convinced the goat path was the superior route and would recommend it to the lodge people on my return.

It is kinda pretty, and very windy on top of the roof of africa.

My destination for the night was great and balls cold. There was traditional basotho beer, fermented over night from a corn sorghum mixture and even less intoxicating than the hated 3.2 of utah. I spent a few hours watching the slaughter of a pig, which I then shared in eating. And sometime in a hut drinking the sour watery beer. I also spent a few hours after dark in the pig cooking hut, not that it was a special hut, just that it happened to own the pig. Smoke like you wouldn’t believe. Imagine a hut, 15ft in diameter, round, with a thatched roof. Now open the door, the only orifice, and light a fire inside. I sat eyes, nostrils, sinii, and lungs a blaze and watched a bubbling cauldron of pig. Eventually I gnawed on what I think was a spare rib, as most of the actual meat was left to be butchered the following day. I then retired for more muesli, jerky and cookies. Lunch was always weet-bix and cheese. Weet-bix are wheat flakes semi compressed into bars and utterly tasteless.
Fueled by my luck and ego from the goat path choice, I elected to ditch the directions given by the lodge yet again for my return route. They had me going through several villages and around several mountains. After decending the pass I headed straight for the river. I had crossed a different river on my first day and knew that the current river eventually met the first. I followed the river all day until is confluence with the first river and it was well worth it. The upper reaches of the river were sensuously carved from the bedrock and spotted with excellent summer swimming holes and enthralling rapids. The lower reaches were bordered with maize and sorghum fields and flanked with sandstone cliffs strongly reminiscent of utah.
The whole way people were very surprised at my being alone and going so far without a horse. I got to talk to some school girls at one point and they were confused as to why I was walking and not using the vehicle or horse that I should have.

I am alive and smiling a bit this time. Note the snow/trail/ ice thing i am standing on. This was actually a heavily used pony path.

Now off to ZA for some art.

The end of the Sand, San, and soon SA

2007-06-27T22:44:00.001+08:00

botswana. its a desert. almost entirely. it isnt all the same, but it is all desert. there are subtle and large differences in the desert like the presence or lack of grass, species of trees like marula and baobab. the north of the county has a river with water(there are many rivers signposted along the road...but none have water). the zambezi flows into the okavango delta and spreads out over something like 16000km2. thats a heap of sand that is wet and has grass and lots of trees with furry things running around eating the plants and marking the sand. we saw a few game antelope(impala, kudu, puku, sable, reedbuck, waterbuck, duikker...) abound, a few girrafe, elephants and hippos galore, few crocs and water monitor lizards, babooons, monkeys, birds, snakes, a jackle, mongoose or mongeese, zebra, and ostrich. we saw tracks of some leopard. we heard some lion, and we saw tracks and heard hyena and wild dogs. mongoose or the water monitor are the best. giraffe are just strange. hippos make strange sounds all night long. when you are sleeping 200ft from 13 of them it is quiet a problem for sleeping. best i can describe hippos noises as are jabba the hut's laugh, a little menacing and unsettling, plus they have big teeth.

we did too much driving. it was spread over 19days which helped, but there wasnt much choice to get around the country. it is big and things are far apart. a private jet would have solved the driving and bird hitting issues. i think we ended up at about 3000miles.

now off to trek with the ponies and the snow in the mountain kingdom

antelope, doing antelope things, standing and eating.
mongoose, like timone, are awesome. there was a whole family that visited us daily.
Botswana has salt pans...something about evaporation, heat, no place for water to go but up.

Botswana is a desert

I am happy, i swear. The sun and water were very bright. i am also vertical. this is what the delta looks like from a dugout canoe.

Away

2007-06-15T20:33:00.000+08:00

I am away for several weeks. Back in July at some point. Currently in Botswana. Almost hit a giraffe. did hit a bird.

see you later

Geese and Dassies

2007-05-29T23:49:00.001+08:00

These are the 'nuggets of enlightenment' you find while reading scientific articles. Taken from Nature 426.

"When a female is sexually promiscuous, the ejaculates of different males compete for the fertilization of her eggs1; the more sperm a male inseminates into a female, the more likely he is to fertilize her eggs2. Because sperm production is limited and costly, theory predicts that males will strategically allocate sperm (1) according to female promiscuity1,3–5, (2) saving some for copulations with new females3,6,7, and (3) to females producing more and/or better offspring3,8. Whether males allocate sperm in all of these ways is not known, particularly in birds where the collection of natural ejaculates only recently became possible. Here we demonstrate male sperm allocation of unprecedented sophistication in the fowl Gallus gallus. Males show status-dependent sperm investment in females according to the level of female promiscuity; they progressively reduce sperm investment in a particular female but, on encountering a new female, instantaneously increase their sperm investment; and they preferentially allocate sperm to females with large sexual ornaments signalling superior maternal investment. Our results indicate that female promiscuity leads to the evolution of sophisticated male sexual behaviour."

Below are some of the 'logo' dassies i used for a recent presentation i made on my research. There is even a dassie wallpaper!

The answer

2007-05-25T22:33:00.000+08:00

Mother or Vicki are the winners. it is in fact something to do with mushrooms. more accurately my roommates learn to cook and attempt to feed me the results. this one was green and ugly ugly ugly. we eventually decided to make it into muffins, which were much much better and not green.

"Kruncher"

Getting real familar with the bowel movements of these guys. not really what i had forseen for my time here, but hey what can you do?

Guess What this is. It is edible, i think

2007-05-16T22:33:00.000+08:00

Mushrooms and Dassies

2007-05-15T04:11:00.000+08:00

Lesotho 360

Mushroom hunting!

We have found an abundance of mushrooms. I think we could harvest enough to eat mushroom every night. So far the only cooking of mushrooms has been the mushroom pasta, mushroom quiche, and mushroom rice.

Dassies!

They are caught. They are caged. It is a little sad to see animals in cages. They need names. There are already some names floating around but nothing is certain. It is up to you to give them their proper titles for their life in captivity, about 2 months. Previously purposed names are Cletus, Fransisco, Mongo, and Didymus. There are six animals, that means six wonderful opportunities.

Dassie going into cage.

The quarry.

As for the last competition…lets just say it was the personal result of caving without a flashlight. Or rather turning off your flashlight while caving, scaring some friends and bumping into some rocks in the process.

Dassies and Arizona

2007-05-04T01:20:00.000+08:00

Skipped some classes on Wednesday and headed to a local granite quarry with a bag of food and a raccoon trap. The plan was just to place the food out on the ground in a line and then watch to see what the little furry animals like to eat. Its called a cafeteria experiment. When we walked into the quarry little animals went scurrying in every direction, the place was infested with dassies. I laid out an apple, carrot, tomato, broccoli, sausage, dates, bread, rusks, and banana. Then stepped back about 20 yards and watched. Sure enough within 15mins the little buggers emerged from their rocky hiding places and began sampling in the delicacies presented to them. Apples and bread were the favorites. Egged on by the ease of which we had lured the animals out of the rocks, we decided to get the trap and try baiting it with bread. 10 minutes later we had two furry animals in the trap. One managed to back out under the door, but his friend was ours. The poor little bugger didn’t even notice or care that the trap had shut. It just continued to eat, even as we approached to within 10ft. We covered the trap, carried it back to the car and returned home. About an hour later we repeated the same process with the same ease to catch Cletus a friend, Francisco. Now we have two dassies and this weekend will hopefully catch 4 more and begin the long awaited Rock Hyrax Geochemistry Study.

This could almost be arizona

Thursday morning I got up at 3 am to go to the airport. Off to Bloemfontein, at least for a few hours, then drive to Maseru, Lesotho. Lesotho is known as the mountain kingdom and is completely surrounded by south Africa, in fact it is the only country to be completely enclosed by another. On the drive in, I saw the king pass going to Bloem, maybe for some shopping. I had a very nice and relaxing 5 day vacation visiting my almost step sister, her husband, and their 15month old daughter. Sara, ben and kadeysha. Spend most of a day driving around with a condom salesman, Mosito, stopping at bars, watching him try and sell condoms and questioning him about Lesotho, HIV, and life. He was a good guy and fun to talk to. Seeing the bars and the people around them was my first introduction to Lesotho and a good one.

We took an overnight trip to a lodge somewhere in the center of Lesotho. Neat little place and home of the worlds biggest commercial rappel next to a large waterfall. It was pretty, quite and it snowed.

Lesotho was very different from south Africa in general and even more different than cape town. Much more relaxed, much more friendly and it felt more alive. Probably because there were more people around or visibly working walking or sitting. Lesotho is a very rural place, interesting in that and I would definitely go back for a time.

bonus points if you can guess what this is or where it came from

Chickens and Caves

2007-04-23T05:00:00.001+08:00

Two weeks gone since vacation! Only a few weeks left, and I am taking at least one, maybe two off!

Week after vacation I spent some time writing a paper on sustainable development and environmental impact assessment (EIA). Not particularly exciting, mostly synthesizing arguments made in the late 90’s by the UN and Canada for a more integrated approach to environmental management, but I think that’s what the prof wanted.

Also wrote a paper on water quality of some nearby river.

I don’t think I have commented on the mosquito situation in my room yet. My old room, the one with a view, never had mosquito problems. I had ants, but still have ants. They crawl over my screen, keyboard, bed, sheets, face, arms, clothes- all in search of food and without ever biting. I like the ants. Mosquitoes are not welcome. The first few nights in my room I suffered through constant buzzing in the ears and waking up with welts all over my body. Then I got smart and before going to bed went on a mosquito search. Found about 10 of the little bastards and killed them, only leaving behind a few bug/blood marks on the walls. I continued sleeping and killing just before bed for about a week. I was still tormented by buzzing in the years, and although the number of welts incurred per night decreased, each morning I still was finding new welts. One night I got smarter and went on a rampage. I clapped, squished and smashed every mosquito I could find in my room. I shook every item, curtain, book, shirt, sheet in order to flush out the little buggers, then went back around the room and flushed again to get the ones that had re-hid. I totaled over 50 for the night, and with bloody hands and even bloodier walls I slept soundly. Since that night it has now been nearly 3 months. Before bed every night I still go about my ritual killing. It is quite an efficient process now, I know the best hiding places- just flush and clap. I average 3 per night.

Went to a rugby game this weekend. That was good, but short, and the stadium was too big to see much. Also went spelunking, cave exploring. Checked out three sandstone caves, no limestone here. Managed to scrap up my knees in some tight squeezes, and get in some really good stealth hide-and-scare operations complete with growling noises or unexpected hair touches. There were also cave crickets.

I saw an awesome movie about food production this week. We Feed the World, half was on soya in Brazil and half was on chickens in Austria. The chicken footage was unbelievable, especially the shots of the young chicks and the slaughterhouse. Aesthetically great, full of repetition, texture, and shape. The movie was actually an informative piece, to bring the reality of mass or commercial farming/ poultry into focus. The birds were raised like crops and slaughtered.

In the next two weeks, I might actually get to go catch some dassies, believe it or not. The naming competition may yet happen. Next thurs I leave for Lesotho for a week.

April Vacation

2007-04-13T04:34:00.000+08:00

April vacation or easter vacation or fall break or the equivalent of spring break came in two parts.

First part started Friday afternoon as a field camp for ecology class. We drove north about two hours to arrive at the Windstone Backpackers Riding and Adventure Centre. A crazy dusty place in the middle of the desert. A small oasis that will serve as home for the next several days. We actually didn’t come for riding or adventure. We came to play in the nearby salt water lagoon, but someone forgot to book the place on the lagoon, so we got to stay at windstone with the horses.

Each day was a new activity. One day spent sieving mud for little creatures then identifying and counting. One day spent counting and identifying creatures on rocky shores. One days spent collecting plants and measuring leaves, chemicals in leaves, and spines. And one day spent fishing with beach seine nets. Beach fishing was the best. We caught sting rays, but they didn’t kill us, we just let them go carefully, avoiding barb through the heart situation. We caught way too many little fish each time and let most go..we took way too many with us, and since they were dead already we had to count and identify them all. Touching thousands(in total maybe 7000) of little fish is kind of fun and its scales all over you. Eventually you get bored silly and start making the fish walk and talk, or carefully positioning fish in surprising locations next to unaware people.

My group, or at least the back seat. Meg, Jess, Gena, Stef. middle seat-luke, my hat, rob.

After work, evenings were spent eating meat and starch and sitting around the fire. Izaac drinks fire

I came up with a great april fools prank, but was unable to garner support staff to pull it off. The plan was to get up early in the morning and tie a certain person (willingly) to the front of one of the cars. The idea was that the profs would find him and feel bad for him and go questing to find the culprits which didn’t exist. Can you imagine coming out to your car at sunrise to find a poor little boy that has been tied to your car overnight? Hilarious.

We came back on Wednesday and then left thrusday for a roadtrip up the east coast.

Day one, 30min in the car dies. It was a friends car with problems. Open up the hood, have a look around, find a strange substance resembling cappacino in color oozing from the carburetor. Not sure how it got there, but pretty sure it is a nice oil water froth. = bad for car, and roadtrip. Tow car to nearby garage, say we will deal with it in a week. Rent car and keep going, with 4 hour delay. Rental car is not station wagon like friends car.. Arrive at hostel and camp on grass. We have one 3 person tent for five people. The original plan was to have two sleep in the back of the wagon with seats down. I sleep outside until it rains. Then I sleep in the camry. Luckily only one night of rain for the whole trip. Next day look for rain ponchos with no luck, drive some more to tutseecomma(spelled wrong) national park where we will stay for the next two days.

Caravan village ho! The np actually resembles a township in that there are numerous small odd shaped dwellings tightly packed with lots of idle people milling around. The np is full of caravans, and tents, or tent mansions. Some of these tents are 500sq feet in total. There is the master tent, the kids tent, the dining canopy, and the cooking canopy. They have all been assigned to squares in the grass and each extends to the edge of its allotment. Strange and not all that appealing. We setup our meager 3 person tent with no atrium, entry way, separate rooms, electricity, home office, kitchenette, storage room, spare bedroom and park our car next to it. Izaac and I sleep outside and some guy comes to tell us it is against the rules and we shouldn’t because there are leopards roaming about and it is against the rules. I say thank you for the warn and he mumbles and wanders off.

Proving I am alive

A strange lady walks through our site, a few feet from me one morning on her way to the bathroom. I say strange because she then on returning came back through our camp and stopped to talk. She did this both days. They were here for a week with the kids. Living in capetown now, but lived in texas for a few years. Strange. She could not figure out how it was possible to sleep outside and freeze to death, it was probably 60F at night.

I spent lots of time reading, thinking, watching waves and the sky. On the way back we stopped at a farmstall and got some dried fruit and grapes. Vacation over. Now 8 weeks or so of UCT then summer/winter break. Who knows what that will hold.

Yummy mushrooms

shiny grasshopper cricket thing deposition eggs

proving my existance again

jumbo cricket, or king cricket
some dead bees i found in an abonded house after i snuck in the window and scared the rest of my group away be pretending to be a wild animal

Casey is the winner

2007-04-13T03:21:00.000+08:00

It was predator 2. i dont know how rocketeer or rocketman comes from a slaughterhouse on fire with the predator in it.

good job casey. i dont know what people are thinking, nobody here got it. it is obvious.

April Spring Easter Fall Vacation Vac

2007-03-30T21:01:00.000+08:00

I leave in a hour for a five day field camp for my ecology class. Five days of looking at plant defenses to herbivory, collecting marine samples for someone's phd thesis and looking at fish communities for someone else. I cant help but get the feeling we are being used. People from previous years have spoke highly of this field camp, but they also spoke highly of the class. They said the camp made the class good. We will see. As i may have mentioned, the class is not good.

After the field camp, i have 4 or 5 days of traveling up the eastern coast and relaxing. this will happen, but in what form i am unsure. left it to some other people to plan. i am in charge of food.

then i am back for the second quarter, another invigorating 7 weeks of class. seems like a paltry amount of time, but it is established and accepted that a semester is 13 weeks of boredom.

On a positive note…two other students and I have started a pseudo ocean carbon flux class. It is not for credit and did only start the 6^th week of term, but it meets more than the other classes, is actually interesting, the prof actually knows something, and the info presented is actually worthwhile, as opposed to copied out of a textbook.

I spent the afternoon freeze grinding shit into homogenous powder for isotope analysis. No word on the status of our dassie application, but I did by chance bump into the head of the animal ethics committee. He said he hadn’t read my app yet, but was concerned. He assured me the committee would meet soon....as in sometime in the next month. They are all very busy people.

Back around the 10^th.

Wine Tasting and Human Interest

2007-03-26T19:11:00.000+08:00

It has been requested of me to include more stories about things that are not rocks. Apparently rocks are not interesting, so I have made some effort here to include some more human interest stories, enjoy.

The weekend started at 5 on Friday with ultimate Frisbee until 7. Followed by the wine society wine tasting at 7. We tasted 4 wines from Constantia uitsig…chenin, sav blanc, chard, and a red blend. Frisbee and wine society are weekly activities that start all weekends for me. At 8 I walked from the wine society to the mountain and ski club wine and cheese party. Was there until 12, then walked back to the house ate pizza and went to bed around 1. woke up at 7 ate breakfast and walked to get on the bus to go on a wine tasting tour with the wine society. Got back at 6, spent some time with the Australians and their sa firstyear friends as they did a centurion. Followed by dinner around 10 and then a two hour life philosophy conversation with wes. Thoughts and topics brought up in our discussion gave rise to the current feeling of satisfaction this weekend. That and plans to make donuts in the morning.

Throughout the weekend and my time here at uct I keep having the same thought….that is a growing appreciation for a liberal arts education. The thought is not so much about the content of the education, although that in itself has merit and probably contributes to the focus of the thought. The focus is on how the environment, be it the selection process or the education system itself concentrates certain types of people and how thankful I am to be in contact with those people. Being away from Pomona for a year has definitely taught me that that certain type of person I find at Pomona does not occur in high densities outside Pomona. In fact they are damn hard to find.

I can attribute this point more to wes than anything. He described the lifestyle or the pace of the life style liberal arts college enforce on the students…basically overwhelm yourself and try and survive. Some might think that my weekend plans from going from one event that ends just as the next starts from 11am on Friday until now, 1am Sunday is a bit too busy. I don’t know if this has anything to do with attempting to swim after being thrown in the pool, but it is busy and has nothing to do with academics. Granted wes was talking about academics, classes along with work and social engagements, but it is still interesting to contemplate the effect of the liberal arts style on my lifestyle.

Wine tasting was centered around the Wellington harvest festival. Went to about 6 wineries and tasted lots of very different wine, some good, some bad and some I liked. There was a pervasive feeling of the classiness and a sense of ego thou ought the day. I was just there to enjoy myself and to explore some wine. Others were there to demonstrate their excellence in wine tasting ability, in particular their ability to memorize and recite reviews from a commercially available wine guide..there is only one for SA.

A common story among the wineries was that they were purchased around 10 years ago by established people who employ winemakers to make wine with owner’s name on it. One particular winery was owned by a beast of a man. He was at least 6.4, but that isn’t so unusual. What was unusual was the size his various parts, chest, head, neck, wrists. His wrist was at least the size of my calf. There was good reason he didn’t wear I watch. There was magazine article in the tasting room about how as a lad he was forced to play rugby due to his size, but his true passion lay with cricket and hence the reason he put in a cricket green on his farm. His name was Schalk Burger and he had two beasts of sons.

Here is a shot of the random fridge that just showed up in the living room one day…a gift from the gods maybe? Either way we have begun to play pictionary on it. Can you guess the movie depicted?

I decorated my room with some magazine pictures..this is one of the best.

This is a gross sponge that lived in the kitchen way too long. Then it got replaced and found new employment migrating around the house with little notes attached to it. Wes and izaac slept with it a few nights, without nowing

Donut creations

Massive grasshopper again

Another view east from cape town…taken on hike Sunday.

Beach and Big Rocks

2007-03-19T15:16:00.000+08:00

Sunset at the beach, wednesday night after some frisbee and before some sorbet

I went camping agian this weekend. Basically got out of the car 1.5hours from town and climbed up a steep gully to the mountain club's ski hut. Spent the night and walked back down sunday morning.
It was exciting at the top. All around there were mountains and all mountains that could be climbed. They were steep, but not too steep, all mottled with rocks and vegetation. You could easily walk out get lost in exploration and enjoyment, which i might do given the chance.
Some mountian clubbers
sunrise

too much time with penguins

2007-03-16T18:37:00.000+08:00

So this is the kind of stuff you can find on the internet. i suppose if i spend enough time with the penguins here i might be able to get a similar shot. still in permit and application limbo for getting permission to go catch furry animals. going camping this weekend.

Copywrite by Nathan Myhrvold, http://edge.org/3rd_culture/myhrvold07/large-15.html

fishies, fried fish and rats

2007-03-12T22:02:00.000+08:00

The coast near kalk bay

Fridays make to be busy days. The last two Fridays have been the same up until about 10pm. Start with waking up around around 8, water the garden, then grab some apple bread, or biscuts for breakfast and make the hike up the hill while eating on the way. Get to campus around 845 and either go find a lab and read articles on dassies or goto the library and read the ecology textbook. First class at 11, ecology, lame, done by 12. Eat some bread. Goto second class, Environmental Analysis, boring, done at 1. Eat the rest of my bread and carrot lunch. Make my way to the zoology building and get to work making some cages. Finish up around four. Walk back to the house, arrive about 420, grab a snack and pack dinner, change clothes. Hike back up to campus for 5pm ultimate Frisbee. Play till 7, then walk to the wine society for wine tasting. Finish up there and walk home between 9-10pm.

Denise, the yet to be seen housemate.

I don’t know what I did last last Friday night. But I do know I was up till about 4am, took a nap and got up at 6am to go wake, say happy birthday, and cook breakfast for a friend. After breakfast, we went to go explore some tide pools. There were lots of fun little creatures and a big crab that escaped the camera. After the tide pools we had some fried and grilled fish and some excellent mussel chowder.

Starfish, orange and red

This last Friday, I went to bed at about 11. and got up at 6am again. This time there pancakes at my house, then wes and I went to climb devil’s peak and we did. Made it back to the house around 12 making it about a 5 hour journey. It was not very windy, but completely clear this time. We could see a solid blanket of clouds move in over the city off the atlantic. Then about 4pm some people came over to the house for a braai..or BBQ. That ended around 2pm and involved some grilling, some pool swimming, lots of conversation and fun. Sunday went to the beach, swam and had fried fish again.

Crab

I am still trapped in paper work limbo for the dassie project. I went to turn in the ethics proposal today and was told I had used the wrong form. Apparently the form on the website is wrong, but they haven’t changed it yet. So I got the right form and filled it out again, but now I need to wait for signatures again, and figure out how to get a permit that was not mentioned on the old form. Maybe this weekend, maybe next weekend, who knows. Once I do get little furry animals there will be a naming contest and associated adoption program..adopt-a-dassie.

Starfish of some sort on a Sea Urchent Skeleton
Today for ecology we looked at invertebrates in water...brings back memories of days spent swimming to playing in the canal behind the house.
I found out there is a snake farm nearby, kind of like a petting zoo. might try and get myself over there. more importantly the snake farm raises rats to feed to the snakes, plus they sell the rats for pets on the order of $1 per rat. next time we braai i might have to goto to the snake farm for meat first.

West Coast Klipfish

An Overnight Jaunt to Ceres

2007-03-01T23:30:00.000+08:00

One of four housemates, wes. he is doing Fulbright research on drought tolerant corn. he is from corn country somewhere.

So i went camping last weekend. Spent most of my time exploring a little creek solo. lots of cool rock pools, including these:

A flower.
Some landscape shots

Furry Creatures

2007-03-01T16:08:00.000+08:00

So I am a bit behind posting. I have some pictures, but those will have to come later. So classes have started, almost done with two weeks now. Thus far I have had no homework or reading. A huge change from the globalization course with 5 hours of reading from day one, Chinese class with 100 characters to learn per night, or good ol’ Pomona. The students are now on campus, and that means my net access is degraded, not only in terms of available computers, but also speed. Yesterday I tried unsuccessfully for 30min to open my email. TIMED OUT.

Class is lame. Lamelamelame. I have two classes and an independent research project. Class one is ecology. I haven’t technically had an ecology class, but I have had most of the content for this class. It is lame on top of redundant. So far lectures are just powerpoints of the subheadings out of an ecology text…and the lecture gets the examples wrong all too frequently. I am in the class with what seem like little kids…way too young, and not interested in the class at all, but I cant really blame them. I will go to class a few more times..but then I think I will just spend my time reading the text book and skip.
Class two is called environmental analysis, the same as my major, but not the same content. The course has two halves. Part one is environmental impact assessments- things developed in the US with NEPA in the 70’s. Supposedly more holistic development plans, but in practice maybe more of a legal hurdle. The second half is geographic information system, GIS, basically mapping software. This class is a bit better than the first, but still very basic, slow and there is no reading….strange. the benefits are that I would not have been able to take a course like this at Pomona.

The research project. Still in the planning phases..but soon to take off. The basic plan is to catch some furry creatures, put them in cages for a few months and feed them different grasses and leaves. Then look at the carbon, nitrogen, calcium and maybe phosphorus content of their food, shit, and pee. Sounds great huh? The point is not to collect shit in little jars everyday, which I will have to do. The point is to try and figure out how much of a filter the little animal is, do their excrement mirror their diet? They will not be just any old creature, we will use rock hyrax, dassie. It is something the size of a groundhog that is not a rodent and might be related to the elephant. It just so happens that the hyrax tend to form big fecal urine deposits called middens. The middens can be 20,000+ years old. There is a guy here doing a phd on climate change in southern Africa using pollen from these old shit piles. My project should help him understand carbon, nitrogen, etc data from his middens and help identify key points in history for vegetative change. So next weekend or the next next I might go to the desert with some cages and a jar of peanut butter and see if I can come back with 10 or so furry creatures that are willing or forced to go on a little holiday retreat here at uct, where they will be fed and watered on a daily basis and all they need to do is let me have their shit.

Some pics from China

2007-02-17T14:32:00.000+08:00

Along the Karakol Highway, Far Western China, near Pakistan

Nuclear Power and Strange Men

2007-02-12T16:33:00.000+08:00

Last week we went to a nuclear power station near Cape Town. It is a small plant producing only 1800mw about 1% of SA's power. Most of the SA power is from coal. The plant was nice. It is surrounded by a natural reserve..a gov rec to keep people from dying in the event of a meltdown. The nature reserve encourages people to come and recreate, walk, run, mountain bike or watch the animals. They have zebra, an assortment of antelope, and lots of snakes. They also have some nice dune plants. The power plant is located on the coast..it uses seawater to cool its reactor coolant.

The other day, a guy that lives with me was walking alone by a train station, lost. He walked down a couple allies that turned out to be deadends..then on the third attempt he was met by three men who had seen him walk down the dead ends and return. The three men yelled at him, went through his pockets and took his bag then ran off. They took his wallet, watch and knife from his bag and his cell phone from his pocket. They ditched his bag in a bush, which he recovered.

The other day the other guy I am living with woke up from a nap around 6pm to find a man in his room. They man asked him if peter was home. There is no peter in the house. My roommate told him there was no peter and that izaac lived next door. He then went to Izaac’s room and found izaac. The man said they had met before at the waterfront. Izaac was confused and asked him when as he let him out of the house. The man said last year when izaac was in iowa. A few minutes later my housemate noticed his camera was gone.

Last week a girl next door woke up to find her computer missing, her window open, and a ladder conveniently leading to the ground.

So there you have it. Things look normal and safe, much like they do in the us. Modern shops, houses, streets, clean looking people. But there is crime. We will see if I experience it first hand.

Devil's Peak, Cockroaches, Township

2007-02-05T01:20:00.000+08:00

Table Mountain From Devil's Peak at Sunrise

On Thursday we went on a township tour, something I think should have happened several weeks earlier. It was an interesting experience, but nothing like what I was imagining. Townships here are informal settlements that are recognized by the government and therefore receive roads, electricity, water, waste removal and other services. They are basically shack or shanty towns that are built on unused land. I was expecting to see something similar to the shanty towns in India, Thailand or China. This place was nothing like what I had seen before. It was much nicer.

The shacks consisted of a variety of discarded building materials assembled about a central frame to enclose an area on average roughly 10ftx10ft. The insides of the shacks that I saw were very well furnished; all had beds and a kitchen type counter. Some even had home entertainment cabinets. Shacks in India had nowhere near this amount of furnishings. Most had an assortment of cooking utensils around a fire ring, and a blanket on the ground for the bed.

The people in the township were also much different to those I had seen in other countries. There were a few older women walking around, and a few young kids playing in empty lots. The township has a school, and it was full of children. Again this was nothing like shanty towns I have seen elsewhere. There were no dirty kids and people and there weren’t people just sitting around out of work. The people that were in the township also did not appear to suffering from lack of food or disease. Unemployment is huge here, 26%, but it wasn’t apparent in the township, or at least this township.

I suspect that this township was different than the others. I suspect the reason we had a tour in this township was its level of ‘development.’ I suspect that other townships are in a lesser state.

Friday after class, Izaac and I climbed Devil’s Peak. Got to the top around 7pm had some dinner and watched the sunset. It was beautiful. Then the fun began. I didn’t bring a sleepingbag to SA. Izaac did. Impromptu camping on Devil’s Peak was a good experience in demonstrating the use of a sleeping bag or bed roll.

Cape Town and Robbin Island

Izaac at our campsite, ie grass in between rocksI brought some warm clothes for the adventure, long underwear and a wind jacket. The clothing was adequate for walking around and sitting around watching the stars, but inadequate for sleeping. Whenever I would fall asleep my body temperature would drop and I would wake up cold. The wind did not help. Cape Town, also known as the cape of storms, is windy most of the time. The wind kept changing directions and I kept moving around in the rocks finding calm places to try and sleep. I didn’t sleep much. I got to wake up and see the stars progress across the night sky. Sunrise came at about 5:30 and ended the night of no sleep.

Table Mountain and the Atlantic Sunrise was again amazing and after a short breakfast we walked back to campus.

Moonrise

In addition to the limited clothing/sleepwear I went for a bare minimum on food. I guess bare minimum would be no food. But I brought food. I brought 8 rusks, four for dinner four for breakfast. Rusks are a Swedish biscut thing…they are baked in loaves, sliced then baked again so they are completely dry and hard. They look like small biscuits. All turned out well, but I was hungry well before lunch on the way back down.

Cockroaches

So there are a few in the house. For me they add value, entertainment and curiosity value to the house. Sometimes you are surprised by one looking for food. They are fun to watch and rather cute. Others in the house are less pleased with the cockroaches. They prefer them dead, scream when they emerge, and run away upstairs or on top of furniture. From their elevated perch they yell at me to kill our little friends. I don’t understand.

Some Pictures

2007-02-02T15:54:00.000+08:00

Devil's Peak with my old room in the foreground

Quiver Tree or Giant aloe that looks like a tree

Spider
Grasshopper with grasshopper #2 on back

Thistle
Tomato with Spines

Real Man's Beer
Grasshopper with Izaac for scale

Cederberg Field Excursion

2007-01-26T14:17:00.000+08:00

Day one travel northward, early morning stop at wheat farm in the Swartland. Talk to farmer about wheat farming post apartheid. Learned about changes in wheat farming practices from deep yearly ripping using a mold broad plow which caused soil loss and used lots of fuel to adoption of minimum till practices, contour bunds, contour plowing, less frequent and much shallower plowing. Learned about the appearance of herbicide resistant rye grass in the fields. Farmers haven’t yet solved the rye grass problem, spraying doesn’t help, tried reverting to the mold broad plow to no avail. Currently using canola in a crop rotation to help clean out the rye grass, but canola is an imperfect cleaner. Globally low wheat prices have been tough for wheat farming in the Swartland, very small margins for production. In the past five years which have been poor rain years, this particular farmer and others in the Swartland have not turned a profit. As a result he has started raising more sheep and cattle because the meat prices are more stable and there is a much lower capital investment, he has a guaranteed return on his investment in livestock. He hopes that china continues to import more food, particularly wheat and will eventually drive up the wheat price to levels that are at least mildly profitable for him.

After the wheat we went further up the road to a fossil park. Not a fossilized park, but a park with fossils in it, rather a ticket office and a shade canopy over and open dig. Most of the fossils were from a now extinct three toed horse. There were also some seals. They think a big flood caught the animals and buried them.

After the fossils we went and looked at some rock paintings left by the San somewhere between 4000 and 500 years ago. We spent the night at a hotel on the Atlantic coast. I went swimming…super cold. There is a big current that comes from Antarctica and runs along the Western coast of southern Africa..so the water is really cold. Somewhere around 50F.

Monday talk on wetland conservation and look at some pelicans. Afterwards drive to the next bay north and have a visit to a massive colony of Gannets. Big sea birds. They were everywhere on the small island. Last year there were no birds. Apparently some seals decided to come eat some gannets, then the gannets left, no surprise. This year there were visible seals basking in the sun on a nearby island, but they hadn’t attacked the birds yet so no problem. Next drive to the cederberg.

Along the side of the road on the way to cederberg, we saw several center pivot irrigation plots growing potatoes on inland beach sand. We also saw several familiar sized circles with no irrigation and no plant life. The farmers grow potatoes for 3-5 years, until the land is completely depleted…it is a deserts and they are growing on sand which is very nutrient poor. After 3-5 years the land is discarded and new plot is set up somewhere else.. Regeneration of used potato plots takes far more than 3-5 years.

The Cederberg, which translates as Cedar mountain, is a conservation area setup for the conservation of the endemic, Cedar. The area is mixed in control, the conservation organization controls most of the mountains, but the valleys are privately held by farmer who continue to farm the land. It was thought that the Cedars disappeared because of overharvest and deforestation to clear farm land. But recent pollen studies by certain UCT professors( the program sponsor amoung others) indicate that the Cedars, at least 10000 years back were never a dominant species and never constituted a closed canopy forest. They did however constitute more of the vegetation than they do today, but that might be do to climate change in the last 10000 years. We took a hike to look at the cedars, they only grow at elevation in secluded pockets now. It looks like a cedar tree..just like every other one I have ever seen. But it might not be around forever, so the have started a nursery program and tree plantings.

We had talk on the leopards of the Cederberg. The cederberg is actually a very arid area. Similar to the basin and range deserts. In addition to leopards, there are also cats similar to a lynx, a relative of the hyena, foxes, skunks, porcupines, and a variety of rodents and a species of hyrax. The cederberg leopard is actually its own subspecies, distinct from the famous African leopard. The cederberg leopard is 1/3-1/2 the size of an African leopard probably due to the relative lack of food in the more arid environment. We didn’t see a leopard, but we saw pictures. The guy who came was part of the Cederberg leopard conservancy. He has been working over the last several years studying the leopard and trying to convince the farmers to stop shooting, poisoning, trapping and generally killing leopards. He began gps collaring leopards and from the collars and remote motion sensitive cameras was able to determine the homeranges of the cederberg leopards and approximate numbers of leopards in the area. Farmers in a particular valley have reported that have severe leopard problems…and have several leopards preying on their hobby sheep. As it turns out, there is only one leopard in the area..which was photographed on all their farms on different nights. The problem with the farmers killing the leopards is that the dead leopard is quickly replaced by a younger leopard which then continues to kill their sheep. Killing a leopard creates a vacuum, open territory with easy yummy sheep to eat, a relatively good territory that is not passed up. So the leopard conservation fund has been working with the farmers to build leopard proof fences around their corrals and to buy Anatolian Sheppard dogs to protect their flocks. Before the corral fences were 3-4 feet tall and could be stepped over by humans or easily jumped by a leopard. Now the sheep are corralled in 6foot enclosures with roofs = leopard proof. The Anatolian Sheppard dogs weigh more than most of the leopards and me. A male is about 80kg. the dogs live with the sheep and attack anything that threatens the sheep or the dog, including strangers and sheep thieves.

That was the end of the field trip, now it is back to globalization and the natural environment classes for another few weeks, then a final paper and presentation then enrollment in UCT classes.

Feild Trips

2007-01-20T17:47:00.000+08:00

This week had more reading, more class and two field trips. Since we have been studying agriculture in SA, we went and visited some farms. First we went to a commercial fruit farm, about 16ha worth of apples, pears, plums and wine grapes. He had a chat with the owner, a retired stock broker from the UK. He took the business over in 1993 and had seen a few changes on the farm post apartheid, but most of the changes on the farm had occurred due to his changing management practices. Next we went to a mission station. The mission station owns around 4500ha which it divides and gives its members user rights to. There were several small vegetable patches and some cattle farming. Back in the day I imagine it would have been more vibrant and active, but today most of the land lay fallow. On day two we went to visit some vineyards and wineries. Wine is a big thing in the region just outside Cape Town and SA is the #8 wine producer in the world. We first went to a family owned traditional winery. The lady that gave the tour was part of the family and in charge of marketing. She was extremely dull, but knowledgeable. Most of the winery’s income comes from tourism and they sell 20% of their wine straight from the cellar to tourists. Unsurprisingly, the whole place was done up to look old and quaint. We next went to a more contemporary winery and had an excellent tour from a retired schoolteacher. The contrast between the two wineries was amazing.
Sunday we leave to go on a four day field trip to the Cedarburg, a mountain region with cedars. Should be fun, back on Thursday.

a few more pictures

2007-01-15T14:56:00.000+08:00

Purple Flower
White Flower
Frog
Red Water
The Southern Suburbs

Fynbos and class

2007-01-15T14:31:00.000+08:00

Here I am at one plus weeks. Been doing an unusually large amount of reading for class each day, will hopefully decrease in the weeks to come. I have lecture for 1.5 hours and discussion for 1.5 hours for the Globalization and the Natural Environment. For class there has been about 5 hours of reading for each day. Reading plus discussion plus cooking equals a full day. Next week we have some field trips which I am looking forward to. Field trips mean I get to see new things and there is no reading for field trip days. This last week we took a tour of the cape peninsula, which is not the southern most point in Africa. We also had a tour of Cape Town proper.
Last Friday we went up Table Mnt in a cable car. At the top another guy on the program and I decided not to ride back down, but instead take a 5 hour stroll back to the house. Table mountain is great. The whole area is covered in a type of vegetation called Fynbos(fain boss) and until recently was a floristic kingdom, now there are only 6 kingdoms. The entire northern hemisphere is just one kingdom. The area has several times the number of plant species present in the UK. It makes for some very interesting strolling. Yesterday we went to the beach. Pretty much like other beaches, but with more wind.
There is a strange feeling of insecurity here. Everyone warns about being alone and about being out at night. There seems to be an unseen danger of crime. People talk about being mugged, but it is not an expected event. Expect in the sense that it does not fit with the level of development/ modernity in the city. The problem however does not exist from the residents of the city. It is a problem of the drastic income contrast between the city and the surrounding townships coupled with a high unemployment rate, +25%. There is this feeling of danger lurking in the shadows. Or at least that is the feeling I get from everyone else. I haven’t found a situation I feel threatened in yet, but I have only been here a week and half and am still getting used to the place.

A Protea of some sort.

Flower

An Erica
A pine tree with flowers...not a pine tree then
Red Flower
Lizard on rock
Lizard on rock with two tails
Fynbos on Table Mountain
Flower, an iris?
Cape Town from Table Mountain

Cape Town Arrival

2007-01-06T23:40:00.000+08:00

So far Cape Town is beautiful. It is strange mix of things. The city itself is situated on the coast, imagine that. It is actually on a narrow strip of land between this big piece of sandstone the call table mountain and the Atlantic ocean. The university campus( referred to as versity) is about 90 to the east. So if cape town is on the NW slope, UCT is on the NE slope. From my limited two day experience of cape town, I have been very surprised by its modernity and global feel. Eating at a restaurant or walking downtown you wouldn’t know you are in South Africa, you may as well be anywhere in the modern or globalized world.
Class starts Monday and I already having readings and an assignment. Our house has a pool with a bbq and bar…a slight improvement to the Pomona dorms.

Vacation in Washington

2007-01-06T23:29:00.000+08:00

After China, I took a little break in the state of washington. Family visiting, holidays, two trips to bellingham, and a shoeshowed adventure in the Olympics.
Here is casey hiding from the morning cold. Jordan is also hiding.

南非

2006-12-25T14:17:00.000+08:00

I have returned. Got on a plane and left China. For the winter break I am living in Burien, Wa, a few miles form Seattle.

Next Semester I will not be returning to Pomona. I am, instead, going to south Africa. I will be studying at the University of Cape Town. I will focus on environmental science, or at least I am supposed to. I will actually enroll until I arrive.

I leave Dec 31, 8 days from now. I will be in South Africa for around 6 months, maybe seven. Come to visit if you happen to be in that part of the world.

I need a new title for my blog. I am open to suggestions. I don’t think south Africa has great walls or giant pandas.

Cabbage!

2006-12-11T07:36:00.000+08:00

My time in China begins to wind down. Only a week left and two Chinese tests. This weekend was spent split between writing an ethnography on some male college students I met here and their thoughts on love and marriage and going with my host parents to buy some clothes. My host parents insisted on taking me to buy clothes, which is fine, it is fun to go out with them and even more fun to observe them in society as opposed to sitting in front of the tv which is my common experience with them.

We first went to look into buying a suit. They have been insisting since I arrived in china that I should by a suit or two before returning home. We finally went out and did some suit shopping. I probably tried on 10+ of the damn things. They were all strange. The first one I tried on, I was unable to move my arms. The sleeves were sewn on in such a way so that they would appear all nice and straight when they hung down, but when I raised my arm the whole jacket came up with it, pushing the collar up around my ears. Great I found a nonfunctional piece of clothing. I tried explaining to the sales person and my host parents that something was wrong, in particular the cut and method of stitching for the arm. I was unsuccessful. The salesperson kept insisting I looked fabulous 挺好看 and that it was made that way to look good when I am standing. She also kept repeating that suits were not meant for activity and I should not wear a suit if I will be moving. Suits are not meant to be comfortable.

After the first shop I gave up on trying to explain that there was something wrong. I tried on many and they all fit the same, no arm movement allowed. In the course of suit shopping we walked through a women’s undergarment section of the shopping area…strange. There were some weird weird underwear styles…every type of compression/ shaping thing imaginable. And then there was the fur….weird.

My host father disappeared about two weeks ago. I asked my host mother where he went and she said business trip. I asked her when he might return and she said she didn’t know. About 10 days later he walked in the door one night. He had been on a business trip that just happened to go to his hometown. He brought back with him several things from his family including pictures and a few homemade treats.

The first homemade treat came out the first night, yam chips. Like potato chips but sweet and wonderful. The second homemade treat came out the next morning. Pickled carrots with chilies. Awful. Pungent with vinegar and hot beyond believe with chili. I was supposed to supplement my rice porridge with the pickled carrots instead of the common pickled veggies which are not hot or unbearable vinegary. The regular pickled veggies are actually really good. 酸菜. I couldn’t handle the carrots and neither could my host mother, she made a terrible face and spit them out when she ate them, I just swallowed and said that wasn’t a sort of flavor I like. My host father ate them by himself with a spoon. His tastebuds must be dead.

I am not a picky eater, you might know this, I eat just about everything and am up for just about any type of food eating dare as long as it involves someone else going one for one with me.

The third treat came out last night. It was an entire ginger root, pickled. Tasted kinda like the ginger you get with sushi, except this was still in root form and there was a lot of it. My host father gave me half the root and he took his back with him into the other room. The first bite was great, gingery and wonderful. The second bite was not good, it burned my tongue and mouth. The third bite was worse, my eyes began to water and my tongue throbbed. I wished I had not accepted half the damn root. Eating a little ginger between bites to clear your palate is fine. But eating half a damn root without anything else is hell, don’t try it. Or if you are like my host father, you will love it and will also have dead tastebuds.

Cabbage. There might be some miss perceptions about my views on cabbage, the current cabbage population in the household, or the frequency of cabbage consumption. Let me set it straight, hopefully once and for all. So about three weeks about my host mom came home with 100lbs of cabbage. That’s right 100lbs..that is about how much she weighs. 100lbs of cabbage translates into 11heads of cabbage. It took her at least three trips from the vegetable seller to the house to get it all back. The white heads of cabbage were placed outside the kitchen window to hang out. Since the arrival of the cabbage we have eaten cabbage at every meal. Until tonight it has been prepared the same. Fried/boiled with black fungus. 炒白菜 . Tonight there was a curve ball. Instead of black fungus there was chilies. My host father cooked the cabbage tonight, hence the chilies. He called it wandefu. 晚的副 which roughly translates as wonderful. It was a nice change in the three week regime of boiled cabbage. Don’t get me wrong I like cabbage and still like cabbage, I will not get tired of it in the next week either. There are other vegetables still, rice, and meat. It is just the cabbage is staying for the winter season. I asked today what number cabbage head we were eating. We are on number three….if you do some math that comes out to just under 10lbs of cabbage a week, or about 3lbs per person per week or about 1/2lb of cabbage per day per person We might call that LCPDPP, or CPPP for NOLS. I find the cabbage amusing. It would be better if they grew legs and invaded the house.

黄山 Huang Shan Yellow Mountain

2006-11-28T17:07:00.000+08:00

Not sure why it is the yellow mountain unless it refers to the dead grass in winter, because most of the rocks are pinkish granite from their high feldspar levels.

This last weekend I went to Huang Shan. Probably the most famous mountain in china. It is often referred to in classical Chinese poetry and often depicted in Chinese classical painting. It is a collection of granite domes in southern china. When people talk about going to Huang Shan they talk about ‘climbing’ the mountain. This actually either means climbing the concrete steps that serve as a path or riding the cable car to the top.

Unfortunately for our visit it was rather foggy and it was difficult to see much. Nevertheless it was a good time. There were actually very few people actually climbing the steps. 20-30 at most were stair climbing. The rest of the people in the 100’s rode the cable car to the top and it is the low season.

Crazy Observatory at the top

Fellow stair climbers, they may or may not be sore from the quantity of stairs.

Awesome mud
From a temple near the mountain
Cool Bugs found on the way

Tomorrow I am going to serve as an extra with about 500 american looking people for the shooting of a movie called Kite Runner. Don’t know much about it expect I might get a minimal payment and food maybe catered by a Canadian company. The scene is supposed to be set in sanfran in summer so I am to wear summer clothing with a jacket that I can take off when they are shooting.

癸街

2006-11-20T17:04:00.000+08:00

Another week of class done. Another weekend gone. Only a few left.

This weekend I started out by a nice all you can eat buffet at noon on Friday. Lots of seafood and fruit, it was great. Then we went to a park, only to find that it had closed early...apparently a winter thing. Still wanted to stroll around so walked for an hour south to Tiananmen square. It got dark just as we arrived, but we still walked around.

Then we got on a bus for a while…then on another bus for a while, an hour or so later we ended up on a street full of restaurants, met some friends and went to a restaurant. Turned out to great, fantastic Chinese food. By far the best meal I have had in china so far.

Afterwards went and tried the night life again, and it wasn’t so bad this time. Heard a Spanish guy play a guitar.

Saturday I went to a Internship Networking Tea…a required attendance for my internship class. It was not so interesting. A few awkward employers looking for interns for next semester.

Afterwards a friend told me about a MEAT restaurant..lots of BBQ and I went with some different people to go eat..turned out to be the same street I was at the night before. Excellent food again. Afterwards, I tried the nightlife again and it was even better than Friday night.

Thank you, China

2006-11-15T20:23:00.000+08:00

China unblocked wikipedia, yeah! I can read about stuff agian.
China blocked blogspot. Boo! I cant read blogs, even my own anymore..but i can still post and read comments.

enjoy

潘家市场和故宫

2006-11-15T20:08:00.000+08:00

This weekend I went on a shopping spree with some professional shoppers. I didn’t buy anything. I did meet some lawyers from LA who were on vacation. I looked at lots of old stuff possibly antiques or more likely old dirty reproductions. Afterwards I went to a clothing market by myself. I hadn’t been to this particular one before, and it was packed I was pretty much shopped out so I didn’t buy anything, but I will probably go back and find something warm.

Sunday I went to the famous Forbidden City 故宫. It is big. There are lots of buildings inside the walls, lots of big halls and lots of smaller courtyard type arrangements. Most of the buildings have been gutted and filled with museum displays. Other buildings were under restoration. Way more people than I ever imagined, both inside and outside in Tiananmen 天安门 square.

佛教 Buddhism

2006-11-08T19:13:00.000+08:00

This last weekend I went to Wutai Shan( 五台山) for a little relaxation, learning about Buddhism and mountain climbing.

On the way there we stopped off in a town called Datong (大同) to visit some grottoes. There were lots of Buddhist sculptures and some were even more more impressive than those we visited on the silk road trip. However, 大同 is a big coal city both for production and for use. The sky was black with coal smoke and the sculptures had a significant coating of black soot. Most sculptures were black or dull in color instead of their intended brilliant variety of color.

大同 was depressing.

五台山 was fun. We got to talk with a monk for several hours, learn how to meditate in the proper Zen fashion, or at least learn the very basics of meditation. The monk was insisted that meditation was dangerous and we should find a master to teach us if we wanted to go further. We visited lots of Buddhist temples some were Zen Buddhist and some were Pure Land Buddhist.

The planned mountain climb turned out to a be pleasant walk down a dirt road to a temple situated on the top of bare peak exposed to a bitterly cold and strong wind.

The noodles we got to eat and see prepared were awesome. As was the wassail I prepared the night of the trip departure.

The Wall

2006-10-28T16:32:00.000+08:00

Went to the great wall for some hiking. Really nice to get out of the city and see some trees again. The road was lined with persimmons the whole way there.

Once we got there we were assaulted by the usual tourist people..trying to sell us things. Telling us the wall was closed. Telling us we had to pay a big entrance fee. And offering their services as personal guides for a wall hike. We eventually opted for the guide service and found the wall. They government was in the process of rebuilding this particular section of wall and was only partially completed so there some new wall, some old and some under construction. By rebuilding, I mean they are encasing the old wall in new bricks, so it is bigger, taller, wider and supposedly better than before. We asked some of the masons if they like the new wall and they all said no, but it was a good paying job to rebuild the wall.

How to kill a vegetable

2006-10-22T13:29:00.000+08:00

This is a fresh very tasty looking vegetable.

This is a dead vegetable. Dead through and through, scalded in oil for five minutes.

This is a duck tongue and a duck stomach in foil with chili. Absolutely not tasty.

Welcome to chinese food. There is a great variety..but most is dead and some is gross.

小兔子夫夫

2006-10-21T07:11:00.000+08:00

The other night I went to the Chinese dorm and spent about 4 hours in one little room with at least 3 Chinese students, but at other times 6 or so. There room consists of four beds, two on each wall, all lofted above desk/dresser units with a small pathway between equivalent in width to s single bed and in length to two beds. Lots of talk about the US and china, and girls and studying Chinese. Then there were some games and cards. Quite fun. This weekend I might go to a nature area with them..the same one as before, the Fragraent hills, 香山.

Went with my tutor to a bakery one day. We spent quite a lot of time point at things and naming them in English and Chinese. I now know my way around a bakery..but it was quite difficult to explain the difference between cake, biscuits and cookies in Chinese. Bought some coconut maccoroons which were far better than the spicy duck tongue and duck stomach I ate earlier.

A little play I wrote for class. Translated directly using Microsoft word.

Good immortal Female-Li Simiao(Amy)李思渺

Small rabbit uncle-But lives outstanding(Me)可杰生

This is the small rabbit uncle's(小兔子夫夫) story.

The small rabbit uncle, drifts along all day long in the forest. Bullies the forest frequently the mouse. The mouse receives small rabbit uncle's suffering all day.

The forest mouse when receives suffers askGood immortalThe female helps them. Mouse hope inGood immortalUnder the female help, can on the quite happy life.

One day in forestGood immortalFemale met with the small rabbit uncle.

Good immortalFemale- The small rabbit uncle, hello.

Small rabbit uncle- What type forest animal are you? What name are you called?

Good immortalFemale- I callGood immortalFemale. I am oneImmortalFemale. I provide happiness for the forest animal, protects you.

Small rabbit uncle- I have not heard you.

Good immortalFemale- I know you. You are that the rabbit which holds the mouse to hit its head.

Small rabbit uncle- Right! You want to hit the mouse together with me?

Good immortalFemale- Does not want! I wanted you to abstain this bad problem. I do not want to see you hit mouse's head again.

Small rabbit uncle- I refuse not to hit mouse's head. If has put the mouse, they could produce too many children to finish eating the very delicious plant. Then I can receive their suffering! I hoped will happen one day can not have the mouse in the forest.

Good immortalFemale- I do not want to see you hit mouse's head again. The mouse is worth having the life, they were not worth by you dying. In the maintenance forest mouse's quantity is not your responsibility. In your ignorant adjustment forest animal, hits them very frantically. But, must enable in the forest to have too many mice, I can create more snakes, the snake can eat the mouse. You should the tranquil life, invite in Zhu Senlin the animal mutual benevolence.

Small rabbit uncle- But I most like the frantic size mouse's head!

Good immortalFemale- In the forest the most terrorist rank smell of blood years are you create. The tens of thousands of mice all were with one's family broken up and decimated. Each and every family all feared you hit them, feared you have created accident. The mice all fantasized nobody bullies the front door the years.

Small rabbit uncle- I have finally understood the truth which you said, now felt is deeply grieved very much. In order to I do the matter, I will feel feeling sorry for a lifetime.

Good immortalFemale- The small rabbit uncle, do not be deeply grieved. If you regretted for a lifetime you do matter, then you can think the life is very long. If you were dying every year mouse's grave sweeping, to is living the mouse was sorry that, was sorry you beforehand material, that mousies can eulogize your merit.

Small rabbit uncle- Good, then I can hope this day. I can change my performance.

Good immortalFemale- Will I hope you later not to be able how lonely, how alone life. You reflected you beforehand action, can look this is very laughable frantic.

Small rabbit uncle- Thanks you, beautifulGood immortalFemale! Through yours education, I can the near forest heaven.

Small rabbit uncleFrom also was lovable the rabbit which led to become the insignificant thing. This story meaning is the human and the human, between the animal and the animal should display the benevolence mutually.

京剧

2006-10-16T14:57:00.000+08:00

Rad Lizard
The other night I went to the Beijing Opera（京剧）. It was crazy..more like a musical than an opera, although there were plenty of high notes and signing, there was also talking and play acting..like a spear fight with some pvc pipe like sticks with fuzz balls on the ends. On TV here you can watch other opera or Chinese opera like things. They are actually rather interesting, crazy awesome clothes and rad singing. At the Beijing opera the lead female would break out into these bouts of voice projection and note prolongulation. It was actually similar to yodeling, or at least the yodeling we get in the US. Here voice would wildly undulate from high to low and back and forth with different durations and different variations. The main female was a princess awaiting her true love in the forbidden city(故宫). She was highly annoying: whiny, prissy, and lame. Most annoying was here voice, nasally and high. Her interaction with the emperor was also annoying...based around pouting complaining and more high pitch whining. Also annoying was her endless dreams of true love…she needs some hobbies and so social interaction, way too much self time. On the other hand, that kind of princess was probably the best back in the day. Glad I wasn’t the unlucky sap that got to marry her.

By far the best part of the Beijing Opera was the music. Lots of wooden blocks mixed with a selection of awesome string instruments. The orchestra served both music for the songs and hilarious sound effects.

Awesome bug.

Went to get my hair cut today, not nearly as exciting as I was hoping for, nor as cheap. I was told that it would cost 三块(3rmb) by my host papa. Turned out to be 八块(8rmb) for no apparent reason…and it was a standard hair cut, except the conversation that took place in the shop while I was there. There was one probably not Chinese women sitting with one of those brain sucking machines attached to her skull, one old lady with really no hair..but they were combing it a lot. Just after my haircut commenced a women entered the shop and proceeded to ask the owner, my haircutter today, if the shop had some particular item. Turns out she was asking about those plastic curling things..the multicolor things that look like little cylinders. She spent the next 10min holding one and inspecting it while it was very close to her face. She asked the owner lots of questions about the small device and switched it for others to also inspect them. The conversation ended in an agreement that she would come back in a few days and get applied to her hair.

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Special words learned this week in class:

Sanguine 血腥

Massive hemorrhage 大出血

Pass UK, Catch US 超英赶美

Cool Rocks.

I tried the bar scene again Friday night, yet again no good. Loud, smoky, crowded. Cant even talk to the person next to you..people just stand around. Went to another place, but that was the same with a dance floor. Definitely a place to go and see other people but I don’t understand the how quality of time spent there can be so bad yet people still swarm the places. I will try again sometime..but try for an even quieter place. I was told the one we went to on Friday was much more chill..but was just terrible wrong.

The Return

2006-10-07T11:50:00.000+08:00

日记，你好！

I have returned from western china. Interesting enough where we went is not actually referred to as western china, it is instead the 新疆（XinJiang）Autonoumous Region and western china is where central or east central china is. Maybe even more surprising is that新疆 isn’t all that Chinese. In the last several decades there have been a huge number of Han Chinese immigrants that have balanced the numbers, but before the 1950’s the place had very “Chinese”. Even now in the cities and especially in the city cores there is very little Chinese spoken and very few “Chinese” people. Most of the population is a minority called the Uighurs. They and their language are of Turkish decent and they are Muslim. It was difficult to believe we were still in china. In the states I had often heard things like “free Tibet,” but never free新疆.

Although I was frustrated with many parts of the trip, it turned out fine and I did enjoy several parts. That being said I will never participate in group travel again. I have posted some photos of the trip here for your viewing pleasure.

I tried the Beijing night life for the first time last night. It was a classmate’s birthday so about 20 of us went to a bar. It was not to exciting, co I came home early. I will probably give it a try again.

Turpan

2006-09-26T17:14:00.000+08:00

We arrived in Turpan this morning。 It is a city in the east of Xinjiang。 The last few days we have been in Dunhuang，a small city in the Northwest of the Gansu Province。 We saw some very impressive Buddhist Caves with carvings and sculptures inside。 We also saw lots of sand and sand dunes。 Most of the group went for a camel ride， but I went for a hike to the top of a dune to watch the sunset。 Tomorrow we are off to see some more Buddhist sculptures then we will get on a plane and fly to Kashgar all the way on the western side of china。 I am looking forward to it because at the beginning of the trip it was sold as the best part。 I am very tired of being herded around。 Yesterday we rode a bus 3 hours to a Geologic Park。。had some lunch（bad sandwiches） got on a bus and took a 45min ride to see some rocks named things like sparrow， lions， or sea turtle。 We then got back on the bus and rode the three hours back into town。 Had some dinner then got on another bus for 2 hours to go the train station。 8 hours of bus riding followed by 12 10hours of train。

Grasslands

2006-09-22T09:37:00.000+08:00

We are on the road. First up was a 12hour train ride to Xi'an(西安）. We stayed in a ridiculous hotel for $100US for the night. Saw some terracotta warriors as well as a hilarious dance recreating the prince's burial.
西安 also had a neat night market where we got to eat lots of yummies and I bought some more dried figs. There was also a fish market complete with fish, shrimp, eels, crawdads, turtles of various kinds, crabs and lots of fish guts in the street.
We then got on another train for 12 hours then on a bus for 7 hours and are now in a place called XiaHe. It is a little town mustly agricultural with a large buddist monestary.
Some of the people on our trip are ridiculous. I dont know how I will survive to the end. The complaining is endless. And being trapped in trains and busses with then or eating meals is unbearable. Too reliant on US ways of life, too self centered and too arrogant. I climbed a mountain this morning while most were sleeping.

Hills

2006-09-17T16:09:00.000+08:00

Today we took a trip to a place called the Fragrant Hills (香山公园). It is kind of like a park, but it has some old temples..or rather the foundations of some old temples…most of the temples were apparently burned by the French and English during an invasion. Parks in Beijing tend to be a little different than parks in the US, but they are very similar to parks in India. The parks are unbelievably crowed. Walking toward the entrance to the park we were part of a long river of people flowing through the gate. All the paths in the park were full of people walking, sitting, eating, talking, sleeping, or standing. It was intense, but beautiful. The guide book says fall is the time to go because all the leaves turn red, but it also says the parked gets mobbed with people in the fall and not to go. I cannot imagine the park being mobbed if that wasn’t what I say today. Either way, we had a good time and I got some good bug pictures. As well as me on a mythological beast turtle thing. I get on the train at 430pm today.

孙悟空

2006-09-16T21:35:00.000+08:00

So I am about to embark on an epic journey that will take me to the end of the earth…or just the other side of china..something like 4000+km（四千公里多）to a place called Kashgar or Kashi.Near the border of Kashmir region, Afghanistan, Tajikistan,Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.Ｉwill be back in 3 weeks…October 6 差不多。Ｉ　ｍａｙ　ｏｒ　ｍａｙ　ｎｏｔ　ｈａｖｅ　ｎｅｔ　ａｃｃｅｓｓ　ｏｆｆ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｗｉｌｄｓ　ｏｆ　Ｃｈｉｎａ．　Ｗｅ　ｗｉｌｌ　ｓｐｅｎｄ　ｍｏｓｔ　ｏｆ　ｏｕｒ　ｔｉｍｅ　ｃｒｏｓｓｉｎｇ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｂｉｇ　ｄｅｓｅｒｔ．Ｇｏｂｉ．　　Ａｐｐａｒｅｎｔｌｙ　ｔｈｅｒｅ　ｉｓ　ｌｏｔｓ　ｏｆ　ｓａｎｄ　ａｎｄ　ｖｅｒｙ　ｆｅｗ　ｐｅｏｐｌｅ．　　Ｔｈｉｓ　ｉｓ　ａｌｓｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｆｒuｉｔ　ｓｅａｓｏｎ．．ｓｏ　ｔｈａｔ　ｍｅａｎｓ　Ｉ will be gorging and will be very happy.
There has been a bit of staring here. Today I was riding my bike to the store and some guy passed me..but after passing kept turning around and staring at me for prolonged tracks of time..this seriously affect his ability to keep the bike on a straight course as well his ability to avoid obstacles.Alas, he did not crash.
Last night I had an interesting conversation with my host mom. She started talking about the hair on my arms again. Last time it was about how because I have hairy arms, I am not cold. This time it was about how the hair on my arms is similar to a TV character, gold in color. Then she got her dictionary and looked up a word for me, evolution. She then proceeded to explain how the Chinese were the most evolutionary advanced and how people, like me, were less evolved because we still have hair like monkeys.
Today I went on a bike ride to a market I had heard about a few days ago.Turned out to not be bad place, not at all like the famous silk market where I was harassed and grabbed repeatedly by salespeople. At the silk market nearly all of the shop keepers yelled out things like “I have special price for you” and “Good friend come look at my shop.” At this market, 天意市场, no one spoke English and there were only other Chinese people, big plus. I bought a backpack, not too big, actually rather small…but now that I have packed it seems to big.Either way it is was a great buy. Don’t know if anyone knows of O7LEY, but they make great products and this one is EXTREME, in fact every bag at the stand was EXTREME but they were different brands..like The North Face, something in Chinese with The North Face logo, Jack Wolfskin, Lowe Alpine, and an assortment of Chinese brands. Some people left for their epic journey this evening and I saw them wheeling out huge bags, poor saps. My bag is really just a book bag….but it does say it is 45L..it is wrong but I have nothing against O7LEY.Here is another view of my room

骑自行车到故宫

2006-09-09T17:26:00.000+08:00

First week of classes are over. In the last half hour of class on Friday, just before lunch, one of the other teachers came into the room and handed our teacher a large stack of paper. Homework for the weekend and next week, great. Write an essay, do some homework, and turn both in at 8am on Monday, and also we will have a quiz at 8am so prepare. Have a good weekend, bye.

Today we went for a 6hour bike ride around the city. We rode along the outside of the Forbidden City.

This is the view I had most of the time.

This is one of the major streets in Beijing.

This is kind of what most of the city looks like.

Our teacher explained to us about how he does not like politics and government, but how he does like culture. He says those three things are what make up life..and you need all three. He says that the recent development in the city..is too focused on money. For example Beijing used to have a city wall in addition to the great wall. The city wall was torn down and replaced with what is now the second ring road to allow better flow of traffic in and out of the city center. It was proposed at one point by a professor at Beijing University to only build/ develop outside the city wall and let the inside remain true Beijing. He also said that as a child he remembered playing on the city wall. Also he talked about the hutongs and how there used to be far more. A Hutong is like a narrow residential street. There are a few left and we rode through a few. Most have been destroyed and replaced with high rises.

This is the Front of the Forbidden City (gugong).

Notice the man above the door.

This is a nicer Beijing street.

This is a man taking a picture of me. He is hired by the government to take pictures of Chinese culture, or tourists ( Chinese and Foreign) doing tourists things, publicity stuff I think.

Along the nicer streets you can still see traditional old Beijing houses and doors. There are also lots of new structures that are built to resemble the old stuff. Our teacher pointed out which were old and which were new.

Here is a very large, modern door/gate and a nice reflection of me on my bike with camera in hand.

This man’s jacket is for “Beijing Light Automotive Co, Ltd.” ie: Bicycle.

Food.

Today I had an assortment of small eats from some place near the Gugong. Most were rice or redbean of some sort. Most were not good. I had a bun with pork in it that was good, I also had what resembled a biscuit but was closer to the density of solid rubber. It was tasty. I had a ball of sticky rice that I thought was benign until I bit into the center to find green chilies drowned in sugar.

The other day I went out to lunch with some classmates and had some good food, but none of them ate it. There was one bad dish. It consisted of lots of sugar cube size and shape jello cubes with potato flakes within, all douses with vinegar of some sort..not good. There were these awesome slime noodles, transparent, stretchy, chewy, huge and awesome to play with. There was also broccoli with garlic. I ate another duck last night.

Shangke

2006-09-04T22:02:00.000+08:00

So I woke up at 5 this morning, but forced myself to stay in bed for another hour. I was excited for class. 4 hours of Chinese and then two hours of econ, who wouldn’t be excited. 6am finally rolled around and I got up and went to take a shower. I met my ayi in the bathroom and she explained how to use the shower (it looks a lot like a shower you might be familiar with except it is in the shape of a 6ft tall telephone booth, works the same as any shower, but is very small and too short to get water on my head without bending down considerably. Shower over, I sat down to another breakfast of strange small cakes/buns/biscuts and hard boiled eggs soaked in soya sauce. Breakfast over; I sat down for a good solid hour of review before my 8am class.

7:45 I roll up in the language class hall to find a schedule posted on the wall informing me that I am in class 332-c. Is that a room number? No. That is my medium class group designation, not to be confused with my small group class designation which I am currently unsure of because it was listed as 132-2, but that was a typo. So next I make my way up and down the hall looking for which room my 8am class is in, I go up and down diligently searching, not once, not twice, but three times. No luck I can find where my 9, 10, and 11 o’clock class is but no 8am class. Turns out they forgot to put some signs up.

Class begins. We get a little tingxie (teacher says stuff in Chinese and you write down what she says using only characters) and then break into some grammar instruction. There was a bit of confusion on the tingxie after class because it was not explained and turns out in previous Chinese classes people have not all done the same thing. Some have written the pinyin(Romanized Chinese), some have translated to English, and others have written characters…so who knows what was right. The grammar instruction was similar to before and there were actually no new structures introduced. Xiake(end of class). We all go into the hall and discuss a bit before finding our next room. In the next room I find the same five classmates but a different teacher. But wait, the teacher is writing the same grammar structures on the board that the last teacher wrote, odd. Shangke( class begins) and is identical to the last class minus the tingxie and with a slightly older teacher. Xiake. That was odd. Goto to the next class, in yet a third room with the same five classmates, but wait the teacher from the first class is back and what is she doing? Writing the same grammar structures on the board that we all seeing for a third time. Shangke, small as the last two classes. Xiake. That was weird again. 11 o’clock class yet another room, but with the same teacher from the first and 3^rd class. Shangke. Same grammar structures except for this time instead of repeat after her and adopt, she asks canned questions(the same question to each of us one at time) and we give her responses using the grammar structure she points at. Xiake. Great I have just had the same class 3.5times in a row. I don’t understand.

Econ was not promising. The teacher gave a poor summary of the assigned reading and possibly made things up. I went to talk to the admin about switching right after class. They told me to wait until after class next week when I will have a better perspective on how the class will be.

Gongyuan hu Xuexi

2006-09-03T21:27:00.000+08:00

For lunch today my host father (shushu) an I shared a large fish..or what I imagine was a large fish boiled in oil. It was hard to tell because it was cut into pieces, but the head was quite large. My host mom(ayi) was also there but she does not like ‘lade’(spicy) food so she just stuck to the other dishes. I think I have had boiled cabbage at every meal thus far and this was no exception. Except this cabbage was boiled with lots of dasuan(small white vegi aka garlic). There was also pork of some kind and rice. After the meal I required a two hour food settling nap.

Last week I was so lucky as to go to an orientation activity and be handed homework that I is due at 8am on the first day of class. After my nap I started on it. It was/is a real assignment, a long boring story about flying to china and 80+ new words to learn how to write. 6 hours later I am done and ready to go to bed only to wake up at 6am and practice the characters some more.

Here is where I sleep. It is on the 5^th floor. There is a bed, desk and a wardrobe.

There is also a fan.

This is the building I used to live in before I met my family..but my current building looks the same. In fact my new building is directly behind that one. Little did I know when I walked out with my stuff to get picked up that I had already walked halfway to my new home.

We went to a park today. Shushu took way too many pictures of me. The man( not me) is Shushu.

There were way too many people in the park. Some were playing badminton with no net, others sitting, whispering sweet nothings. Most of the people were either old or kids, as shushu explained. It was true, except most of the haizi(kids) had parents with them that were not old. There were some of the old people playing a traditional instrument(two-string bamboo guitar) and singing in a traditional Beijing style.. It sounded awful, the singing, but the instrument was great. We also went to buy a new pair of house sandals(shoes you wear while inside) because the ones that originally got were too small. And I ate a sweet potato/yam roasted on a little grill next to the road.

Move in day

2006-09-02T20:23:00.000+08:00

On friday we went to the Big Bell Temple...which is actually not a temple, but it does have a big bell. It used to be a buddist and Taoist temple, but has since been taken over by the government and converted into a bell museum. There were lots of bells and lots of bell info. There were plaques all over the place telling about some bell or another. There were also plenty of replica bells and a few pictures of bells.

Here is a picture of some chicken I ate.

This picture comes after I ate the little floppy thing on the chicken head as well as its eyeball.

I moved in with my family today. Say goodbye to curvaceous curls man, although i do have a few more weird stories about him...one involves him climbing in someone else's window at 4am.
My host mother is a Chinese teacher at the university. She teaches Chinese as a foreign language primarily to Korean and Japanese students. My host father is a manager at some type of energy consulting firm that tries to cut energy use, i think. He definitely works with electricity, water, and natural gas and using less of all of them. My family lives on campus in a small apartment on the 5th floor. This is odd because in my homestay interview the only thing i requested was that my family did not live on campus.
My parents are both 55 and very nice. Communication for the past 7 hours was a bit difficult. Lots of spoken words and constructions that I dont know yet. They dont speak english, so i have been trying to communicate by saying things like "how do you say..the water of cow" which is milk. They got a good laugh out of water of cow..and have repeated it several times since to laugh again.

life thus far

2006-09-01T11:23:00.000+08:00

I am still around. Internet is still hard to come by. There is no internet in my temporary room and they are in the process of moving offices so there is now only one computer for public use amongst the 90 IES students.

I am currently sharing a room with a guy from Rice university in texas. He is a weird guy and difficult to have a conversation with. He is also shocked by china and spends most of his time in the room. He also has curly hair and 5 large bottles of "curvaceous curls" to help accentuate his precious collection of curls.

I move into my homestay tomorrow. No idea who or where it will be. They promised it would be within 30min travel. Their plan is to have us all show up on pickup day and just call out names and have the students and the family acquaint themselves. I did manage to extract a small bit of info..one of the host fathers is a retired geologist, I mentioned I was an EA major and interested in exploring, hiking, having an active host family not too much tv.

The first part of the week was busy. Too many long boring info sessions on policy, procedure, and safety. All read directly from powerpoint presentations project on a large screen or multiple large screens. Some were even in broken english. The next three days are mostly free, aside from moving in and getting to know my family, I only have to do my homework for the first day of class. Yes homework for the first day of class. Yesterday we met our teachers...or rather sat in a room with them long enough for them to give us books and instructions on what are homework was and that it was due at 8am on monday. I dont yet know what my teachers name is or where class is, but i have homework.

Yesterday i went downtown and figured out how the buses and subway work. At the bus stops there are large boards with bus schedules on them all in chinese, which is ok because i can read most of it. What is not ok is the stop names are mostly local names that do not appear on maps and i do not know. So bus riding is mostly trail and error and lots of asking for help. Both the subway and buses are packed...but no one is riding on the roofs, at least in the city.

Downtown we found a few shopping districts and we were assaulted by salespeople. "Sir you want to buy wallet. I give you best price. You good friend." Some even grabbed my arm in an attempt to sell me something i did not want. I bargained with one of them for a backpack and got her down from $25 to $3, but did not purchase the bag because of its poor quality.

The other day, in an effort to force people off campus the program had us split into teams of 3 and gave us little slips of paper with place names on them. We were to go to the place..somehow with out asking english speakers and return with proof of our success. The two other guys in my group immediately returned to their rooms to take naps and recover from a heavy night of drinking. So i ventured alone only to be hugely disappointed when i arrived. I found a department store, something similar to walmart. I was just unlucky, other groups got better destinations.

The IES students are the only ones on campus thus far. The rest of the university does not arrive or start until the 8th or 9th. Many of the IES students have started to form habits similar to what they had in the us. They go out at night to western bars and return sometime between 12 and 4am.

I bought a bike. $13. It is a real winner, black,dirty, old, and it works. I have ridden it around the city some. Biggest ride was 20km...in about 3 hours. You ride in the streets with the cars, buses, and other bikes. There is constant stopping and going. Most of the bikes are single speed bikes and gear low so top speed comes soon and is slow.

Food. I have eaten many types of food and have no idea what most were. For the first few days the program took us in big groups and bought our meals. Most of the food was meat in various sauces with a few cabbage or potato dishes. In addition to restaurants there are many street vendors selling "small foods," kabobs, pancake looking things, dumplings, etc. There are also fruit stands at which i have brought peaches, plums, grapes and pears, all of which are different than what you are familiar with. I havent been sick yet, but still am in the adjustment phases.

We have two weeks of class then we go on a two week field trip along the silk road to the western border of china. It is a long trip and I am not sure i will enjoy that much time spent on buses, trains, or planes, but it should be interesting. The trip will end near the border of pakistan, north of tibet. We will be traveling in 4 groups of 22. I am not keen on the idea of being herded like sheep as has been done thus far on the program..and hope to get away from the mass.

four days to go

2006-08-21T03:11:00.000+08:00

it's coming