Tourist + Moron = Touron

Ok, this isn’t really a Chinese word, but it’s worth meditating on… deeply meditating on. All of us. Together.

And while you’re at it, you can check out this site:
Where Am I Wearing? (a guy travels to the countries that make his/our clothes.)

Apparently someone across the street from us has wireless internet… hence this post, written sitting really close to the window.

We’re out of our suitcases, doing laundry, steaming 包子, drinking tea (yay!), and hanging pictures. Feeling almost completely moved in. Some people took us to the foreigner Sunday morning fellowship this morning. Until a few months ago it was the only English one in this city of 11 million (there’s one for overseas Chinese and five or six Korean ones), but they just managed to get another one registered in another part of town. It was kind of strange to need your passport to get into church – kind of like driving to the USA for milk and cheese gas, only they don’t give you dirty looks at church. It was interesting – mostly white Westerners, but a handful of Africans, Indians, and overseas Asians. “Foreign passport holders only.” Once our language is good enough to at least get a clue, I imagine we’ll check out some local registered churches.

One thing that us and the other new couple learned the hard way was that you can’t put toilet paper down the “loo,” as our UK friends call it. We’ve had a constant stream of information from JHF ever since we left Taiwan, but somehow they forgot about that bit. Turns out the nice girl down the hall who loaned us her plunger found out the hard way also when she first arrived. It always feels better when you find out you’re not the first foreigner to do something wrong. :)

We heard a little bit from Mingdaw, who has adopted Chou-chou. She got fixed, and has one of those plastic satellite dishes on her head. Do-do does, too, and he just got shaved again, so I hope they send photos.

Speaking of bathrooms, several people who were with us in Thailand are still not over whatever bug was at that resort that made everyone so sick. So if you’re going to Thailand, avoid at all costs the SUAN BUA RESORT!! It turns out that this has been going on for the last few years. I thought it was suspicious the way the staff seemed so prepared and efficient with the medicine dispensing and record keeping arrangement they had going on.

I haven’t had much time to think about taking photos yet, but the one in this post is from today on the walk back to our apartment.

We’re here! We arrived exhausted and had a full afternoon and evening of running around and starting to get oriented. But the other JHFers have been great – they really know how to take care of rookies and have done a lot to begin easing our disorientation stress. Our apartment is on the sixth floor. Here’s the view from our windows:

Our first night was a special night during Chinese New Year’s where they light off extra fireworks. There are big stands on the corners selling fireworks, and people just light them off on the sidewalk so they shoot up beside/between the apartment buildings. At night you can see them all over the city. I was talking to someone last night and it started raining ashes on us. The bigger ones will set off all the car alarms in the area… it’s kind of funny.

This smoke stack is on our block. It’s where they burn the coal to make the heat for the buildings in the area. Heat comes on on a certain day and goes off on a certain day each year. You control the temperature by opening or closing windows… at least, that’s how we’re doing it!

I don’t think I realized just how comfortable we’d become in Yonghe until we drove in to Tianjin from the airport. A new city, big, polluted, doesn’t look or feel like Taipei, we didn’t know where anything is, we’re almost 100% dependent on others for absolutely everything… and this time there are other foreigners around who all know the area and who have better Chinese, so you feel like you’re behind. I was wondering why I suddenly felt better when we were shown where the first big grocery store was, and realized it’s because I was now just that much less dependent on others. Of course it’s not the first time we’ve experienced this, and in the big picture we have it really easy. Anyway, we’re still tired and disoriented and I’m not sure I even know what I’m saying. ;) But we’re here and settling down, surrounded by some great people.

The Jian Hua associates have been great, having us in for dinner, making themselves available for questions, showing us around. I think we go to the bike market tomorrow morning. I’m aiming for an old one that won’t get stolen but hopefully won’t break down every other trip. There’s a tea shop in the wet market… now that we can make hot water we’ll get tea tomorrow, too. These three pictures are the only ones we’ve taken so far. I’m posting this using a pirated wireless signal from next door, so I’ll get it posted before our neighbour goes to bed. We’re doing great. Thanks to everyone for your cares and support! We’ll respond to all the e-mails when we get some longer time online.

We’re in the Bangkok airport waiting to board, about 14 hours later than planned. They didn’t take off as scheduled because of freezing fog in Beijing or something. But they sent us to a really nice hotel for the rest of the day and gave us a huge meal. We should board in about 20 minutes. A bunch of JHF people were in the same boat, so we had a good time. Afternoon tea and everything, courtesy of Thai Air. Next post in China!

First, I should say that the orientation (at a hotel in the city) and the annual conference (at a resort outside the city) that we’ve been attending in Thailand has been great. We’re learning a lot and meetings tons of really interesting people. There’s about 200 people here counting kids, and from all over the Western world. Lots of Kiwis and Aussies and Brits, Germans, even a French guy, and a few Yanks. The really cool thing is that almost everyone has tons of overseas experience in different parts of the world doing all kinds of stuff, especially all over China. Sexual health education, water development for villages way out west, doctors working on the Tibetan plateau, and of course, people teaching and working in the coastal cities from the high frozen north to the tropical south. One British couple coming in with us lived for 14 years in Hong Kong, then 17 in South Africa, and now their starting language school with us in Tianjin.

You can see from the photos that this resort is beautiful. The most immediate downside to all this is that for over a month, for every group that has come to this resort (lots of groups use this for conferences during Chinese New Year), they’ve had dozens of people get really bad diarrhea and/or vomiting on day two or three. Yesterday we had 50 adults listed as sick, and I don’t know how many children. One of the singers threw up on stage. Jessica, who got sick and spent most of the day in bed, saw a lady suddenly shove her baby stroller in another woman’s direction and say, “Watch my baby I’m going to be sick!” before throwing up in the bushes. Our general meetings are less than 2/3 full. And these are all seasoned ex-pats, too. Jessica’s doing much better today, and although we both feel yucky, she’s been able to eat some at breakfast and lunch. So it looks like we’ll be mostly OK by the time we fly out for China on the 21st.

This may or may not be the last post from outside of China. Depends on if we manage to get online again or not.

This place is crawling with mzungus. We saw more white people in our first hour here than in our last 6 months in Taiwan.

I can see why this is such a tourist friendly place. Our hotel is really nice, and cheaper than that dingy motel we stayed at one night in Nowhere, Texas when our ’77 Nova broke down. We spent all day yesterday walking around Chiang Mai and basically doing the tourist thing. It seems more relaxing here – not as crowded, things seem to move a bit slower (relative to Yonghe). We’ll get some photos up when we get a better internet connection.

The tourist thing is honestly kind of boring. Street markets designed for tourists for some reason turn me off a bit, I don’t know why. It seems like it’s “not as real” or something… I don’t know what that means, or if it’s even fair… oh well. But since we’re here early to do some visa stuff, no one else from the conference is here that we know of and we’re sort of on our own, at the mercy of the tourist industry… which is pretty big here. It’s easy to get around and find stuff, but not half as interesting when you don’t have local friends.

Jessica is off at a Thai cooking class today, I’m getting some work done (visas, etc.) and reading. Next time we’ll have some photos up that we took yesterday and today.

Well, we made it to Chiang Mai. We found curry, asap. But we’re really tired after pulling an all-nighter packing so we’re going to bed early.

Leaving is no fun – it’s always rushed: the packing and getting everything in order, but also the last moments with friends and all the things you want to say and moments you want to savour. I’m beginning to wonder if this will be a recurring theme in our lives… though I sure hope we get the packing part down before we have kids!

Mingdaw, Yang Mama, Zhi-ling, Wang Ge, Mu Shi and Gong-zhu (‘Princess’) came with us to the airport at 5am to see us off. We’re really going to miss them! We already do.

We’re in the mall at an internet cafe. When we figure out where the wireless connections are we’ll put up pictures, as we have a few small Thailand adventures planned. But tonight it’s just showers and bed.

ps – Chou-chou and Fire Chicken are now Mingdaw’s… I’m sure Doo-doo is thrilled.

We’re back in Taipei. Good flight, 4 seats all to ourselves, had dinner at the school and are finally taking showers and going to bed. We start working tomorrow. The internet is a little messed up, so it will be a bit before we’re regularly back online.

While I haven’t written in a while, I seem to have abundantly more spare time on my hands than I had planned for tonight. Due to a conspiracy between the weather and Continental Airlines, Joel and I are trapped at the George Bush “Intercontinental” Airport in Houston, TX until tomorrow morning’s first flight out to Vancouver. So, we’re camped out in front of the Presidents Club, which is the prime location from which to filch the “President’s Club Only” wireless internet signal. If you’re ever stuck in an airport with a laptop, just look around for the President’s Club and see if you can latch onto a smidgen of their signal. Especially if you have HOURS to kill, as we do tonight.

Our flight from Dallas to Houston was interesting…the most turbulent I’ve ever been on. I wondered for a bit if we were actually at Six Flags, in some airplane shaped amusement ride. No…it was a real airplane and we were seated in the very last seats, where we REALLY felt the bumps. The best part was when we hit this HUGE bump and my coffee splashed upwards hitting the ceiling of the aircraft and splattering everywhere. I wish I’d had it on video!!! Surprisingly little of it landed on me, which was a good thing considering the number of hours I’m going to be wearing these clothes.

Edited to add…we also just saw security arrest some lady. Not exactly sure what was going on, but she was definitely agitated. As they handcuffed her, she was yelling something about Chop-suey, Pakistanis, Japan, her boyfriend and a poodle. Should be an interesting night, to say the least!

After two red-eye flights and three hours of driving, we’re here. Where is here? A bumber sticker at the local flea market says, “…the town you can’t afford to leave.” It’s 110 American degrees, which I’m sure is something obscene in Celsius. They haven’t had rain in about five weeks. But the university campus is also covered in migrating butterflies; we walked through clouds of them today.

On the way into town we stopped at Dan and Brenda’s and had a great three hours or so catching up. It’s amazing how you can just pick up conversation with some people after a while and it’s like you were never apart. Them and our conversation reminded me of how incredibly blessed we are to have all kinds of people whom we love and respect on our side. Dan and Brenda live outside of town on some land in the country, and they’ve started building an African village compound… huts and all that, complete with goats and donkeys and I think soon some ducks.

Same with Kelly and Houston (re: the conversation, not the goats and huts). Houston and I have some shared history involving goats (and huts), African village-market-quality knives, and a rather messy “cultural learning experience.” But anyway we’re staying with Kelly and Houston until Friday, when we’ll head to Dallas to see Jessica’s mom and sister before heading back to Canada on Sunday.

One whole week to enjoy lots of friends in between some meetings – sounds pretty good to me!