Well, that was a mistake....

We don't start class again until the 7th, so in the meantime, the new year long team is training and everyone else is trying to relax and catch up on sleep. The director of the whole program, Dr. Danny Yu, got back from a business trip to America last night and as I was headed out to dinner, I stopped to say hello to him for a quick second. (Mistake Number One.)

Me "Welcome back, Dr. Yu. How was your trip?"
Dr. Yu "Ah. You are very lucky. You have been drafted."
Me "Excuse me, sir?"
Dr. Yu "You can help me for maybe 30 minutes." (Notice how that's not really a question.)
Me "Uh, I was actually heading out to dinner, but sure, I can help for a second..." (Mistake Number Two)

So myself and about four others like myself who were in the wrong place at the wrong time followed him up to his office. Ninety minutes and an entire office suite moved, including desks and file cabinets later, we were done. Dr. Yu took us all out to eat at a nice goose restaurant, which was better (at least cheaper, for me anyway) than where I was going.

New living area

For all summer the campus has been getting renovated for year-long facilitators. While the room is definitely better, the only "before and after" that I am really interested in is this one.

Before in Building Six

Public "squatties"


New living space in Building Three

My own private Western bathroom!

I went for over 2 months using the squatties, so having a real throne to sit on....its just indescribable!

Nap Time

One of the first things that foreigners notice here is how the entire country seems to shut down in the middle of the day. Everything seems to run a little slower to accommodate the centuries old cultural practice of a mid day siesta.




Literally, everything slows down...

Please excuse the delay...

Sorry about leaving you all hanging for a while. Since we moved there has been no internet here, however today I trampsed all over Beijing with Ray and bought my very own router so I have my own dedicated Internet connection. This pleases me. :D

More Pictures from Yuan Ming Yuan

A little deeper into the park.


Ruins of the central building structures.



Pathway alongside massive lily pond.

Yuan Ming Yuan park

Our campus is really close to a park that used to be the Summer Palace where the emperors of the Qing Dynasties resided and handled government affairs. The more famous Forbidden City was used only for formal ceremonies. The extensive network of gardens, lily ponds and architecture led it to be called the "Garden of Gardens" and "Garden of Perfect Brightness." Today there is only ruins, the buildings having been destroyed by British and French troops in 1860 during the Second Opium War. Even so, it makes a very relaxing place when one needs to get away. I went there the other day and took a few pictures with my cell phone so forgive the low quality.




The entrance to the park



Close up of ruins



All that remains of what once was a bridge.


Vast lily pond.


A recreation of how an ancient bridge looked.


I have a few more pics that I'll put up when I can, but right now I think the Internet is going to die on me, so I'll leave it at these for now.

Apple + China Mobile = Pain

I bought a cell phone when I first got here. A little non-descript phone that ran on the China Mobile network. Like most cell phones (and everything else for that matter) here, it is pay as you go. The only problem is that trying to check your balance on the thing involves calling a hotline and going through a series of instructions that is harder to comprehend than Chinese algebra. So I figured as long as I could call people and they could call me, I had minutes. This was seemingly confirmed one Sunday a few weeks back when I got an error message trying to call someone and had to buy more minutes. No problem. Then a few days ago, my boss Dr. Yu, and I were playing air hockey when the puck soared off the table and hit me squarely in the leg. This was too much for my little phone and her screen cracked right down the middle. A phone is a constant necessity here and being without is not a possibility here. I didn't have the financial means to fix this one or buy a new one, so I asked the technical guru, Ray, here if he could "unlock" my American iPhone to work on the China Mobile network and still continue to buy minutes. Ray was able to do this in about a day's time (something Apple once proudly proclaimed was impossible to do) and then when I synched it to my iTunes on my computer, I found a little jewel that the nice people at Apple had put in for people like me. iTunes has a "security patch" that goes into your iPhone and identifies whether its been unlocked or not. If it has, it immediatly kills the phone capabilities. Thanks a lot, Apple. So this was a problem for a while, until Ray fixed it again (again, considered impossible by Apple at one time). Now I should have a great working iPhone again on the China Mobile network with plenty of minutes. This is where China Mobile comes in and tag teams me along with Apple to ruin my day. Minutes are sold in fifty yuan increments and then after you use them China Mobile is glad to let you go into the negatives (without telling you) and then just take out what you owe them the next time you buy minutes. So thus, I was over 100 yuan into negatives when I was able to check my balance today. How I found this lovely piece of information out was I bought two fifty yuan phone minute cards and expecting my balance to be somewhere near, oh I don't know, a hundred, it was five. five minutes. So i spent another fifty yuan and this time it's at 55 which is enough to last for a few weeks. Hopefully.

You Don't See This Everyday...

The past few weeks, it has been storming more than average. We've been getting three or four heavy storms each week, including several monsoons and one that was very severe. Apparently, the torrential rainfall, loud thunder and high winds affect more than just us. I went back to my room last night right after another round of storms and found a lump in my usually made bed. This is a little odd, as to the best of my knowledge my room is not possessed, so my blankets should not be moving or lumping by themselves. So I pulled them back with great caution, much to the annoyance of the cat who snuck in and wandered into my room to escape the storms.