Humbled by Henges

Every college or university has one. The ultimate cool guy. Girls want to be with him, guys want to be him, even professors love him. At my alma mater, Central, it was it was no different. His name was Josh Henges. He could have been an All-American at any state university, he had the Abercrombie model looks and the charm and personality that just gravitated everyone towards him, and yet he chose to come to Central to pursue a life of missions.
To me this was a huge deal. Here's a guy who looks like he just stepped out of a magazine and whenever he went around without a shirt, you were very conscious of just how much of a gut you were getting. You would need higher math to calculate the number of sit-ups you would need to do get a flawless torso like he sported effortlessly. By coincidence, I happened to wear the same cologne that he wore, and girls would tell me "you smell like Josh Henges." I used to double up on the cologne in hopes of attracting more female attention for just that very reason. He had all this and yet chose to come to Central, to devote his life to what God wanted for him. This blew me away at first as I could not comprehend why Apollo was choosing to come here, a 400 student Bible college rather than becoming the type of legend teen movies are based off at a state university.
He was very humble, always having a great sense of humor - and never believing he was any better than any of the rest of us. As time went on, we found out he was good at judo.
Very good.
My senior year at Central, he traveled to Australia to compete in some international competition. This made a lot of newspapers as a guy from Moberly was finally making news without it involving a police spokesman. As we graduated, I ended up in China and he ended up breaking hundreds of hearts as he got married and we gradually lost touch, keeping in contact sporadically through Facebook.
So this brings us up to tonight. Out of the blue he happens to randomly message me on Facebook and we talk for a bit. I find out he just won a world championship in judo at a competition in Ireland, after having won another competition in Germany. He is now a serious contender for the Team USA judo team in the London Olympics in 2016. To say that I'm honored to know the man is an understatement.
Then the conversation turns like this...(reposted here with his permission)

Dan: If you make the team, I'll be there. I don't care if i have to sell a kidney to get to London.
Josh: If I make it, I'll go halfsies to get you there. Out of all the people from Central, I'm most proud of you for what you're doing.
Dan: Thanks man, that's awesome. Why do you feel that way though?
Josh: You kept quiet, kept to yourself, got your stuff together and are kicking butt in the PRC.

Yeah, a guy from my tiny college who was the most popular guy to ever attend and is a world judo champion and quite possibly competing in the 2016 Olympics is proud of me.....I don't think I have been so thoroughly humbled and exhilarated in a long, long while.

Wild Swans

I just finished reading Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang.

It is quite simply, the best book I have ever read on modern Chinese history.

When I sat down with Wild Swans, I had no expectations but to be informed and entertained by what I hoped would be a good book. I read to gain a personal understanding of the world in which we live through accounts and examples given by others of things of past events. Never have I read a book that drew me in so powerfully and personally as Chang's Wild Swans. Wild Swans is epic in its historical backdrop moving untirelessly through the last century of China, roughly between the years 1911 and 1976, but this is no textbook. It's the story of the author Jung Chang, her mother, and her grandmother. It is through their lives that history unfolds and is exposed. From the end of Imperial China, through Japanese occupation, the Nationalist movement, the Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communists, Communist takeover, Mao's Great Leap Forward starving tens of millions to death, the Cultural Revolution turning a national identity upon its head and breaking its collective spirit in the process, to Mao Zedong's death,I was constantly amazed at what I learned in this book about the capacity of the heart to perservere and triumph. I couldn't help but to feel ashamed at the provincial life we are handed in our land of freedom, and at once be thankful that we are so endowed. Jung Chang explores her family so deeply that her subjects, such as her stoic father, a true beliver in the Communist cause, and her grandmother, a veritable symbol through her bound feet of a time and place long gone, become indelibly etched upon the mind of the reader.

I would highly recommend this book to you. By the end of Wild Swans, you will feel you know China and Ms. Chang and her family intimately. If you have never been afraid to crack a book, let this fall into your hands, enter your heart, and enrich your life and in the end, thank Jung Chang for sharing her history (and the collective history of hundreds of millions just like her) with you.

Apples to Apples

Over the past few weeks I have seen a lot more apples being sold by the street vendors. I never thought much about it until today when Pastor Liu explained it at church. The word for "apple" is "ping guo" which sounds similar to the word for "peace" which is "he ping" (add in the tones and it does anyway). So by giving out apples, they're giving out "peace" for the holiday season and the start of the new year.

Door

For those of you who sent me Christmas cards, this is where they ended up.

Metric

A big thing to get used to here is the metric system. Temperature is fairly simple, zero is freezing and 100 is boiling, but length, mass, speed and volume are a bit trickier to wrap your mind around. I found this comic over at xkcd that makes a handy guide for converting to metric. I present it here for you, just click to make it bigger.

and the Parent of the Year Award goes to...

A two-year-old Chinese boy is thought to be the world’s youngest smoker.

Tong Liangliang was taught how to light up by his father, who believed the habit would alleviate pain caused by a hernia.

The toddler now smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and throws a tantrum if he can’t get his fix.

‘The father wasn’t aware of how serious the toddler’s habit became until the child began to increase the number of cigarettes he smoked per day’, China Radio International reported.

Tong received his first cigarette at the age of 18 months in a bid to reduce the discomfort caused by his hernia. The boy’s tender age meant he was too young to have an operation.

In 2005 a 37-year-old man submitted an application to the Guinness Book of Records, claiming to have smoked since the age of three.

The man was bidding for an accolade as the world’s youngest smoker, but his application was denied on the grounds that it promoted a harmful habit.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1195513/Is-worlds-youngest-smoker-Chinese-year-old-pack-day.html#ixzz17yDwr1p7

SantaCon is held in Beijing....right.

Maybe Santa should rethink his primary color....

http://www.upi.com/News_Photos/Features/SantaCon-in-Beijing/4306/3/

Foreigners dressed in Santa Claus costumes pose for a group photo on Tiananmen Square for SantaCon, an annual "Santa Claus convention celebrating cheer, goodwill and fun," in Beijing December111, 2010. Police on Tiananmen Square, surprised by the large gathering of people wearing red, ordered the group to disperse and leave the square while also harassing foreign journalists, detaining one. Tiananmen Square was under tight security as the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony was held in Norway.

Amber Goes to the Doctor

One of my best friends and former college buddy, Amber Hope, has followed me to China. We hang out a lot together and so thus, when something happens to one, the other gets concerned. She complained recently of a bad toothache that kept getting worse. She was resigned to the fact that she would wait until the next she got back to America, nearly four months away, to go to the dentist and get it checked out.

Today, I decided to go and see if I couldn't get the Chinese version of Orajel for her ("Improved Formula! 30% less anti-freeze!") None of the facilitators knew if it was possible to get or where to get it. So I went to the Chinese staff office.

Being the start of the new session, the Chinese staff, what limited few we haven't scared off yet, were up to their ears in preparation and most could care less at the moment. I asked one girl, Maggie, and she told me to try the clinic on campus. The clinic on campus is something of a mystery. It's on the far side, where not much else is, and surrounded by many many potted plants, cacti and other vegetation useful for homeopathic medicine. Apparently, the guy is really good as sometimes outside people will come to him for problems, but he speaks no English and I've only been in there one other time before, that was to see my boss get acupuncture. (Admit it, there are times that you'd like to see someone shove needles in your boss's face...)

Anyway, I go there and it's dark and locked. There is however a phone number on the door. Maggie calls the guy and it being around 5 o'clock, he promptly tells her he's having dinner with his family and his normal business hours are posted on the door, thank you very much.

That should have been the end of that, but a former student named Grace happened to be in the room at the time. Grace was Amber's student last session and really liked her.
"Amber is not feeling well? Sad! I love Amber! I will help you!" So she calls the guy another 3 or 4 times until the good doctor agrees to come in around 6:30. When he comes in, Grace and I go there and the doctor is "well, where's the patient?"

"I just wanted to pick up some medicine for her."

"You idiot, how do you expect me to give her medicine if I've never seen her! Go get her."

So I run back to the dorm where Amber (ignorant of all this going on) is in her pajamas and listening to some music and quite curious as to why I'm running around all evening.

"Quick, get your coat on and let's go!"

"What, huh? where? what?"

"Grace and I got the doctor on campus to come in to look at your toothache. Let's go. Now!"

"No, Dan....wait, I'll wait until I go to America."

"Oh no you won't. Not now. Let's go!"

"Ugh, I really wish you would have asked me beforehand so I could have told you no."

"That's precisely why I didn't. Now HURRY UP!"

We get to the clinic and the doctor looks at her jaw line and teeth and in about a minute and a half has determined that a former cavity has become infected and the infection is spreading out, hitting the nerves. He gives her some serious looking medication and prescribes how often to take it (3 times a day for this one, twice a day for this one, this one must be taken every six hours starting at 6am, etc) with Grace rapidly translating. After he's spent about 15 minutes describing all the medication and how much to take and when, he writes up the bill.

Nineteen yuan.

Two dollars and eighty-seven cents.
$2.87 covers an emergency call, examination, diagnosis, and prescription for three packages of medicine.

I love China.

new coworkers

We got in two new coworkers from America. Emily from Seattle and Michelle from LA. Both are recent college grads. It's always fun to see how new people react to our groups interactions when they first get here.

Army Surplus

In America, Army/Navy stores are a pretty common sight. They're pretty much the same all over, an American flag sharing space with a POW/MIA flag outside and racks and racks of used drab green military jackets, pants and miscellaneous home defense/survival gear that is all tended to by a slightly creepy older guy who after spending a lifetime risking his life for his country, is now awfully paranoid about its government.

Whaddya know, they have those in China too.

I never thought one could exist here, but a teammate found one about 15 subway stops over (ie, an eternity) and we went to check it out. Not so much Chinese military items, per se, although there were some standard issue haversacks and greatcoats and generic belts, pants, buttons, covers, some of which dated back to the Revolution. A lot of it was fake, made by companies that make shirts and jackets which look vaguely para military. A surprising number of it was American. On a lot of the jackets for sale in there I read US ARMY, or USMC along with rank and insignia. As I flipped through one rack, I was able to identify the insignia for 101st Airborne, 82 Airborne, US Navy Seabees, 7th Air Calvary and several more that I could not identify. Even more creepily, some still had last names sewn on. I'd really rather not think about how they got from the American serviceman wearing it to a shady Army surplus store halfway across Beijing.

My friend Nathan bought a greatcoat, which is similar to a trench coat but drab green with a fur lining around the neck and brass buttons with the communist star on them. Go watch a John Wayne movie where he's tackling the Koreans or the Vietnamese and you see a lot of them. He also bought a fur hat with large ear flaps, the kind you'd expect to see in Russia. He's now geared to go fight against the Imperialist Devils along the 38th Parallel or pose for propaganda depicting the same.

I picked up a really nice Army backpack, looks similar to the digital camouflage that the American military uses, only the flag on the back is different. I plan on using it to go to Europe here in a month.

Some things don't change

No matter where you are in the world...some things don't change. Mainly, woman and bugs.

Amber: Agh! There's a bug! Get him! Get him!
Dan:...uhm ok. *grabs something*
Amber: No, don't use that!
Dan: sigh..*grabs something else*
Amber: Throw him outside...he's a NICE bug!

Thanksgiving

Thursday, November 25 is just like any other workday for us. Our big feast will be on Saturday. Here is what I had for Thanksgiving dinner today.

Knock it off already....

With this new flair up in the Koreas between a poofy hair midget backed by a first world superpower and a technological giant (also backed by a first world superpower), things are getting interesting. So when that usually happens, Internet and communication is filtered much more heavily and sometimes even cut off. This latest spat gets serious and you don't see me on for a while, you know why. I'm pretty sure it will blow over in a week or so as I've lived in China just under 2 years and this is the fifth or sixth time these two have gotten into it, since I've been here.

I sooooooooo want to do this...

China North International Shooting Range

"If you've seen all the sites in Beijing and still want a fun day out doing something you've probably never done before then a trip to the shooting range is a great idea.There is a lot of primal enjoyment to be had from just blasting some deadly weapon at nothing in particular.

Good range of weapons from pistols, rifles, shotguns and snipers, to full-automatics and even heavy artillery. They've got all the famous ones, as the previous reviewer said - the AK, M16, magnum, desert eagle, AUG. The range includes lots of chinese-made weapons which the assistants are quite keen to show off to customers...

..The prices are usually about 4-8 kuai per bullet for the pistols, 8-15 for the rifles, 15 for the shotgun, and if you want to fire the anti-aircraft cannon then you have to 'shell' out over 1200kuai for 8 shells which you can 'blow' all at once. I just fired a clip on a chinese pistol (cheaper), a rifle, a sniper, and a few goes on the shotgun and it came to about 350 kuai per person altogether. It takes about an hour to get through all that.

They also have a paintballing course for when you get tired of shooting at stationary targets." [emphasis mine]

TeachOverseas recruiter

Henry Eu, the guy who does the recruitment for our summer staff via TeachOverseas is here. This makes anyone who has had to work in the summer immensely happy. Henry, having never been here before, would describe the conditions of our previous campus with the nice rooms and heavy tree forests, then when they would get here and find the cracked cement and wooden slat bunks, we would get the "But Henry said..." chorus. I don't know how many times a shocked summer staffer would stare at a squatty potty in disbelief and say "But Henry said that the rooms would be American style."

Ah yes, well since Henry said it, let me get out my magic wand and change everything to how you're used to, because you know, this trip of yours IS all about you. Sometimes I think Henry just made some things up to get people over here. So hopefully, with Henry being on campus today, the list of questions we get in the summer should dwindle.

"But Henry said you would be wheelchair accessible." Lady, this is China. OSHA would shut the entire country down if they could. There are parts of Beijing that are barely foot accessible, let alone wheelchair accessible. What part of "Great Wall" made you think it would be wheelchair friendly? Remember, what we view as a lawsuit waiting to happen, they look at as future entertainment.

"But Henry said the ATMs would work over here." They do...if you have a Chinese bank card. Or don't mind paying an eight dollar transaction fee from your bank which isn't used to dealing in yuan. Yet.

"But Henry said I would have my own room with my own shower." Haha. Sir, I am 26 years old. I have lived in a dorm style setting for the better part of ten years. Most of that time with a roommate and most of that time, shared a shower with a roommate and/or a whole floor and a peaceful, yet expansion minded colony of mold. I have been at TIP for almost two years and I just got my own room a bit ago. You're going to be here for all of six weeks, you can duke it out amongst each other on who goes to the showers first.

"But Henry said we'd be able to see (insert attraction here)." and we will certainly try our best to give you a cultural experience along with your service here. There should be time at the end of the session for you to do some sightseeing before you go back and we rejoice. But please understand, if you really wanted to see that, you should have talked to a travel agency, not an English volunteer service organization. You know, in all this time, I still haven't been to see the Summer Palace?

"Henry didn't say anything about (insert major cultural difference here)." Yeah, well...TIC

Warning: Pictures may be hazardous to worldview

This post is for my friend Eric Kiser who was asking about the openness of Christianity in China. Now keep in mind that every province is different and this only represents Beijing. These were all pictures I took with my cell phone out in public

Also, check out this link to China Daily. The number one English language newspaper in Beijing.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-03/17/content_9600333.htm

entrance interviews

At the start of every session we have entrance interviews for the students to determine what level of English they have and what class to put them in. Students expect this and they're usually told by coworkers who have gone before about it, so they rehearse answers. You can usually tell a lot about how a session will go by these interviews and how many "rehearsed answers" you get. These questions are just to get to know a little about the students and gauge their English from their answers. Here's how most of mine went yesterday.

Hi, my name is Dan. It is nice to meet you.

Hi! I am (insertnamehere). Nice to meet you.

I want to ask you a few questions. Is that OK?

There are three people in my family. My husband, my son and I.

Uhm, OK, that's great. So are you a teacher?
Yes I am a teacher. My husband is a worker. There are three people in my family, my husband, and my ...

Right, yes. Three people. Got it. So what level do you teach? Primary school? Middle school? High school?

Primary school. Next year I will teach my son who is only 6 years old. There are three people in my..

Family. Yes. Three. Do you teach English in primary school?

Yes, I teach English to my son and husband. There are three

People in your family. I know. Let's switch gears here. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I want to go to Beijing with my husband and my son.

Well you are IN Beijing right now. I mean, if you could visit any other country, where would you go.

To travel?

Yes, to travel.

I would not want to to travel anywhere. I want to stay home and take care of my husband and my son.

(under breath) *Dr. Phil, eat your heart out.* Ok, (insertnamehere) that is all the questions I have for you. It was nice to meet you. Have a nice day.

It's at this point she walks away a little confused because the question she rehearsed the hardest for wasn't asked. But she gave the answer anyway, she reminds herself, so she should be good. Now that that is over, the first place almost all of them go is outside to call their husband and son to update them.

What I Learned Today

-Beijing hairdressers are some of the most fashionable people in the country. They often look like extras on Rent or Rufio from Hook. I'm not kidding, google it.

-They have no idea what "highlights" mean. Even when shown a picture of highlights and the Chinese word for them. Apparently it's just easier to do a full dye job.

-I do not look like Leonardo DiCaprio

What I was going for....

What I got...



Well, at least I still have the stubble.

Chinese Census

China is undertaking a count of everyone in the country. This raises incredible logistics problems and actually more than a few are quite opposed to it. So in the twisted cul-de-sac that is my mind, it raises a few interesting questions/scenarios on how this will go...

-Could you say that those not wanting to be included have taken leave of their census?

-Question 13. How many children reside in your home?

two....one!
uh-oh....

-"Hey, another F. Yu lives here too! Third one this block."

-Who lives here?
Hu.
Yes, who?
Yes.
I mean the fellow's name.
Hu.
The fellow who lives here!
Hu is the person who lives here.
I'm asking YOU who lives here.
That's the man's name.
That's whose name?
Yes.

-Just how many more will be born by the time they're done?

Happenings...

FINALLY, got my sink fixed...it took 3 plumbers 10 days to tell me they can't do anything and need to order a part or what not. Finally I got fed up with that and bought the janitor a pack a Marlboros. He put down his broom and in less than an hour it was fixed. American cigarettes can do anything.

AMBER AND I said good bye to our class. It was her first session and she did about 70% of the work and did a really good job. I'll miss her in the classroom next month as I go back to the slave ship SS Danny's Book.

FOR THE FIRST TIME, I watched a scary movie on Halloween just because it was Halloween. Amber and I watched Paranormal Activity which was just downright creepy but not all that scary.

Beijing in Twilight

A few pictures around Beijing at sunset.

Tiananmen Square

Hohai Lake

Forbidden City

Right on campus

Class A Picture

I swear I am in there.

David Crowder Band - SMS [Shine]

So my bathroom is kinda....exploding

For the past several days, there has been a maddeningly annoying drip drip in my bathroom that I couldn't seem to find the source. Today I went to wash my hands and my faucet shot water from all directions and made a very loud rumbling somewhere near a jet breaking the sound barrier.

My bathroom

In a few seconds time, there is a good half inch of standing water on the floor and I'm noticing that it's getting increasingly hot. Soon my glasses are fogged up. I yank the handle on the faucet (leaving my fingerprints forever burned into the melting metal) to the "cold" setting only to find out that my faucet now comes equipped with "Burn Your Fingers Off" and "Split Your Own Atoms." I run to the building manager's office...and it's dark. Turns out they're on holiday. Great, say I. Rumble, rumble say my pipes.

One of the Chinese staff girls who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time helped me call a plumber who came in and then....couldn't speak a word of Mandarin. This plumber only spoke a regional dialect. Imagine you call a plumber and you get Billy Bubba from Kentucky and people in Kentucky all speak Pidgeon English with every third vowel removed and backwards word order with a different set of vocabulary for everything and you get a vague idea of the situation. Fortunately, same staff girl (who really should have gone home when she had the chance) happened to be from that region and spent the better part of an hour relaying everything he said from their local dialect to English (for me) and Mandarin (for the Beida official who came by to see what was going on.)

The plumber was able to stop the leak but at that time my room was doing its best Yangtze River impression. I was able to get that cleaned up and nothing was damaged too badly but I gotta wait a few days until I can get the whole problem fixed.

Winter Comes to the City

All of the sudden, it is cold. Bitter winds and apathetic raindrops have invaded Beijing. The sky is the color of old, cracked cement that barely lets any sun in. The old guard take their coats out of storage, the new ones (from the north) take a little comfort in this reminder of home, the new ones (from the south) complain about how this is China and nobody thinks of cold when they think of China. The weather pays little heed to their logic.

Student Journal

I've written in the past how students have to write journal entries every day. Most are so awful in their grammar, spelling and overall format that they rip the very fabric of time and space, while others are straight up ripped from magazines or newspapers. ("Last night, my husband Mark and I were able to watch our beloved Padres take on the Anaheim Angels and win 5-4 in one of the best pitching duels I have ever seen." This came from one of my guy students, who is apparently gay and has developed a way to get to California and back in only a few hours.)

However, every once in a while you get a good one. Such is the case with Adam, who is my oldest student and been teaching for 25 years. The assigned topic was "If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?" He wrote:

If I could go anywhere in the world, I would go to America because America is the most advanced country in science and technology as well as economy which is not only the biggest country in making and producing but in creating and inventing as well. The people of America are wise as well as intelligent and hard-working. They are active and brave. They confront the evil and protect the hurt peoples of the world. They have full of the spirit in challenging and I know from our facilitators, even the elders are the same.

This spirit affects me deeply. This is the spirit of America.

The culture of America has been spread throughout the world. There are many famous writers in America. I read the story of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when I was a child by Mark Twain. I give them to my child to enjoy very much.

It was the creative spirit of adventure that makes the United States of America become stronger and richer and going forward ahead of the world. I am proud to be member of a country that is ally with America.

The history of America is not long but is full of instructiveness. That is, in the country in where everyone can be after and worship freedom and peace. The scientists are respected and fully available in their fields. I would go to America because I want to see and know much more of this mysterious country.

Goodbye

Geoff left early yesterday morning. I went with him to the airport at 5am and made it back in time for a half day of work. We were trying to figure out all the things we have done together in the year he was here, especially including the 8 months we were roommates.

Some of the more memorable events were...

-Sunday afternoon McDonald's and Zhongguancun Electronics window shopping.

-Being four feet apart from each other in the room and sharing links and talking via Instant Message

-Late night hard-core biblical doctrine discussions over beer and mutton sticks at our favorite muslim restaurant. ("First Thess-a-frigg-alonians says this....")

-Q. How many Calvinists does it take to change a light bulb? A. None. If it's supposed to give light, it will.

-Prank calling North Korea....Yes, we actually did that. It was awesome.

-Prank calling the owner of timecube.org and convincing him we would pay him 30 million dollars for his "research." (Disclaimer: going to that site may cause your head to explode)

-Going to Harbin...more specifically the train ride to Harbin. Who knew that sleeping pills, beer and a flashcube on a camera don't mix?

-Looking at the pictures Geoff took on the ride to Harbin.

-Breaking into Geoffrey's room and moving the furniture around, then waiting up all night for him to get back and find out.

-Speaking "Swedish" at the Silk Market to the vendors.

-Q. How do you starve a Calvinist? A. Give him 3 cakes and tell him he can only have one, but he has to choose which one.

-Countless visits to Lush and Pyro.

-Bike rides through Beijing rush hour.

-"Dude, are you in the bathroom again?" Yeah. "Do you have your laptop in there with you?" Yeah..so?

-I don't care....about Libya.

Well my mom thinks I'm special...

Every session or so, we get new chinese staff volunteers who help out in the session and do basic routine menial tasks like making copies, arranging chairs, passing out papers stuff like that. We call them Administrative Assistants or AA's because Non-Paid Overworked Under-appreciated Chinese Staff doesn't all quite fit on the name tag. Most of the time they are former students themselves who've come back to help. We have a new one this session. Her name is Summer. Most of our AA's have at least a certificate, most have a degree. Summer brings a little more than that to the table.

She has...(and try to keep up)

...a Masters Degree in International Politics from Oxford University (yeah, that Oxford)

...a Masters Degree in International Economics and Finance from Warwick University.

...a PhD candidate in World History.

...undergrad work at a top university in China.

...an internship at Goldman Sachs.

...and she's only 22.

That sound we heard when she introduced herself was everyone's egos slowly deflating.

Panda + Bear = Death

A lot of people ask if I see any pandas. Well, yes I have but I don't cuddle with them or hold them or feed them. Many people forget that the full name of a panda is "a panda bear" as in "bear" as in "will straight up kill you." Frankly, I'm a little annoyed with society's love of pandas. They're not small and cuddly but the size of full grown bears. The cute color scheme blinds people to the fact that it's still a couple hundred pounds of freaking bear and bears can and will kill you. But as long as they have the "awww big teddy weddy bear!" appeal people are going to keep them around. Bamboo is their depression comfort food since they've become too slow and fat to hunt anything but firmly rooted plants, but they'll still eat any small animals they get their paws on. All in all, the panda is nature's loser, an animal so far gone that it won't even have sex without the aid of several Chinese zookeepers. When a species' sole responsibility is to "get busy" and it still doesn't bother, then we, as people who have to get up and go to work every day, should lose sympathy.Scientists are considering cloning the species, but when you've got a room full of super-biologists stuck photocopying an animal that was too stupid to exist the first time, it isn't going to be long before they start thinking: "We could build a far better panda--with six arms! And laser vision! And neon pink!

Basically, I said all that to share with you this....pandas are vicious brutes and their extreme lethargy is God's way of taking care of us.

New Session (Take Two)

So it looks like I'll have a class this session and once again co-facilitating with Amber. There are around 300 students, so I'm pretty sure it won't be cancelled this time. Should be fun. I just randomly found out about it so I'm trying to mentally prepare as well as physically get ready for my first class in 10 months.

birthday

I had a pretty good birthday. Lunch Geoff and I went to Lush and then Starbucks, which if you have a Starbucks Card you get a free drink which was nice. Dinner about ten of us went to dry hot pot which was really good. It's basically like a much better stir fry, but you get the idea. Today a package came with many cards, so thank you to those of you participated in that. :)

The Great Bedbug War

Out of the many "challenges" that come with living in China, (squatties, overt racism, food, etc) the insects are the worst. During the summer, the mosquito situation is always bad. I would kill a few and then more would come to avenge their fallen brethren. I remembered reading how kings of old would place the heads of captured spies and scouts on poles at the borders of their kingdoms so for a while, I tried the same. You'd walk into my room and see a bunch of toothpicks with mosquitos. Apparently, psychological warfare doesn't go over real well with them. Other guys would showcase their kills like any other hunting trophy. "Yeah, man I'll tell you what...that one over their squished between the poster and the mystery stain....I must have swatted that sucker ten times before I got 'em. Darn frustrating..." and then the guys standing there nearby reply "Nice one, looks good. What'd you use?"

"Started with my hand but then when the hunt got tough, I switched over to Old Bessie, my 80 watt electrified tennis racket." All the guys nod in approval, save one.

"80 watt, eh? I got me one here thats 120 watt....whooooweee, mosquito flambe any day of the week. Practically gets up on its own to go kill 'em."

So now that summer is over and the season for big game mosquito hunting is almost, you think things would be ok with insects....Nope, they just tag team us.

Apparently from what I read, New York is struggling with a bit of a bed bug problem. Well like most things, China may not have had it first but darn it, if they won't try and outdo the US in it. These tiny little blood-suckers which lurk in mattresses and bedding have been spotted in massive numbers in recent years. It turns out that the popularity of bed bug infestations has only been matched by the popularity of bed bug remedies, because while waking up with tiny little bites is very trendy, it is also possibly the single most annoying non-Justin Bieber-related-thing ever.So for the past few days, I've declared war on them and documented the results and the eventual peace treaty.

Day One: Natural Remedy

I decided to start off gently, looking for non-toxic, 100-mile, fair trade ways to rid myself of my infestation. A few sites on the Internet recommended rubbing alcohol, and a couple others recommended baking soda, so I decided to mix them together in a big bowl and see what happened. There were two results from this. The first was that I didn't die, and the second was that I made a kind of whitish paste. Didn't look very useful or effective. Worried that I wasn't being thorough enough, and dimly recalling that tomato juice and club soda were also useful for some unremembered home remedies (constipation? Moon repellent? Deodorant?), I added large quantities of those to the mix, and liberally applied the whole batch to my mattress . That night I went to sleep, eager to see if my techniques had worked.

Results: 10 fresh bites

Day Two: Can of Raid

Deciding to up the ante a bit after my first failed attempt, and having adopted a new "I really hate bed bugs" mentality, I went out and got a can of Raid, a consumer-grade pesticide. Returning to my room and ignoring the instructions, I doused every part of my increasingly horrible mattress nest with the poison.

"Juuu try to maayys with me you leetle cock-a-roaches," I said, lying in bed, misremembering some Scarface dialog. "Then let me introduce you to my friend the little... uh. My leeeetle friend. That's it." I coughed myself to sleep.

Results: 6 fresh bites

Day Three: Gloves are off.

"In a way, I'm glad," I said to the mirror, as I examined my fresh wounds. "Otherwise this would have been a dull blog posting." My muscles rippled in agreement.

This time around I purchased eight cans of Raid, extra strength, giant skull and cross bones logo and applied them to everything in my apartment, including my clothes, the floor, my collection of empty plastic bottles and then all of the above again. The next morning I did actually wake without any fresh bites, which would constitute a success, but for the fact that I had slept out in the living room, terrified of killing myself by spending any time in the Vestibule of Poisoned Hell that my room had become. But after 16 hours of open windows and fresh air, I summoned up the courage to spend the night in what I thought was my own bed. (I had moved the mattress around a bit by that point, and given the amount of poison I had ingested, the mattress-identifying part of my memory was a little patchy.)

Results: 10 fresh bites.

Day Four: The Professional

"Did something die in here?" the building manager sniffed, my homemade remedies having not aged well in the previous days. The janitor didn't seem to care, just started bringing in what looked like quite lethal equipment.

"No," I said, only half-bothering to come up with a lie. "I've been tanning leather. Anyways, you said this was guaranteed to work? And get rid of them?"

"Oh my no. It may take up to three or four return trips to finally get them all," she said. "And even then, there's no guarantee."

"Well, so long as it's covered by Beida."

"It's not. Speaking of which, how are you going to pay for this?"

I quickly looked in my pockets.

"Uh....do you accept bits of string?"

Results: 10 fresh bites, 1 annoyed building manager and janitor.

Day Five: Everything Must Go!

My research had taught me that bed bugs like to hide during the day, concealing themselves in various cavities, crevices and crannies around the apartment. Adopting a scorched earth policy, I took every one of my many sheets and comforters, my carpets and all of my non-vinyl clothing, and threw it in a pile in the alley. After that, I vacuumed every square inch of the bare concrete surfaces that remained, hissing angry words at the floors and walls as I did so, the day's activities having kicked up a lot of toxic dust and residual pesticide, now lodged in my brain. That night I curled up in the bathroom, hands close to my chest, muttering something about the Weimar Republic.

Results: 4 fresh bites

Day Six: Deep Undercover

When I awoke the next day, the answer appeared to me, having been born, fully formed, in the crucible of my fevered sleep. By learning the techniques of the bed bugs, I could adapt them for my own use. I would become the enemy, then destroy them from within. I quickly made a bedbug disguise.

Realizing that bed bugs feast on blood, and after a moment's thought, I determined that the nearest source of blood could be found in my neighbor Geoff, often located in my neighbor Geoff's room. While he was in class, I let myself into his place, and quietly squirreled myself away in his closet. Following standard daytime bed bug methodology, I promptly fell asleep.

I awoke around midnight, undiscovered, and possessed with an insatiable hunger. Creeping out of the hamper, I observed my neighbor's sleeping form. Cautiously, I approached the bed, and leaning down, carefully took a bite out of his ankle.

"What the heck are you doing?" he yelled, sitting upright in bed. Not wearing his contacts, Geoff couldn't recognize me, but was able to see enough to know that a grown man came out of his closet in a bedbug suit and was chewing on his leg. This was evidently something he was angry about.

Results: 0 fresh bites (suffered) + 1 fresh bite (inflicted) + 24 punches (suffered)

Day Seven: Symbiosis.

"Dan... wake up Dan..." a voice that was many voices called out to me.

"What? Who is it?" I asked, rousing myself awake. Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I realized I was lying on the bare floor of my room, surrounded by bed bugs. "What's going on here?"

"You're going insane," the bed bugs replied.

"Oh good. Do you think it's from eating nothing but poisoned food for the last week?"

"Food is tasty," the bed bugs observed. "You don't taste like food any more. We need food. Food is tasty."

I nodded. "It is." Thinking for a second, an idea came to me. "Say, bed bugs. I've just had a thought. What if I were to get you a steady supply of food?"

"Food is tasty," the bed bugs replied.

"Indeed. Here's my plan: You guys climb aboard me, and I'll give you a ride into people's rooms, and around bedding stores and such. All I ask in return is that when you're done feeding, you bring me back some Cheetos. I'm pretty sure you should be able to lift a Cheeto with a couple of you working together. That way you'll get all the food you'll need, and I'll have a never ending stream of Cheetos slowly marching towards my door. It's a classic win-win."

"Food is tasty," the bed bugs agreed, sealing the deal.

"THEN CLIMB ABOARD FRIENDS," I bellowed. "YOU SHALL SAIL THE SEAS OF GLORY, ABOARD ME, YOUR MAN-BUG SHIP OF HONOR!"

The Treaty was made, peace was observed.

Results: 0 fresh bites + 17 Cheetos (and counting)