Trains, Baseball, and a Victory in the War on Bullshit

Well, we're in Qufu now, and this is notable for a couple reasons. For one, Qufu is the first large city we've been in for a camp, which you'd think would mean there would be things to do around here. You would be completely wrong. It's the birthplace of Confucius, so it's super touristy, and we don't dare go to the tourist stuff, because we're pretty sure the school's going to take us there. Which brings me to the second notable point: Qufu marks our first victory in the wave of complete bullshit that marks the beginning of every camp. They wanted us to start classes at 8 instead of 8:30, do evening activities, and teach on our day off. Ben's our camp director for this trip, and he's leaving the country in 20 days, which puts him in the excellent position to be a huge dick at negotiations. Although we're teaching at 8AM, we don't have to work 12 hour days, and we maintain our day off. As a bonus, we get coffee at breakfast now! The only really bad things are that our room is about the size of my freshman dorm room with five guys in it, and we may have the grossest bathroom in the world. It's honestly worse than the one in Hebei. 

Oh, remember that train crash that happened here about a week back? We rode the same kind of train to get here, and let me tell you, it is very nice. Instead of the cramped spaces I have been used to on trains, we had comfortable seats and a bar car. The more that I travel by train here, the more that I like it. It's also stupid cheap. Our ticket from Inner Mongolia back to Beijing was less than $20. 

There's a store about a block down from the school that sells supplies and sporting goods. I bought a baseball bat and six tennis balls for 80 yuan, so we've been hitting balls, and I get to teach my kids how to play baseball. Anytime we hit, we attract a crowd, and I've already taught some kids how to hit. Their swings suck, but they're making contact, and that's what counts. Miles and I are going to teach our kids how to play, and then play a game against each other on the Soccer field here. I may have to record that.

Other than that, I have nothing much else to report. We have the opening ceremony this afternoon, and after that, we meet our kids for the camp. We have to assign them English names, so I'm just going to use names of family members. They're all eigth graders, so I'm worried about their English levels. We'll see what happens. If they get the damn Internet working in our room I should be able to Skype again soon.

-Cooper

Inner Mongolia->Austria->North Africa->Beijing

Well, I didn't think that I was going to have enough time in Beijing to shoot off an e-mail, but as it turns out, I have a whole six hours, which is enough to send e-mail AND go buy a new laptop bag (The strap on my eBags.com bag broke. Fuck you, eBags.) Our group splits up today, and some of them won't be coming back. I'm going to miss them, but, then again, I suppose once we get our placements I'll have to say goodbye to almost all of the group, so I might as well get used to my circle of Americans contracting.

The travel day in Inner Mongolia was every bit as weird as I was expecting it to be. We managed to go from China to Austria to North Africa in a day. That statement is going to need some explanation. We started off the day with the understanding that we would be visiting the grassland and the desert, although none of us knew what this meant. We got on the bus, knowing that we were in for at least a two and a half hour bus ride. As we moved away from the city, we found ourselves going through mountain valleys and through tiny villages. We were momentarily stopped when the road went right into a river that the locals reported "wasn't there yesterday". I'm not exactly sure how that happens, but I'm not going to question it. That was about an hour and a half into the trip. An hour later, windmills started popping up on the landscape, and we started to climb up the mountain. As an aside, I feel like I should talk about the windmills. The PROC wants to make Inner Mongolia a center of green power production, which is a delightful juxtaposition with all of the dirty coal that gets mined there. If what we saw was any indication, they may actually be making good on that goal. We must have seen over 300 windmills, all spinning merrily. The bus rounded a corner, and then, bam! Yurts, which are apparently the Inner Mongolian sign for tourist stop. We get out, and all around us is a beautiful alpine meadow full of wildflowers and tall grass. I rode a horse through a field and sheep were grazing everywhere. We walked through the field and back again, and I've never seen so many colors in a field. There's some pretty good photos in my album. We then had a lunch that consisted of some buns, a whole chicken, guts and all, and a bag of gizzards. As it turns out, gizzards are great, and trying to get the meat off of a whole chicken isn't. Tired from the hike through the field, almost everyone took a nap.

I awoke two hours later thinking that we'd be near the desert. I was completely wrong. We were still traveling the same road we took to get there, and we wouldn't get to the desert for another two hours. Following a stop at the worlds worst public bathroom, we arrived at the desert, and wouldn't you know it, there's more horses. I briefly tried to resist the temptation to ride, but they said it was 20 yuan to ride, and if I could do it while singing Horse With No Name, why the hell not? Well, you know how they said it was 20 yuan? As soon as I got off the horse, the price changed to 50. I did not have 50. He demanded all of the money in my wallet, and since I had about 35 yuan and $5 in it, I decided it wasn't worth arguing, and gave him my damn money and walked down the dunes. Dan had a different experience.

See, Dan had no intention to ride the horses, but the same guy that swindled me followed him, constantly pestering him to ride. Dan finally got so annoyed that he got on the horse just to shut him up, and soon found himself in the same boondoggle that I accepted minutes before. Dan was in no mood to deal with this shit, and refused to pay. He came back to the group to get someone to translate, and a shouting match ensued. It escalated, and then one of my favorite moments of the day happened. Jeff was a TA that had lived in America and could swear about as well as any of us, he is also a big kid. He heard about what was going on, and immediately took off running down a dune to the argument, yelling FUUUUCCCKKKK YOOUUUUU! at the top of his lungs. Following this, the headmaster of the school in Wu Dan, who looks like an Asian Dave Heins, said that we weren't paying anything, and we all got onto the bus. The bus took us to another set of yurts, where we were treated to a feast of lamb, but not the parts of lamb you would expect. Instead of, you know, meat, I ate liver, heart and tongue, and lord did I pay for it yesterday.

(WARNING: BUTT STUFF) I have always tried to avoid public toilets here, but sometimes, you can't really control it. Such was my plight yesterday, when I got off the bus 10 minutes away from the train station, and realized I was in a mission critical poop situation. I frantically found a bathroom and proceeded to make the most disgusting sensory stimuli I have ever created. Following this, I thought I was good. I... was... not. Five minutes down the road, I hit mission critical status again, and proceed to wreck another bathroom. This second bout was enough to get me to the train station (Another Aside: What is with communist countries and super ornate train stations?), where after a third ejection of what was effectively hot, putrid water from my butt, I was back to stable bowel status, and relaxed. Train ride was nothing worth noting, I slept for seven hours, and now I'm back in Beijing. Time to buy that bag.

-Cooper

One last blast from Inner Mongolia

Well, it's the last day of classes here at Wu Dan Number One Middle School, and it is a complete madhouse. Classes have dissipated into what can only be described as a non-sexual orgy of photographs and shirt signing. I just stepped out of the office to check up on things and was instantly the subject of about a hundred photos. Chinese people like to make fun of my signature. I was held hostage by Ish's class, and Miles is pleading with me to get him out of there. But this isn't the strangest things that have happened over the last two days. 

For one, I have guided this weird ship through the great rain crisis by completely screwing everything up. You see, we had planned to do a mini-Olympics on Monday, but rain decided to intervene. Not a big deal, I had a whole morning, so I made a Family Feud activity, genuine noises and everything. Well, as with everything else I've done here, I saved it to the CSETC folder on Logan's portable hard drive, and gave it back to him at lunch. Well, that last part was a bad idea, as he took it back to the hotel, and left it there. Flash forward to 3:30PM, where I found myself with no powerpoint, and no way to get it. Panic slowly sets in. Fortunately I still had all of the sheets from the cancelled Photo Scavenger Hunt activity, so I distributed them to the teachers and retreated to the office. The film festival the next day went much, much more smoothly.

Last night was a doozy of a time, too. Remember that bar I found? We decided to go back, because we havenothing else to do. Well, as it turns out, it's not a bar, it's a restaurant. We were wrong. The good news is that we brought along a TA to translate, and wound up eating a fantastic second dinner. While we were there, one of the employees heard us speaking English, and asked us if we'd go to her house to speak to her English students. In the spirit of "Why not?" that guides all of our actions, we went back to her house and chatted with her students and her about teaching English. The kids loved having all of us there, and it was good to talk slightly broken shop with another teacher. From there we went to the square, where we have become celebrities. We danced, we took photos with people, we laughed, and watched some really, really good break-dancing. Apparently globalization exports hip-hop culture reallt well. Who knew?

We have two days in Inner Mongolia after today, then it's off on a train odyssey to Qufu. I probably won't have internet for the next three days, but when I finally get the Internet, I'll have a ton of stories. Talk to you soon.

-Cooper

Save Ferris

 Yesterday I may have inadvertently participated in a Chinese remake of Ferris Beuler's Day Off. This story takes some explaining, so I'm going to have to go back a bit. You see, there's a main square in Wu Dan, and every night, people gather for what can be described as an outdoor combination of a carnival and a senior center. There's carnival rides around the outside, like a weird tilt-a-whirl thing and then there are old people dancing to drummers in the middle. There's also a town jumbotron that only plays videos of Asian men breakdancing. I don't get it either. We went there on Saturday, and wandered for a while, which was nice, and so tonight, at a loss for things to do on our off day, we decided to go back. Yesterday, there was a stage set up, and various people performed in different ways. I watched a man fit through a foot and a half wide metal hoop, and then break a metal chain with his chest. This was fun for a bit, but I soon got the urge to move around, and I soon found Miles. We wandered down the road, and I continued a mission that I've been on since arriving in Inner Mongolia: finding a bar, any bar.

I tried to find one Saturday when wandering around with the group near the square, but I was completely unsuccessful, and began to believe that bars don't exist here. We wandered down the road, found some really expansive construction, and not much else, and turned back to the square. Instead of going back to the square, we took a turn and walked down a different street. Going past what seemed like a brothel (prices posted outside, nondescript waiting room), we saw some bright neon signs, and figured why not. We got there, and thought it was just a restaurant, but gave it a shot anyway. As it turns out, bars look like restaurants here. We got two giant beers for 7 yuan (about a dollar), and quickly drunk them because time was running out to get back to the square, doing our best to answer the staff's questions about us. The waitresses kept giggling at us, but I'm not sure if they thought we were cute, or just kinda dirty.

When we got back to the square, we discovered that the remaining teachers were being mobbed by people wanting photos. We're kind of inadvertent celebrities here. The plan was to have everyone go to the bar for a drink, but we were soon sidetracked when it was discovered that one of Alejandra's students was going to be singing on the stage soon. When we arrive at the stage, we're pulled to the front, where we watch for a bit, then I was pulled aside by Alejandra's student and asked a simple question “Would you guys sing a song?” I talked to everyone, and the answer is a big yes, but with a problem: none of us know a song to sing. I thought about this problem, and remembered that my phone was in my pocket. I flipped through the songs on it, and I realized that most people in the group would know Brown Eyed Girl. The thing is, nobody except me and Logan knew the words.

We decided that we'd just go up and sing it, because it was getting to be time to take the stage. We got up there, and I hit play on my phone. As the intro played, every teacher was pulled up to the stage. Me and Logan sang/lipsynced, and everyone else danced. Apparently my Van Morrison impression is part Van, part David Byrne in Stop Making Sense, and part Joe Cocker. Rachel took photos, I'll get them up sometime soon. Dan pulled the pretty woman who was acting as MC up and danced with her, and everyone else did whatever they felt was appropriate. The crowd went apeshit. The whole thing felt like the Twist and Shout scene in Ferris Beuler, but in the middle of Inner Mongolia. We were given a bag of free soap for our performance. The bag was shared among the group.

But that's not the only weird thing that's happened over the past 48 hours, in fact it's far from it. We had all of yesterday off, and following a morning of sleeping in, everybody decided to use the afternoon to explore Wu Dan. Miles and I decided to take a right out of the gate of our hotel, and just keep walking. We soon came to a place where a bridge over a stream should have been, but there was no bridge, and the stream was mostly industrial runoff. Deciding that we'd come this far, we crossed the stream, and climbing the bank of this weird runoff river, we found ourselves in what I would consider to be the rough part of town. Except we didn't realize it was the rough part of town when we first got there. In fact, it seemed to be a slightly more rural version of Wu Dan, but slowly the signs came to us. The shops were all gone, replaced by garages and places selling obscure equipment and electronics. Trash was everywhere, and the smell was markedly worse than before. The big sign for us was that nobody was smiling back at us, or really going anything other than glaring. Did that stop us? Hell no. We walked all the way to the edge of town, and back again. We really didn't have anything better to do. We crossed the river intact and unharmed, and roamed about town some more, although none of that is really of note.

Moving backwards in time, I discovered on Saturday that organizing a water balloon fight with 175 teenagers is not a good idea, especially if it's damn near impossible to communicate with them. There were supposed to be four games, and I explained the way that the games worked beforehand. However, I counted on two things, them paying attention and sturdy water balloons, that turned out to be things that I should not have counted on. The first game went well, baring some disorganization. They filled the water bottles up, and everything went well. The second game saw the introduction of the water balloon, and, well, you probably shouldn't leave overly full water balloons out in the sun. They almost always broke on contact, which made them nearly unthrowable. The second event ended in a draw. Playing steal the bacon worked well with them, and everyone cheered and had a good time. However, when it came to the final event, an actual water balloon fight, things fell apart, and the fight was over in about two minutes. Oh well. We closed off the day by lining up all the students for a photo, and instead of taking a photo, we just dumped water on all of them from a balcony. Classic summer camp prank.

I was supposed to run a mini-Olympics today, but it's raining, so I'm off to figure out something to do inside. I'm thinking Family Feud.

-Cooper

Of Fallen Man-Princesses and Smiling Foreigner Time

Sorry I didn't send anything yesterday, I didn't really have all that much to say, and I suppose I don't have much to say now, either. I'm entirely self-supervised here, and in a lot of ways, I'm running the entire camp. I make sure everyone gets where they need to be, do the schedule for classes, and prepare the afternoon events. That represents almost all of the camp, but even all of that isn't enough to keep me busy for seven hours a day. It's odd, because at the last camp in QuZhou, it seemed like there wasn't enough time in the day for Logan to get everything done, but I suppose that can be attributed to the sheer chaos that was Hebei, where the school would just randomly veto activities and insist he come up with something new on the spot. Plus, people are happier here, and that makes things easier. It also seems like the lack of things to do isn't limited to us. I was just upstairs printing some things, and I remembered that every time I'm up there, all the staff is doing is smoking and playing Warcraft III.

Maybe it's the sun coming out and heat returning to Hebei-esque levels, or maybe it's the six days of class in a row, but either way, discipline is slipping. Am I complaining? Not at all. All of the kids are having fun, and the teachers are relaxed, and they're all speaking English more and more. Besides, I'm not here to discipline people, I'm just here to make sure the trains run on time. All of the students made, or are making videos for our film festival at the end of the camp. The only one I've seen so far is the one Miles's class made, and it centers around a cross dressing ancient princess and his/her pursuit of a mysterious man in a bathroom. It's definitely one for Facebook once I get it edited. We're doing what is more or less a big water balloon fight this afternoon, which should go well with the rising mercury. We have the day off tomorrow to lay around and waste away in a WuDan hotel room. I'm hoping very hard that Niona will take us out to explore around town. Either way, I think that all of the teachers are going to make a run to the supermarket, get some drinks, and all hang out as a group, something that we haven't really done ever, which is kind of surprising. Oh, and wave out the window at Chinese people time has a name now: “Smiling Foreigner Time”. It's caught on like wildfire, and the van drivers are actively encouraging us to do it. I think I may try to say things to them in German this afternoon. I'm off the Internet tomorrow, so I'll write more on Monday.

-Cooper

Blog Update

Hey everyone, sorry if you're subscribed and just got a ton of e-mail, I've been neglecting this corner of the Internet, and I decided to get it up to speed. I'm hoping to keep it updated for the rest of my trip, so look forward to more. All of the photos are on my Facebook account.

-Cooper

I'm Big in Inner Mongolia

Today marks the first day that we've seen the sun in Inner Mongolia, and it's strange to have some sort of idea of cardinal directions. What I had once supposed to be south is actually west, and I feel like I have some sense of direction for the first time here. I was interviewed by a local TV crew yesterday, and because I'm not teaching here, I was completely unqualified to answer any of the questions, so I lied through my teeth and told them what I thought they wanted me to say, which I suppose is no different from most TV interviews. They had three questions: what do you think of the city, how are the students, and what are you getting from the students as a teacher.

Question number one was unanswerable because outside of chaperoned trips to the supermarket, we aren't allowed to leave the hotel to wander around and explore the meager looking shops that line the streets here because it's “too dangerous”. Having seen the kind of crowd we draw whenever we leave the hotel, I can see why leaving could be considered dangerous, although the crowds seem more fascinated by foreigners than dangerous. Niona thinks that most of them have never seen a foreigner before, and they bombard us with questions that none of us can understand as they circle around us. Questions two and three would have been better answered by an actual teacher at this camp, as I have had very little contact with the students, outside of running the afternoon activities and giving a speech that nobody in the audience understood at the beginning of the camp. I rather liked my speech.

We don't have the Internet on our laptops today because all of the internets are being used by frantic Chinese students applying for colleges in a frenzy. There's a whole lot of students that are very driven, either from within or by their parents, to get into the top colleges around the world. The weird thing is, I don't think that they're applying to colleges based on the quality of the education that they will be receiving, I think they're doing it by brand name. China loves brand names, and that seems to carry over to colleges. I read an article today that talked about brand loyalty in China, and there were several people quoted as caring more about the brand name of a product than its quality or benefits, and you can see that reflected in their drive for colleges. They all seem to want to go to Harvard or Yale, or some other big name school. As an example, the name of the camp we're teaching is the Oxbridge and Ivy League English Summer Camp, although and is spelled ane on our shirts. Thanks, Chinese t-shirt factory, I'm glad to see our 2 RMB (About 15 cents) per shirt bought us quality!

Going to the supermarket is an interesting experience. You know how people complain about salespeople in American stores being overbearing and kind of pushy in asking you if you need help? I miss that. Instead of asking, products are just kind of pushed on you in the most helpful seeming manner possible. And this isn't just a few people that you can try to avoid, or push onto some other unlucky shopper, there are probably more store employees than shoppers present at any given time. It's madness, and I would just like to shop for snacks in peace, thank you.

Other than all of that, the only other notable thing I've done is sit around the room and watch MST3K episodes with Miles while drinking gigantic Chinese beers that taste exactly like Heineken. I'm running a gigantic game of The Price is Right this afternoon, so I'm going to have to remind everyone to spay and neuter their pets, and hope that the last person doesn't perpetually guess one dollar. I'm bringing my webcam every day, so hopefully Skype will be a possibility soon. Oh, the name of the Inner Mongolian town we're in is Wu Dan, see if you can find anything about it on the Internet, I haven't really looked.

-Cooper

On Accidentally Violating Chinese Time Travel Laws

July 19th

        Well, the camp at Inner Mongolia has officially opened, and as a coordinator, I have already inadvertently violated Chinese law once. You see, yesterday's activity was supposed to be a photo scavenger hunt, where the classes all go out and take photos around campus, but half an hour before it was supposed to start, the rain started. I scrambled to find something to do, and then I got an idea: “Well, if they're going to be making movies later, we can just show them a movie to get them thinking about movies!” The plan was great, except I had nothing subtitled in Chinese. I talked to Niona, the CSETC employee that came with us on this trip, and she had a copy of Disney's Meet the Robinsons with Chinese subtitles. Awesome, problem solved. Well, problem solved until halfway through the film, when time travel happens. You see, in an attempt to stave off historical revisionism, China banned all time travel movies a couple of weeks back, and here we were watching time travel. Whoops! But nobody raised the issue, and I haven't been arrested yet, so I'm hopeful that I'll get away with this one. If I don't I'll plead ignorance about the content of the film, which I was ignorant of.

        Other than that, things are pretty good here. The food is great, I get a hot shower every morning, and Miles and I have taken up drinking tea whenever we are in our hotel room. I gave a speech to everyone yesterday, and successfully guided us through the opening ceremony without incident. Well, there was one, but it wasn't anything I had to do with. Most of our opening ceremony involves a guitar. Melissa sings Our Song by Taylor Swift, Miles does Everybody's Talkin', I do El Paso, and Logan finishes it off with I'm Good Now, and everyone is impressed. But before the opening ceremony, the TAs borrowed the guitar, and broke the G string, so we wound up with a very hollow sounding guitar. We're going to get new strings when we get back to Beijing.

        It feels like we're all foreign dignitaries here in a way. We stay in a hotel, isolated from everyone else, we're driven to and from the school by three vans twice a day (We've taken up waving to the locals from the van windows, they seem to like it), people crowd around us whenever we go outside of the hotel, and we seem to get special treatment wherever we go. It's pretty neat, but I can't help but feel slightly guilty about it.

        As camp director, I'm running a fashion show today, and camp is in session for the next five days. I'm really afraid I'm going to run out of things to do. I've already worked out the schedule for the entire camp, and if I'm productive today, I think I can get all of the activities done by the end of the day, leaving me with nothing to do at all, except wander around the halls and hope someone somewhere needs help with something. If they get the Internet working for us, I'll probably be on it quite a bit. Maybe we can Skype, although that seems unlikely.

-Cooper

The Great Khan Told me to Post This

July 17th

        Well, it's been a crazy 48 hours. Between 5AM on July 16th, 2011 and 9AM on July 17th, 2011, I spent 15 hours on a train, 5 and a half hours on a bus, and at least three hours waiting on the transportation to arrive, depart or figuring out where in the hell the transportation was. (The finding was mostly buses. Poor communication seems to be the norm here in China.). But that's not where my adventures for this e-mail start. No, in order to fully tell the story, we have to go back further, back to just after I sent my last e-mail. You see, when I sent that I was under the impression that we would be taking a bus to Handan to buy snacks and such. 

        We did not go to Handan, something that became apparent to me when the bus headed south instead of north as soon as we left the compound. At this point, I said to myself “Oh, that's no big deal, we're just going to the closer town, we can just buy things there.” However, as we continued though the town, narrowly avoiding several traffic accidents, this seemed to no longer be the case, and when we took a turn down an alleyway that was nearly too small for the bus, and took a left turn into a cornfield, we all knew that something had changed, and an eerie chatter descended on the bus. We soon discovered that we were going to be visiting some sort of tomb, although whose tomb was not mentioned. We also discovered that the path through the corn that the bus had taken was not sufficient for bus travel, so we turned around, headed for parts unknown.

        After about ten minutes of bus travel we stopped in the same corn field, about five hundred feet from where we had turned around, and departed the bus, walking down an even narrower path through the corn. Our destination was not given, and soon we began to joke that they were simply doing this so they could kill us all. Jokes have gotten dark around here. After a hike of about half a mile, we stopped by a bunch of mounds of dirt, and it was explained to us that one of these was the burial mound of the Chinese Juliet. Apparently this is popular folklore of the Hebei region, but none of us really cared, we were all kind of annoyed that our plans had changed to go see a pile of dirt. All of the employees from the school were very excited, so we faked enthusiasm. At least we got to see something that I highly doubt many westerners had seen: a pile of dirt with bones in it. 

        Following this, we loaded ourselves onto the bus and went back to the surprisingly active town of Quzhou. Everyone got far more snacks than they really needed, because it just felt so good to be able to buy things again. Actually, this is one of my major observations from the camp at Quzhou: It wasn't the crappy living conditions, or the students that were significantly below the level we thought they would be at that brought down the morale of the group, it was the lack of freedom to go places other than the compound that brought down morale. I think that we as Americans enjoy our freedom without thinking about it, and when that freedom is stripped from us, it annoys us more than we can really tell. That hypothesis will be tested here in Inner Mongolia. I'll report back with the results. On the bus back to the compound, a snack attack of unprecedented proportions occurred through the group. “Oh, check this out, it's prawn flavored!” “Hey, these cookies are great!” “Can I try some of that?” Everyone was positive for the first time in a long time, and as such, everyone had fun. We all got back, packed up, and went to bed, after all, we had to wake up at 4 AM the next day.

        If you have never woken up at 4 AM to catch a 7 AM train, let me tell you that it feels like the worst bullshit in the world. Most of us couldn't keep our eyes open for the bus ride, and I was most definitely one of them. Fortunately, I'm pretty adept at sleeping on transportation, and so I was lights out to Handan. Remember the last train ride I had, where it was too crowded to even move? This was kind of the opposite of that. I got to the front of the line, and moved as quickly as I could to get to the train, which turned out to not be a problem, the train was barely oversold, and I was able to store my luggage in the overhead rack. Score! The only disturbance in my travels was the fact that I had gotten the only ticket that wasn't with anyone from CSETC, which turned out to not be a problem at all. I popped in my headphones, and very quickly discovered the secret to a successful train ride: alcohol. We all bought little bottles of Jing wine from the supermarket in Quzhou, and as soon as the train started moving, I started into mine, drinking about a third of it over the course of the five hour ride. I'm pretty sure it's mostly ginseng. Either way, the time flew by, and I stared off into the Chinese countryside.

        Speaking of which, it's time for my second soapbox of this e-mail: If anyone says that China will be the only global superpower any time in the next twenty to thirty years, they have never taken a train through the Chinese countryside. Certainly the cities are modern, with big shiny buildings, and well developed infrastructure that seems to indicate that China has this whole development thing figured out, but that really ends with the cities. Most of the countryside seems to still be stuck in the 1950's, if not even earlier than that. Mechanization of farming seems to be nearly non-existent, farmers with scythes reap the crops, and fertilizer is delivered by hand. Crumbling brick walls are everywhere, and the roads are poorly maintained at best. Don't get me wrong, things are improving. You can't scan the horizon without seeing at least a handful of construction cranes, but it's going to take a pretty long time to get the country to catch up with the cities. I kind of doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. But enough of my IPE nonsense, the adventure doesn't stop!

        We returned to Beijing to find that we had way less time than we thought we did, we couldn't find the bus, and that there was a pizza party for us to attend. The time thing was a bummer, I was going to buy some speakers, the bus was found after about a half an hour of frantic phone calls, and that Chinese pizza is odd, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Also, while we were in Beijing, we got great news: we would be spending all of the Inner Mongolia trip in a hotel, which is where I am now. We all changed out our old clothes for some new ones, and hopped on the bus to the train yard for our second train ride of the day.

        We avoided the crowding problem thanks to a kind old station hand that let us on the train early for reasons that were not clear to us (We were white people). Let me be the first person to say that sleeper cars rule. I got a bed that was way nicer than the one I had spent a week on, we all got to sit together, share music, drink the rest of our Jing wine and generally horse around while watching the mountains out of the window. All of this was The Best. Once 9PM rolled around, we all turned in for bed, as we had to be up and off the train by three thirty AM, an even more insane hour than we had to the day prior. But the insanity was just beginning.

        Rolling out of bed was way easier than any of us thought it would be, despite the fatigued silence that ensued following it. We quickly transferred from train to bus, and following a speech by one of the employees of the school at Inner Mongolia, I fell back to sleep, waking up every now and then to flashes of strange landscapes that I didn't really want to decode. I slept for two more hours and when I woke up, I was informed by Logan that we had passes the town that we were supposed to be going to an hour ago, and nobody but the driver had any idea where we were going. This should have shocked me, but after just two weeks in this place, nothing's shocking to me when it comes to plans changing, or anything else really. (Side note: One of our TAs in Hebei woke up the night before we left with the head of a bird stuck to his shorts, along with its blood. Apparently the bird had flown into the ceiling fan during the night, as its body laid limply on the floor. Nobody was shocked by this. This is what China does to you). After about fifteen minutes, everything started to look kinda like what I think Scotland looks like: green rocky mountains, sheep grazing, mist everywhere. Then, we pulled over a hill, and saw a bunch of yurts. Yes, yurts. Well, yurts, drummers, dancers, people in costume and a giant gate.

        As you would expect, everyone's reaction to this was a whole lot of what the fuck. One of our handlers from the school told us that we needed to go up and receive scarves from them, so, as group leader I was forced to the front. Once I was in place, the drums started, the trumpets blared, and the gates opened to reveal someone who I suppose was supposed to be the Great Khan. He gave some sort of speech in what I think was Mongolian, and walked up to me. One of his assistants poured something into a cup, and gestured for me to drink it. It was more wine, which I happily drank. That's right, I've drank before noon two days in a row. I'm not proud, but I have to do what the Great Khan tells me to do. After the wine, they adorned me with a ceremonial cloth, and proceeded to repeat the action for the rest of the group. Once that ceremony was over, the feast began. We were seated at the biggest lazy susan I have ever seen in my life, and were served all sorts of different food. My favorite was the sheep. Keep in mind it's not 8 AM yet, and none of us have slept well in two days, so the whole thing is super surreal. I got some great photos, and PaNhia got a video of the whole ceremony. Both will be up on Facebook ASAP. Following the dinner, we got on the bus, and were driven an hour across what looked like a combination of desert, the Australian outback, and the Italian countryside all at once. We got to whatever city we're in right now, and discovered that the road the hotel was on is no longer there, so all of us had to lug all of our bags down a dirt road-ish thing (I'm assuming itt'l be a new road soon) to the hotel, which completely stopped everything that was going on along side this non-road, because, hey, white people!

        The hotel's pretty nice, and I got the first hot shower I've had in about a week. Right now we're just killing time before dinner, and we don't have Internet yet, so I'm just writing this as a Word document. By the time I have Internet, I'll probably have about a page more to add, but for now, I've been writing for over an hour and three cups of green tea. Wish me luck on leading the group, and pray that Ish's butt stops leaking blood, because that's a very real problem right now.

Leaving on a gross note,

-Cooper

Ish's Hospital Adventure

Another day, another e-mail sent out after lunch. Everyone that once was sick is now better, and man oh man do I have a slightly vulgar story for you from their trip to the Chinese hospital. So, as it turns out, the reason why Ish was pooping blood was because he had hemorrhoids, and he knew about them. So they all get to the hospital, and it's even less sanitary than the camp. They take him in to a little room, and the proceed to probe him anally three times. After the second time, he exclaimed "Ni-How!", and everyone in the place cracked up, including the doctor, who responded with "Ni-How!", and shoved the probe in a third time, hitting him right on the prostate, causing him to get an erection in front of god and everyone. We will never let him live that one down. If China has done one thing, it has cemented my distaste for kids even more. My students bring their kids into class, because where the hell else would they take them? They're good when I'm teaching, but they're kind of little monsters come activity time. Oh, and one of them insisted on giving me a hug and a kiss repeatedly with his penis hanging out of his shorts. Not cool. The closing ceremony was today. It went way too long, but I did get to sing El Paso for some Communist Party bigwigs. They loved it. Also, the Carpenters are really, really big here, which was a very surprising revelation. Oh, and I got my class to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and it sounded like a bunch of cats. There's video on the Facebook. We're only stuck in this hell hole for another day and a half, and the relief is palpable, even from Bonnie. Logan said in his speech today that she was the reason we all were here, which is true, because we all would have jumped ship without her working endlessly to improve things. It's going to be really good to get back to Beijing, even if it is for a few hours. We're going to the old town tomorrow, although I don't really know what that means, then going to a city to buy lunch for the train. I think we all might buy some cheap Chinese booze and do some early morning train drinking, because why not? We've all put up with enough crap. I'll know about if we're getting paid (I didn't ask because Bonnie had enough stress in her life yesterday), and about Inner Mongolia tomorrow. TTFN!

Quzhou, Hebei again

July 13th

Well, I just taught my last class at this camp, which, because I'm the coordinator for Inner Mongolia, means that I've taught my last class for about two weeks. i taught about Minnesota today, going over geography, the plight of Native Americans, and teaching them how to say Oof-Da and Youbetcha. That last part was pretty fun, and they figured it out pretty quickly. Every class has to do something for the closing ceremony tomorrow, so I taught mine Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and you know what? They can't quite get the pronunciation of peanuts correct. I'm totally going to have someone record video of it tomorrow, it may be hilarious. Oh, a kid puked in my class yesterday, that was fun. The students cleaned it up quickly. Two of the program members went to the hospital today. Rachel was puking constantly, and Ish was pooping blood, and looked like he was going to pass out. We don't know what's wrong with them yet. The shower's working now, so I'm clean-ish, which is neat. we woke up with a finch in our room, and no clue how it got there, went outside pretty easily, though. Oh, and a disturbing rumor has swept through camp. Apparently we might not be getting paid for the summer camps, although that is unconfirmed. Apparently they consider this volunteer work, and if that's the case, it's complete bullshit. I'm asking Bonnie about that tonight, I'll report back with news tomorrow. The more time I spend int his school, the more it gives me the Hebei Jeebies as we've been calling them. Apparently the school is brand new, but it also shows serious signs of wear and tear throughout. Everything's super dirty, there are a ton of empty classrooms, and most of the classrooms that have things in them seem like they're just setups. Art classrooms with art but no materials, and completely unused computer labs. Seriously weird stuff. The officials come tomorrow, and we're half-plotting ways to make them do embarrassing stuff, like the Cha-Cha slide. The day after tomorrow we're touring the old city, which will either be interesting, or completely awful, I'll have to wait and see which. Hope for the best for Ish and Rachel, I'll have photos of this place up when I can get my hands on a cable, I left mine in Beijing.

-Cooper

More Letters from Hebei

In the interest of honesty and transperency, I have included my letter from July 10th. It's a bleak letter, and things have gotten slightly better, so don't let it alarm you too much.

July 10th

Hey everyone! As you're aware, we are not exacty where we had expected to be, pr in the kind of conditions that we would have wanted, and things just kinda keep getting worse. All of the teachers that we are teaching know even less English than we thought they would, and that's cause everyone to more or less scrap their lesson plans for the trip, and we're more or less improvising everything that we're teaching. I haven't showered for three days now, and the roof of the shower caved in overnight. This means that my lack of showering is no longer a personal choice, and may become a health concern before the trip is over. There is't potable water, and bottled water is hard to find. There's no store to go to anywhere near here, and even if there was, we wouldn't be able to go. Why? Well, the police came last night and said that we should do everything we can to not make our presence known. The school generally isn't open in summer, and if the locas found out that there were foreigners here, they would probably try to rob/murder us, which is a huge bummer. None of the staff members from CSETC knew it was going to be like this, and Bonnie, the woman who is on our trip, cried yesterday because of how bad/unexpected things are. Want to know what the real kicker is? I was talking to my TA yesterday, and she's under the impression that the camp in Inner Mongolia is going to be even worse, a concept that none of us can even begin to fathom. We're holding a meeting tonight to figure out what to do about this, and there's talk of some kind of mutiny in the air in the dorms. I'm pretty certain that they're completely in violation of their contract right now, so that's an option. My major worry is that if they didn't know and sent us into this, what will happen when I get my teaching assignment? Nobody knows anything, and that only makes it worse. I feel bad for Bonnie. She means so wel in everything that she does, and she's trying herdamndest to make things better. We have two nice watermellons sitting in our room thanks to her, but nothing to cut them with. We'll figure that out tonight. I pooped into a hole today, and it went better than I expected. Expect similarily depressing e-mails until the situation improves. I drempt about home last night lying on a bamboo mat, and I woke up wishing I could contract malaria to give myself a way out of Hebei provience. I've spend much of today trying to think of ways to get a discharge from the program, so it's kind of like I'm in the army. I miss all of you so much.

-Cooper

July 11th

Happy birthday, Bea! I wish I could be there to celebrate. Eat more cake for me! We're back at camp, and I'm currently on my overly long lunch break. Being able to stay at the hotel for a night was nice, but all it really did for me was miss not being here even more. I contacted Julie at the internship office, and she responded quite quickly, I'm going to work with her via e-mail to see what our options are. At the very least I've decided that I'm going to switch to a one semester contract no matter what, as it will keep me from having to go do summer camps again, and apparently they're just fine with switching, so I'm going to be home sooner than a year. It's been a hard choice for me to make, as it feels like I'm kind of failing at what I came here to do, but it's a good example of how much things suck around here. We're going to hold off on making any other decisions until we see how things are in Inner Mongolia. We always say that it can't get worse, and yet it always seems to. It's not that any of us are not enjoying the experence, every point of my trip outside of our bizarre imprisonment in The Compound as we've been calling it, has been amazing, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I just don't trust the program anymore, and I'd rather not have to go through something like this again. Logan had an interesting observation yesterday: we're here as status symbols, not as teachers. We're their sports cars. Everyone at the school loves to take their photos with us, and they kind of parade us around like trophies, it's really strange. Teaching keeps getting easier, although I'm teaching nothing of what I wanted to. I taught them how to ask questions today, that's the level they're at. We have three more days, and then it's off to Inner Mongolia, where they haven't told us what city we're going to, which makes me pretty nervous. There was more gunfire this morning, or at least it richochets around the empty buildings like gunfire, I doubt I'll even know what it is, but I also don't really want to know. We'll see how Inner Mongolia is. I love you guys.

-Cooper

July 12th

Hey everyone! Morale around here has improved significantly, and classes are going better than I had expected. The improvement in morale can be attributed to the slow effects of time wearing down our defenses to the absurd, and the fact that the gatekeeper has decided that selling ice cream and cold water out of his house would be a great business decision. He was completely right. I taught my students about American music today, and they were very responsive. I played Down in the Flood by the Derek Trucks Band, Midnight Moonlight by Old and In the Way, Giant Steps by John Coltrane, Let it Ride by Ryan Adams, and Rocks Off by The Rolling Stones. Every song was enjoyed, although the most popular was Ryan Adams by a wide margin. One middle aged teacher said that it was sweet and beautiful, which is a compliment that I wish I could send him. The schedule for this camp keeps changing. Now we're doing the closing ceremony in the morning of the 14th, which means I have to teach less. A plus! The bad part is that it's all for a bunch of local Communist Party officials, which means there's going to be photos of me with them, so I can no longer run for president. Teaching continues to get easier, and Bonnie's doing her best to keep spirits up. The food here is way better than in Beijing, and I think I might actually be gaining weight, which is odd. There were flashlights in the trees last night, and everyone got a little freaked out, but nothing bad happened. My students asked a lot of questions about family yesterday, and I almost cried thinking about missing Bea's birthday more than once. I was also asked repeatedly if I have a girlfriend, I think I may start lying about that one. We got word last night from the head of CSETC that this camp should be as bad as it gets, but because of the word should, I'm skeptical. Got an e-mail back from the Internship office telling us to suck it up. I'm not sure they know how bad it once was here. Oh well, we just have three more days, and then it's off on another train adventure! I figured out how to get my laptop up on the Internet, so expect more photos from here tomorrow, when I'll grab my camera cable out of my bag. Things seem to be better, so worry less! We'll see how Inner Mongolia is when we get there.

-Cooper

Letter From a Ghost Suburb in Hebei Provence

July 9th

Holy fucking shit have I ever had a weird 24 hours. It's a pretty linear narriative, so I'm just going to go in order, and everything should make the most sense. We left the school in Beijing around 12:30 on a bus, which was suprisingly comfortable, and air conditioned. We got on the highway, and things promptly came to a screeching halt. As we slowly crawled down the interstate, Logan made an important observationabout Chinese traffic that requires me to explain a little bit about traffic in Beijing. Never in my life have I been so completely calm and accepting around traffic that obviously wants nothing more than to detroy me. As we left the stand that we got lunch at, both Logan and I had to jump out of the way of a van making a 30mph left and turn at a red light. In a normal situation, I would have been shook up, but in China I just laughed and kept on walking. Anyway, what Logan said was that traffic here behaves like pedestrians; everyone goes where theres space, with complete disregard for the flow of motion. It took us half an hour to get three blocks, and folowing several snags of this variety, we made it to the train station.

We arrived pretty early, and because of this, we all had to huddle around in a circle for an hour. We had a guitar, and we entertained ourselves and several chinese people by playing any song we knew, regardless of content. This is how I ended up singing The Best Ever Death Metal Band to several little Chinese girls. None of them seemed to care about the content. After way too much of this nonsense, we boarded the train, and everyone got a big suprise. See, when everyone said that teains were going to be crowded, I though that it was going to be airplane crowded. It...was...not. Apparently you can buy standing room only tickets on trains here, and if someone doesn't show up for their seat, you can sit, so I boarded the subway-crowded train to find a man in my seat. After a bunch of yelling and me showing my ticket, I gothim out of my seat, focing him into the asile, along with many other people. Miles was less lucky. He discovered that someone had used his overhead storage space, and had to keep all of his bags on him. This left me with the guitar on my lap for the journey. Following some more shuffling and yeling, the ride began.

Riding a train through China is an odd experence. There are three kinds of sights: Farm land, cities, and what I can only describe as a kind of waste, which looks like the bottom of an old riverbed, which has dried up and has been replaced with scrub grass. Sometimes there's sheep or cattle, but mosty there isn't. All of these things are interspersed with weird industrial pockets, power plants, odd factories, and construction. Construction seems to be a constant. I saw more construction cranes than I could count, and it's all very high apartment buildings, hundreds of them dotting the landscape, sometimes in the middle of nowhere. The ride lasts for five hours, and we were all pretty excited to get off the cramped train.

This is where the strange really takes over. We get off the train in some generic large city, and boarded a bus. We were told the ride was going to take an hour, which should have been a tip off that something odd was afoot, but we continued on blindly. We got on a highway, and headed out of town. Chinese highways are like Mexican highways. They're dark, narrow, and you really don't have a sense of direction on them. After a loing voyage, we pulled off the interstate in the middle of nowhere, and headed down the road. As we drove through the dark, what can only be described as a cheap knockoff of an American suburb popped up out of nowhere, and we turned in. I said, "If the school is here, I'll eat my hat". Guess what? There was the school. Hat eaten.

As we filed off the bus, many dead eyed Chinese laborers crowded the gate, giving the scene a Children of the Corn feel. We lugged our stuff through the dead of night into what felt like a prison cafeteria, had some really good cake and a bowl of warm whole milk, and were escorted to our rooms. Remember how bad our rooms were in Beijing? these are worse. One room in a building that looks like it may have been a barrack once, 8 bunks, mosquito nets on all the beds, and washbasins, because our rooms don't have running water. There are two showers in the same room for all 30 people, and the toilets are slits in a concrete slab with a big pit underneath them. Everyone freaks out. There's a wall next to our building with broken glass on top to keep people out, and there's this eerie sense of fear everywhere. Attempting to make the best of the situation, all of the guys decided to treat it like a summer camp. I'm probably going to shower once in this next week, despite the fact that all I do is sweat here, and we're all just going to have to work through it.

The good news is that it's much better in the daylight, and everyone here seems to be really happy that we're here, and wiling to learn. We'll see where we're all at tomorrow. We meet our students today, and we teach tomorrow. Let's hope I don't flop. How are things back home? It goes without saying that I miss it right now.

-Cooper

On Meeting an Old Friend in Beijing

July 8th

Hey all, we completed our training yesterday, although I feel like I am in no way qualified to teach. Our train leaves in six hours, and i'm super excited for the five hour ride, even though I shouldn't be. It's going to be hot, smelly and crowded, which I suppose is no different from the rest of China. I met up with Betsy last night for dinner. All day I was thinking that it was so weird that I could be so far from home but still able to meet up with an old friend, and the exact same thing was the first thing out of her mouth when we met outside the subway stop. Oh, about subways: they're really crowded after 5PM. I thought the photos of people being crammed in with baggage carts was infrequent, but it's very much not, as I discovered last night on the red line. Betsy and I went out to a dumpling place and had some delightful food, dumplings, mushrooms and pears in this blueberry sauce that tasted like wine. Positively delightful. Had to catch a cab to get home before curfew, but it was completely worth it.

One thing I've been meaning to discuss is my culture shock, or complete lack thereof. Language hasn't been that much of a problem, and if I want to, I can make it feel kinda like home. I've gotten around on the subway just fine, and I haven't felt any different than I do when I'm home. Plus, American goods and brands are ubiquitous here. It's possible that when we go out away from Beijing that the other shoe is going to drop and I'm going to be completely thrown, but I'm not sure that going to be the case, or at least I hope it isn't. I'll know later today when I go to a 'small city' of 2.4 million people on a five hour train ride. 

The people that we're teaching at this camp aren't kids, they're teachers, which is going to make for an odd dynamic. I'll be fine, I've dealt with flop sweat before, and lord knows I'm going to have to deal with it again. More when I'm able, I think we're going to have our hands full.

-Cooper

July 7th

Hey everyone that my parents have started forwarding this e-mail to (and Mom, Dad and Bea)! Went to a street market last night in an alleyway and watched a bunch of people from the group eat freshly fried scorpions. I decided against this culinary adventure, but I did have lamb from a street vendor today, it was delicious and fried right in front of me for 5 yuan. A good lunch for less than a dollar! Prices here are all completely insane. I've spent less than 200 yuan since I got here, and that's about thirty dollars. The $800 that I'll be getting per month is going to go a hell of a long way here. Oh, another thing about the market: salespeople are aggressive. I got into a tug of war with my own arm and a woman that really wanted me to buy her trinkets, and at least three other people form my group had the same thing happen throughout the market.

Group morale is low right now. We all start teaching in two days, and nobody is ready for it, myself included. I'm hiding it well, although a few people completely floundered in front of the class. Everyone has assumed that the kids know more English than they do, and it's causing problems. I'm going to adjust my lesson plans accordingly, but I'm worried it won't be enough. I suppose I may have to just wing it, or let them stare dejectedly at their desks as I attempt to explain the Minnesota State Fair. I'm sure I'll come out just fine, and I get to sing El Paso during the opening ceremony. Score! I'm leading the group when we go to Inner Mongolia, so I won't have to teach, but will spend my days coordinating everything. It fills me with a false sense of importance that I find comforting.

Every day I get more and more comfortable with the space that I'm living in. I know how to get around the city fairly well, or at least my neck of the woods, and I've already shed my Minnesotan politeness when going on the subway. I haven't been able to see the sky through the smog since I got here, and it's been sticky humid every day. My skin has never looked better, at least when I'm not sweating buckets. We're going to bar trivia at the same ex-pat bar we went to on the 4th. I think we're going to do pretty well. They fixed our shower head, but I also have to hand wash clothing, which is going to be a trip. I'm going to hang out with Betsy tomorrow, and it's going to be crazy to see a familiar face on the other side of the planet. I'll fire off another e-mail tomorrow, we're traveling on the eighth so I won't be able to send anything.

-Cooper

P.S. Just after I wrote that e-mail last night with every intention of sending it, I discovered that we were all going out for Peking duck as a send off dinner for the summer camp program. Morale improved drastically at that point. We went tot his restaurant, and the waitstaff started bringing out dishes one by one. After four were on the cardinal directions of the table, Logan and I thought that the duck would be the next thing, and that would be that. It was not. Food just kept coming, and every time we thought that we had seen the last dish, another dish was placed at the table. The duck was incredible, and an excellent dinner was had by everyone. After that, we went out to the pub quiz, and proceeded to do really, really well. Our first round was perfect, thanks to Miles's vast stores of knowledge about Disney movies, and we entered the fifth round three points out of first. The problem was, the fifth round was bag of music, and the theme was 90's hip hop. We got crushed, and proceeded to get drunk on 5 yuan beers, gin and tonics, and tequila shots. I'm still completely flabbergasted by prices here, and they'll only get lower when we get to our first camp at Quzhou in Hebei province. I met a couple of students from Austria at the bar, and we debated the potential collapse of the Euro. Thomas Friedman's mustache is tingling right now because of that sentence. Our cab home cost each of us 8 yuan, and let me tell you, a Beijing cab ride is just as crazy as you think it is. We're spending today working on lesson plans, and I get to hang out with Betsy tonight, so I'm excited.

July 7th

Hey everyone that my parents have started forwarding this e-mail to (and Mom, Dad and Bea)! Went to a street market last night in an alleyway and watched a bunch of people from the group eat freshly fried scorpions. I decided against this culinary adventure, but I did have lamb from a street vendor today, it was delicious and fried right in front of me for 5 yuan. A good lunch for less than a dollar! Prices here are all completely insane. I've spent less than 200 yuan since I got here, and that's about thirty dollars. The $800 that I'll be getting per month is going to go a hell of a long way here. Oh, another thing about the market: salespeople are aggressive. I got into a tug of war with my own arm and a woman that really wanted me to buy her trinkets, and at least three other people form my group had the same thing happen throughout the market.

Group morale is low right now. We all start teaching in two days, and nobody is ready for it, myself included. I'm hiding it well, although a few people completely floundered in front of the class. Everyone has assumed that the kids know more English than they do, and it's causing problems. I'm going to adjust my lesson plans accordingly, but I'm worried it won't be enough. I suppose I may have to just wing it, or let them stare dejectedly at their desks as I attempt to explain the Minnesota State Fair. I'm sure I'll come out just fine, and I get to sing El Paso during the opening ceremony. Score! I'm leading the group when we go to Inner Mongolia, so I won't have to teach, but will spend my days coordinating everything. It fills me with a false sense of importance that I find comforting.

Every day I get more and more comfortable with the space that I'm living in. I know how to get around the city fairly well, or at least my neck of the woods, and I've already shed my Minnesotan politeness when going on the subway. I haven't been able to see the sky through the smog since I got here, and it's been sticky humid every day. My skin has never looked better, at least when I'm not sweating buckets. We're going to bar trivia at the same ex-pat bar we went to on the 4th. I think we're going to do pretty well. They fixed our shower head, but I also have to hand wash clothing, which is going to be a trip. I'm going to hang out with Betsy tomorrow, and it's going to be crazy to see a familiar face on the other side of the planet. I'll fire off another e-mail tomorrow, we're traveling on the eighth so I won't be able to send anything.

-Cooper

P.S. Just after I wrote that e-mail last night with every intention of sending it, I discovered that we were all going out for Peking duck as a send off dinner for the summer camp program. Morale improved drastically at that point. We went tot his restaurant, and the waitstaff started bringing out dishes one by one. After four were on the cardinal directions of the table, Logan and I thought that the duck would be the next thing, and that would be that. It was not. Food just kept coming, and every time we thought that we had seen the last dish, another dish was placed at the table. The duck was incredible, and an excellent dinner was had by everyone. After that, we went out to the pub quiz, and proceeded to do really, really well. Our first round was perfect, thanks to Miles's vast stores of knowledge about Disney movies, and we entered the fifth round three points out of first. The problem was, the fifth round was bag of music, and the theme was 90's hip hop. We got crushed, and proceeded to get drunk on 5 yuan beers, gin and tonics, and tequila shots. I'm still completely flabbergasted by prices here, and they'll only get lower when we get to our first camp at Quzhou in Hebei province. I met a couple of students from Austria at the bar, and we debated the potential collapse of the Euro. Thomas Friedman's mustache is tingling right now because of that sentence. Our cab home cost each of us 8 yuan, and let me tell you, a Beijing cab ride is just as crazy as you think it is. We're spending today working on lesson plans, and I get to hang out with Betsy tonight, so I'm excited.

July 6th

Hey! I have some bad news. I'm not going to have internet access for my laptop until we get back from teaching summer camps, which means no skype. The good news is that I'll still be able to get e-mail, so I'll be in touch at least a little bit. I'm adjusting to China quite nicely, and I'm looking forward to shipping out for camps at the end of the week. It's still hot here, and I'm still sleeping on what is effectively a piece of plywood with a comforter over it, but, hey, I suppose these are the prices I have to pay. I'm not sure what else to tell you, I'm sitting on Logan's computer in a Starbucks right now after having purchased a coffee entirely in English. This felt weird, even though it shouldn't. Oh well, living proof of globalization. Thomas Freidman's mustache would be proud.  We train again tomorrow, and I might get to see Miles eat Scorpion tonight. I'm journaling my experience, so when I get a real chance to sit down and write out stories, they should all still be in my head. Also, the food here kinda sucks. I'll write again tomorrow if I get the chance

-Cooper

July 5th

Hey everyone, I'm currently stealing internet from a Burger King to write to inform you that I'm alive. I slept for most of the plane ride, and woke up this morning refreshed and ready to go. We went to the forbidden city today, and as I walked around the  old castle, I realized that I am a complete stranger in this land, and that I'm here for a long, long time. I missed everyone in that brief moment, but I thought my way out of it. This place is amazing, not because of how different is, but because of how it feels like any other big city. Well, except for the fact that I'm understanding next to nothing, and I can't talk to anyone. Hopefully that'll change soon. We're going out tonight for burgers and beer for the 4th, and I hope you kicked ass at crowshoes. I'll write more when we get our internet sticks, right now I'm afraid I'm going to be kicked out of the mall.

Missing all of you,

Cooper