Cocoons and Running Shoes

 Today I realized that I might be the coolest person in this city, if only because of the fact that I know who Led Zeppelin is. More on that thought later. Getting used to this place has been a stranger and more difficult experience than I thought it would be, and I think I might have some inkling of why that is. For one, it's just four of us now. We're out of our dynamic roving band of merry foreigners, and we're left with just us, and as far as I can tell, none of us make good social leaders (I know that I don't for sure), and this makes obtaining a lively group dynamic an uphill climb for all of us. This fact is not helped by the fact that we all have our own rooms, and as such, nobody sees anyone unless they physically go and see them, and right now, I believe, and I may be completely wrong, that we're all just too damn tired following our whirlwind teaching tour of northeast China to put forth much effort on that front.

There's another thing about the rooms that I've noticed, and it's probably a very important one: my room feels like a little America. I have all of my music, all of my TV shows, all of my books, and all of them are from home, and they make things feel like I'm at home. Granted, it's a sweaty, humid version of home, but it's enough to trick my mind into comfort. Couple this with the surprisingly fast Internet access in my room, and the fact that I can peer into my screen and with a few clicks it becomes a portal to one of you where we can converse as though we aren't thousands and thousands of miles away, my room becomes a comfortable, womb-like environment that is actually kind of hard to leave. Is that a bad thing? Maybe so, maybe not. All it really provides is a protective cocoon to keep me from the fact that I'm still in rural China.

Finally, it's worth noting that even if I wanted to leave the cocoon, I have nowhere to go for leisure. I mean, there are restaurants and stores here, but those are really only places I go if I need something, like food, or the delightful running shoes I bought earlier today, but they aren't places to go to hang out or meet people. Really, all I want is a bar. I've gone through my adult life under the assumption that no matter where I would go, there would at least be a bar I could go to, and in that, I thought I had some sort of social security. China doesn't have bars. I'm in a town of 3.4 million people, and if I'm lucky, there is one bar in the entire town. If I'm unlucky, there are none, and that upsets me more than it should. It's not about drinking, which you can do anywhere here, including sidewalks and just walking down the street. It's about the whole Cheers thing, the place where everyone knows your name. A social place, a place where you can just go and sit for a long while without feeling pressure to leave, like a restaurant gives after you've been in it for too long after you've finished eating. A social rallying point, like the Midi gave me and my friends during college. I'm not sure I can find that here, and as such, I'll probably end up spending too much time in my room, and my ability to socialize will be damaged, like I was afraid of when I received this position.

Other than that, there hasn't been a whole lot of stuff going on here, as you could probably guess. Last night we tried in vain to find a bar to go to, but we only ended up with sweat and disappointment. I slept late today, as I am wont to do when able, listened to the Phish show in Colorado live through the wonders of the internet, and caught a bus into town. I had two goals for this excursion, buy running shoes, and wander aimlessly. I succeeded in both goals. I got lunch at the KFC, and everyone stared at the foreigner sitting by himself with Led Zeppelin II going through his headphones, eating a chicken sandwich by himself. The mere act of me eating is spectacle here. As I ate, I thought to myself that none of them had any clue who Led Zeppelin was, and I felt the same way that I would suppose a missionary feels when they think of all of the people who don't know who Jesus is. This knowledge made me feel cool.

After eating, I took a right and kept to the shady side of the street, and to my non-surprise, I found most of the places I found were exactly the same as all of the other places I had been. There is very, very little variation in shops in China, so little that I can't help but wonder how they all stay in business. Even the technology district suffered from the same problem. I walked past the same Lenovo store four times in the span of a mile, and I can't imagine any of them are making much money. As such, my walk was a bust, except for the last part of my trip. Just off the main street, I may have found what the Hold Steady calls the sweet part of the city. There's definitely a bunch of restaurants, and there might be a bar, I'm not exactly sure. Miles and I are going to investigate tonight. I returned to the KFC, bought running shoes for $30, and caught the bus back. Mission accomplished.

I think I'm going to enjoy my cocoon and watch an episode of Louie now. I'll probably work on the retrospective when I get back from the potential bar tonight, so look for it soon, unless it spirals out of control and becomes a 20 page behemoth, which it very well may.

-Cooper

Alive in Jiangxi

After little debate, I have decided that the proper course of action for me to take in this new town is to attempt to establish some sort of mythos. No, not by going out and doing dumb stuff, but by doing slightly odd things in a visible way. Or maybe that's stupid because anything that I do will draw attention, so it doesn't have to be weird and people will still probably tell stories about me. Yeah, that's the one. We all took a stroll through the main street in the city, and people would come running to shop windows to look at us just walk down the road like normal people, and I ate KFC under the intrigued eyes of many locals.

If you couldn't tell, I'm finally situated in my long term placement here in Fuzhou, Jianxi, PRC, and as of right now, things are pretty, pretty good. I get my own room, which means I have my own twin sized bed, a TV, desk, my own bathroom, air conditioning, and oddly enough, a beer fridge. However, the room also comes with what appear to be a fairly substantial number of cockroaches, and a general odor of mold that I plan on investigating. All and all, pretty damn good. Oh, and I have pretty nice internet access now all the time, so Skype away, people.

The school seems pretty nice, and if it isn't actually nice, it most certainly is sprawling. It's larger than any school I've ever been to, with buildings that just kinda seem like they go on forever, and a real moat on the outside. Plus, it has a pretty nice track, so I'm going to start running again with Vang. The food here is awful, so I think I'm going to have to work up an appetite to get myself to not wither away entirely, so hopefully at least some good will come out of this for me physically. All of the staff is super helpful, and I shouldn't have any problems with dealing with them in the future. Teaching with them might be significantly more difficult, because I'm teaching way more kids than I ever thought I would be in my life. How many? Oh, 50-60 in every standard class, and an unknown number in the 'international' classes. Plus, we set the curriculum for the international classes, and we know precious little about their skill level. So far, the only thing I know I'll be doing with them is journals. More on that as I develop it.

The town is also better than I was anticipating. There are a few shops around the school that have the inventory equivalent of an American convenience store, and a supermarket about a mile down the road. We're about a 15 minute bus ride from the heart of town, and there's a lot of shopping to be done there if you're into that kind of thing. Google says there's a couple of bars around up there, and you can bet that if there's a bar here, I'm going to find it. Other than that hope that Google is correct, there's not a whole lot else to do here. Good thing there's enough bandwidth for Nexflix and Hulu in my room. I've got some stories from travel that are worth typing up, but not now. Traveling for two months and finally getting to a place that I can consider home in some strange way has drained my enthusiasm to write much other than an extended status update. Lord knows I'll get bored soon and write a bunch of them down. Maybe I'll do a reflection on my two months of travel. That actually sounds pretty neat.

-Cooper

Fuck you, Google

 I know that I said in my last message that I wouldn't have anything until I got to Jiangxi, but as I sit here in my temporary residence, wondering what of my vast music collection I should transfer to my iPhone for the marathon train ride I have in my near future, I can't help but reflect on the day that I have just had. Today I have seen some really good art, some really mediocre art, gotten completely lost in Beijing, found my way through Beijing, and got back in time to eat sushi and ride a six story tall escalator. Recently I've been questioning if I rely too much on liner narrative in the way that I write, but this is a day that was more or less made of liner narrative, so I'm going to have to swallow my doubts and plunge in at the beginning.

Our plan for the day was simple: see Ish and Alejandra off on their journey, go to the art district in Beijing and the Temple of Heaven, and then eat sushi with everyone as a way to say goodbye before we leave at 1 PM tomorrow. Things got off to a good start. I got us directions to and from where we needed to go, wolfed down a Big Mac and fries, and before noon we were on our way. The route to the art district was a simple subway stop, followed by a bus ride. We had the number, got on the bus, counted the stops, and were there in a matter of an hour. Cool beans. The art district in Beijing is called 798, and exists in the old buildings of the alleged birthplace of the Chinese nuclear program, or so Miles tells me. A useful note for later is the fact that Mary was with us as well, as she plays into the story later. This is the most heavy handed foreshadowing you'll see in a non-Dan Brown penned for for years and years. Anyway, 798 is pretty cool. It's a sprawling place full of a mixture of galleries, street sculpture, and decrepit looking industrial buildings/equipment. I'd really rather not do what my photos can do, so I'm not going to describe it more than that. However, there were a couple of things worth noting. For one, don't go on Monday, as most of the galleries are closed on Monday. Second, although this is an art district, it's still in China, and as such, a ton of work toes the party line in some way, or just becomes a bunch of blandish portraits and landscapes. There was some really cool stuff, and some really mediocre stuff, although my experience is that of the places that were open. Third, there was a lot of art from North Korea, which was really weird to see.

A lot of the galleries are in these old, poured concrete warehouses that really reminded me of St. John's, oddly enough. It was in one of these that our first incident happened. Until we stepped into this warehouse, all three of us were traveling in a pack. When we got in, some sort of miscommunication happened, and Mary left, and we stayed. Miles and I then exited a different way, and Mary was lost forever (at least for the sake of the story, she's fine. She waited for us, and when we didn't come, she caught the bus back home. Not a big deal). Miles and I continued to wander around, and once we hit the end of the “Art Zone”, we turned around, and using Google's directions took the bus that we thought would take us to the subway.

The thing is, this bus was supposed to take us to the subway in six stops, and instead, it took us to the bus garage in four stops. That's a small difference in the number of stops, but a huge difference in wither or not Miles and I were lost in Beijing or not. In the daze that only a discrepancy this large between expected and actual location can bring, we headed out from the bus garage, and decided the best thing to do was to walk, so we did. We walked a hell of a long way, looking for some way to get to the subway. When we had walked for miles and found ourselves standing in front of an international flower market in the middle of a field, we decided to take up a new strategy. We caught the only bus we could find, and hoped it would take us some place that would make more sense. No dice there, only another garage.

At this point, we were out of small bills, so we walked across the street to a supermarket to make change. Whist inside the supermarket, we decided that if we were lost, which we most certainly were, we might as well make a good time out of it, so we each bought tall boy cans of Yanjing Beer, and cans in hand, we moved east, as we knew the subway line was east from how far south we had gone, but we just didn't know how far.

As it turned out, it wasn't that far, but it would have been if we wouldn't have done one important thing: acted like locals. On our journey east, we hit a snag, and by snag, I do mean a railway line. After flipping a coin, we headed south along the line, walking on a side road past confused locals going home from work. I'm not really sure what we were thinking other than “just keep walking”, but this turned out to be a good idea, as we soon made an important discovery. When I said we acted like locals, it was for one moment, when we came upon a hole in the fence, watched a guy take his bike across the tracks, and then did the same with our bodies, moving us from the wrong side of the tracks, to the significantly more affluent right side of the tracks.

We soon found a bus stop, and this being the more affluent side of the tracks, it would make sense that it would be the side that would have significantly better access to rapid transit, right? Doesn't matter, we're getting on the bus, logic or no. And you know what? Three of the stops on this bus line had subway access, and before I could listen to three songs off of Summerteeth, we were at the subway station, and on our way home,a full two and a half hours after we wanted to be going. This would have bothered us, but all of our plans are flexible anyway.

We arrived back at the compound to empty dorms. Everyone had gone out to sushi without us. “No big deal,” we thought, “We'll just meet them there.” As it turns out, we went to completely different sushi restaurants, but that problem was nothing a few plates of salmon and eel couldn't fix. I went to the corner store to get a bottle of wine for the 17 hours on a train, and now I'm here, talking to everyone/nobody, listening to George Harrison sing All Things Must Pass. I think now is time for me to go to bed, as I'll probably have even more stories tomorrow.

-Cooper

Beijing: Land of Commerce

I've been back in Beijing for two days, and that means three things. One, I'm sleeping on plywood again. Two, everyone has a cough. But the most important thing of all is that we all get to engage in commerce again. Yesterday I bought 400 RMB worth of books to keep me company in the next four months, and I don't regret a single jaio of it. A lot of them are books that I have read at various points in the past, but the point of my purchase wasn't to learn new things, it was go get things that provide comfort during my uncertain four months. Along the same lines, I bought new headphones, as I left my old pair in a Guyuan hotel room. The great thing is, I don't feel bad about spending money, because what the hell am I going to buy during the rest of the year?

Along the same lines, we've been going out every night and eating American food (I had Eggs Benedict last night!), and drinking American drinks (Manhattans! Manhattans with my Eggs Benedict!). There's a large concentration of places to go near the embassy district, and we've been trying different ones out. Tonight's my last night in Beijing, so we're going out again. We'll see if getting home is as weird as it was last night. Speaking of which, I'm beginning to really hate Beijing cabbies. Last night it took us half an hour to find someone who would drive us back to Xidan, and when we finally found a cabbie that would take us, he promptly called Irene, the head of the program and the woman whose business card has our address on it, to yell at her about directions. Then, when we got back to CSETC, he refused our bills until we satisfied him by giving him all of the small bills in our pockets, which was significantly less than cab fare.

This also reminds me of a previous transportation experience that I neglected. Our trip back from the last camp at Guyuan was . . . eventful. When we got into the van that was supposed to take all of us back to Beijing, there were two Chinese men in the van whose purpose was never explained to any of us. The van was already overfull with all of us in it, so these two extra people were really, really not what we wanted. It gets weirder, though. We hit a police checkpoint, and just before this checkpoint, the two men exited the van, walked past the police checkpoint, and then promptly got back in the van. Nobody batted an eye at this behavior. We later dropped one of the men at the side of the highway. Who knows where the second guy ended up.

We went to the Great Wall yesterday, and it truly is a great wall. It's very steep, and there are a lot of people climbing it. I realized quickly that the easiest way to deal with he stairs is to run up them, so I actually ended up running a significant portion of the wall, which actually felt really good. We got to the top, took a photo, ate some jerky, and then began our descent. Quickly Ish discovered that sliding down the railing is a much easier way to get down, and I followed him. There is still rust on my butt, but I got down quickly, had fun, and offended nobody. I feel like I should write more about the wall, but there's not a whole lot to say. It's big, it's old, and it's steep. I climbed it. Nothing else of note happened.

I leave for my post tomorrow at 1PM, and I get a 17 hour long train ride out of the deal. At least I have my books, my music, and probably more than three games of Chinese Chess with Miles. The next time you hear from me, I'll be at the place I'll be living at for four months. I really hope it doesn't suck.

-Cooper

Hopefully a more positive jam

Hey all, thank you to everyone for the flood of support and words following my admittedly depressing previous e-mail, it means a hell of a lot to hear from everyone, and know that everyone has my back at home. I talked to the head of the program and told her about my concerns about my location, and I was met with the vocal equivalent of a blank stare. I got some words about the strong history of the region, my close relationship with Miles, and the high level of the students at the school, but nothing that really addressed my problems with the situation. There's no chance for me to be moved, so I'm just going to have to muscle my way through things and hope for the best.

My experiences with talking to my director bring me to another point, and it comes from our group discussion about the summer camps. I brought up the point that communication needs to be improved, and was met with yet another blank stare, and the response that poor communication is simply the Chinese Way, which was kind of a shitty answer for the group. I suppose there's not a whole lot that can be done about it though. Won't keep it from driving me crazy, though.

We renewed our visas today, and we've found ourselves in a pickle that indicates to me that there isn't much inter-office communication. You see, to renew our visas, we have to give the Chinese government our passports, and then have them returned in about a week. Thing is, we leave in less than that, and some people are taking a plane, which means I'll be traveling through China without my passport, and no way of knowing when I'll get it back, and I'm only taking a train. The folks getting on a plane have it even worse. We'll see how that situation plays out.

We're going to the Great Wall tomorrow, so look forward to photos of that. Other than that, there's not much to report. News as it breaks from here in Beijing.

Rock over London, Rock on Chicago,

-Cooper

You know, I liked it better when there was hope

 Today we received our teaching assignments, and as it turns out, I'm going to Jiangxi. It's really hard for me to properly describe how disappointed and worried this news makes me, so instead of describing how I feel, I think it would be best for me to explain why I'm feeling this way, and hopefully you'll get some sense of how I feel. Jiangxi was one of the places that CSETC has summer camps, and it was the one place that I did no go to. However, other members of our group did, and one of them who was supposed to go to Jiangxi returned from Jiangxi and said that they wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with Jiangxi. It's a town about as big as the ones we have been visiting in these summer camps, and that is super worrisome.

Everywhere we've gone has been little podunk towns that have nothing to do, or any major features of note, and the thought of spending a year of my life in one is one that's difficult for me to face. I enjoy going out, and I enjoy having people to talk to, and it certainly looks like Miles, Vang, and I will be the only ones that will be capable of any sort of English fluency for miles and miles, and I'm afraid that I'm going to lose part of myself that I really like because of it. I like being able to talk the way that I do, and very little in the world is worth losing it, especially a job where I'm making $9.50 an hour.

It's also frustrating that I was placed in Jiangxi because it was the place that I wanted to be the least. I was alright when they canceled my first choice, but now that I have been assigned my lowest choice as my assignment, I can't help but feel that CSETC isn't listening to me, and doesn't really give a damn about me. They try to put on like they do, but I've heard enough stories from the teachers that I know that there's a significant amount of other things going on. Which brings me to another thing I've realized through this news.

I've had some pretty bad experiences here through the summer camp program, and I've tried my hardest to stay optimistic about everything that's happened to me because I thought things were going to get better, that I would eventually leave these small towns with nothing to do in them, these places where everyone gawks at me and seems to see me as something other than human, and get to a city where I can try to blend in and keep a low profile, but that certainly isn't going to happen anymore, and I'm not really sure if I can take all of this for the next year of my life.

Actually, this completely throws off all of my plans for my stay here in China. I was going to get another job to compliment my part time hours as a teacher and to give me something to do, but I doubt that the services of a non-Chinese speaker are going to be in high demand in a place other than a city. I was also going to further my research on China and multinationals, since I'm here, and it would be easier to get primary research her than anywhere else in the world. Because I'm not near any manufacturing centers, or any major industrial centers in general, that's also no longer a possibility.

People that have been to Jiangxi have tired to cheer me up by telling me that the students there are really good, and it illustrates a major difference between me and most people in the program, in that I'm not really here to be a teacher, and to set myself up for a future of teaching students in any fashion. I'm here to gain experience interacting with other cultures, and to see if I'm capable of living in a different country for an extended period of time, and teaching is simply a job that allows me to do that. To say to me that the kids are really good even if everything else isn't is like saying “Yeah, the job sucks, but they've got a really nice copy machine, so you've got that around.” It doesn't really do much to improve my mood. And to be completely honest, I don't really enjoy teaching.

As you can see, this is going to be a very hard time for me, and I'm going to do whatever it is that I can to try to change this, or to fix it in some way, but I don't really have any kind of hope that I can change anything, and I think that I might have to prepare myself for a really shitty year in my life. I really wish that I wouldn't have signed on without knowing where I was going. Hell, I really wish I wouldn't have come here at all. I'm very afraid that all of this is going to change me for the worse instead of the better.

-Cooper

Guyuan

Sorry for not updating things, I haven't had internet access on my laptop until today.

Well, it's been a pretty crazy time here in Guyuan, but not the good kind of crazy like you want it to be. From the very beginning of the trip it has been nearly nonstop bad craziness. Ish is back in the hospital, this time with a mysterious fever, and the school we're at initially failed to provide us with assistants and a proper area to do large group activities for our standard number of kids, let alone the 350 kids we're in charge of at this camp, and we don't really have internet access (We share one computer with all of the teachers at this school). But those are just the current problems, in order to talk about the constant clusterfuck that has been this camp, I need to go back to just after I sent my last e-mail.

You see, we didn't take a train to get here. When we arrived in Beijing, we were told we were taking a bus. That bus became two vans, and those two vans became one van and a car. This presented us with a significant challenge, as one van isn't enough to hold all of us, and it definite;y isn't enough to hold all of us and all of our luggage and still be comfortable. So we threw comfort out of the window, and crammed 13 people and all of our stuff into a van that can hold 11 people on a good day. With spirits low, we exited Beijing, and promptly entered the worst rural traffic jam I've ever seen. Traffic was backed up for miles, and this was with Chinese drivers creating four lanes out of a two lane highway. Once we got off the highway, I began to fear our lives were in danger.

There are no real traffic laws in China, there are merely suggestions, and you realize that once you're flying at 100Km/h in an overloaded van through mountain roads in the rain. We would pass people on the shoulder, we would pass them and narrowly avoid oncoming traffic, and I spent most of the time yelling at the driver under my breath. It was not good.

Finally, after 5 hours (they told us it would be a three hour ride) of this terror, we arrived in Guyuan, and things started to look up. We're staying at the Sports Questhouse, although I haven't been on any quests yet, and it's fairly nice, albeit pretty dirty. After we got our things up to the room, they took us to dinner, where I got to sit with all of the school officials, and the head of CSETC, Irene. The principal of the school decided it would be a great idea to get me and Miles drunk, and so we spent most of dinner toasting and talking about China and America, and I proved myself as a drinker to them. Irene actually challenged me to a drinking contest when we get back to Beijing, and that should be quite the time, assuming it happens. Me and Miles fell asleep soundly, unaware of the shitstorm to come.

The first thing that went wrong went wrong at 6:30 in the morning, when Logan knocked on our door and said that we needed to get Ish to a hospital right away. He couldn't move, and he was vomiting all night. He's been in and out of the hospital since we got here, and the best that the doctors can tell us is that he has a viral infection. His fever peaked at 104, and he seems to be getting better, although he's seemed that way before. Before lunch, we received word that the opening ceremony would be outside, and after wondering why, we got our answer: there isn't an auditorium big enough to hold everyone. On top of that, we also discovered that the assistants that the school promised us don't really exist on a constant basis. These two facts present a significant problem, and in order to explain this problem, I need to explain how camps are run.

In the morning on a standard camp day, we all teach three classes, and we can do that on our own. However, in the afternoon, we have tutorial time and an activity for all of the students. During tutorial time, we take one or two students out into the hall, and chat with them, while the assistant takes over the class and keeps them busy. Without assistants, we're leaving a class unattended, and that is Bad. 34 teenagers can get into so much trouble without supervision. The activity is kind of the centerpiece of the afternoon, and to do most of them, we need a computer with a projector, and a microphone. We don't have these things here, but we still have to do activities. Why don't we have assistants or an auditorium? Because they didn't know that was part of the camp, so they didn't plan for it, and now that they know those things exist, we have to do them. Goddamnit. We have assistants now, although they are teachers, and are prone to leaving class. We'll see how that works. The activity situation is significantly less clear. I want us to tell them that we just can't do that, but Miles doesn't think that's an option, and he's the leader, so it's his call.

But I digress. We did the opening ceremony outside, despite the constant threat of rain, and everything went well. I sang The Weight while kids hung out the windows of the school to see the crazy white people, and I felt kind of like a Beatle. Then it was time to meet my kids, all thirty four of them. Well, as it turns out, these kids understand less English than any of the other camps, so I'm in for a constant struggle. Class today went better than I thought it would, but I'm super wary of the future, as all I did today was feed them vocabulary words.

Other than that, I have nothing else to report. I'm going to try to stay in contact as much as I can by writing e-mails on my laptop and sneaking into the office with them on a flash drive, but other than that, don't expect any real contact with me for the next two weeks. All any of us are telling ourselves right now is that this is the last camp, and that will probably become the mantra for the rest of the trip. I'm getting tired of living out of a suitcase, and I just really want to get where I'm going to be. I hope I don't get what Ish has.

-Cooper

Things here appear to have hit a boiling point. This isn't about the school we're at, in fact, this camp has been pretty great, this is about CSETC as a program. You see, when I was accepted into this program, I was told that at the orientation meeting I would find out where my permanent position was going to be. When I arrived at the meeting they said the information was going to be with the contract I had to sign. When I signed the contract, they said I would find out when I arrived in China. When I arrived in China, they said I was going to find out at the end of the camps. And now I'm here at the end of the camps, and I know absolutely nothing. Everyone knows nothing, and we're all mad as hell. Niona told us that we might not know where we're going until we physically receive our train tickets, and we all kinda flew off the handle, which I feel is warranted at the time. Well, not all of us. Logan urged restraint, and I got super angry with him, because I've had enough of restraint at this point. I feel bad about doing it, and I have to find some way to make it up to him. Miles called Annie, the person in charge of all of this, and asked when we'd know. When she said maybe Thursday, he simply said “No, not maybe. Thursday.” and hung up. It's the kind of communication problems we've been dealing with since the beginning, and what we're doing for six months of our lives is important enough that we're not going to take it sitting down. More on that story as it develops.

However, the daily goings on of the camp have calmed down. As it turns out, my kids are really fun and like me a lot, which makes teaching a lot easier. However, it also makes telling them no worse. They wanted me to do a dance with them, and because it's their ceremony (and I dislike organized dancing) I had to tell them no. They haven't dropped the idea. I think most to all of the girls have crushes on me. Why do I say that? Well, for one, one of them asked me “Why do you look like a hero?” during question time, and most of them have more or less told me that they do. Don't stand so close to me, I guess. They guys all think I'm cool, and keep challenging me to feats of strength, which I politely refuse. All of them can hit the hell out of a tennis ball with an old mop handle, and they like rock and roll.

The administration is still difficult to work with, though. Take today as an example: We had to cancel the rest of the activity because all of our students have to go march (Yes, 1! 2! 3! 4! style marching) during the afternoons next week. On top of that, the kids that have been marching for the last week are coming back, and they're using our classrooms, so we have no idea where we're teaching next week. Oh, and with the exception of my home room, I'm teaching different kids for the last few days. They still seem to like to get us drunk at inappropriate times, though. Last Wednesday, me and Miles drank one of them, a guy we call Cigarette Man thanks to his love of offering us cigarettes, into submission with beer, and then he took us to a square in town where people danced, and we all had a great time. He, too, can hit the hell out of a tennis ball.

I'm making new Chinese friends. While we were at the square, I met a worker in the local Party HQ named Joseph who spoke very good English, and we talked for a while about the differences in being members o the bureaucracy in America and China. He's an interesting guy that knows how to play Baseball. I hope I run into him again tonight. Zowahh's TA is another one of these new friends. She's going to be going to grad school in Tianjin, and we've had a few good conversations. Her English is better than she gives herself credit for.

Other than that, I've had a few interesting observations about the town we're in. For one, nothing is built to last, everything seems to be semi-temporary at best. The buildings across from our hotel are about three years old, but look like they're twenty years old. The school we're in is less than ten, but sufferers from some serious wear and tear. But, then again, I know what it's made of. It looks like it's made of brick from the outside, but the brick is merely decorative. There are a few places where it's falling off, and underneath it is concrete. But that's not all! The layer of concrete is about a centimeter thick, and under that is some of the cheapest looking cinder block I've ever seen. That too is crumbling.

Another thing I've noticed, and its not just here, is that China seems to not have any sanitation workers at all. Sewers runneth over into the streets, floors are swept by old women but never mopped, and non flush toilets exist inside of school buildings, including one right outside my classroom. I hope they get on that hose sooner rather than later.

We went to a Catholic Church a few days ago, and it was every bit as weird as you would think. It's a big, pink church that towers over the buildings in town, and is visible from our hotel room. It's full of gaudy prints of paintings, and there's LED rope lights around the cross that flash. Oh, and the courtyard is full of mangy, stray dogs, although this is more of a Guyuan problem than a church problem. Even our school campus is full of them. We named one of them Dogmeat. Ish is back in the hotel, although I haven't seen him at all, as he's refusing visitors. I'll keep you posted on his condition and the assignment situation as they develop. Pray for good news, as the mood around here is even worse than it was in Quzhou.

Resisting the urge to kill

-Cooper

Well, things around here have improved considerably since I last decided to write. We finally got an explanation as to why we don't know where we're going for the school year. As it turns out, the schools haven't contacted CSETC because they're on summer break, although as I write that, I'm not sure if I believe it anymore. After all, don't most administrative staff at schools work through the summer? But there's no real way to call them out on it. Intrigue continues.

Ish has emerged from his room, and although he can't walk too well, he's generally in good spirits, and it's good to see him around. I made a fool of myself last night at karaoke by performing the most enthusiastic version of Bohemian Rhapsody that this town has ever seen. Apparently I dance weird, and that makes people laugh. At least I understand that it's not about singing, it's about showmanship, something that was lacking from all of the other members of the group. The camp's running smoothly enough, and I have maintained my generally well-liked status with the students. I'm interested to see if our exit from this place is as emotional as the one we had in Wu Dan, because I think it might be.

The school cafeteria is closed today, so they took us all out for hotpot at lunch. What this meant was that everyone got their own little pot on a hot plate that was used to cook things, and we shared a bunch of communal things to put into our individual pots, like raw meats and various mushrooms. It was an interesting experience, and definitely a novel concept, but because you were effectively boiling everything to cook it meant that all of the meat came out tasting about the same, and there was the constant nagging worry of if the meat was cooked enough. If I get dysentery in the next week, I'll know why.

I'm pretty nervous about getting my assignment for the year, because I've realized that nothing is guaranteed here, and because of that, I can't count on anything. Will I have internet access when I get to where I'm going? Will there be other English speakers than me there? Will I be living in squalor, or am I going to have some place nice to live? What am I going to do with all of my time? If I'm in some rural place, I can't count on any of that, and if things aren't in my favor, it's going to be a very long year for me. I wish there was something I could do about it, but there isn't, and I'm stuck sitting around with my thumbs firmly up my ass. Maybe I'm just being overly nervous about things, but everything that I've encountered with the program hasn't given me faith in their ability to provide conditions, or to communicate enough with other locations to get information about conditions.

On a related note, we've discovered a possible reason why all of this has been so slipshod in execution: this is the first time they've had more than five people in the program, and this is the first time they've sent people to teach anywhere other than Beijing. This is another fact that doesn't really instill confidence for me. There's not much else I can do other than sit and wait for the day when we finally get our assignments, and hope things work out for the best. I hate that fact.

-Cooper