I'm Good Now

Bob Schnieder you really cut to the core of me. I'm up late preparing a powerpoint for the class discussion I volunteered to lead in one of my english-speaking classes tomorrow. It's amazing how a room anywhere in the world feels like Rice when you're up past midnight studying. Culture shock indeed. Upon noticing that it had been a whole week since my last post, and seeing as I leave for the mountains on Thursday and will be gone all weekend, I wanted to write something before I get too busy. Mainly I enjoy bragging, and I feel good right now.

I have one day with nine hours of classes left, and then we leave for the mountains of northern Shanxi province, which involves starting at 7:45 a.m. for a day of riding a bus, a train, and then another less comofortable bus. Lunch will not be served. We visit an unpaved section of the Great Wall, and arrive in a small village and spend the night. Friday we take a short 6 mile hike south to the other side of the mountain chain, into Hebei province, to reach a small guesthouse for cold showers. Possible visit to a hot spring with a brothel built on the second floor. Don't worry, I'll wear a shower cap. Saturday we have classes and sucker an unsuspecting driver into taking us to an almost undiscovered Buddhist temple, on a road which has snared every other vehicle which used it, requiring the passengers to get out and push. Also, Happy Yom Kippur. Sunday we spend all day getting back to school. So really too many experiences to make sense of them all at once, but the main thing is people are pretty much the same everywhere: crazy. Still wrapping my head around what it means to be one of 1.4 Billion, in a nation where the government is seen as the natural solver of problems ( as opposed to individual or community action). Also a HUGE generation gap, as those over 50 here lived through the Mao era, but those my age were born after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

Had my first Beijing nightclub experience, and it was everything I thought it could be. Sweet dance moves are clearly an international language. We got a spot on stage, and proceeded to tear the club up.  Home before dawn. Before theis club visit of course, we spent the day climbing the Great Wall, absolutely beautiful, absolutely impressive, mountains behind mountains behind mountains, with this thin ribbon of stone that took hundreds of years and thousands of lives, thrusting from the top Also filled with bodies of those who died building it. It was less crowded than it might have been. Only takes a half hour walking uphill to reach it. The best view was just past the Off-Limits signs. So overall my life is entirely too good right now.