Making some Guanxi

I have been pretty busy lately. I am not sure what I have been really doing though that makes me so busy. Mostly socializing, which could technically be classified as studying and working, since a lot of the socializing takes place in Chinese. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that the central part of my job is to create guanxi（关系）or make connections. This is not quite as devious as it sounds. Really, I spend my time making friends. Chatting. Sharing stories. Listening to the crazy things that people have done with their lives thus far, and taken part in communal musings about what we are all going to do in the future. Ofcourse, these conversations are usually accompanied by various and delicious food or drink. Lately, I have been indulging in fresh fruit juice:pineapple,watermelon, strawberry, orange, mango. As you can see my life is tough. Filled with adversity.
Besides (sometimes) going to class, my biggest project right now is finding homestay families that Dragons' students will live with for a week or two this summer. It was kind of a slow process starting out for a number of reasons. The person who did this job last year has been helping me out a bit, but she is really busy with her new job and so I have kind of been left to go at it alone. Although, not completely alone because I have a Chinese friend who is also going to be working with Dragons this summer helping me out. She is mostly helping with translating applications and finding new families.
In the week or so leading up to me going to visit a family by myself for the first time, a talked with a bunch of people, who when I told them what I was actually going to be doing, they were like, "oh! that sounds like it would be really hard for you." Not exactly words of encouragement. It is also intimidating that the person who did this job last year is not only Chinese (helpful for both language and culture), but she is also extremely chatty and bubbly, and she always knows exactly what to say to make people feel comfortable. I It is also one of those projects that the more you sit around thinking about it (and not actually getting started) the more scary and impossible it seems.
Fortunately, in this past week it has all started to come together. I have visited a few families on my own, and I feel pretty good about my ability to communicate and make a good impression. The first family I visited was really warm and welcoming. They helped me finish sentences when I could not think of the right word, and referred to me as "Teacher Lexi"(in Chinese). At the second family I visited, the mother kept complimenting my Chinese, saying how well I spoke. In response to which, the father said "she's okay. there still seem to be a bunch of words that she doesn't really know how to use." Fair point. I still have a long way to go. But the fact that I can pretty much always get my point across one way or another (sometimes after a series of mumbles, restarts, and hand gestures), means that my main objective (communication) is being accomplished.
Chinese kids are also really funny and honest. The little girl in the family I met last night was slightly appalled by the density of my arm hair. She told her mom, "Mama, you can see foreigner's arm hair, but you can't see ours." She also noticed that our noses were different and our hair different colors. Her mother asked me if it was true that in foreign countries families could have more than one kid. When I said yes, she said something like, "well, that's nice, isn't it."
So I have gotten a nice start on this daunting task. Hopefully as I get more and more comfortable with this process I will stop saying so many silly sounding and grammatically incorrect things and work on my comedic timing when telling cultural misunderstanding anecdotes. For example, there is a great one about a Chinese mom heating up a cup of milk for her foreign student (Chinese people like to drink warm milk) and then the student being puzzled, and putting the milk into the fridge to cool it off (as American custom dictates) and then the mother being confused and reheating the milk, and the American in turn putting it in the fridge again.
I will probably be visiting 3-4 families a week for the next 2 months. While it is much harder for me to do this job than it would be for a Chinese person, I also think that there are some positives for both sides. For the Chinese family, they get to have a foreigner come visit their home and get a little taste of what it will be like if they end up hosting a student this summer. They get to stare at me and ask me questions and have me explain why I do not have pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. For me, I get to practice speaking Chinese with people who really want to understand, who compliment my language skills, even when I may not deserve it, and I get to hang out with really interesting Chinese families in their homes. I might have a different perspective on this whole process after I have visited 20-30 families (instead of my current 3). Either way, it is crazy that this is my job. It is also crazy that I have been in this country for 8 months, that I only have about 3-ish months left, and that before I know it I will be back in the good 'ol US of A...

Things that have happened recently

I have had lots of visitors lately. Also, many people have left Kunming. I am living in this crazy city where many people are just sort of passing through, here for a month or two or six and then off on the next adventure. Of course, there are also many people who have been here for years. There is a whole contingent of somewhat strange older white men who came to Kunming 30 years ago and just never left. They sit around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all day until evening time when they exchange their coffee cup for a cold beer.
However, these guys are not the majority. The majority of people in Kunming are passing through...for a week or a semester or a couple of years. It is an interesting mindset among foreigners. You find a group of people you like and then they disappear for a month to go traveling through Vietnam or Laos or to go back to their native land. And then you meet more cool new interesting well-traveled people and make friends with them for a while. And yet, somehow it seems that all the foreigners in Kunming know each other.
Exactly two days after my brother left China my friend from Macalester who is currently working in Beijing came to visit for a couple days. During this time we visited a bunch of the Buddhist Temples around Kunming that I had yet to get to. I also educated him on the wonders of the Kunming dining experience, we attended a photography club meeting at the botanical gardens with a bunch of Chinese college student who met on a website (something that is much more common and less sketchy here than in the states), and spent some time discussing our experiences thus far in China.
For example, my friend put out an add for a language exchange partner in Beijing where he lives. He got a response from a Chinese woman who expected him to be a big strong handsome rich successful white guy and potential husband. When they met to practice speaking together she seemed rather disappointed that he was so young (she was 27) and that he was therefore not a potential future spouse. She patted him on the head and bought him the Chinese equivalent of a lollipop or a cookie.
After eating his way through Kunming, my friend returned to Beijing. The next day passover started, and I have to admit that I skipped out on a huge seder of 50 or so people that was being organized by the Israeli population of Kunming in order to go to the Hot Springs with my fellow Dragons colleagues. All of the semester program instructors have been working really hard and were leaving the next day to go traveling for a month and somehow I got to tag along on this crazy China Spa experience.
For 170 kuai ($25...which is A LOT of money in China) we got to wear huge comfy terri-cloth bathrobes, lie around in pools of hot water that had been infused with various Chinese medicinal or beneficial herbs, relax in a sauna, play around in a huge swimming pool filled with various water-using massage devices and ball-pit balls (for throwing at each other), get a 1.5 hour Chinese Massage, eat noodles, and have our toenails clipped for us while eating a jello-like substance that tasted a bit like charcoal. My favorite part though was the matching shorts and t-shirt pajama set that we all got to wear (I very nearly stole mine because they were that awesome) and the identification bracelets that made us all feel a little bit like we were in some sort of mental hospital. So, you see, I have an excuse for missing the passover seder.
This past Thursday the Dragons semester group took off for their month of travel, on Saturday my friends who are studying with the S.I.T. program in Kunming hit the road for the next six weeks, and while I will miss these people for a bit, lets just say that I have not been sitting at home moping about it.
I spent my weekend reading and relaxing, going out for meals and chatting with friends. I ate my first da-pan-ji (literally big plate chicken), a food that comes from Xinjiang which is in the northwest part of China that has a heavy Muslim influence and incredibly delicious food. This dish is literally an entire chicken (it serves four) cooked up with potatoes and some green peppers in a rich tangy sauce. When I say an entire chicken, I mean the ENTIRE chicken. Evan would not have liked this very much because when he was here I 'accidentally' ordered him chicken feet instead of chicken wings and he nearly cried and asked if we could remove them from our table. I said no, and started to attack him with them. He liked this a lot.
I also have a Chinese friend who offered to teach me how to cook. She is a great cook, and an incredibly nice and generous person. The problem is that she is too nice and doesn't actually let me help so much, I chop a few vegetables here and there and carry the dishes from the kitchen to the table. However, the lessons so far have done little to actually make me feel more comfortable with cooking in China. I have, however, gotten to eat some amazingly delicious homemade food and so I am okay with it.
Today I spent nearly the entire day speaking Chinese. This really shouldn't be a big deal because last semester I spent every day all day speaking, but since I have come to Kunming I have been speaking too much English. I went to class in the morning (the old Japanese men entertained me by teasing each other about drinking too much alcohol)had lunch with a Chinese friend, then went to chat with a potential Chinese teacher for dragons summer programs, and then this evening went to visit a family that will host dragons students this summer in order to learn how to interview and screen families. I have that I-have-spoken-a-lot-of-Chinese-today feeling in my mouth where forming the sounds of the English language becomes a bit difficult. I should probably make it my goal to get this feeling more often.
Also today, a random friend who I worked with two summers ago showed up in Kunming. He contacted me because he is studying in Beijing and came down to my province for a visit. We had a nice meal where I got to introduce yet another person to the amazingness that is Yunnan food. It is pretty weird and at the same time not weird at all to have random people continuously appear in this city.

Note to the reader: I just went through and proofread and found about 10-15 problems with my grammar and ability to speak in the past tense. -has-have-had was a particularly large problem. I am sorry for any more problems that exist that might make reading this blog a little painful, or make you think that the author is not a native English speaker.

Bringing My Blog Back

Hello Everyone! I have decided that is it time for my blog to be mine again. While we have all enjoyed Evan's unique writing style and endless musings on China and the NCAA, he has now fled the country and I think it is time for him to get his own blog.
As always, it has been a long time since I lost wrote, and I am not quite sure where to start. It was really fun having Evan here. Not only did we have a great time, but it was really fun for me to show my brother (who had never ventured outside of North America) another part of the world. Obviously,my first goal of having him here was for him to enjoy himself, but I also thought it was really important to put him in situations where he was a little bit uncomfortable, surrounded by foreign people speaking languages that he could not understand, on dirty, smelly, buses and having to listen to me have conversations with cab drivers and Chinese friends during which he constantly asked, "are you laughing at me?" Sometimes we were. Usually we were talking about something that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
For the first entire week that Evan was here we stayed in Kunming in my beautiful apartment with all of the comforts of home. (meaning I don't think he had to use a squat toilet once.) We went on some day trips, a put my brother on a bike in China (something that requires considerable guts and even greater reflexes), and I fed him a lot of spicy, foreign, and in general "strange" food (although he rejected my offer to buy him a pig foot.) We also played some basketball and frisbee, Evan enjoyed spreading the wonders of BeerDie, and I got to introduce my brother to the good people of Kunming that I have come to know and love. It was really cool for me to have Evan dropped into my world for a little while.
But he was a little bit too happy and comfortable in Kunming. It was not quite weird enough or hard enough for him (except for a bit of gastro-intestinal distress that he chose not to write about in his blogs for fear that his readers did not want to know.) So we went to the long distance bus station and got on a bus. For those of you who have not been to a bus station in China, it can be a bit overwhelming. As soon as you pull up in front of the station people start yelling at you, thrusting papers at you, trying to get you to buy what they are selling or go where they want to take you. For me, I expect this, I know how to walk straight ahead and get them to leave me alone. Evan was a bit more frazzled. However, we got tickets and got on an average China bus with tiny China sized seats, surrounded by average Chinese people. Evan was in China at last.
Vendors got on and off the bus, peddling newspapers and maps, eggs and corn, announcing their products in country-side accented Mandarin. Evan, feeling overwhelmed for maybe the first time since he found me at the airport, asked me if all Chinese bus stations were this crazy. I told him that this was just a small city of 6-7 million and therefore this is a small, relatively-mellow station. Welcome to China. At this point, I told Evan that seeing him uncomfortable makes me happy. Yes, this may sound cruel, but it is true. Because it is not pointless discomfort, it is a feeling that is productive and that he overcame and learned a whole lot from. (Even if he doesn't know it.)
Dali was awesome. When I told the taxi driver on the way to the old town that my brother was a sports broadcasters, he asked if Evan had ever seen Yao Ming, and was disappointed when Evan's answer was "only on T.V." We went on a crazy biking adventure in which Evan's bike rebelled against him from the very beginning and we made our way through small villages and open fields where local farmers (mostly) smiled at us as we passed. We also hiked a 4,100m peak (really high) and stayed in a small guesthouse on a mountain.
We eventually made our way back to Kunming. We spent Evan's last Saturday in China mountain biking with a few of my hardcore biker friends up and down the foothills of Kunming. The entire ride took about 4-5 hours (including the time spent fixing bike chains with the sophisticated tools of rocks, pliers, and the washers that happened to be in my backpack because I was planning to make earrings out of them). Evan only fell down/crashed into strangers/nearly killed himself and others a handful of times. It was a great ride that challenged us both.
The last night that Evan spent in China was phenomenal. We had dinner with a few friends and then eventually made our way to Karaoke, where we sang our hearts and souls out for nearly four hours. I KNEW my brother would love KTV. It is possible that he liked the sing-along slightly more because of the Baijiu that he was peer pressured into drinking. It was a great group of people and the perfect way to spend Evan's last evening/early morning in China.
On Tuesday morning, I brought Evan to the Kunming Airport and he put himself on a plane to take him back to the land of forks and ice water. He was worried about culture shock and readjusting after being in China for only 2 weeks. I don't even want to think about what it is going to be like for me after an entire year.

Evan's Reeducation -- Dominating Dali

Lexi and I returned to Kunming last night after spending four days in and around the city of Dali. We journeyed north on a 4-5 hour bus ride on Monday evening, setting the stage for a true test of how I could handle the Chinese wilderness. The week included a day-long bike ride through endless fields of crops and an array of tiny villages, mostly ridden on terrain not meant for bicycles. In addition, my rented bike was more broken than Lexi's NCAA Tournament Bracket (0 for 8 among the elite 8 for Lexi Rae). But despite the challenges of the grueling ride, it was a very rewarding experience.

The basic plan was to bike around the lake, Erhai Lake, supposedly the 7th largest freshwater lake in China. It was not a small body of water, yet we were determined. Unfortunately, we did not really know where we were going, and in China, asking for multi-step directions, according to Lexi, is entirely unacceptable (more on this ridiculously inefficient cultural method and my other issues with China in another post). So anyway, despite the fact that there was something wrong with my bicycle (mainly, but not limited to, the fact that peddling did not necessarily move the vehicle), we began to traverse absurd obstacles in our quest to venture around this lake. We carried our bikes over rock piles, down steps in villagers' backyards, and during stretches where the "path"--interpret that term loosely-- was no more than a foot wide and veering inches left or right may have meant a 5-6 foot leap into a cliff of crops. We drove past hundreds of farmers working on their land, some who waved as we passed by. We sped past elephant-size piles of manure accompanied by ungodly swarms of flies who seem to like poop a lot more than I do. We would arrive at a dead-end and try something else. It was the ultimate exploration ride, with the caveat that we were mainly trying to go around this lake. And although we felt like roaming nomads at times, we almost always had the view of the city in the distance, probably no more than 3-5 kilometers away at all times. We eventually decided to turn towards the city, as we had been enduring for about 5 hours and were tired and hungry. We found some food, explored some more, and searched for a hotel to spend the night. We ended up staying at a place that was way too nice for us, but we were tired and felt we had earned it.

The following day, we had planned on riding our bikes on the road back to where we rented them from (probably 25-30 kilometers away), but it was not meant to be. After about 5 minutes, I declared that I had had enough of my crappy bicycle. Right around that same moment, Lexi tried to break. It broke, but not in a slowing down the bike kind of way. It was more of a dropping a glass plate from a rooftop onto pavement breakage. And just like that, her bike was semi-unrideable as well. Fortunately, we did find a taxi that put both pieces of junk in the trunk so we could get our substantial deposit back from the orginal rental place.

Back in Old Dali, where we stayed the first night, we walked around a bunch, found some fantastic western pizza for lunch (The establishment was called "Bad Monkey" and the sign out front red "the most pimped out pizza in China"-- Yes, there is photographic evidence of said sign and slogan), and began our trek into the mountainess wilderness. Friends of Lexi's had recommended a place called the HigherLand Inn, which is a very small place for hikers to stay on a nearby mountain. To get to the Inn, we hiked about 90 minutes up a fairly steep trail in the late afternoon (it was still scorching hot), and we discovered this incredibly awesome place (Link for anyone interested: http://www.higherland.com/eabout%20us/index.htm) I think there are only seven rooms available, yet there is basic electricity and a shower and bathroom. Everyone kinda ate together in the main cabin, where the food was almost always very tasty. At our first dinner, we shared some great conversations with travelers from all over the world. During our two days there, we had enjoyable chats with folks from Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France, Quebec, Scotland, and England.

After a peaceful night's rest snuggled in a few different blankets to stay warm during the chilly conditions, we embarked on, quite possibly, the greatest hike that either of us have ever experienced. In majestic terms, this was not close to the Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon or perhaps even some of the magnificent climbs we've conquered in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. However, never before had we started a climb at 2,600 meters, with a goal of ascending to a peak of 4,100 meters, or over 12,000 feet. Acting as our own sherpas, we began our journey a little before 9am. Despite encountering steep challenges, snow/ice covered sections of the trail, gargantuan winds near the peaks that nearly blew us away, and somewhat excruciating headaches due in large part to the elevation/lack of oxygen, we returned to the HigherLand Inn around 7:20PM. We were victorious. We summitted two separate peaks higher than 12,000 feet during our approximately 10.5 hour trek. It was an exhaustingly satisfying accomplishment, and we both slept around 11 hours the ensuing night.

The next morning, nearly afternoon following our late sleep, we descended back down the mountain and said farewell to the HigherLand Inn. With sore legs, we strolled the few kilometers back to the main town where we'd be able to find a bus ticket back to Kunming. I doubt many reading this blog will ever have the chance to bike around Erhai Lake or summit the nearby mountains that overlook it. But the entire adventure was a pretty crazy experience.

The legs are still sore. But that's ok.

Evan's Reeducation -- Good times in Kunming

Once again I say ahoy to all and one from the great city of Kunming. It is Monday morning here in the east, and I have a plethora of stories from the past 4 days, some that can be told in this space, others that you will have to hear from me directly at a later date.

Quick hits from the past 96 hours:
On Thursday, Lexi rented me a bike and we rode about 8 kilometers to the Golden Temple. It was a cool place to explore, and at one point the following exchange occurred.
Lexi: "Do you want to sit on a camel?"
Evan (speaking approximately 0.000012 seconds later): "YES"
For 5 yuan (about 70 cents), I sat on a camel roughly the size of Rhode Island. The monstrous animal smelled horrible, but hopefully the stenge won't carry through into the pictures that Lexi took. I'm sure she will post them with embarrassing captions at some later date.

On Friday, Lexi actually had some work to do (trying to convince me that she's here for an internship rather than simply playing ultimate and creating memories). She met a few people for an informal interview at a cafe nearby her apartment. I tagged along with my computer and followed as much basketball as I could. (At this point, the unfortunate shellacking of 84-69 had not occurred yet and I was somewhat excited for the NCAA Tournament... Red was right, hope can drive a man insane.) On Friday night, Lexi and her roomate Jess hosted a dinner party, which was a lot of fun. My friend Todd, who graduated from Wake in 2005 and now lives in Shanghai, came to Kunming for the weekend. It was completely absurd seeing him for the first time in a year and a half in this small city in southwest China. It was also completely awesome. Along with some of Lexi's friends we went out to see some live music after dinner. Tribal Moon was the moniker of the rock quartet that blared their sounds into the streets. They actually weren't terrible. I think jetlag finally caught up with me a little bit, as by around 11:30 or 12 I was totally and completely exhausted. Good times, though.

On Saturday, it was Lexi's 21st birthday, and as a present to her, I let her continue paying for everything. I'm quite the giver. As you might expect, she wanted to do what anyone else would want to do on their birthday: go to the zoo. And as luck had it, there was a zoo basically across the street from where she lived. Todd joined us for a stroll through some pretty interesting habitats. We saw giraffes, zebras, lions, tigers, bears, stegosaurasas, and peacocks. Lots of peacocks. It was a dandy time that was cut short when Lexi received a call asking if we all would be interested in free massages at this new massage place that is opening in Kunming at the end of the month. Basically, they needed live bodies to practice with. And after the experience, I was phenomenally grateful that I was a chosen live body. The three of us all received sensational massages, and afterwards were thanked repeatedly for letting them massage us. It was totally and utterly ridiculous. As someone who had never had a professional massage before, I am officially a huge fan.
Lexi's birthday dinner (Others payed for her, she payed for me of course) featured a diverse hodgepodge of her American and Chinese friends here in Kunming. The solid meal paved the way for other shennanigans amidst an array of card games at another venue nearby. I think she had fun. I know I did.

On Sunday, we slept in, and Lexi basically woke me up with the following words: "Do you want another free massage?" Like Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, I was confused whether I was in heaven, Iowa, or Kunming. Around 1PM, we walked back to the magical massage place for our aromatherapy oil massage, in which we were forced to remove most of our clothing and be slathered with hot sweet almond oil. It was a completely different experience than the day before (twice as long -- two hours versus one) and it was much more intense. I'm now conditioned to expect a free professional massage every day. One of my best friends from high school is now dating a masseuse back in the states, and he's told me that it is not terrible. No kidding. Any single female professional massage therapists in Salem, Virginia reading this blog right now, give me a call. I'll be joining you in the Roanoke Valley in early April.
After having our muscles worked for two hours, we quickly sped home, collected our frisbee attire, and jolted over to the game of pickup ultimate. It wasn't exactly the thrill of Atlantic Coast regionals, but ultimate is ultimate, and I met a lot of other good people. The few hours of disc were followed by another large dinner, and then a gathering at the nearby apartment inhabitated by the aforementioned duo of frisbee playing twins from Atlanta (Padeia HS). It was an evening filled with plunks. That's right, plunks. Once again, very good times.

I think Lexi and I are off to another city to traverse and explore for the next few days. We miss everyone back in the states and hope that things are well.

One final thought: I watched pretty much the entire Wake-Cleveland State game on streaming video here in China on Saturday morning. It was an abysmal, pathetic, and disgraceful effort, that, after the fact, was not that suprising. For the past few weeks I'd been saying that Wake would either lose to a double-digit seed in the first round or advance to the final four. I had thought the odds were around 50-50. Either was possible. Crash. Burn. Destruction. Finality. Hopefully the trio of immature future millionaires stay in school for another year with a certain fire in the belly that'll transform Wake into a top 5 team in 2010. Wake fans who are calling for Dino's job are embarrassing. They sound like NC State fans who hated Herb Sendek or Kentucky fans who drove away Tubby Smith. I hope that there are better days ahead. I take back me previous statement; Red was wrong. Hope is a good things, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

Thank you, Andy Dufresne.

Evan's Reeducation -- It's a Small World

First full day in China included good food, good people, and good hoops.

In the late morning, we began our tour of the city, with Lexi guiding me around town. Few observations: horn beeping is out of control. Both cars and motor scooters are constantly blaring their horns. Perhaps this is because people kind of just walk out in the road as vehicles are moving towards them. I was amazed that people don't get hit more often. Lexi says that the horn isn't an impolite 'get out of my way,' it's more of a 'just realize I'm coming,' but regardless, the shrilling horn is a ubiquitous feature of strolling through the city. Also, I found it kind of strange that a very decent percentage of the girls here are holding hands or interlocking arms when walking around. They weren't gay, or so Lexi said, but many of the girls walk in twos. That's just how friends stay together, I guess.

We had a really cool lunch, my initial meal in China, and my first attempt to conquer chopsticks. In America, my General Gao's chicken or Beef w/ Pea Pods are always consumed with forks. Here, not so much. Lexi ordered four dishes for the two of us: a sizzling beef dish, Grandma's potatoes (a type of mashed potatoes I have never had before), fried red beans, and a plate of broccoli. (These total cost: 42 yuan, or about 6 dollars!!! Food is crazy cheap!) To make my father proud, I stayed clear of the broccoli, but everything else was good/interesting. The gargantuan plate of fried beans was a strange concoction. I liked them at first, but they were very salty and it seemed strange to eat a crunchy bean, almost like a chip. The beef dish and mashed potatoes were both good. The potatoes were a world apart from typical American mashed potatoes though, seasoned w/ very different spices and other stuff. You think of mashed potatoes always containing some butter, but not these. They were really tasty though. My chopstick travails made quite a mess in front of me, and eventually I was either trying to use the chopsticks as more of a shovel-type utensil, or simply using my left hand to place the morsel of food inside the chopsticks that were in my right hand. I hope people were staring. I'm sure it was entertaining.

After lunch, we walked around the city more, browsing in and out of some shops, the most intriguing of which is a store that sells lots of American DVDs for ridiculously cheap prices. I may come home with Seasons 1-4 of Lost for less than 10 bucks. It was also cool to see The Wire, The West Wing, Mad Men, and other shows I liked available for cheap with Chinese writing on the front.

We eventually, at my urging, meandered over to the nearby university, or more specifically, the six outdoor basketball courts on that campus. Arriving mid/late-afternoon, there were tons of kids shooting around and playing pickup games. Despite my attire, jeans and running shoes, I was eager to play, and Lexi was nice enough to ask someone what the protocal was. I was encouraged to go shoot around, and about 15 minutes later, I was involved in a game of 3-on-3. Somehow, I was fortunate enough to end up on a team with two kids who could really play, and it was fantastic. At 5'10'', I was one of the tallest kids there, and really the only one who consistently boxed out. In addition, the biggest thing I saw from the Chinese players was the need to almost always double-pump when going up for a shot or layup. But it was an awesome time. With people waiting, they played very quick games to 5, winners take except when it's game-point. So if you score to go up 4-1, the other team gets the ball up top. My team won the first 6 or 7 games we played, and probably 17 out of 19 games we played overall. It helped that I was playing with the Ray Allen of China, who just kept draining outside shots. It was a really awesome time, despite our inability to communicate. We'd high-five after nice passes and good finishes, take responsibility for our mistakes, and overall the sportsmanship was excellent by everyone there. Definitely a really cool experience; I'm sure I'll play again before I leave.

For dinner, we met up w/ a very cool crew of Lexi's American friends who live here, mostly folks who she met playing frisbee. Included in the crew of 7 kids were twins who both played at Padeia in Atlanta (the top HS for ultimate in the country), one of whom played at Boston University, a team I played against when I was a freshman at Wake. He remembered the game: "I think we beat you guys," he said. Yea, you did. But we beat Duke the following game 13-11, so I remember the day fondly. I was not involved at all in the ordering of the food, but gradually a smorgasbord of dishes arrived at our table. Now, I want to be adventurous and try new things, so I was pretty open to tasting everything. My lasting perspective from the evening was how, at a single meal, there might be 8 different clashing flavors. They all were good and interesting, mostly unlike anything I've had before with differing levels of spicyness. But in China they don't give you water at a meal. They give you tea, in a cup the size of basically a double-shot glass. So at times I was reluctant to really delve into something I thought would be spicy, since I had very little to drink at the table. Following dinner, we proceeded to a trivia night at some bar. It was led by a crew of New Zealanders, and it seemed that there were "white people" from many different parts of the world in attendence. The beer was good, the trivia was challenging (particularly the questions exclusively about Kunming or China, I was completely worthless).

One day down, lots more to see. Stay tuned.

Evan's Reeducation -- A Two Week Experience

Greetings from Kunming, China...

Already, in about 18 hours in this faraway land, I am incredibly grateful to be here, and thankful to have a cultured native guiding me around. Sure, Lexi has only been reeducated for about seven months, but she seems to grasp everything around her. I, meanwhile, am like an infant again when it comes to communication. I look around, watch, listen, and rarely speak. I've never done anything like this before; it's an overwhelming but incredible experience.

The adventure began when I arrived at the Raleigh airport around 6:30 AM on Monday morning. From there, a smooth flight to Newark set the stage for a 13+ hour intercontinental journey to Beijing. Though the endless travel may have been challenging to some, after riding a bus through the South Atlantic League this past summer, it was a peace of cake, particularly with the individual touch-screen devices on the back of every single seat. With over 300 movies, dozens of tv shows, and about 25 arcade games to play, it really wasn't that bad of a time. I devoured three hour-long episodes of The Wire (the most important show ever made -- watch it if you have never seen it), an episode of Flight of the Conchords, two movies (Catch Me If You Can and Meet the Fockers), and a good portion of a Lewis Black HBO special. Combine all that with a few games of Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Mini-Golf, tell me that's not a fun way to spend to 13 hours when you can't move. Sure, you're a little confined in terms of space, but it is not hard to avoid boredom. Plus, they bring you decent food every few hours. The weirdest part was waking up the Chinese guy next to me to be able to get to the bathroom, an underratedly difficult thing to do.

I spent about five hours in the Beijing airport, including a stint in a nice coffee shop. I was planning on eating something, but on the menu everything looked more expensive than the 75 yuan that I possessed (about 10 bucks). I tried to watch Monday's episode of 24 using the wireless internet that was available, but right after hulu loaded it told me that it was not available in this part of the world. In the words of Jack Bauer, dammit.

Despite the fact that I was remarkably sleep deprived, I remained energized. Lexi's talked a lot about everyone staring at her all the time. Me, I felt like I was staring at everyone else. Not in a rude way, but just looking around and trying to understand what was going on around me.

I finally got on my flight to Kunming around 7 PM China team, or 7 AM eastern time (approximately 25 hours since I began the journey). With not much sleep in that duration, I completely passed out on the ensuing flight. I remember putting my headphones on right after we took off, and seemingly moments later my leg was tapped by an attractive Chinese stewardess, asking me to remove them cause we were landing. Fastest three and a half hour flight ever.

That was my journey. Lexi was waiting for me behind the glass with a devious smile on her face. Some might claim her smile is friendly, but I know better. This is the first time we've seen each other since one day last June. Before that, it was for two days the previous Thanksgiving. Now we got two weeks. It's pretty exciting. Much to see. More to experience.

Time to go to dinner, which will apparently be followed by trivia and drinking. Cheers!

I am a wordy blogger I know, but I will try to post more details soon about my first day in China, which included a sensational Chinese lunch, a lengthy walk around town, as well as an awesome bunch of pickup basketball games with no one else who spoke English.

My reeducation continues...