World’s hardest logic puzzle

October 18, 2009 Filed in: Uncategorized

As specified in Wikipedia:

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are ‘da’ and ‘ja’, in some order. You do not know which word means which.

Hell explained by Chemistry Student

October 18, 2009 Filed in: Uncategorized

Thanks, Dana, for the following answer to a question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Answer:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Cathy during my Freshman year that, ‘It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,’ and takeinto account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct……leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Cathy kept shouting ‘Oh my God.’

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A

The Taglit-Birthright Israel program.

October 16, 2009 Filed in: Uncategorized

I asked my Commission Junction fellow worker and friend Hal Arnold how his son Theo enjoyed his Taglit-Birthright Israel program (this is a program that sponsors free 10-day trips to Israel for Jewish young adults – as of Spring of this year, over 200,000 individuals from 52 different countries have participated since the trips began in the Winter of 2000; 70% of the participants come from the U.S.). Here is Theo’s response:

The provider of the trip I went on was Routes Travel, sponsored
through the Taglit-Birthright Israel program. It would have been a
lot of fun at 18-19, but at 26 I no longer have the desire or stamina
to go hiking all day and drinking all night for ten days straight with
little sleep, and neither did many of my peers on the trip. Mine was
billed as an ‘outdoor adventure’ tour.

Theo

And Dana’s response:

hiking all day and drinking all night for ten days straight with
little sleep

Sounds perfect!

Dana objects to fettle

October 14, 2009 Filed in: Dana in China

Hey Dad,

First of all, what’s up with you and the word, “fettle”? You’ve used it in the last three emails.
How is your fettle? How’s the fettle at work? It sounds like Phoebe’s fettle is just fettle-tastic while snakey’s fettle’s not so great.

Big email from Dana in China

October 10, 2009 Filed in: Dana in China

Ni Hao friends and family,

Night scene, Dalien

This is the first of what I hope to be many emails, updates on my life here in China. They will serve not only to inform you of my whereabouts and well being, but also as a sort of formal journal to record my observations. Keeping in touch with loved ones (or even liked ones) has not been one of my strong points, so I hope this marks the beginning of a new habit. If you don’t want to be subjected to these emails or you fear you might be targeted by the Chinese government as an anti-communist threat, just let me know and I’ll remove you from the list. Or, if you want to forward them to someone, go ahead.

I apologize for taking so long to get this first email out. I was busy and overwhelmed for the first two weeks here, and I have been sick for the past week and thus unable to travel to a location with Internet access. To make up for it, this email is very long. Probably too long.

Celebrations, Dalien

I boarded the plane in Los Angeles on October 13. The flight was uneventful, as flights should be. I slept for most of the fourteen hours and then watched part of a bad Keano Reaves movie about corrupt LAPD officers. During the short layover in Hong Kong, I stopped to buy a sandwich at a café next to a luxury store titled, “Free Duty”, which sounds like a bit of a paradox to me. The funny thing about the experience was that I had no concept of the value of Hong Kong currency. The price tag of forty-six whatever’s could have been a hefty one or it could’ve been a bargain. It was sort of liberating to enjoy a purchase without the emotional baggage, the guilt of overspending or the smugness of having gotten a great deal. But the sandwich was only the beginning of a day full of surprises, pleasant and otherwise.

I arrived in Beijing safe and sound, but my luggage wasn’t so lucky. My bag was tragically mishandled by the bag handlers, so I ended up living for a week in the same set of clothes, until Hong Kong Dragon airlines got their shit together and sent it my way.

Dana and his new family

The cab ride to the Beijing Train Station was quite the introduction to the joys of spoken Chinese. The driver tossed aside my disclaimer (“I can only speak a little bit”), and took my few Chinese words as a cue to rocket off at full pace, as if he were holding an auction with my confusion as the currency. I told him to slow down, but he would not. Thus began an hour-long routine: he would jabber away for a few minutes, and I would nod and occasionally agree with him. I would make out a few key words and then formulate a response based on what I was capable of saying (which Chinese words I knew) on the topic, not based on what he had asked, because I had absolutely no idea what he had asked. In the middle of a particularly long monologue, I heard, “police, people, gun, like.” When he was finished, I replied, (in Chinese, of course) “Yes, you’re right; nobody likes police officers. In America we also dislike them.” He looked confused, and a little offended. He went on (as we neared the station, passing row after row of towering apartment buildings) about cars, bicycles, traffic lights, swine flu, black people, Obama, and –I’m almost certain –the American Revolution. Either that or the year 1776 holds some other significance unbeknownst to me.

My sister had warned me that buying tickets at the train station was going to be difficult, but after memorizing the appropriate words and phrases (“I’d like a ticket to Dalian”, “Sleeper cabin”, etc.), I figured I was going to be okay. I was wrong. I spent about twenty minutes trying to understand what she was saying, but she looked angry, so I finally gave up, just saying yes to everything. When it was over, I held a ticket in my hand. The train didn’t leave for a while, so I spent the day walking around the city in a daze. I found I had sort of stepped outside of myself as an inadvertent coping mechanism, the environment being so very foreign. People were spitting openly. Everyone was smoking. There were armed policemen at every corner. The sky was a muted gray and it smelt like thick fumes, humidity, and freshly steamed dumplings.

Street scene, Dalien

You walk down a street in any major American city, you’re bound to see white people, black people, Latin Americans, Asians of all types. In China, you walk down a street with thousands of people and you’re lucky if you see one person who isn’t Chinese. The homogeneity of the Chinese -both ethnically and culturally -is astounding, especially to me, coming from the renowned “melting pot” of the world. China is more like a rice cooker.

I walked down the streets smiling, occasionally laughing at what I had gotten myself into. This was the beginning of an adventure.

When it was time, I was on the train. I was pretty sure I was going to Dalian, pretty sure I was going to arrive the next morning at 6:30, and pretty sure a guy –who said his name was “Golden Bridge”- from the school I was to work for, was going to be there to pick me up. But I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t really care. I was tired. By the time I arrived in Dalian, I had been traveling for more than thirty-five hours.

I immediately recognized that Dalian was a lot nicer than Beijing. It has been voted China’s most livable city for several years in a row. It is a coastal city, and the sky is usually clear or covered with actual fog. The climate is similar to that of San Francisco, but the winters are colder. It snows here in December and January. Look at a map of East Asia, and find South Korea. Dalian is at the tip of the peninsula directly west of Korea.

Coast near Dalien

I spent the first two days at a hotel, resting up and checking out the city. I turned on the TV one night. At seven PM, nearly all of the forty-some TV stations, each a different network, showed the same news program. The only exceptions were channels displaying infomercials for very strange products: multi-purpose meat cooking contraptions and elaborate beds that looked more ornamental than comfortable, along with the sports network that, it seems, exclusively covers fencing, badminton, and ping pong. I found one channel that had an English version of the news program. It turns out, everything in China is going great! There are no real problems in the country, and all its people are united in a great bundle of patriotism, fair diplomacy, and mutual respect for the environment. Either that, or I have been duped by what can only be described as utter propaganda. Here, there is no free press and everything is rosy. In the States, there is free press and people complain that the news is too depressing. Take your pick.

Golden Bridge took me to the “American Language School”, which is on the ninth floor of a nice building on the outside of Zhongshan Square, the center of the most prominent business district in the city. The square (which, bewilderingly, is actually a circle) is a very nice place to hang out. It is the center of a massive roundabout, perhaps 300 meters in diameter. (Check it out on Google Earth: Zhongshan square, Dalian, China.) Every day I spend some time there before or after work: reading, writing, talking with locals, taking pictures, people-watching, etc. There is a woman who sells seeds to feed the now highly annoying and un-frightened flock of pigeons who crowd the square, a huge attraction for park wanderers. Every evening the “square” turns into a dog-walking park for those individuals wealthy enough to skirt the Chinese limitations on dog size, and it also hosts a large group of middle-aged women performing choreographed dance moves/tai chi to Celine Dion or other American pop music of the 90’s.

The school typically provides its employees with apartments, but I wanted to live with a Chinese family. I felt that the home-stay experience would be far more rewarding. This didn’t seem to be an option, until I inadvertently said one little word, which magically procured the home of a former student with hopes of attaining a top American high school.

That word is Stanford. I hate to say it, but dropping the word Stanford in China, let alone at a school whose sole purpose is to prepare wealthy, ultra-overachieving students for hopeful admission to Stanford (or some other top U.S. college) has massive consequences, those consequences being that I am treated like royalty, and they unequivocally assume me to be an expert on just about everything, if not a god. The upside of this is that I get more respect than I’ve ever had in my life (although I feel bad because I don’t deserve it), and the management reserves some of their less than professional management techniques. The downside is that every student I am assigned has high expectations and is bound to be disappointed at my teaching performance, seeing as I am the youngest and least experienced teacher at the school, by a long shot.

On the home front, life is great. My adopted family is very sweet and hospitable. The boy, “Stephen”, is fifteen years old and applying to high schools in America. I help him with his English and with his applications (I’ve convinced him to apply to Cate), and his parents feel that this is more than sufficient compensation for my stay. (By the way, I’m interested in what you think is appropriate and/or ethical in helping Stephen with his applications. I corrected his essays for grammar and a few cases of word choice. Is that all right? To what extent can I help him? If I don’t help enough, I will offend and let down his family, and if I help too much, it will be clear that the work is not his own.) Both parents are high-up managers at a cell phone company, and work long hours each day. I only see them at night. In China, most workers and students have insanely little free time. The Chinese philosophy, then, seems to be that when you do have free time, you live it up, you go big.

On my second night at the house, I went with Stephen and his father, whom I have named, “Kevin”, to the Dalian International Fashion Festival. Every four years, people of all nationalities and ethnicities dress up in their traditional garb and parade down Zhongshan Street in downtown Dalian. We had VIP tickets to see the event, which Kevin had acquired through his work. We arrived and sat at a table in front of the center stage. On our table, and on the thirty or so others situated nearby, were dozens of cans of silly string and huge party poppers. When the mayor arrived, the music started, and the strange dancing performances commenced, all the people around us –mostly upper-class businessmen in suits -picked up the cans of silly string and sprayed each other. What commenced was an all-out silly string war, while in the background floats passed with extravagantly dressed marchers alongside.

On National Day (this year a very big deal because it is the sixtieth anniversary of the Chinese nation), the parents took Stephen and me out to Dalian’s famous aquarium, the zoo, and to a very fancy meal. At the zoo, right next to signs reading, “Don’t feed the animals” were zoo employees selling food to throw to the animals. I couldn’t believe it. At the meal, we sat in a private room with a private chef who cooked various delicacies and unspeakable body parts/organs on a grill in the center of our table. At night, Kevin went with Stepen and me to a bathhouse, or, as I like to call it, “House of naked old men”. After getting over the initial discomfort of the nude environment and wondering about the apparent paradox of an almost hairless race of people except for their abundant pubic hair, I was instructed to lie down on a bed as a man proceeded to harshly rub the dry skin off my body with a towel, and was –shall we say –less than careful about avoiding my genitalia. I’m not sure how I feel about the bathhouses. Kevin wants to take me every Saturday.

Now, I am a very culturally tolerant person. I was willing to think of this bathhouse phenomenon as evidence that theirs is simply a more open culture. They are more relaxed about sexual issues, more in touch with themselves, and thus not as worried about naked dudes rubbing each other down. However, the theory does not hold. They are incredibly conservative with members of the opposite sex. They prohibit girls and boys from even talking with one another in school (though admittedly this is partly for academic reasons) and most college students have the girl/guy social skills of cave men. Sex is not talked about, and looked at as not so much morally sinful as culturally undesirable. Kissing on the cheek is as risqué as it gets on Chinese TV, and all pornographic web sites are blocked by the government. Their culture is not more open –per se – but more open with the same sex, and incidentally less open with the opposite sex. Guys rub each other down and walk down the streets holding hands. Same with girls. But most remain virgins well into their twenties. Theirs is simply a more gay culture, and I mean that in no way negatively or derogatorily.

Something very funny happened to me the first night at home. Actually, at the time, it was not funny. It was terrible, an act of desperation. But in retrospect it is very funny. To give you some background, the night before, I crashed early, and Stephen mentioned that the door to my room was kind of broken. This posed something of a problem when I woke up the next morning with an urgent desire to urinate. I tried the door, and it was stuck. I pulled hard; I tried force and finnese, and still it would not budge. I really had to pee. I had consumed a lot of water the night before, trying to stay hydrated. I looked around the room and had no option but to pee in my water bottle. Ten minutes later, I had to pee just as badly, but the water bottle was full, and the only recepticle in sight was a nice ornamental Chinese vase. I peed in it, and then ten minutes later I peed in the other vase. I feel really bad about pissing in their vases, but I had no choice. Once I figured out how to open the door (with adroit implementation of credit card), I rinsed them out and returned them to their previous locations. Such was my introduction to the Chinese household.

For the national holiday, the grandmother came to stay with us. I met her at night, went to sleep, and woke up late the next morning to find two bowls of warm milk left out for me on the dining room table. Thanks, grandma. A nice gesture, but I’m not a cat. She is the quite the chef, however. The dishes, I’ve discovered, are either hit or miss here. There’s not much in between. Some of it I love: the homemade dumplings, most of the vegetable dishes, the tofu, the fried rice, etc. Some of it tastes like rotting ass: the bitter, watery egg custard with pieces of questionable seafood at the bottom, the fried chicken feet, the marinated cow liver, etc. One thing is clear; they eat a lot of meat here. It’s part of the mentality of the developing country. Only one generation removed from poverty and peasantry, nothing more than rice at every meal, modern Chinese people think that eating meat is a sign of social status, what you do when you can afford it. So they eat it at essentially every meal.

I will leave you with a few scattered observations I have made about Chinese people. Because of what I was saying about the homogeneity of the Chinese, these habits seem to be remarkably consistent with the entire population, at least in Dalian.

Nobody in China walks up or down the escalator. They’re just on for the ride. They may be rushing, running to and from the escalator, but when they’re on it, all movement is ceased. Couples in China often walk down the street wearing completely matching outfits. Old people walk around waving their hands in swift choreographed motions and patting their stomachs to a rhythm, presumably for some sort of exercise. People in China have an interesting concept of authority and autonomy. For some things, for instance, respect for elders and parents, studying vigorously, etc., there is no straying from the beaten path, and people adhere to such rules with discipline and deference. But with other rules, they are nonchalant as ever. People J-walk across crowded streets in front of policemen, waiting in between lanes of traffic while taxis zoom past on either side, cool as cucumbers, smoking cigarettes. When I recently went to the hospital (don’t worry I don’t have the H1N1), I saw a man smoking a cigarette while being examined by a doctor. I wished I’d had my camera.

I’ve begun a list of funny t-shirts and slogans that I see here, such as are inevitable in any non-English-speaking country with a taste for western clothing. Here is what I have so far: t-shirts reading, “Cute girl littlefriend”, “Happy smiley fuck”, and “I sleep with girls” (worn by a young girl walking with her mother). I also enjoyed the subtitle on the body wash that I use at this house: “Stop the shower of the ticklish clearly”.

As you can see, I’m having quite the adventure here, and I have a very kind family to look after me, so you need not worry. I hope you are all doing well, and I would be delighted to hear from you. If you’ve read all the way to here, you deserve a medal. Sometimes I get carried away with things like this. Next time I will tell you all about teaching English, and learning Chinese, because there’s a lot to say. Oh, and soon I’m posting some photos up on Shutterfly, so check those out.

All the best,

Dana

Apology from Dana

October 10, 2009 Filed in: Uncategorized

Hello everyone. I looked back at what I wrote to you all a few days ago, and in retrospect it seems like I was making some judgements about Chinese culture that I simply cannot make, having been in the country for only about a month. Those are simply observations, what I have seen and heard thus far. In addition, I shouldn’t talk about Chinese people as a whole, but only those I see in Dalian. I realize that China is not actually homogenous; it is a huge country with many different groups of people from local regions. I apologize for coming off the way I did, but I was partly just trying to be funny.

Dana is ok

October 7, 2009 Filed in: Dana in China

“Boychick” is okay!
Hello mom and dad. I really apologize for not contacting you in the past week, but I have physically been unable to do so. Yes -the rumors are true -I was sick. But that’s in the past, and now I’m better. I can’t tell you exactly what I had (because I couldn’t understand what the doctor said and Stephen couldn’t translate medical terminology), but I can tell you what my symptoms were. First I had a fever that lasted a day or two, which reduced to a mild fever and added more than mild nausea (blah blahhhh), which gave way to very little fever and nausea but the most uncomfortable stomach-ache you can imagine, coupled with the strangest poopies I’ve ever had. I can only describe it as constipated dihorrea. I would be relatively okay, lying down, for about an hour, and suddenly I would feel pressure in my stomach, which would gradually increase in intensity and move downwards towards my bowels, by which point I would feel like I was going to shit my pants. But then I would run to the toilet and nothing would come out, as hard as I pushed, even though I had the feeling that I really, really had to go. Very unique and uncomforatble sensation. This persisted for a day, they took me to a hospital. At the hospital they gave me some sort of I.V. I’ve been at home for two days since then and now I am almost fully recovered. I start work again tomorrow.

I’m guessing it was some sort of stomach flu?

Anyways, sorry to keep you in the dark. Love you all. How are the plants? Are there any ripe tomatoes yet?
Long family email (delayed by illness) to soon follow.

Dana

Rachael is back in China

September 30, 2009 Filed in: Rachael in China

She has safely arrived in Kunming, Yunnan province, and here is her first email:

Hi mom and dadda,

I’m here! The Internet is really dodgy in my apartment and I have to write an email and then walk around the room before I can send it. I’m going to go to a cafe today, but we think because it’s a mac the system isn’t that comparable.

I had a very interesting flight. I cried as soon as I reached my gate and tried to hide it, but couldn’t. I had so many Chinese people staring at me. I loaded on the plane and slept almost the entire flight. The tiny Chinese man sitting next to me fell asleep on my shoulder and I was too lazy to tell him to move. It was pretty cute, except his breathe was STANKY.

In Hong Kong I met an Aussie fellow who was coming to Yunnan to film and document a ten-day charity bike ride through rural China, run by non other than the Jane Goddall Roots and Shoots Beijing. I helped edit some of the pamphlets for this charity bike ride last year during my intern. I really want to go on it, but I have class starting in a few days. Anyways, he was very nice and taught me all sorts of stuff about my camera. Small world.

I arrived and got picked up by Josh’s wife Naoko who is Japanese and lived in China for at least ten years. She is fluent in mandarin and English. Very nice. She moved me into my apartment which is two bedrooms and Naoko’s office where she treats patients during the week. I live with a 40-ish German lady who has been a TCM doctor for years. Everyone here is already a doctor, practiced for years, and is now brushing up on some skills. For example, the man who moved out of my room just before I arrived is name Brody. He’s a crazy Canadian, huge beard, strange necklaces, big round glasses, and a loud distinct laugh. He’s dyslexic and told me about how hard it is to study, well anything, being that way-but in particular TCM. He is here learning emergency acupuncture. What to do if someone is bleeding severely, or going into shock etc. It’s quite amazing the people here. And most of all they are all so excited to have me just starting. Brody just went on and on about how this is really going to change my view of well being and life. I told Bridget (my housemate) that my back was hurting and she starting rubbing acupuncture points in my leg and hand. About five minutes later my lower back felt much more relaxed. I could get used to this.

My room is really nice. Big, wooden floors, little nook to read next to my large glass window. The view is of many other apartment buildings and the mountains that surround Yunnan. I always hear traffic, but it doesn’t bother me. The air is clean, the sky blue, and people seem much happier than in Beijing.

I met up with my friend, Tai, who was my RA in Beijing. He’s living with two other friends from the States and they are all teaching English. They live about 15min bike ride from me, right next to the green lake. The green lake is what I remember most of Kunming. It’s a decent sized lake, the color of jade, that has many different islands, walkways, and platforms. Basically it’s a haven for all Chinese past times. Tai and I after getting delicious jiaozi (dumplings) and a one hour massage for five dollars, walked around the lake. Everyone was there. Grandmas and Grandpas were gathered around in every corner playing cards, Chinese checkers (different from the star shaped board we know), playing instruments (a lot of reed flutes), dancing (country, unusual line dancing, and some sort of hand dance), loudly debating about something, and of course staring shamelessly at my blond locks. It was extremely crowded. Some of the gatherings were no less than 100 people, but they all were just sitting, listening, relaxing.

The pace of life is much more layed back, and even though there are high rises and many people, there is still a village feeling. There are very few foreigners and the ex pat community is not an isolated bubble like in Beijing. Most foreigners speak mandarin, and are here because they WANT to be part of the community. They are not condescending to the locals the way so many butt heads in Beijing were. I’m already getting to know the woman who sells roses outside of our complex, and the guard who watches the bikes.

The diversity among the people is amazing. Most people are dressed in comfortable clothes, a t shirt and jeans. Very few are all dolled up and wearing heals the way Beijingers were. The people themselves all look so different, and in my opinion are much more beautiful than Han Chinese. South Asian is very exotic. Some have freckles, some really dark skin, and they are on average much shorter than Han Chinese. There are quite a few Tibetans around, and they are not hard to miss. They are dressed the same, but there faces are so distinct. Darker skin usually and wider faces. Of course I’m not sure, they could be a mix of other bordering countries as well. Some people are wearing traditional minority clothing and it’s beautiful. I believe they are some sort of Tibetan group. I’ll let you know once I do.

Yunnan is the best place to be in China if you want to travel. You can take a bus for thirty US dollars to Vietnam and probably cheaper to Burma. Tibet is just above me, and I’m just itching to get up there. Sichuan is practically free. I’m going to have some good weekend trips. Tai and I are already scheming, and I’m trying to get Dana to come visit.

My first Tai Qi class starts Sunday morning, and my full schedule starts Monday. I have a few days now to buy groceries, explore, read, do college apps, try to fix my Internet, and get a couple more massages:)

I hope everything at home is good. You guys are so beautiful. I’m such a lucky girl. My last dinner was amazing-I’m still nibbling on the brownies. Take care of Phoebe, and I hope Snakey had a smooth ascension to her next life.

Lots of Love,
Rach

Dana reports on his living situation in Dalian, China

September 19, 2009 Filed in: Dana in China

Read it and enjoy…

Hey fam,
Sounds like there’s a lot of action in the dog sector of the Edwards home. That’s her way of saying she loves you. Or her way of trying to kill you. Hard to say. One way or another, maybe it’s time to think about doing a little training, now that I am out of the country and it cannot physically be my responsibility.

Well I am settling in nicely. Two nights ago I moved in with my home-stay family, which is basically composed of a fourteen-year-old boy, because his mother is in the US and his father works very late each night. It’s great though. The kid is really nice (this morning he drew me a detailed map of the area and the bus stops so I could find my way to work). Something really funny happened yesterday morning, my first morning at the house. Actually, at the time, it was not funny. It was terrible, an act of desperation. But in retrospect it is very funny. To give you some background, the night before, I crashed early, and Stephen (the kid) mentioned that the door to my room was kind of broken. This posed something of a problem when I woke up the next morning with an urgent desire to urinate. I tried the door, and it was stuck. I pulled hard; I tried force and finnese, and still it would not budge. I really had to piss. I had consumed a lot of water the night before because staying hydrated is important for staying healthy, and it came back to bite me in the ass, or peehole. Anyways, I looked around the room and had no option but to pee in my water bottle. Ten minutes later, I had to pee just as bad, but the water bottle was full, and the only recepticle in sight was a nice ornamental Chinese vase. I pissed in it, and then ten minutes later I pissed in the other vase. I feel really bad about pissing in their vases, but I had no choice. Once I figured out how to open the door (with adroit implementation of credit card), I rinsed them out and returned them to their previous locations.

I am really doing great here. I scored big time with the homestay family. I don’t have to pay them anything. The kid is a really smart overachiever, and his father thinks my teaching him a little English is more than sufficient compensation for my stay. Tonight I finally met the father and he took me and Stephen out to a nice meal, and then to a high class bathouse, or as I like to call it, “house full of small asian penises”. It was really nice. I soaked for a while and then some dude scrubbed off my dead skin with a towel and in the process was-shall we say- less than careful about avoiding my genitalia. He skimmed my balls like a hundred times. Made me a little uncomfortable, but the experience was overall very relaxing. The three of us will go every Saturday.

At dinner I offered to pay the check, and the father nearly killed me. He was like, no no no no! The family is really great. Tomorrow they’re taking me to a big festival at the nearby Olympic park, where there will be music and a fashion show. Apparently the tickets are very expensive and hard to come by, but they won’t allow me to pay for myself.

I’ve figured out how to take buses to work, with the help of Stephen. It is about a fifteen minute bus ride, which costs a whopping sum of one yuan (about fifteen cents). At this rate (buying meals for 12 yuan, buses for one yuan, etc.) I think I’ll be broke pretty soon.

I’ve worked for two days now. I’m slowly getting the hang of it. It is all one-on-one tutoring, which is nice because you can tailor the lesson to the ability level of the student, which ranges from primitive in the cute little five-year-olds to damn-near fluent in the ultra-overachieving eighteen-year-olds. I was wrong; I won’t really be teaching adults. It’s mainly middle school and highschool students. Each student has a different textbook (arranged by difficulty level, from 1 to 6) that he or she is learning from, and I teach according to his or her desire, whether it be reading comprehension, pronunciation, writing, or “free talk”. With some students, mostly boys, teaching is a breeze, because they are eager to talk and I don’t have to rack my brains for topics of basic conversation, but with the shy students, who are mostly girls, it becomes rather difficult to keep a conversation going at their level of fluency.

I am learning a few tricks of the trade, and I have begun a teacher’s notebook to jot down ideas and the like.

The other teachers are really cool. I’d say about a third of them are American, and the others are English, Irish, Scottish, and African, but the school thinks they are American (to comply with the “American Language School” theme) and I honestly don’t think they can differentiate between the accents. It’s funny, throughout the school there are maps of America and American flags. It makes me feel at home.

I have to work quite a bit, and weekends are far from a respite. Weekends are when you work long hours, becasue that’s when the students are not in school and have time to further cram their schedules with structured learning and avoid enjoying their fleeting childhood or adolescence. These kids work like dogs. Like working dogs. Like the hardest workers of the working dogs.

So on the weekends, because I am “full time”, I will work between nine and eleven classes ( the maximum), so from 8:30 in the morning until 6:30 in the evening, roughly. During the week, no classes start before 2:30, and I will have four or five each weekday.I will be working 20-25 hours Monday-Friday and about 20 hours over the weekend, so forty hour weeks, maybe even forty five. My free time is every weekday morning, and nights, if I want to go out and party it up with, say, the crazy Zimbabwean guy named Walter with whom I am becoming acquainted. He swears an enormous amount, and most of the Chinese people, even at the school, either don’t know the swear words or don’t care. The result is very funny. He’ll go up to one of the chinese guys who works there, (Golden Bridge, for example) and say “Bridge, fix my computer, you chinese f**k! What the f**k do you think you’re doing, you asian a*hole?”

Anyways, I am getting carried away with this email. There is internet here at my house, and sometimes at school (when the network is not down, which it often is). Next time I go online I will try to skype you guys. Love you all very very much

Dana

Sam Edwards Family Website

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