Typhoid Mary

Greetings from cloudy-but-warmer Chengdu, Sichuan. Over the past couple of weeks we have traveled a fair amount. Starting last (Thanksgiving) weekend, we left our little town for the metropolis of Lanzhou, Gansu. Almost all of the Gansu volunteers, some Chinese students, along with a few expats gathered for a semi-traditional Thanksgiving meal. Each person brought a little something and we ended up with a group of over 30 people and well over 30 dishes to eat! While there was no turkey, it was still a delicious meal and more than we ever had a right to expect.

We took the long bus ride home to Chengxian for a week of teaching and then we were off to Chengdu on Thursday. Michelle was chosen to be an organizer for our annual training session and she didn't want to make the 17-hour trip alone. So, I took a couple of vacation days am hanging out at the Peace Corps China headquarters in Chengdu.

The train ride started out terrible. We boarded and found that, rather than the normal carpeted middle priced hard sleepers (a sleeper is a bed berth) that we usually ride in, the hard sleepers were much worse. They had no carpeting and everyone was smoking everywhere. No big deal, right? Wrong.

Unfortunately, many people here find that if there is no carpeting, spitting is considered acceptable and these cars are jammed with people. So I trudged through the lake-o-phlegm(vowing to burn my shoes after the trip) to my bed and I found a woman sitting on my bed. I told her that she was in my bunk, she smiled pleasantly and moved for me. Much like Baby Bear, of Three Bears fame, It was plain to see that she had been sleeping in my bed. "No problem. I can deal with this," I thought, trying to be positive.

Then she started coughing...

This wasn't a little innocuous cough. She bent at the waist and let forth great gales of wind with each hack. After each coughing spell, she would rid her body of the offending mucuous by spitting the contents of her lungs on the ground in front of her, and unfortunately, me.

I looked at her. Then I looked at my bed of death, crawling with what I pictured were zillions of her bacteria, who were all bidding, pleading, BEGGING me to lie down for awhile. Then I told my grimacing wife that I'd be right back.

I wanted to see about getting a different berth. I found the car officer and was told that there was a better bunk available. The price was pretty steep as it was a move up to a soft sleeper (the train equivalent of a deluxe room.) It only took me a short moment to decide that our health took precedence over money and forked over the cash.

The new bunk was much better, the man across from me lit up a cigarette a couple of times. I politely asked him to smoke outside of the sleeper (The rule is that smokers must go between cars to smoke anyway, but it is not strictly enforced.) and he was happy to oblige.

We are now in the metropolis of Chengdu, where we are able to enjoy western food and I can replenish my Chinese textbook collection and other fun stuff. On Monday, we'll be back on the train (fingers crossed for a decent, or at least disease-free, bed) for the trip back home.

Movin' Down But Not Feelin' Down

When we were told about our move we were never really sure when it was going to happen because we had seen our new "home." Every time we walked by, it was absolutely barren. All we could see was cement floor and walls. There was no sinks, toilets, pipes or anything else. The door didn't even have a peephole! Just an empty spot where it should be.

The move turned out to be quite sudden, but just fine. Before it went down we were told it would be sometime in the afternoon, probably on a weekend. We had a bunch of stuff packed up and ready but figured that we could put the rest of it together Saturday morning and be ready by 4 or 5pm when the move would probably happen. How wrong we were!

At 8am we received the call. Mr. Pu called us and told us that he hired a bunch of guys to help us move and they'd be there in 10 minutes! Shell and I began to scramble like crazy getting everything ready. We didn't succeed, but that didn't matter. When the workers arrived, they just scooped up anything they found and chucked it in a box, bag or other container and took it.

The school had definitely been busy at our place. They slapped some funky faux-hardwood floor down that is about as thick and durable as aluminum foil. This stuff gets holes in it if you give it a hard stare. It is bubbly, lumpy, and very low quality. It is also 100,000% better than the cement that was there before it, so it was a good thing. The workers had been there and installed a sink and other things things that made it livable. Finally, we discovered that the furniture we had been using belonged to the owners of our old apartment. We had been using their couch, bed (kinda creepy,) table, and other stuff. That meant that the school had to buy new furniture for our apartment. This turned out to be quite a good thing. Particularly the couch. Apparently, there had been some guilty feelings about forcing us to move into the dormitories. In a move I think was partially motivated to assuage their guilt, they bought us a very comfortable, new couch.

So now we are all settled in, more or less. The new place is essentially two long, skinny rooms. Despite the significant reduction in size there are definitely some benefits of living here. First, the place is much warmer than our old apartment. Before, we lived on the 6th and very top floor. My theory is that in the winter, we lost more heat because we resided on the top than the other apartments below us who had adjacent apartments to retain the heat. Now we are on the 3rd floor, and are sandwiched in a little better. Michelle doesn't buy my theory. What doyou think? Second, we are even closer to our classes (Probably too close, but we'll make do.) This is no exaggeration: it takes us 30 seconds to get to class and that is at a normal pace. Third, again, we are on the 3rd floor. This means half as many stairs to get in and out of our place.

One of the more important things that being in China and in the Peace Corps has taught me is to roll with the punches. If something doesn't go your way, learn to be flexible and it might turn out better than you expected. This doesn't mean you should always give in and you should make your opinion known; but be willing to find ways to compromise.

In other news, the heat has finally turned on! This is a great development. The whole city of Chengxian has been enveloped in a fog of coal smoke from all of the coal burning stoves, and other heating systems but at least we are all warm for a while.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we will spend the actual holiday at hotpot with our students. Rachel, Thomas (the Swedish volunteers,) Michelle and I each chose one student to join us for the meal. We each tried to choose students who were pretty shy but also worked hard to improve their English. My choice was a student named Jan. She is very quiet and you have to lean close to hear her most times and she doesn't really approach any of her teachers. I told her about how each teacher was choosing a student to go to dinner and she was my choice. I then asked her if she'd like to go. She looked up, blushed a little, smiled and said, "I am very happy!" I asked her if that meant she'd go and she told me, "Of course!"

Like last year, we will meet for a big Thanksgiving meal on the weekend. There will be a football game again (Last year I caught both touchdown passes! I should have gone pro!) and a huge potluck dinner. There isn't really turkey in China. At least not this far out, so we are going to substitute it with some KFC chicken. Not perfect, but we roll with the punches, right?

I hope your holiday is great. Eat some turkey for me!

Will upload pics when it is working again.