Adventures in Guangzhou!

The train ride itself was pretty uneventful. I must hand it to Apple though--I played my iPod almost non-stop for the entire 25 hour ride and not only did the battery last through the trip, but it was still going strong on the subway and bus back to my apartment. Impressive, no? The only other point of note was that I attempted to make conversation with a businessman who came over to me as I was eating dinner on Monday night. He told me in broken English that he had never spoken to a westerner before but that he had studied 5 years of English.

I was happy to speak with him in both English and Chinese and thought it was a perfect opportunity to use my new phrasebook. In Dali, Lexi and I looked around a bookstore that had a really good selection of English books. I was going to buy an Amos Oz book but then saw that they had the new edition of the Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook. Lexi had the 4th edition which seemed like a really handy thing to have around so I splurged to purchase my own. Once I opened the plastic though I was horrified to discover that they had devised their own system of romanization and pronunciation instead of using the standard Pinyin system. After spending the last two months learning pronunciation of Pinyin, I quickly discovered that the L.P. phrasebook was almost useless to me.

Both of us got very frustrated as I butchered my pronunciation of basic phrases. Ugh. Moral of the story? Avoid the 5th edition of the L.P. phrasebook. I even emailed them to express my disappointment and it turns out they're returning to Pinyin in the next edition coming out next September. I may even be able to finagle a copy of one of the older editions too, which would be excellent. They did send me back a personalized email response to my complaint so maybe it's not such a disaster after all.

Back in GZ, I was comforted to see the familiar chaos around the metro station closest to me. It was sort of odd to notice that no one really gave me a second look walking around with my backpack but yet everyone seemed to stare quite a bit more in Kunming. Kunming, being more of a tourist destination, seems to have more westerners walking around yet they remain more of a novelty. On the flipside, GZ always has pinyin on street signs and for many storefronts whereas Kunming usually only has Chinese characters. I wonder why?

After being away for so long, a bunch of students greeted me with a warm welcome as I walked through the gate of the school. It may be a big ol' dirty city, but it's *my* big ol' dirty city. Seeing my coworker and friend David, he immediately asked if I'd be playing basketball that night. Of course! He also informed me that he did fifteen 100m sprints yesterday in preparation for the upcoming faculty-staff track meet. Geez. Well at least I don't feel silly for taking it seriously! This was a wake-up call for me that I really need to get back on the track ASAP if I'm going to represent on December 4th. David even trains with track spikes! I gotta get on that.

I am happy to announce that all of my students survived the experience on the farm and that no one got bitten by a dog or snake (as they all feared beforehand). It has been really interesting to talk to them about the week. Many reported that their families were actually quite rich and had bigger homes than most city-folk. Others reported that they slept three to a bed and were disappointed to eat the exact same dish for every meal. A bunch of the kids even taught English classes in the local primary school and told me they got very frustrated by having to scream in order to keep order. Ha! Always good to get kids on the other side to see how hard a teacher has to work. The most poignant moment by far though was when one of my girls broke into tears relating a story of how she spent a day talking to a 80 year-old blind woman who had no family left.

All in all it was an incredible vacation and I can't wait to head out and travel again. I'm thinking about doing a weekend trip to either Yangshuo, Macau, or up to the PiA girls in Jishou. We'll see. Finally, here are my photos one more time from the trip. I have yet to add in Lexi's photos but I'll get around to that one of these days so if you're really interested, you can bookmark the page and check back in sometime:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/awolfe03/sets/1373122/