Adventures in Guangzhou!

As I stared out at the beautiful countryside, I began to think about how I am the first foreigner that almost everyone in David's town had ever met. The crazy thing is not only that I'm the first, but that I will most likely be the *only* one as well. It's rare for anyone to move more than one town away and there are very very few foreigners that venture out to this area of Hunan--there's simply no reason to.

At first I began to feel quite a bit of self-imposed pressure because of this. I knew I was under the microscope and I wanted to make sure that I made a good impression and was a good embassador of the west, of the U.S., of Jews, of foreign teachers, and of the greater non-Han-Chinese world. I worried a bit about what I looked like, what I said, and how I acted. However, even only 5 or 6 days into it, I began to lose this feeling. I started to care less and to not worry about it, especially for those strangers who just stared at me quizzically for minutes at a time. I can't help it--it just got old.

We arrived in Liu Yang and I was pleased. It was a relatively clean city and the lack of garbage strewn everywhere was a welcome change. We hopped in a couple cabs to get to his cousin's apartment for lunch, who happens to be a geography teacher in the local high school. He must have been doing quite well for himself because the apartment was beautiful. It was there that I had my first meal in days that was eaten in a place with a floor and lighting that went beyond a single bulb hanging uncovered from the ceiling. They even had a computer!

We walked around for a while and went along the river that cuts the city in half. It was quite nice and I was excited about strolling around for a while longer but the rest of the crew wanted to go back and watch TV. This seemed ridiculous to me until I realized that most of them work so many hours that they rarely have time to sit around a veg around the boob-tube. I guess when you have such a long period of downtime, watching TV on the couch is like going to a resort. I had to rmeind myself--it's all relative. I tried to make the most of it though and learn some more Chinese characters. Almost every tv show has a transcription on the bottom of the screen of all text so if you have someone around who can help you, it's a good way to learn.

Meanwhile, I realized that I was starting to feel a bit like Morgan Spurlock from "Super Size Me." In a weird sort of way, I was putting my body through ridiculous and unnecessary conditions simply to see what would happen. Well, in rural Hunan, what happened is that I began to cough up flem on a regular basis, had black boogers coming out of my nose, had a minor soar throat every morning, and hadn't washed my body in almost a week. Interesting, but yet I did not have the option of ending this experiment early like Morgan did.

On a similar note, I realized that I was beginning to gravitate towards vegetables during every meal which is bizarre, given my track record as a meat-lover. The inner monologue thought process went something like this: "Hmmm, is that pig intestines? Tough call. Looks a heckuva lot like the smoked duck's feet but slightly smaller. It looks like that one might be another dog dish but I think I've had more than enough of that in the last week. Well that right there is definitely a carrot. Yeah, definitely a carrot. I guess I'll go with that." As it is, people save up lots of money in order to cook/eat meat during Spring Festival so they see eating vegetables as a sign of poverty or of being cheap. All I know is that I probably would have shelled out some serious cash for a whole dish of qing cai (green vegetables).

We headed back and went to bed on the early side, with plans to get up and head out to Chairman Mao's hometown. Excellent.