So, there we were, sitting in Beijing’s soft seat waiting room hoping that we would be able to interpret what the loud speaker was saying in Chinese so that we wouldn’t miss our train to Shenyang. Every once in a while the word Beijing would flutter into our ears followed by a string of words we couldn’t understand and then Shenyang would register. The train station was packed and busy with people running from here to there and there to here. Somehow or another there were a few people, like the girl in the above picture, camped out and sleeping on the seats provided. All was insane as usual.

I heard a Chinese saying yesterday that is rather similar to one of our western ones, and it made me laugh. In America, when things get hairy and out of control, we commonly say, “It’s a zoo in(out) there.” This statement might refer to a busy shopping day, like Black Friday, or a simple trip to Wal-Mart to buy some groceries – which may or may not be so easy depending on when you go. Any time during normal waking hours is usually a bad time to go. And recently, vampire hours have made maneuvering Wal-Mart a task. 🙂 I don’t exactly know why we chose the word zoo to describe how crazy things can get, but I’m sure it has something to do with how mischievous animals can be and how quick they can destroy a room if you aren’t there to stop them. Monkeys are espeically talented at doing said thing.

In China, it’s not zoos that people refer to, but instead train stations. If you have ever been to China or had to wait in a train station at any point of the year, but more importantly during major holidays, you can understand why completely. So, when things get a little out of hand here, and oh, they do, the Chinese say, “It’s a train station in(out) there.” Same idea. Same meaning. They just compare it to something different: Themselves. I find this especially interesting. In America, we pick on the lower evolved species that can’t defend itself, but the Chinese call themselves out. They have no problem admitting to the insanity they cause in train stations and bus stations alike when they all try to get somewhere at the same time. That’s no joke either. A sea of Chinese men and women will bombard the ticket taker as if the train is about to leave at any second, but the truth is that two seconds ago it was announced over the loud speakers that it was all the clear to board. They always seem to be in such a rush, and I can never figure out why. The insanity may be the worst in the actually train station, but things are just as crazy in mnay other places in China as well. I don’t get as stressed out as I used to over it. Now I just smile, and squeeze along with the rest of them like I’m one of the crowd.

Ah, “It’s a train station in(out) there”.

I’m turning Chinese.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR!!!!

Run for your lives! Save yourself!

Oh, dear GOD! What is that?!

That’s a tough question really, but if you use your imagination, I’m sure you can think of something creative. My idea was that they were all foreign teachers that just found out they were living and working illegally in China. In all the confusion and mass hysteria of trying to leave the country, they were rounded up by the Chinese Alien Control Cowboy and were being thrown one by one into a pot of boiling water to be made into Laowai Tea. Hmm, sounds tasty, huh? Laowai is Chinese for foreigner or outsider, by the way, if you didn’t know.

Well, on a more serious note, that crazy poster I am posing next to was one of the posters that the former Shenyang WECL English School had hanging in the hallway. Former you say? Yep. Former. When we left to go to Beijing to get our health exam, Shenyang WECL was alive and kicking and trying desperately to find us some students to teach. A week later we returned to find every piece of paper, sign, and poster(including the poster up top) that was related to the school stripped off the wall and thrown into the storage room to collect dust. Apparently, in our absence, they decided that Shenyang WECL English School wasn’t doing so hot and that they should pursue other interests until they could get their act together. What did they decide to do? Well, they thought turning the 8th floor of the high rise we were teaching on into a floor of cozy apartments. No joke. The plans for how they would look were lined up on the wall by the front door. And to make things more interesting, when I went into the room where our office had been, all of the desks, including all the other furniture they had brought in were missing.

“Umm,” I said to Chris, our friend and assistant, “Where did our stuff go?”

“Oh, they moved it into the other room. Your desk is mine now.”

And sure enough it was, along with the computers they had let us use.

“When did they decide to scrap WECL and build apartments Chris?”

“About two days after you left.”

Wow. I knew things in China were changing quickly, but that’s unbelievable! They didn’t even wait until we moved out to switch shop. Another crazy thing was the all of the staff for the school was still there. They just were no longer concerned with who we were and what we were doing there. Apparently, they were now working with whomever decided to reconstruct the 8th floor into apartments. When their job title changed, so did their responsibility. Thankfully, Chris was there to help us get everything situated for our move to Xiamen. He was a great guy, and I’m sad that we weren’t able to stay in Shenyang and get to know him more. I miss him.

I’ll make this short and sweet.

Since I was unable to really sleep on our journey from Beijing to Shenyang, I was wide awake to take this picture. I wish my camera would work better under extreme circumstances – IE taking a picture of the bright sun through a window in a train that is traveling 120 KM per hour – but what can you do. I don’t think it came out too bad considering. At least you can tell what it was I was taking a picture of. The crazy part is that I took about ten pictures before I got this one. All the rest of them were blurry or too bright.

I miss the sun.

I haven’t seen it since the day after we arrived in Xiamen. It’s been rainy and craptastic ever since. It seems the sun is a seldom visitor in the south of China. Xiamen seems to be a lot like Fuyang in that regard. Even though it was cold, windy and dusty in Beijing, at least there was a big ball of fire on most days hanging above me in the vast blue sky. Heh. I guess I can’t be happy all the time. : ) The sun has to come out eventually,though. I’ve seen too many pictures of Xiamen to believe that it is perpetually overcast here. At least, I hope not.

As mentioned before, in multiple posts, we had to take a train from Beijing to get to our supposed final destination of Shenyang. Instead of getting a soft seat like we did to go from Hangzhou to Beijing(which I will never do again), we were provided with soft sleepers. The above picture is of the car we resided in for the 8 hour journey.

For the most part, it wasn’t that bad. The beds were soft enough to get comfortable in, but because of the constant shaking of the train, I had a horrible time getting some shut eye. Phil had a similar problem, but Christine was out cold as soon as she closed her eyes. Not long after the train pushed off, Phil tried taking a 360 of the room, but only this portion of it turned out. It shows the majority of the room anyway. The room was itzy bitzy(don’t let the picture fool you) and was barely big enough to put all of our luggage in it. Thankfully, Richard decided to take a plane to Shenyang, or else we wouldn’t have had a bed to lay everything on. Phil and I took the top bunks and Christine and all of our luggage took the bottom two.

Each bed came equipped with sheets, a pillow and a little reading light. To get to the top bunks though, one needed to be super agile. There were no stairs leading up to them. Instead, there was a little foot hold and a handle to pull yourself up. It’s much easier getting up than getting down – at least that is how it was for me. But, as I have seen since being in China – even the elderly Chinese are pretty darn flexible. I saw an old lady sitting flat footed, like it was natural. I don’t think I can name one elderly person back home that can do that. I think it is all the training they do throughout their lives to use the toilet here. I will never understand how they do it or want to do it.

And that is the low down on the sleeper car that we stayed in. I’ll be posting about our experiences so far in Xiamen soon. I just want to go ahead and post the things that have happened recently before I forget them. I have a few more pictures that I have saved on blogger to get to before I move on to Xiamen. Plus, I haven’t really had many picture opportunities since coming to Xiamen. The weather did a 180 the day after we got here. It’s been overcast and rainy every day since. We are in the rainy season, so I guess it is something I need to get used to. I just hope we are spared a typhoon. I don’t want to have to deal with one of those.

I thought I would post this just to make some of you laugh.

I know that in America we have brands that are made to look like other ones, but this completely caught me off guard. Everything on the box looks exactly as it does on the original, but the only real difference is its name. Instead of Colgate, my preferred brand of toothpaste, it’s Colqore. The same goes for the Crene. It’s supposed to be Crest. The brand in the middle is a knock off of brand as well, but I am unsure of it’s true name. I’ve seen it a few times here in China. It may be Black Man International or something to that effect. And where did we find these, you ask? Well, just right down the street from Er Wai in Beijing, at the new Chinese “thrift store” universally known as the 2 Kuai Store. And no, I didn’t buy any. It may work just as well as my Colgate Whitening, but I treasure my teeth a little more than to risk it. The printing on the box was really poor too. I have no idea where they had it printed up. Anyway, I just thought it was funny.

Ah. No more planes, buses, trains or automobiles. I never thought I would despise traveling so much or enjoy the pleasures of home like I do now. It’s so nice to know that my home will be nice and stable for the next three months(at least) and that it won’t have wings, tires, shake, or have the possibility of crashing. We’ve only been here four days now and I’ve already dug my feet into the ground and started growing roots. It’s either going to take all of the men, women, and children of China ripping me up and dragging me out or a fierce typhoon to make me leave Xiamen.For those of you who have just arrived or missed some of the posts that talked about our crazy trip that bounced us all over China, let me bring you up to speed. For those who know all about it, take a look at the map above and get a good idea of just how far we’ve gone is such a little amount of time. I know think I can say that I have been to more places in China, than I can say I’ve been in my own country. There is something wrong about that, I think.

So, if you take a look at the map above, you will see a whole bunch of black lines going from one corner of China, one city at a time, to the other corner of China. Now you can understand my hatred for traveling. I think anyone would have a sour look upon their face if they had just gone through what we have. I’m just a little sad that I didn’t make it any further west. I mean, if you are going to bounce us around China, you could have at least bounced us in all of the cardinal directions! :)Alright, hopefully, this final explanation of everywhere we’ve been will not become any bigger than it has. Every time I’ve thought its come to an end, something else has happened. This time though, I think the insanity has finally settled to the bottom of the ocean and won’t be tempted to show it’s evil face again.

From the top:

Fuyang to Hangzhou – by bus – 1 hour
Hangzhou to Beijing – by train – 14 hours – soft seat
Beijing to Shenzhen – by plane – 4 hours
Shenzhen to Hong Kong – by “train” – 1 hour
Hong Kong to Shenzhen – by “train” – 1 hour
Shenzhen to Hangzhou – by plane – 2 hours
Hangzhou to Tunxi – by bus – 2.5 hours
Tunxi to Huang Shan – by bus – 1.5 hours
Huang Shan to Tunxi – by bus – 1.5 hours
Tunxi to Hangzhou – by bus – 2.5 hours
Hangzhou to Beijing – by plane – 2 hours
1st attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 2 hours of sitting – Freak snow storm
2nd attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – Flight canceled
3rd attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 14 hours of sitting for a one hour flight
4th attempt Beijing to Shenyang – by train – soft sleeper – 8 hours
Shenyang to Beijing – by train – soft seat – 9.5 hours
Beijing to Shenyang – by plane – 1 hour
Shenyang to Xiamen – by plane – 5.5 hours (delay and stop-over)

That’s about 70 hours of traveling and is probably pretty accurate, but I wouldn’t doubt it if it was actually more. I’m probably missing a bus ride or something in there somewhere. The worst part about it is that the only places we had actually planned on going after our contract was up in January was Huang Shan, Beijing, and of course Shenyang. It is true that we got to see a lot of China, but almost everywhere we went, we were trying to get important things done so that we could stay in China for the following semester. Because of that, we missed a lot of cool things in the cities that we were able to go. Maybe I will win the lottery or something, and be able to go back and enjoy them all at a much more leisurely pace. Heh, that would be nice.

And after all of that, there isn’t much more to say on that subject. I guess that chapter of my life is over and it is time to move on to the next one. As crazy as this chapter was, I sure got some crazy stories out of it – that’s for sure. And even though the experience at the time frustrated the living hell out of me, I know that I will have a good laugh when I’m 60 and sipping sweet tea on my front porch. . . .”Hey, Phil, do you remember the time we got bounced all over China.”

I have a feeling that Xiamen is going to be good to us.

If you have ever wondered what you would look like in a claymation cartoon or movie, all you have to do is go to any large market in China and say the word. That’s what Phil and I did and look what happened. They are pretty freaky, but remarkably good.

Phil is so suave.

We had seen something like this in Hangzhou, but to save money and space in our suitcases, we decided to pass them up at the time. The kind we saw in Hangzhou were made of clay too, but didn’t come in color. When we saw the guy making these at the Silk Street Market in Beijing for cheaper than the variety in Hangzhou we couldn’t pass them up. I think that Phil looks more like his than I do of mine, but they are still very cool. For the two of them we paid 160 yuan and it took the guy about 25 minutes to recreate us in clay. Neat, huh?

Gabe will never be as beautiful as she was on the day she was made.

Well, it appears that China has decided to revoke my freedom again.

A few days ago Phil and I were trying to update our blog and make it pretty by adding new features when the ever familiar and loathed message – The connection has timed out – popped up on the screen when I deviated from the page I had been on for a while. I thought perhaps that the internet was acting a bit funny for a second, but when I tried reloading my blog again, the same thing occurred. My next thought was, “What are the odds that China blogged blogspot at the exact time that I was using it.” So I waited a while and tried again. Same message. Hrm, strange. I tried using a random proxy and poof – my blog reappeared. What I feared seemed to have actually happened. My blogged was now blocked/banned in China again after being unblocked since Thanksgiving. I thought I’d give it a day or so, but it seems it’s back to using www.pkblogs.com to access my blog if I want to read anything written by anyone else.

The picture up top is my favorite yogurt here in China, and not only because of the funny little story that the top container of four tells. I thought it was pretty funny though, and that is why I took a picture of it. Poor little Raspberry. Or is it a Strawberry? Being jumped by a pair of crazy grapes sure has to suck. Heh.

As for news on our situation in China: We are still in Beijing. We will either leave on Tuesday or Wednesday for Shenyang by plane and then go on to Xiamen a day or two after that by plane aw well. I am so looking forward to going. Richard says our apartment is beautiful, but I’ll have to wait to see it to believe him. Maybe he’s rented us a beach front apartment or something. Oh, ha, I know, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it is at least as nice as our apartment in Shenyang. It was small, but cozy, bright, and clean. And that is all I want of our new apartment in Xiamen.

I want to preface this post by saying this story starts bad, but ends well – at least as well as a story can in China. Okay, continue.

We had been told that we might be able to leave today for Shenyang, but when I called Richard this morning he said that our paper work wouldn’t be done until next Tuesday. I sighed at that, but continued to listen. Not two seconds later, he decided to reach into is big bag of that he carries over his shoulder and hand out another dose of bad news. Richard is like an evil version of Santa, but instead of just working one night of the year, he puts in a full 365 days.

After talking with the Xiamen school, Richard found out that the school has enough teachers for the amount of students enrolled and wouldn’t be needing us like he thought. On top of this information, he wanted us to go get our stuff in Shenyang and come back to Beijing where he would somehow find work for us. He said he would call us later because he was in a business meeting.

I lost it. I’ve tried really hard to stay positive these last 70 some odd days, but I couldn’t keep it up any longer. I laid back down in bed, covered up my head and cried. Beijing is the last place in all of China that we would want to work/live. This city has become our center of hatred, for everything bad that has happened has stemmed from this city and the WECL school. Maybe if our transfer to Shenyang had gone smoothly, we wouldn’t feel this way. Some people love this city. It just isn’t our cup of tea.

When the phone rang a few minutes later, I made Phil answer it. I was still crying and didn’t want to deal with Richard anymore. It was a short conversation. Phil told Richard he wanted to meet with him and discuss this madness. He agreed to a 2 o’clock meeting in the WECL office. I spent the time provided to calm down. The last thing I wanted to do was meet with Richard and start bawling my eyes out like a two year or go ballistic on his ass. If he had told this news to our faces I might have done just that.

At two o’clock, Richard strolled into the office and we sat down for a chat. Richard continued to explain the problem. There were too many teachers in Xiamen and not enough students. Like Shenyang, Xiamen’s WECL school is new and they haven’t had time to get a full load of students. Richard said that there were other places in Beijing, another University, where we could teach until they got more students in Xiamen, but all that meant was that there would never be enough students in Xiamen and we would be stuck in Beijijng for the rest of our contract. He said that our work load would be small, and that it would be easy to get to the University by subway or bus, but that didn’t make us any happier. He tried very hard to paint the ratty, 2 quai picture he pulled out of the dumpster into something it could never be to convince us Beijing was the way to go, but we didn’t budge. I think at this point he realized he’d lost. Maybe some where in his soul he understood our frustration and knew that he couldn’t push us much further without making us completely insane, so he looked at us and said, “What do you want?”

This question was a shock to me. I don’t think anyone in charge of me has asked me what I’ve wanted since I’ve come to China. I’ve always had to follow what other people have told me to do even if it sucked hardcore. So, given the chance to give our opinion, Phil and I took it like it was a piece of candy and ran with it.

I looked at him and said, “Richard, I’m stressed out, frustrated and sick and tired of bouncing all over China. I want to go anywhere, anywhere in China, except for Beijing, and live in a place that I can call home. I want a roof over my head, a job and a paycheck.”

A lot more was said of course, a lot more, but in the end, we won – if you can even call it a victory. Even though they don’t really need us in Xiamen, that is where we will be going. We may have only a few hours of work, if any, but we’ll have a home, a roof over our head, a job, and a paycheck no matter if we teach or not.

So, what began as a sucky day that made me cry like the little girl that I secretly am – everything seems to be okay for now. But nothing is permanent, and I am not about to get my hopes up because tomorrow is another day and anything and everything changes on a whim.

Maybe things are finally starting to look up. I can hope I guess. Hoping never hurt anyone.

Where do I begin? How many times have I had to say that? And how many times has it meant that something else bad has happened? Too many.

As my last entry stated, we’ve had to go back to Beijing. (Insert a stream of bad words and a few huffs and puffs of pure frustration.) We arrived on Sunday evening after spending 9.5 hours on a train. We were supposed to have gotten soft sleepers, but all of them had been sold out or at least that is what our support staff said. They had to buy us some soft seats instead. It wasn’t too bad. The train was nicer than the others we have been on. It was a double decker for one and the soft seats seemed much bigger than usual. I think it was a new train. We were lucky because the seats facing us weren’t taken so Phil and I each had two seats to ourselves. I tried to sleep, but it wasn’t possible. Instead, I started and finished the book I had brought with me – Thief of Always by Clive Barker. I haven’t been able to read too much lately with all the insanity that has been going on. So that was nice. I miss reading.

Once we fought our way out of the train station we hunted down a taxi. We found one sitting on the side of the road with the cabbie and a few of his friends chillin beside it. We told him that we wanted to go Er Wai and his immediate response was 100 kuai(yuan). That was an insane an offer considering we weren’t that far from the school and that he was a taxi and had a meter to go by. We told him that was too expensive and he dropped it to 80 kuai. Again we told him it was too expensive and decided to go find another taxi driver down the street. He stopped us and said 50 kuai. That seemed like a better deal even though it was a little more than it probably would of cost. Whatever we paid was going to be paid back, so it didn’t matter, but being ripped off is just wrong! We took the 50 kuai offer and off to WECL we went. I tried getting a receipt of some sort, but the cabbie kept saying sorry that he couldn’t. I gave up and we got out. It seems that so few Chinese our legit. That bothers me.

No one at the dorm speaks English, so we had to call Richard, his Incompetentness, and tell him that we were there. He told us to call Joe, his lackey, and that he would let us in. So we did. The person that answered the phone was not Joe, but instead some poor Chinese man who didn’t know what I was saying. I hung up and told Phil to try. This time an angry Chinese woman answered. Phil hung up. I tried calling back Richard, but his phone was busy. I waited a little while and called again. It was still busy. I did this countless times to continue to get the Chinese message of, “Sorry, the subscriber you have called is busy.” Phil and I sat down on the couch trying to figure out what to do when Joe came into the lobby. I guess his Chinese instinct told him someone was looking for him. He didn’t even know we were there yet. He got the key and took us to our room, brought us some health forms to fill out and left us to our favorite place in the world(you can hear the sarcasm in my words, right? – Room 110 – our on and off again home for the last month or so. This time though, they changed our sheets. They thought Beijing had released it’s grip on us too, but they had been fooled as well.

Starving after our long journey, we went to the closet and fastest place – McDonald’s. We stuffed ourselves and then made our way back home. We had to go to bed in order to be able to wake up at 6:00 am. Joe had told us that we had to meet him in the lobby at 7:00 am so that he could take us to get our health exam. Like the good Chinese man that he is, Joe was and our driver were there right on time. When they want to be, they can be Kings of Punctuality. We entered Beijing’s rush hour and began our journey across town. After 30 minutes of nonstop stop and go, my eyes began to droop. I layed my head of Phil’s shoulder and before I knew it, I was fast asleep. I awoke almost 45 minutes later to find that we still hadn’t arrived. I didn’t think we would ever get there, but not long after I woke up, the driver pulled over and we hopped out.

I don’t what it is about Chinese people, but they are always in a freaking hurry. As soon as we got out of the car, Joe took off for the front door of the “Inspection Building”. He ran up the stairs, threw 1300 yuan reception desk lady, and rushed us like we were on fire from one room to the next. It was like he was being timed or something and if we stayed there too long something really bad would happen to us. This is how is always is when we go somewhere with a Chinese person in the lead.

The exam was much like the one we got in Hangzhou – fast and stupid. It took 30 minutes for the both of us to get a ECG, blood drawn, our weight, height, eyes, and pulse checked and to get an x-ray of our chest. They didn’t even check my eyes. The “doctor” just pointed and said, “Ok?” I could have had the worst vision on the planet and he would have never known. I know why we had to come back though. Every time you get a new visa, you need a need health inspection. It has something to do with the rules. Even though we had one in Hangzhou six months ago, it doesn’t matter. And the reason it had to be done in Beijing, is because we are being registered as Beijing teachers at Er Wai even though we won’t be teaching there. Why they are doing this – I have no idea. I’m just shaking my head and praying this all works it self out.

Joe took us back to Er Wai after our health exam was over and told us we could get some sleep. I decided to go to the WECl office and see if I could find any of the teachers I’d met previously. I knew that they would shocked to see me since they thought I had finally left for good and was Shenyang at least for the next 4 months. When Gloria and Donnie walked in and saw me they did a double take. “What in the world are you doing here?” They asked with great big shocked expressions on their faces. They couldn’t believe everything that had happened. As Gloria put it, “I’m flabbergasted.” They all were. Heck, so am I. So is Phil.

After telling Gloria and Donnie and their family everything that had happened since we left I decided to go take a nap. A few hours later our cell phone rang and woke me up. It was Richard. He wanted to know where we were. He said that all of our documents should me done by Thursday and that we could probably go back to Shenyang this weekend.

And this is when all the S**T hit the fan. This is when I looked up at our white ceiling and said, “Just what have I done, God? Tell me what I have done wrong so that I can fix my ways. Please, God, tell me, and I will stop whatever it is that displeases you.”

Because we have no students to teach in Shenyang(Phil actually has one student) and because they won’t be getting them any time soon, Richard has decided that it is best to relocate us all the way down to the city of Xiamen. This means that we have to go back to Shenyang and repack everything that we just got done unpacking. We seriously just finished making our new home “home”. We only just got there a week ago and now we have to leave. And our poor adopted fish, Pi Jiu(Beer in Chinese), what will we do with him?

I don’t think Richard even has room for us in Xiamen. At last check, Xiamen had more than enough teachers to operate the WECL school there. They’ve already started their semester. I have no idea what this means for us or how in the world we can start teaching students who already have teachers a month into the curriculum. At least Richard is paying for everything. I guess I can be thankful for that much. And, on top of that, Xiamen is a very pretty place in China to be.

I’m actually a lot more calm than I was when we first found out. It’s all more frustrating than anything really and to be bounced around China like we have just adds to it. I know that nothing in China is easy, but this is becoming quiet ridiculous.

There are only so many times that you can act like a duck and have the water run off your feathers and back into the water before you really start losing your mind.

I think I lost my mind today.