A Transcript of Today's 8:38 a.m. Conversation with One Half of a Foreign Couple on the Street

Woman: Excuse me, do you live here?
Me: Ehh, I've been here for a few months.
W: Could you tell us - is this the Mound?
M: Yep, this is it! (gesture)
W: Ok. Thank you very much.

...and then, I took the wrong street to Starbucks.

Recent happenings and what's on next

Despite what my blog entries might have you believe, I do spend a fair amount of time simply working, exploring Edinburgh, eating, and sleeping - I'm not constantly running from place to place (though I have gotten quite good at that). I tend to only blog about these significant trips and events, though, because they are more interesting...or at least, in my judgment, they are. For those of you just dying to know how I spend the rest of my time: this blog entry is for you.

A typical weekday for me is as follows:
-Wake up in a whirlwind and get ready leaving just enough time to walk briskly to work.
-Work.
-Go to class.
-Commute home.
-Make dinner.
-Eat dinner.
-Do some homework.
-Skype.
-Sleep.

Boring? Maybe. But it is comforting to have a sort of routine. Obviously, it's not exactly the same any one day - my class and internship schedules vary, and if I don't have any commitments for the day, it's spent entirely differently. Of course, I don't use Skype every night, and sometimes, I break things up by going back to work after class or going somewhere after dinner. And there are always fellow American transplants around - so, really, it's not THAT boring, I promise!

However, recently, I've had a bit of a cold, so I've been doing even less than usual. I'm hoping to get over it soon and get caught up on all of the blog entries that I want to write, which may include (get excited!):
-Glasgow
-Loch Ness & the Highlands tour
-my impression of vegetarianism in Scotland
-another volume of the dictionary
-Arthur's Seat
-Scottish music and my project for Scottish Culture & Society class
-Culross
-cars & driving in the UK
-more things that I miss

Let's see how long it takes me to get through that list, eh?

One of the main reasons that I do often take a few days to blog about things I've done is that I take SO. MANY. PICTURES! Like I mentioned, I spent hours going through my three days' worth of Amsterdam pictures to caption and arrange about 10% of them. Don't get me wrong - obviously, I love taking pictures, and I do enjoy recording the events of my travel study - it just takes time. Thanks for being patient :)

Itinerary for My Field Trip

Dr. Kaup, our professor for “Issues in Chinese Politics: Environmental Challenges,” will be leading all ten of us from Furman (along with Chinese language professor Xu Laoshi) on a ten-day excursion to China’s poorest province, Guizhou. On our trip, we will encounter many different minority customs as well as lots of environmental sites. Our journey culminates with a three-day cruise down the Yangtze - through the Three Gorges Dam! Please see the tentative itinerary below:

Friday, Oct. 16 - depart Suzhou for Guiyang (bus-->plane); ride on bus to Kaili
Saturday, Oct. 17 - visit a Miao minority village; transfer to Xijing and partake in home stays with local Miao families
Sunday, Oct. 18 - visit Qingman, Shiqiao, and Boji Miao villages
Monday, Oct. 19 - visit Kaili folk museum; travel to Qingyan; transfer back to Guiyang
Tuesday, Oct. 20 - bus to Huangguoshu, stopping in Jichang to view an opera performance; hike from Jichang to Tianlong; visit Huangguoshu waterfall (China’s largest); bus back to Guiyang w/a stop in Anshun to visit a batik museum
Wednesday, Oct. 21 - visit Qianlingshan Park and Jia Xiu temple; bus to airport; flight to Chongqing
Thursday, Oct. 22 - visit the panda center in the Chongqing Zoo, the Porcelain Port, and the Three Gorges Dam museum; board Yangtze River cruise ship
Friday, Oct. 23 - cruise; shore excursion to Fengdu, Shibaozhai, or Wanzhou
Saturday, Oct. 24 - cruise through Qutang and Wu Gorges and Three Gorges locks with a shore excursion to Daning River Small Gorges or Shennong Stream in between
Sunday, Oct. 25 - visit Three Gorges dam site before departing at Yichang
Monday, Oct. 26 - visit Sturgeon Museum and Sanyoudong; return to Suzhou

I’m going to finish packing and go to bed so that I can be ready to go tomorrow morning!

Hong Kong, Vol. I: A Race Against Time

I’m back from Hong Kong, safe and sound. I’m not sure that I want to be, though - my trip was incredible! I’ll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start:

Last Thursday morning, I hurriedly completed my final paper assignment for Zhang Laoshi’s class while simultaneously watching the National Day celebration in Beijing on TV as an assignment for my internship (I then wrote a reaction that has probably been published by now, but I truthfully have yet to check) in the midst of last-minute packing and goodbyes to everyone. Phew!

We left only about 15 minutes late, which I would later learn was astounding for us. We went via taxi to the bus station, then rode the bus directly to the airport. Obviously, we then took a train...just kidding. We flew to Shenzhen, which is a city in China on the border with Hong Kong, and then followed some other white people onto a bus that (thankfully) took us to HONG KONG! We made our way to Kowloon, the district in which we were staying, and ended up at an upscale bus terminus/shopping center called Elements. After lugging our things around for a few blocks, we finally arrived at Cosmic Guest House in Mirador Mansions around midnight.

The four of us stayed in a room with four twin beds that are some of the smallest beds I have ever seen - thank goodness I’m short! The room itself was pretty small, too - no two people could pass in the aisle between the beds - but apparently not as small as even some of the nicer places in London, for instance. (I wouldn’t know.) Anyway, because we had to pay more to get the nicer room, which was the only quad available when we booked, we had clean-looking tiled walls and flooring, sconces on the walls, and some sort of gold throw on each bed. My favorite part of the room, though, was the ensuite bathroom area: a shower with thirteen nozzles (I kid you not!) (not that we could ever figure out how to work more than a few of them) was in the same approximately four square feet of space as the sink and was separated both from the toilet and the rest of the room via sliding doors. The toilet area was so small that your knees barely fit when you sat - again, thank goodness I am short.

We finally made it to bed - on top, not under, the sheets - and took our time getting up the next morning before wandering around the area. We decided that we wanted Indian food for lunch, so we headed to the arcade of Chungking Mansions, another building just down the road that is also full of slightly sketchy guest houses, where we had heard that good Indian food abounded. After being harassed by one too many hawkers, we decided to just sit down and order somewhere, as it was already past 2:00 and we were HUNGRY. The food was a bit pricey, but the bhindi masala and nan that I got ended up being DELICIOUS. Satiated, we headed out and were soon transfixed by Heritage 1881, a complex that we later found used to be the headquarters of some city/government offices (Marine Police, for example, if I remember correctly) and is now home to upscale shops and is apparently the place to be for either wedding photos or a bridal shop’s photoshoot. (Yes, there were that many wedding parties - we really couldn’t tell whether they were all getting married or they were models.) We looked around for a while before finally making it to the Star Ferry Pier, home of the Tourist Information building.

PLANS

China has a national holiday, the Mid-Autumn Festival, coming up this week. Because of huge celebrations happening all over the country, we receive a week off school - think Fall Break with Chinese characteristics. From October 1 through October, no one works or goes to class, and everyone eats moon cakes (LINK). Since last spring, when we learned of the event (but not exact dates), us Furman students have been eagerly anticipating a full week rather than a weekend available for us to travel.

To make a very, very long booking story short, Karim, Kathleen, Caitlin, and I will be traveling to Hong Kong and Macau for these eight days. We are flying into Shenzhen, China, on the evening of the 1st before taking a train or bus across the border and staying in a hostel in Hong Kong for the next six nights. During our stay, we plan to eat some unique cuisine, wander the streets, maybe shop a little, explore some nearby mountains, trails, and sights, and go into Macau for a few days to complete the HIGHEST BUNGEE JUMP IN THE WORLD and mix things up with a bit of Portuguese flavor. On the seventh night, we will travel back into Shenzhen with the help of our re-entry visa and spend the night there in order to catch our flight back to Shanghai the next morning. We should arrive back here in Suzhou around dinnertime to prepare for class the next morning.

I am so excited! Karim and I talked about this bungee jumping trip before we ever left the U.S. Now that we have our plane tickets, things are actually starting to seem real. I am just eager to get out of China (well, kind of) and see another part of the world. It should be a fun week with friends!

A little MORE conversation

I feel as if I have been driving back and forth between college and home a lot lately. Unfortunately, it was only on this most recent return trip that I discovered talk radio.

Sure, I had known of its existence before, but my only recollections of talk radio up to Sunday were of annoying morning shows and boring subject matter. However, Sunday, my cell phone was dead, and my music supply from my iPod and CDs was, believe it or not, all but exhausted. Thus, I turned to my XM - never a bad choice, but after switching between the same five or ten stations for a few hours, you tend to hear the same songs. Finally, I began to spin the dial and scan all the way up into the 100s. Aha: talk radio.

From Cosmo to Oprah to medical shows to NPR to news to sports (probably in that order), I think that XM and its shows were my savior this weekend. I was tired, I was in a funny mood, and I had been driving for hours with absolutely no contact with the outside world. However, when I began to listen to a talk radio segment, the minutes suddenly seemed to fly by and turn into hours that brought me closer to my second home.

No longer do I see talk radio as annoying or boring. Sure, I have my preferences, and some shows are definitely better than others, but I actually found myself wishing that I had a car charger or at least some semblance of battery life in my new cell phone so that I could call in and chat. I disagreed, I laughed, I learned, and I actually look somewhat forward to my next long car ride.