Merry Christmas!  Happy new Year!  I have to say that my Christmas in China was somewhat of a disappointment.  Being at a banquet with 100 other teachers in a new country all or most in their mid twenties meant that for most of them it was just an excuse to get drunk.  That plus the fact that the food itself was unremarkable chinese food meant that the day itself was nothing particularly special.  Seeing most of my fellow teacher perform for the talent show was funny but all in all it was not nearly as much fun as Christmas at homewas/is.
Now, while the Christmas celebration itself was not much there were a few very nice things about Christmas.  Of course being able to talk to the family was very nice as was getting packages from home but once again comapred to being able to actually be with the family it was also a reminder of what was missing.  My kids were the nicest aprt of Christmas that occured in country.  Not all or even most but a few gave me cards and an even fewer number gave me actual gifts.  I got a Santa doll, a hand painted flag of China, a sculpture/painting of wolves, a jade pendant for good luck and a hand knitted scarf.  The scarf was knitted by the students mother and in the note the student apologized for the lack of skill in its creation though I personally think it is very well made.  So not expecting any gifts it was a very nice suprise to recieve them from some of my students.  I don't know if teachers in the states feel the same way or if after a while it just becomes same old same old for them but here and now for me at least it was a very welcome suprise.
Next up is new Years, all the classes had a little aprty in their room that reminded me of All Saints and for the day itself i will go to hong Kong assuming I am not sick because i feel myeslf getting sick I think so I have been lots of oranges(almost forgot my school gave me a box full of oranges, and a big box not a little one)  Tongiht Im going to get Hot and sour soup ith noodles at the local noodle joint and hope like all get out that I am better in time. 

Almost finished with teaching about Christmas.  I have Christmas Day and New Years Day off but in between I have class but On January 12th is break so that is getting ever closer.  it's weird becaus i realized a few days ago that for all my life I have been on break for at least a week or so by this time and I still have another couple weeks or so until i get off.  But I do have a solid month which is nice.  As far as Christmas go, the kids know about it and I see lots of Merry Christmas signs(all in english) on restaurants and the like.  But the knowledge is very superficial.  They know we have turkey because in America we always have turkey when we have a holiday.  They know about Christmas hats and Christmas "socks" though they do not know what they are for.  They of course all know presents and Santa but for most of them they call him Christmas old man which leads me to believe that they know him only by site, that is that they have seen pictures of him but that's it.  
What else? Ah, my tutoring is going well, an hour and a half on Fridays and two on Sunday, both of the kids I tutor(a 12 year old boy and 10 year old girl) have smaller sisters and both mothers have started telling the smaller sisters to call me uncle, which they do in a very cute way.  The girl is better then the boy and both the mothers like to "pop"(barge) in and talk during the tutoring which is fine but I get the feeling they want to practise their english too.  Everyone here who speaks english has a tendency to mix up pronouns when talking about people(calling hes shes and vice versa) but otherwise they speak english fairly well.  For my first client I never saw the father because he lived in a different city where he worked.  My new girl client has a mother father grandmother and nanny along with the two kids in the house(not that big but nice) while the other has no grandmother but otherwise same setup except the mother also has another apartment in the city as well.  Anyways, that is what is going on with me at the moment, not sure what I'll be up to this weekend but nothing fancy as I am trying to keep a low profile to save every RMB I can for the trip.  Happy Holidays to all!

Shoes Pt 2
In my haste to tell about my economic face to face I almost forgot to talk about the actual exchange.  I went into the shop on the third floor of the mall and it was quite small.  After I sat down they asked me what brand I wanted and I told them Puma and they then took out a laminated paper with different pictures of the different types of Puma shoes.  i pointed to the ones that I wanted and told them my shoe size.  Now I had bought DVDs there before and that time they had a radio and told the person on the other line what DVDs they needed and they were brought to me.  So this time i expected the same thing.  Instead, a panel in the roof of the shop opened and like the hand of God a hand with the shoe box reached down and handed it to the person inside the shop.  Never seen taht before so I am glad I did not forget to let people know.

Ah the cruelties of imperfect information! Damn you imperfect information, and take price discrimination down there with you!  FLASH, economics in action right here right now in Shenzhen.  So I was out buying presents, which is more difficult than it sounds, trying to find things that are distinctly chinese and yet not the exact same stuff that I saw all the time in Chinatown, especially in Shenzhen, which is not noted for its tourist trade so there are not alot of stores catering to that sort of thing, not that most of the stuff in said stores would be anything but kitsch anyways.  Anyways, back to the point at hand.  While in beijing a friend had bought a t shirt for 50 kuai, about 6 bucks and was very happy about it until I showed him the same shirt that I had bought for 15 kuai.  While he was upset I pointed out that since both he and the seller had reached a mutually beneficial  arrangement, where they had eached exchanged an item for something they wanted more that it was an okay deal.  According to utility maximization, perfect price discrimination works out well, where each customer pays exactly how much for the item that it is worth to them.  So when it happened to him it was actually okay in the grand economic scheme of things.
Because of imperfect information, there exists price discrimination outside of a monopoly and inside of Shenzhen.  The shoes that I bought in this example, while still cheaper than how much i would have paid for them in the USA were still much more expensive than they would have been had I known the other prices they were being sold for.  Ah, economics, you are a cruel cruel mistress!!
Also on an unrelated note, I was asked why I had a new hotplate.  The old hotplate did work, after a fashion.  It would work well for about 10 to 15 minutes and then shut off for another 15 minutes until I could turn it on again.  So I bought a new one, and the old one will go to a needy fellow teacher whose school only gave them a microwave so everyone ends up happy.  Almost done teaching my week about being on a deserted island and I am going to put a full blog entry into the asnwers to questions I got about that but I did get to teach them the word cannibal so there is a preview.

The China Squat
Here in China, just as in India, the toilets are the literal inverse of those in the Unites States, ie where they go up and form a seat in the States here and in India they go down, basically a porcelain hole in the ground.  Now just as then in India I didn't understand why if they have the ability to make a toilet that is a whole why they cannot make one that is a seat which is so much more comfortable.  However, there is something here called the "China squat" which does shed some light on this.  Here when people are waiting rather then standing around they squat, perfectly balanced with the feet flat on the ground.  This is a very stable squat as compared to what I can do, but then I am very unflexable.  So if you are able to do the China squat then it makes the bathrooms here very easy.
Ah, well cultural differences, is what some people say, but then  any of those people are not a 20 something living in the other country.  Maybe you know where I am going with this, so i will get to the point, bars and clubs.  Now while taking no stnad myself there are some people who do go out on occasion to bars and clubs and imbibe drinks of a mind altering nature.  Part of the way they alter the mind in that they dampen motor control and balance.  Ah, yes, balance.  I am very steady on my feet even in the worst of times but when needing to attend to nature while having been drinking it is a very difficult thing.  Now luckily it has never come to a bad end and i will knock on wood that it won't but I would think that even to people to whom the china squat is second nature this might be an issue, especially considering the nature of barand club bathroom floors and what it means to solid footing.  
I want to be able to do the china squat just on general principles and I have been trying but I need to do consistent yoga/stretching and my schedule is somwhat hectic so it is hard to find the time, but i still have hope.  now I have to go buy a new hotplate.

On the Friday that just passed I along with what seemed to be all the foreigners in Shezhen went to Ghuangzho, which is about two hours by bus away from Shezhen, to attend a Tourism Concert of some sort.  It was a very intersesting trip.  We were given a very nice dinner, that included eel and snake dishes, the snake just tasted a bit like fish I thought, I was a bit disappointed about the lack of "snakiness" taste.  Then after dinner we all went to the stadium to see the concert.  After about 45 minutes of chinese speeches from local government officials the show finally started...with floats advertising the different provinces and cities in China, which would have been helpful had the names not mostly been in Chinese.  After this there was an actual concert revolving around a story set in the chinese past where a hero undetakes a sea voyage to retrieve a lucky vase or mirror(it was kind of unclear on that part)  anyhoo each new part of the story was presented in song by what I can assume were at least fairly well known singers since they all got cheers when they came on stage and lots of dancers backing them up.  Overall I would give the whole perforance a 6.5 maybe, EXCEPT for one thing which made the whole thing worthwhile, one song was sung by a performer who I did know, even though I had not known he was a singer as well as an actor.  We got to see Jackie Chan sing live, and it was alot of fun.  Apparently he is the Tourism Ambassador for Ghuangdong, which is the province we are in.  Anyways, that was the whole point of this post, just letting peope know I saw Jackie Chan sing a song live in concert.  He was only on stage for perhaps 6 minutes but it made the whole trip and concert well woth the time and effort to get there and back.  Though the Chinese government did provide tickets, transportation there and back, and dinner gratis, which I thought was very nice of them so xie xie to them.

BaiJiu
So as a product of both American high school and college I have had my share of alcoholic beverages, well...several peoples shares.  And also I have been a poor high school and college student as well, so I am more than used to dealing with less than top of the line alcohol.  I still have fond...or at least some type of memory of Popov brand vodka.  For those who are not college or high school age I will elaborate.  When you go into a grocery store there is an aisle just for liquor.  Now as you walk down said aisle the alcohol is divided by type, tequila, gin, etc.  NOW, when you get to the vodka aisle you see Smirnoff, Absolute, etc.  Now look down, nonono, keep looking down, bottom shelf.  There it is, the handle of vodka in the plastic bottle.  The one that only costs 8 dollars.  Ah Popov, how truly revolting and yet it brings a tear to my eye as I recall all the fun that this most disgusting of brands gave me. 
Now you may be asking yourself why I am talking about this, is this simply a walk down memory lane?  Well no, because in China I have met Popov's older cheaper long lost twin.  It goes by the standard name of BaiJiu(pronounced Buy-Joe) and it is actually a type of alcohol like vodka and gin.  However, while there may be high quality Baijiu, I have not found it and since it all tastes more or less the same to me I stick to the flask sized bottles that cost .50 cents US.  This stuff is very bad and very good and very cheap.  It pervades all types of mixers and is very alcoholic.  After a while, when your taste buds no longer function it doesn't actually taste that bad...well that's not true it still does but by the time you don't notie the taste you are already fairly tipsy so that helps.  
There is no real moral to this post, I just felt that I should share my find with the rest of the world.  Chinese red wine, named Great Wall, is also an interesting drink, though the beers so far hae been nice, not great but consistently good.

So this last weekend, I went to a place called Window of the World with my neighbour Dan.  Window of the World is something like an amusement park, with the theme being wonders of the world.  It has scale models ranging from a four story version of the eiffel tower to a 4 foot capital building.  They also have a few rides, and an indian shooting rane with the chinese who work there dressed in warpaint, feathers, and other indian regalia of the type that I would have worn when I was little for halloween.  I had been very curious about the place since I heard about it when i first got here.  I asked my contact teacher about it and she said that there are several palces such as this around China.  The reason being of course that most chinese do not have the chance to leave the country to see the actual versions of what they can see at Window of the World.  
Now I don't want to nay say or anything of the like but it didn't really sit right with me.  I have sen several of the actual things that they had replicas of at Window of the World.  BUT, there are still several that i have not seen, including several replcias from southeast asia that I hope to see soon, and several from Europe that I want to see, an example is the Colliseum.  The replica they had of that came up to about my waist.  To me you can't use a replica for these types of things.  A HUGE part of the awe and reason that people find these sights so amazing is because of the sheer scale of these monuments that people have achieved, especially considering that most of them were made long before modern technology came along.  It just seems that if you only look at the pyramids, the Colliseum, the Easter island statues, Machu Pichu, etc as something that you oly need to see to say that you have seen them then you are missing the point.  you can do that from the interent, just look at the pictures.  But if you want to actually SEE them then it shouldn't just be to say I kow waht they look like, it should be because you carea bout what they are and how they were made and the history behind them.  I mean these arent just buildings, these are monuments to human achievement.  Anyways, next time I'm just going across the street to Happy Valley, which is just a simple amusement park.

A real difference between China and the US customs I have recently found has to do with the discussion of salary.  Now I am the first to admit that I have discussed salary with friends and family on occasion, and in the case of my salary I felt no real compunction about not talking about it since the main reason I came here was not for the pay.  For the record I make 5000 yuan a month or about 667 dollars. In 2005, the average salary was 2450, and keep in mind that I do not have to pay for my room.  Anyways, the reason I thought of this is because at dinner tonight the manager jsut came out and asked how much we make a month.  We did not answer and she told us that she made 2000 yuan.
It is a very weird feeling for two reasons.  The first is that I feel bad that I fly in out of the blue and start making more money than alot of people here, even other teachers, and that does not include that fact that I live in the same amount of space as a teacher and his/her family.  The second has nothing to do with China nad more with making me think about waht I am going to do when i get back to the U.S.  I have no idea what kind of job I am going to get or anything like that.  I want to go to graduate school but after some research most grad schools do not accept students until after they have at least 2 years of work experience under their belt.  I also am coming to realize that even when it comes to grad school I do notknow whether to go after an MBA or an M.A.  There are some schools that have Masters programs that you can go to straight from your undergrad but I don't know if that is the best option, though I do miss college every day.  I know that St Mary's has one such program but again, who knows.  -Sigh- And I miss people back home alot, AND Thanksgiving is coming up which is reminding me that Christmas is coming up which I will be spending over here.   -Sigh-x2 
On the up side I did just buy all six seasons of 24 for 30 kuai(or 4 dollars0 and while the quality is not great at least I do not have to be left with cliffhanger endings, those kill me and I am already addicted to a few shows that I downlaod as they air.  And I did go surfing again which was fun even if I did get rocked by a good number of waves.  Life.

So I was thinking about the comparison between China and India, in terms of certain social norms.  India seemed much more repressed as a society when I visited there, what witht the prevalence of arranged marriages and the whole flare up over the Richard Gere kiss.  China on the other hand seems much more open, pop bands, cheerleaders, and what not.  
But this week as every week I played a music video before I started the lesson and this one had a scene where a boy kissed a girl and had a girl in a bikini.  Now I teach 14 and 15 and the odd 16 year old so I was really suprised when the scene brought forth a suprising amount of "oh my god" or as they say "oh my gaaah" which can be very funny in its own right.  Anyhoo, after that reaction I went into my lesson about eating out at restaurants and at the end of the lesson asked about whether for dates you go out for cheap or expensive food.  Now these kids all know about boy and girlfriends and a good way to embarress them to be quiet if a boy and girl are talking to each other is to say they need to stop talking to your boyfriend/girlfriend.  Now while I had my first girlfriend freshman year of high school which would have made me 14/15, I figured that maybe they started a little older.  The general answer I got was that they were not allowed to date until after they were at least in college and in some cases after they graduated because it would interfere with their studies.  
See unlike the US, after middle school, which goes until you are 16, high school entrance is dependent upon how well you do on entrance tests, which is one reason why some kids do not care about class anymore they know they don't have the test scores to get into high school.  Same with college, in Shenzhen, a city with 15 million people there is only one college.  Now while I am sure that just like teens back in the US(not me of course but bad teens) they don't always listen to their parents and may have a signifigant other, but it hamemrs home the point I am trying to make which is that for all the ways that Chinese popular culture is mimicking US culture underneath that veneer is a completely different country.

A word on Presents

Giving presents in China is something that is done much more often than in America.  For instance, when we first came to our school we gave a present to the principla and our contact teacher.  Since then, we as teachers have recieved several, well not several but a few presents from the school and in one instance from my students.  I thinkied I already talked about Teacher's Day when the students all gave flowers and sometimes cards and in one case a small statue of two pigs smiling and hugging and from the school a large box of small mongolian milk boxes.  For the Autumn Festival the school gave me shampoo and body wash and also moon cakes, which at some point I am going to send home examples of.  I just got a new present from my school in the form of toilet paper and kleenex.  I'm not sure how to react to these presents.  I mean on the one hand of course any time someone gives you a present it is a very nice gesture and this is a very nice gesture and I can certainly use all the things that have been given, on the other hand I have to say that when i came to China I did not expect to be given these as presents.  It is very nice of them and I really do appreciate them but it is just a cultural difference that I still take some pleasure in noting.

Give me access to random info or give me death!

It is very odd coming from America which despite what people say and what may or may not be true is still one of if not the most free country on earth, at least in terms of speech and the like to come to China. There are of course many many things to come to terms with in China and on the whole it has been a ver painless switch, except in terms of not being able to have the choices at the grocery store and the speed of the internet. However, a particular vexing problem and one that is not going to go away is the censoring of the internet. I don't know about you but I have many random thoughts throughout the day, and I had become used to simply logging on to wikipedia to answer the questions that these thoughts raised. now i realize that wikipedia is not always a reliable source blah blah blah BUT as compared to the published tomes of information na dtheir web counterparts it is always nice to get more than a small paragraph. While in Beijing wikipedia worked fine but now it never works, the "server never responds". AND nw youtube has followed suit. I find this particularly amusing since the largest problem that I have read about youtube having is the copyright issues and we all know how seriously China takes those. The odd news article is laso off limits such as the gold medal awarded to some Tibetan or other, though a few days after it came out i was able to read those articles. The youtube thing happened so suddel that I am inclined to blame the meeting of the party congress and maybe they don't want people to publish video blogs or the like but even that doesn't make that much sense. Anyways, I use it to download music videos to show to my class and I have enough in reserve to last a good while but I might be forced to switch to simple mp3s. Eh.

So my first break had not as a student but as an educator has come and gone.  I went to Hong Kong on Monday and Tuesday and then left for Hainan Island on Wednesday night.  The trip took about 16 hours each way so we got settled in and on the beach around 2 on Thursday.  Hainan was alot of fun, maybe not as culturally signifigant as the Great Wall but very relaxing after the stress of a new job with actual responsibilties and everything.  
Friday night we were out at a bar around 4 and after we left the bar went to grab some street food, meat on a stick to be precise.  We then decided that we were going to stay up and watch the sun rise on the beach.  I have to say that sitting on the beach in pitch black and listening to the waves and yes, going for a late night/early morning swim was amazing.  And watching the sun rise was also great!  
I don't know, it's been very up and down so far here in China, the experience itself is amazing but alot of times the kids make this a very difficult and frustratingjob, especially since there are always a few kids who you can tell DO care about learning but instead of trying to help them you are forced to deal with the loud kids who are talking and horsing around.  But sitting on the beach really helped to center myself.  I'm not saying that it's not going to be just as difficult now, in fact one of my classes today already had me at the end of my patience.  However, it does help to know there are moments when you can just be alone in another cuntry with your thoughts.  I didn't get that at the Forbidden City though after walking for two hours on the Great Wall and looking back at where I'd come from and watching how far id have to go since the Great Wall went all the way to the horizon I did get a certain moment there as well.
I don't know, being here has decidedly been an up and down experience, especially with things going on back in the states that make me want to stay or go.  Anyways, tomorrow I have an interview for tutoring which if it goes through should more than take care of my weekly expensives with a little to spare which would allow me to save my salary from the school for trips or just savings.  We'll see.

Chinese Women(written and read to the theme of Jaws)
Walking down the street in Shenzhen
(dumdum...dumdum...dumdum)
Walking towards us is a chinese woman
(dumdum...dumdum...dumdum)
As she get closer we see her face
(dumdum-dumdum-dumdum-dumdum)
Wow she is stunning, face, eyes, everything
(dumdum-dumdum-dumdum-dumdum)
As she gets close she gets a phone call
(dumdumdumdumdumdumdumdum)
She raises her hand to her ear to answer
(dumdumdumdumdumdumdumdum)
Suddenly we se it!!!!!!! Body hair!!!!!
(dumdum...dumdum...dumdum....DUM)

honestly it was one if the things ive only just now begun noticing but I realize that I had been aware of it since Ive been ehre but its never really registered.  Regardless of age, women here have arm pit hair, and maybe it is just because I am American but it came as something of a shock to me.  Im not sayng Im checking out beautfil women or anything Im just saying that I am not a monk and when i see a woman who could be termed beautiful I can appreciate it from a purely ascetic standpoint and then BOOM the hair.  I guess I should just be more accepting and open my mind etc etc  but until I gain that next level of enlightenment it can be dangerous swimming in the metaphorical water.

So I went over the border to Hong Kong yesterday.  I didn't realize that it was National Day, well I mean i did but I did not really think about it beyond the whole it's a holiday and I have the week off.  National Day celebrates when mao declared the People's Republic of China so it's 4th of July, only in China, and the first day of October.  Anyways, because it was National Day there turned out to be fireworks over the bay which was pretty fun to watch along with the huge crowds of chinese people.  Though I like the fireworks in the US better, mostly because I am used to it being set to music, also the presentation was only so so.

Anyways, so, Hong Kong.  We checked into our hostel but they tried to switch the room on us but luckily the bulding we were in had many many hostels.  What happens is that people basically renovate their apartments and turn them into hostels, it was very small but nice.  The day we got there we just explored the ex-pat bar area of Hong Kong.  The next day we stayed in kowloon and went to a temple that had over 10,00 buddhas, it was a looooong climb up all the stairs to the temple, the stairs were flanked by statues of buddhas in different poses so that was cool and at the top were....more buddhas.  After that we went to the Museum of Art, but they did not have any of Bob's pieces displayed which was a little disappointing but the Museum was still interesting.  next time I want to explore more of Hong Kong proper.  Tomorrow I leave for Sanya on Hainan Island so until then...

 So yesterday was Mid Autumn Day, which is odd considering that the 21st was the beginning of autumn but hey, there wouldn't have been a full moon necessarily if they had waited.  They also give out moon cakes, of which I have been given a few, and they range from good to...let's leave it at not good.  They do not actually have the day off, but starting Monday they have the week off, YET they make us work on the saturday and sunday before the start of the week off which is slightly odd, but hey the chinese make their children work andstudy at school much more then America.
     Anyways, the plan is now mostly set to go to Hainan Island on Monday night and arrive by train on Tuesday morning.  After that not much is planned, exploring the beach, exploring the inner island, etc.  hoepfully surfing, though ive been told the surf isn't that great but how often do you get to surf in China?

     I picked up my jacket yesterday and it was pretty exciting, walked to the back of the cloth market and to the tailors stall and handed them my claim ticket and badda bing I had a tailored sports jacket.  It is black, simple, suave, always in style and I think its pretty nice.  Of course I do not have much to compare it to but hey.  So I now have a custom jacket hanging in my closet.  It's like Iv been told getting a tattoo is, kinda addicting.  I mean of course I will go back and get a full custom tailored suit, or maybe two.  You are supposed to have three, a grey, a black, and a dark blue right? WEll I have the grey one back home and now I need the other two.  BUT, can you really only have one sports jacket?  You need a blue one as well and then maybe one with pin stripes or lighter colors or something.  THEN of course can you really have custom tailored suits and sports jackets and then wear off the rack shirts?  It's a tough question to answer but perhaps just one or two right? 
   

So tomorrow, Wednesday, is a fairly full day.  In the morning I have to teach two classes, though i do get to sleep in.  Then I have two hors of chinese class.  After that I am going to Lo Hu Commercial City.  This is a five story mall where you can buy anything from electronics to fake watches or shoes or tailored suits.  I am going for two reasons.  The first is that I have a sports jacket being made for me, ailored of course, and tomorrow is the initial fitting, after which time they will make adjustments for the final jacket.  The second is that unless things change drastically change and we suddenly get our passports back we may well be buying the train tickets for Autumn Festival to hainan island, which should be fun.  So all in all a full day, and if all goes well with the jacket then next month at some point after I get paid I will be getting a full suit tailored, and maybe another sports jacket who knows.  I'll come back looking like Bond!

So in about a week and a half the first week of Cotober is coming up and that is the first of two GOlden Weeks.  While I am not sure as to what exactly that means I gather that basically it encompasses a week of celebration in this case around the Autumn Festival.  For this week me and some friends are discussing going to Hainan Isand or Thailand.  Hainan Island is an island about 10 hours away by train and has been called the Hawaii of China and supposedly there are surfing spots there which would be awesome!  Also the hostel there is only $4.00 a days. 
Thailand is Thailand, I actually might want to go to Hainan Island more because if I go to Thailand I might want to spend more time there or at least have more time to plan the trip so I can go to other cities besides Bangkok, other cities, maybe see some temples, and of course surfing in Thailand too.  We'll see what happens

Happy Teacher's Day!!

So today the 10th of September is Teacher's Day in China.  Yes, finally someone decides to celebrate my calling of two weeks.  It's about time.  Though I don't really understand why we don't get the day off if it is the day celebrating us.  But oh well.  It was very nice, lots of students gave me flowers or cards, and one class even gave me a small statue of two smiling pigs, this being the year of the pig and all.  So all in all it was a pretty fun day!

Ode to A Pen

You are like the light from the sun
Noticed most only in it's absence
So little and yet so important to life
The ability to write, to remember
Surely one of our greatest accomplishment

For want of a pen, here in China is a great part of my life.  I have bought a few pens here, because I did not bring any with me, though I should have.  One of the thigs I have gotten used to is the lack of good working pens.  For some reason, I don't know why they do not have a good pen here except maybe for the high priced ones that executives buy.  It is annoying how much you need a good pen when you don't have one.  Still, ces't la vie.

The "On the Stick" Phenomenon

I love food.  Alot.  And one of the many things I like in China is the food.  Today will we learn about the "on the stick" phenomenon.  Food stalls along the street sell lots and lots of lots of different types of food, most of them, on a stick.  There are of course meat on a stick, which is a perennial favorite.  Of these my personal favorite is mutton.  They are barbequed right there on the street and then dusted with spice which taste very good.  There are also beef, chicken, squid, meatballs, and fish of some type I think.  

But there is also another type of food on a stick, melon.  Melon on a stick was a very nice suprise because it is freakin hot and humid here.  I don't know what kind of melon it is, it tastes like honeydew but it isn't.  On a hot day, this is a life saver, plus it only costs a yuan each so it is very affordable on a lowl teachers salary!

So this will hopefully be my blog space for the next year or so and if I can sustain this monumental bloging effort then I firmly believe that these chosen and intimate words and thoughts will go down in the annals of history along with the diaries of Napolean and Julius Caesar.  Perhaps one day these scribbles will be used as a manual to let other people know how China is.