June 2004
Wednesday June 2nd
Dream:
Way outside town- this place we all get together- I feel like an outsider. Everything thing is like on a barter level. I'm walking through a tent and a person says go to her, she's great! The woman is a masseuse. After I sit down she tells me it's 25$, there are these hand knit sweaters. I'm annoyed, I would have rather spent $ on a sweater- then as she's giving me my massage she stands up and leaves- and doesn't come back. I got and complain to someone I know with some power. Take a bus out of town- If you don't have a bike with you then a long walk after the bus. Some young man is bartering sexual services, I go down to the main road, there's a huge bathhouse there.
I wrote that down on paper and just typed it now- several days later- so I can't remember a thing aside from what I've written. Odd.
Yesterday was a pretty relaxed day, because it was Chinese Children's Day, so there were no classes at the elementary school. In the morning, Michael came to my Academic Writing class, since classes are almost over and he wanted to see my teaching style/methods. I didn't prepare anything extra fancy, I could have but that wouldn't have been honest. Anyway, he was really impressed. He said among other things that I am a lot warmer to the students than he expected, that it's great I don't have that teacher-trait of "I can't be wrong." even when you are wrong and you know it, but you insist you aren't... and that he was amazed how I naturally followed the class program he'd been taught to do in his CELTA classes, in terms of starting with a warm-up exercise and stuff.. but of course I never was trained how to teach English, I just do it from experience. He told me he felt invigorated for his own teaching. Yay! I felt super great after he said all that. He's my colleague after all, and he saw me teaching a perfectly everyday lesson.
In the afternoon and evening Karjam studied and I prepared for classes, then we watched another episode of "Alias" this TV show I bought the first season of, so far it's good. Or at least it knows how to end an episode so you can't wait to watch the next one.
This is a letter I wrote to Kimberly, I've edited it somewhat since I wrote it to her:
I¡¯m doing mostly okay. I think in general I¡¯ve got a pretty swell life. I love Karjam a lot and the big stuff- we¡¯re ironing it out. And his English is improving. I expect by the time my mom gets here that he¡¯ll be able to deal with her when I¡¯m not around to a somewhat successful degree. I don¡¯t really need his English good in the short term, but in the long-term I do. I can see myself working in a foreign school, or in a US university, and at a foreign school I could potentially get them to hire Karjam to teach dance part-time. In America, well, darn-right he can¡¯t do hardly anything unless he speaks English, not even pumping gas. Not that pumping gas is a vocation on Lopez¡¦ you know what I mean though. Apparently, he said yesterday, if he passes this college entrance exam and goes back to NW Minorities Univ. where he was before, I¡¯m not sure if it¡¯s cause he was there for two years already, or what, but anyway, he¡¯ll have a BA after two years. Yesterday we were able to agree on a major, whether he changes his mind or not, who knows: Tibetan History. He can study in Tibetan (not Chinese). I think it¡¯s potentially marketable in America. A Tibetan, strong arts background, AA in Tibetan Literature, BA in Tibetan History¡¦ if he can speak reasonable English, then he could at least teach some Community College non-credit courses, or part-time at a liberal arts small college like the places I¡¯ve gone to. We could potentially get a dorm directorship position, live in the dorm, teach, that kind of thing¡¦ We¡¯ll have complimentary areas of knowledge, could work in the same place¡¦ depends on the future, but you know you can, with special knowledge and foreign citizenship get a lecturer position in America, just like you and I did in Korea. Besides, he could get a Master¡¯s in the future¡¦
Well, I¡¯m sure you got that forward I sent you last night, that Kim¡¯s university is interviewing me. That would REALLY work for me. I checked their current schedule on the Internet. They have 4 people listed, one woman (married to a Korean) three men, all at least 2 years in Korea (woman is the 2 years, the men are longer). Who knows who¡¯s leaving, I think it¡¯s two positions, but maybe they are adding to the program? It¡¯s 15 hours per week and the schedule is pretty varied- there are night classes, and early morning classes, and ordinary classes, so far as I can tell. (I'm not sure if I¡¯m reading the schedule correctly). Anyway, with such a varied schedule, as long as they agreed to let me study at the same time, there is NO WAY it wouldn¡¯t work. This term¡¯s schedule on the Yonsei site, I¡¯d have (at a 5 class full load) two late afternoon classes and three classes on Wednesday, basically taking up the entire day (no breaks between them, guess I¡¯d eat kimbap in the hall). Who knows next term, but that is similar to the previous term, which I would have had three days of classes, Thursday two later classes, Friday morning and two on Tuesday (I think it was) later afternoon again. All three hour classes that meet once per week. So, I think that the schedule at Kim¡¯s school would work, and they SHOULD like having someone soon to have a MA at their school. The only question being, of course, if they¡¯ll trust, before meeting me, that I have enough energy to be a good teacher and take classes (I can always tell them I¡¯m taking a low course load the first term, and perhaps even hold to that).
I¡¯m writing this as short breaks. Now I¡¯m taking a short break from just cooking and eating dinner. Since I only have one burner it can take awhile. I cooked Karjam a yak meat and cauliflower dish and he said it was the best or second best I¡¯d ever made him. He was very happy. Lots of praise. Yay! What a good-wifey I am. I made myself a sort of curry goulash with cauliflower and potatoes as the major parts, also green chili pepper, green onions, carrots and onions. I had leftover miyukgook with it. Nummy. I should be taking notes for tomorrow¡¯s lecture on "Election 2004" in America and the whole political process. I¡¯d better get back to that.
Damn, finished reading what I¡¯d copied from the Internet¡¦ and it wasn¡¯t enough to do the job, gotta go back to Google! I¡¯m burning out on the term though¡¦ not sure how many classes are left, cause we have this nat¡¯l college entrance exam, three days long on our campus, then after the exam, our profs (not me) correct the papers, and that takes time and is also in my main teaching bldg, so it may be that all classes are cancelled for a week (I¡¯ve heard rumoured many times)¡¦ I hope I hope. If so, I have one more class and the exam for each class after this week.
Can you check to see if my website is still up? It never opens here in China¡¦ Can¡¯t wait for Korean internet access. Wow, my Inbox has 7 emails! Probably mostly uninteresting¡¦ I sort of bitched out an old friend today, he probably sent me five responses. Of course I¡¯ll by typing you for another five minutes before my email opens.
Nope he was only two of the emails. The second is from this hot school I wish I could work for in Seoul, wonder why they¡¯re emailing again, cause I know they won¡¯t hire a BA, and I didn¡¯t apply, just emailed one of their teachers for info and she was really sweet¡¦. Now my login session has expired, not ten minutes (no, 11:53) after I turned on the Internet! The school is called International Graduate School of English. Sounds like tough teaching, huh! And Yonsei wrote me, too. See this is how you get a long email from me, I write you while I am doing other stuff¡¦ it¡¯s the only way. By the time I view my emails and open a compose box, you¡¯ll have a serious freaking email on your hands! (13:35, not re-logged in yet).
Latest gossip around here. They decide not to rehire Amaya, sent her an email to that effect, and after the weekend, (email went out on Friday) she shows up in Deputy Director Liu¡¯s office with a lawyer and a translator to say ¡°I¡¯ll bust your balls¡± or something to that effect. Like she would never have been hired if she hadn¡¯t posed as a native speaker. She has Brit citizenship, but she¡¯s Spanish with accented English and errors¡¦ And she¡¯s really been a trouble-maker. Bad relations with the other foreign teachers out at Yuzhong. I managed to get back to the you have eight (not seven) emails page¡¦ See how much time can be wasted? It¡¯s 17:07 by the way. Getting close to 20 minutes, yet to read one email. If Amaya had showed up and sweet-talked softy-Liu would have totally rehired her. She¡¯s so stupid to give the slap in the face of straight off going to a lawyer. What¡¯s her argument? Mina sent a sample contract to all of us (including the other non-rehired teachers) and asked us what we thought of it (it had been rewritten) about three or 2.5 months ago. Now, when I knew for sure I was getting rehired Mr. Liu made an appointment and came to my house, showed me a contract and formally offered me to come back, but Amaya says that email was an offer of re-employment and what not¡¦ like hello, if your English was good enough to be an English teacher, you would have understood it wasn¡¯t an offer! (20:04 and still can¡¯t see if the new email was also from that same friend¡¦ still haven¡¯t opened that page). Oops, when I went to get some dried figs, I got ¡°This Page Can¡¯t Open¡± great. I waited 21 minutes and have to reconnect the Internet most likely. It¡¯s refreshing (the page) but I don¡¯t know if it will open. 23:24, no such luck, it reopened part way and decided that was enough. Back on the Amaya thing- if it was an offer of employment, wouldn¡¯t it come from the guy with power, not Mina? I talked to Mina today and she was really upset that she¡¯d been so misled as to think Amaya was a good person when now it is obvious she is not¡¦ like hello, you¡¯re not a native speaker or a Westerner, it¡¯s easy to not get a sense of stuff like that¡¦. Besides Amaya wanted to keep on Mina¡¯s good side and took advantage of Mina¡¯s innocence... I am trying to reconnect the Internet by the way. The first three dials have been duds. We¡¯ll see. Even when it does connect it can be like it just was¡¦. Which wasn¡¯t that unusual at all. Really, it was much worse for just over a week ending about five days ago¡¦ like 5 refreshes to get a single page to appear from top to bottom and a long wait between each and innumerous time-outs. FUCKing annoying. Don¡¯t know how many times I¡¯ve dialed it up now¡¦ but a fuck of a lot. Fuck. Oh and Karjam uses the word "Fuck" now. I never gave him proper pronunciation of Jesus Christ, and he kept trying, even though I told him don¡¯t don¡¯t don¡¯t, so now he¡¯s settled on "fuck" since it's shorter and easier to pronounce.
Michael¡¯s girlfriend has decided to take a break from all men for the next six months or so. We¡¯ll see. My social life is so regular and predictable, I have nothing to say about it, and have to live through Michael¡¯s soap opera. It¡¯s a bad connection again. The bytes are adding up really slowly. But it is a connection, so I¡¯ll try for a few minutes and see what I get. I have to email the Yellow River people and checking email from Yonsei is important¡¦ 3:13, the ready to refresh page that should show up the names of my messages has not refreshed yet. Yes, the new email was from my same friend.
Damn, Yonsei says that I need that VOD (verification of lots of cash) to send to them to get the paperwork that allows them to give me the paper that allows an embassy to give me a D2. I don¡¯t know how to get any info on my Daegu Bank Acct. from here. For all I know I still don¡¯t have my pension refund. So I may have to ask my mom again for a VOD if I don¡¯t end up working instead. Also, I can only take a language course in August on a C-3 which is not the same as a regular tourist visa. Fuck again. I can get insurance (must have) through Yonsei for 90,000 per month. Seems a little steep, wonder how much it covers. If I take 4 classes per term the first three, then take 2 my last term, I also write a thesis. Last term tuition is higher. Huh? Why? I can take as many as five classes, though. So I think I might take four my first term, but five after that. If I took five per term, I could do all my classes in three terms, easy, and spend the last term only on thesis, which I could probably type anywhere¡¦ China¡¦ Yonsei also however has these Korean courses, that unless I test as above them, I have to take, so that¡¯s an optional 5 class on the books, without any credit for the fifth one. Just pass/fail until I pass. I can¡¯t test out of it. I know that, after the Korean reviewing I¡¯ve been doing lately. It¡¯s scary. There are so many aspects of Korean grammar I don¡¯t know because I don¡¯t use them, but just cause I don¡¯t use them, doesn¡¯t mean I don¡¯t have to know them when I see them in books, or hear someone using them. I mean, millions in this grammar book I¡¯ve got. It¡¯s scary! I¡¯ll probably test (out of six levels) at about 5 in speaking and freaking 3 or something in reading. As you know my writing is better than my reading.
The IGSE woman told me that her boss is thinking of hiring people with B.A.s for some lower teaching positions and sent me his email address. This could be good¡¦ will keep you posted. She¡¯s so sweet to do this for a stranger who just emailed her out of the blue! Can¡¯t open the next email, another ¡°This page can¡¯t open¡± message, am refreshing. Do you see why I have a hard time calmly answering people¡¯s emails? Arghhh! I opened up two windows both of Yahoo Mail. I sent to the Yellow River crew, and read two waste of time emails. So I¡¯ve got three left to read and sending you this email and I think I¡¯ll send Kim a note telling her what I found on her schools website so she doesn¡¯t feel she needs to write me that. Damn, just realized I think that Yellow River email didn¡¯t go through. Have to write it again, just in case.
Thursday June 3rd
My American Culture class went just fine. The presentation by Zhang Aiping was pretty good. I asked her to outline the major issues of the 2004 election. She added in one I'd never heard of before though... lowering the voting age. Don't think anything can be a major issue and I don't know about it, after all I read the Internet Yahoo election coverage daily. Kim H. wrote to tell me more about her school. Sounds pretty reasonable, but it's more than the four teachers profiled on the website.
I wrote the guy at IGSE and introduced myself with the new expanded version of my resume... at Alannah's suggestion (she's the one who works at IGSE) I added on a section just detailing my publications. I guess it does look kind of impressive, but I can't remember the names of the two different journals I was published in that are associated with Daegu Tech, that's embarrassing. My copy of the journals is in Korea, of course. I also don't know the exact name of the journal they're publishing the texts of my speeches in. I did mention that, right? I'm getting all three of my speeches (giving the last one next week) published by Landa. I'll ask Mina next time I talk to her to tell me the name of the publication. (IGSE wrote back to say they don't need anyone till the Spring at least.)
Classes at the elementary school went fine, I managed to not even get a little angry. That was amazing. It's not that my lesson was that great, either. I think I was calm and the students liked the lesson plan. There is a difference between a good lesson plan and one the students like. One has good introduction of information and it's fun, the second kind is only fun. So, yes, we played review games.
Karjam and I went out for dinner, and I picked up the house while Michael talked to me. I had told the AmCult students if they wanted to, to come over to watch a DVD before our movie class, but only one student came, cause it started raining right about then. Chinese people are so afraid of the rain. Karjam and I will shortly watch our nightly "Alias" episode.
Friday June 4th
Dream:
I'm giving out condoms to a huge group of people, like 15 or so. I'm the only one who has any and I have them in a box like a carton of cigarettes in a duffel bag with my clothes. I want to sleep and I don't want to share, but they need them. There is a guard on the porch. He won't let the other guy in, but lets me in when I say I just need to say goodbye and goodnight to the friends I started the evening with.
Karjam and I had a bad day... just sort of picking at each other. Or he picked at me after I was sarcastic and biting to him at lunch time. He spent the rest of the day until after I got back from the Wushuguan being much less than charming. I got tired of him saying "I not" when he meant to say "I don't know". I mean, does he really not know how to say that yet? He was saying in Chinese "Wo bu jidao" really- I don't know. But of course he's totally right when he says if I want him to practice and learn English I have to be encouraging not get annoyed when he makes mistakes. Worst, he relayed a phone message in English and caused me to be 20 minutes late for a date I thought was cancelled. That was embarrassing. He told me she called and cancelled. In English anyway, or close enough... "Yesterday woman, called, today, no time meet you" or something like that... it seemed pretty basic and understandable to me.
Other than that, I tried to calm down and brush off Karjam's anger by shopping for DVDs with Michael and then by watching Legally Blonde 2 (Red, White and Blonde). It was funny and cute, but too much like the first one. It needed something new.
The Wushuguan was good, I now have learned the entire form I'm learning now. After I got home we took a bath and watched two episodes of Alias (the first one ended with Sydney in a mental institution in Romania as a patient run by spies from the other side).
Saturday June 5th
Well, the Catholic U interview... harrowing. The woman who called was exactly who Kim H had told me about. She seemed really interesting and strong willed- the kind of woman I like. However the little bit I'd mentioned about graduate school on the application, they picked right up on. We spent 40 (yes, 40) minutes on the phone, and the whole time it was "Why did you have to be honest about going to graduate school? We really want to hire you but... the school's beaurocratic ideas... full time instructor/full time student... they don't like it..." Oy. She seemed to be hinting that I agree to go part-time or wait till spring semester. But they might not permit me to study in the spring, either, and tuition is the same if I take 1 or 5 classes, so I don't see a point in either of those options.
We went to my favorite restaurant for lunch and stopped at the DVD store where Karjam picked out two music things and I chose one DVD to buy.
After that we went to the Yellow River to clean-up. It was great. 15 people and weather that kept threatening rain-- any-second-now threatening, but the rain didn't come. We picked up a huge amount of garbage along the north bank near the bridge (and right underneath it). We even got five volunteers to help us carry the bags back, without even asking. Four were boys that looked to be in the sixth-seventh grade range and one was an older man. Na La and her mom came, as did my other usuals except Lee Tau whose ankle is still bothering him.
Back home Karjam and I ended up watching DVDs, but not until I'd made significant progress on writing my exam for the non-English majors.
Sunday June 6th
By the middle of the afternoon I finished my exam. Karjam and I had breakfast/lunch at the jiaozhi restaurant. The Koreans brought me bibimbap for dinner, which normally in Korea I don't like (overdosed on it many years ago) but today I loved it. Karjam left after lunch to go meet another guy from his Troupe that happens to be studying Tibetan flute here in town. He'd never met him before, he's a new hire. He came back grouchy and watched a dubbed movie, after that we went to Home World. Exciting day, huh.
Mom wrote about coral, and we looked on the Internet, but it's all so small! I mean, the largest I found were about 20mm beads, but the Tibetans are commonly wearing 30-50mm beads, especially in the middle of the necklace. I guess I should have known better than to think that anything could be cheaper in the US than here!
Monday June 7th
Dream
My whole family is visiting, and I'm trying to find out if they can stay in the Guesthouse at Yuzhong for 20 each a night, they should be able to. There is Dad and Irene, Mom and Zack so I need three rooms, though mom says that she's okay staying with me. We sleep on a classroom floor, pushing the desks together in a jumble. The floor is red carpet, the board is white, not chalk. Mina drives a big pickup truck, like a Dodge Ram. I'm 20 minutes late for my first class, but not very concerned about it.
I have to work at Yuzhong part-time now, because I'm monitoring the other teachers and because I am giving them an example. I teach my first class and they video-tape it. In the class I explain some stuff from the book and I play Jeopardy with the students. They are pretty gung-ho and into it. I am given my Yuzhong house I'll use when I'm there. It's like a rough cabin in the woods, it's on the outside row of the cabins and fronts on the trees- out the windows that run down one side of it's rectangle I can't see anything but wood. It is all one room, except the bathroom. The only problem with it is the rain comes in and soaks into the carpet along the side nearer the windows, it looks almost like I have the marks of eaves, but inside the house instead of outside along the dripline. The carpet is green and lumpy, as though it is put down on top of the ground. The bed is large, a platform into the wall, and covered with sheepskin. I love my little cabin, even though I know the other Yuzhong people have something much different as I've heard before- with hardwood floors and such.
Sarra sees me and she says she watched the videotape and she was really inspired and says I'm a great teacher, but it's like a week after I taught the class and I can't remember what really happened except Jeopardy. Mina, Zack and I drive to the main campus, let Zack out and then start to drive off, Zack is just looking at us all forlorn and I think "I should tell him to go to Tom's" but I don't. He can figure it out, he and Tom are buddies.
There is a party on the main campus and Mina can give me a ride there, because there isn't any bus going for a long time. I ask her where it is, excepting her to say in such a place, but she says, no, it's in the --- house which is Ernie McMullen's Studio, why would he have us have a party there? It's a house inside of an old barn, on the third floor and mostly full of Ernie sculptures and stuff. I just ask her to please wait while I wash my hair. I'm washing my hair in a basin. The water is not very hot, but after I do the shampoo Mina goes and gets more hot water in the thermos while I'm outside dripping and massaging conditioner into my hair. When I come back in there is a nice hot basin of water.
In my dream campus looked nothing like it really does- trees at Yuzhong? It's in the desert! Ernie McMullen taught at College of the Atlantic and probably still does. I never took one of his classes.
Wednesday June 9th
Dream
I'm in a clothing store owned by a friend with Michael and Dave. I have one pair of socks, wool and therma lined, they're too big for me, I'm trying to determine who to give them to, because I already gave socks to Dave once. The store is having a two for one sale. I just came back from working somewhere else...When I was there I picked up a bunch of mostly dry wheat heads and stuff for the rabbit the shopkeeper owns. There is a car trunk. The field was the backside of the field, with a little swath cut to see how it was gong. People are suspicious of me, know I'm a spy? The socks are deep burgundy weave with grey, I try them on, they're too big. I'm trying to hitchhike right past Islanddale, I have the lead rope of a goat? sheep? that is in a barn or shed, and am pretending the animal is coming with me, is this helping me to hitchhike? I intend to throw the rope into the door, then close it as soon as a car picks me up. I love that animal though.
I had my last regular classes today for Class 1 and 2, and yesterday I finished regular classes for Academic Writing. Tomorrow I sleep in, then teach at the elementary school, then Friday Karjam and I will go to Wanma's hometown (he's in Beijing) to throw some Tibetan wish for luck thing in a famous wishing-for-luck lake.
Yesterday I had a terrible day at the elementary school cause I had 6-2, they are absolute monsters. I came home and worked really hard on preparing for my speech and I gave a great one. It was just one hour, but very clear, well organized and understandable. There were about 60 people there, which is a lot when you consider that I was speaking about the American Electoral System. I mean, how relevant is that to the life of a Chinese person, anyway? After the speech Karjam and I went to a fancier restaurant for dinner.
Sunday June 13th
I need to just write and write and write. I have so many things to say. But I feel wiped out, drained. I haven't been taking notes, either. So I'll probably forget some important things.
Thursday morning we woke up reasonably early and managed to get Karjam in a huff by the time we reached the main gate. We took a taxi to the bus station, then had to wait an hour and a three quarters for a 9:40 departure for Yueliguan, theoretically a direct bus, though it turned out not to be. We had fairly good seats, the bus did have knee room (often the seats on the buses are so packed together that with my long legs I can't sit with my butt smack against the back of the seat and my legs going straight out without having my knees grinding into the chair back in front of me. In that case I have to sit for however long with my legs akimbo, and in this situation I can rarely stretch them out under the seat in front of me, it's that tight a fit. So, I managed to sit fairly comfortably, and the scenery was great. I kept thinking about what mom would think when she saw it. About 1.5 hours into the trip we started down a road I haven't been on before, so there was lots of stuff to see when I wasn't dozing off. It was too bumpy to read and underline in my book or even to consider correcting and grading the large research papers from the Academic Writing class. We went through Lintao another Hui town not quite as big as Linxia, then we had to change our "direct" bus in Kongla. I stayed on our new bus because Karjam nailed me the passenger side next to the driver practically on top of the road seat! These buses are flat fronted! I didn't want anyone to snake that seat, but Karjam bought me some noodles, cold ones, not bad, with green beans and fried tofu in them. The ride was great, and I didn't fall asleep. Karjam sat on the engine, then we switched, which was butt jarring- the road was horrific. It was so bad at one point we waited for twenty minutes while a backhoe cleared it, we were lucky, we could have waited much longer, but there was already a build up of other cars on both sides. The scenery had me exclaiming "Oh, I want to live there!" about every twenty minutes. Small streams meandering through lush farmfields with mountains on both sides and trees on the mountains, it was SO gorgeous, and incredibly green, I can't even describe it. The houses were small brick white washed affairs, the cows were fat, it was just like a little slice of paradise on earth. I could imagine having my own garden growing like mad in that lush soil.
Unfortunately Yueliguan was a big dissapointment. I mean, they seem to have spontaneously decided to tear down three quarters of the houses in the city center. So the town looked gutted and empty, sprawling on the outside and vacant in the middle. We found an expensive place to stay, and started worrying, so we decided to go to the lake in the mountains (that's why we were there) right away and not waste a day. We took a three wheel sort of baby truck (jouncing like crazy) up this track. The sun was peaking out at the fields on both sides, it was gorgeous, but I wanted to get to the lake. We only had a little time before it was going to be dark, so no time for walking and shooting photos. Unfortunately by the time we got to the lake, the sun was done with it's appearance for the day. The lake was gorgeous, though it was lower than Karjam expected and remembered, and looked a bit parched. Karjam had three bundles of some Tibetan sacred thing, and he threw them into the lake. Then we worked until we'd filled four bags with trash- strewn allover.
I've created a monster, Karjam immediately insisted we had to come back the next day and finish the job, which he looked at and said would take an entire day (I thought half a day). It was almost dark when we got back to the parking lot, but as we walked there we met a farmer who agreed to give us and our trash a ride back down the hill. (For 15 Yuan). Back in town we found a place to stay that was reasonably priced, dirty and uncomfortable and then ate dinner and bought some big gunny-sacks for picking up garbage.
In the morning we woke up at six and walked to the lake, which took over three hours even with the short cut introduced by an old man we met who was also walking there. We picked up garbage like mad-- the thing is it's hard to know what's garbage. Tibetan sacred practices include a lot of things that seem seriously like strewing trash all over, though in many cases the color catching my eye was from squares of lightweight paper, in others it was plastic bags, boxes, plastic drink bottles, parts of beer bottles, etc. Karjam specialized in picking up Tibetan things- like swatches of brightly colored cloth, and I worked on the plastic stuck in the bushes (graced by thorns so long and sharp a surgeon could reach for one instead of a suture without even realizing his mistake at first). Unfortunately when we had about four gunny sacks full some kids stole our food, which put me off from cleaning up. Though most of what we were cleaning was brought there by Tibetans, a lot of it was general garbage from the locals who were sitting around. Karjam was very cute, he lectured them all about environmentalism and suggested they get the town's approval to start charging per head and using the money to pick up and dispose of trash. He suggested 1 Yuan per person until it was a group of more than five, then knock it down to half a Yuan. It was much too funny to hear him saying "Why do we travelers have to come here and pick up the trash? You love and visit this lake everyday!". Eventually as it started to rain we tried to lug these huge heavy gunny sacks down the hill. Karjam hired a early teenager to help us, which also made me mad. Why didn't some just offer to help? We got the same guy to drive us down the hill, ate lunch, bought gasoline and had a garbage fire. The locals told us to throw the garbage in the stream that runs through town! So I think the fire was a better option, really.
After our little bonfire we took a nap and then Karjam had dinner but I didn't and he watched TV while I graded my Academic Writing papers. Some are good, some are shit copied crap.
This morning we got up at 5:25 and the sky was still full of clouds, so we took the 6:00 bus back to Lanzhou. This time it was direct, but my knees were pulverized, every other person on the bus was chain-smoking or so it seemed, and we had to stop for 40 minutes of bus repairs in Kongla. I slept for most of the first part, then the latter part Karjam and I had a good conversation. Unfortunately after we got home around 2:00 and Michael visited--
--digression. Last week, I guess it was Thursday Karjam went just about ape shit about Michael. He forbade me to meet him or be his friend, even though Michael and I are usually talking about Michael's love-life and almost always talking where Karjam can see us! Karjam was acting totally crazy and wouldn't even let me leave the house (physically prevented me) when I said I was going to go let him cool off, so I had to quick duck out onto the balcony and rush through a room that luckily one of the girls was vacuuming at that time. I came back 20 minutes later, when I'd stopped shaking, but Karjam wasn't much more under control. I told him firmly that though I don't have many male friends, I do have some, and that trying to control who I meet is completely unacceptable, and if he couldn't trust me in a case like Michael, who he knows is crazy in love with Woojing, who he sees me talk with and can see our body language, then how was he going to trust me when I was in Korea meeting people he'd never once seen? end digression--
Michael has gone past the "I'm so sad Woojing picked this other guy and dumped me" stage and has entered the stage of "I want to make that stupid woman want me so bad and then tell her I don't want her back". I like this new stage as it means Michael's less mopey and he's not being a doormat anymore. I just hope he can move past that to something like a normal balanced existence where you just realize no one is perfect, and shelve the relationship under "First relationship with a foreign woman" or something like that.
After Michael left Karjam was being irritable. We watched "Alias" but midway through he got a phone call and was on the phone long enough for me to cook myself some veggies for a snack. While I was putting them in the pan he came in and shouted in my ear which hurt like a motherfucker, maybe cause my ears had popped a few times earlier in the day as we lost altitude coming home. Then he said he'd kiss it and make it better, but got close and blew in my ear instead. So then I was pissed off, of course, and wanted to talk about it, and it became this long drawn out "everything" argument. It was so stupid. So Karjam decides (mid-argument) to go to sleep, so I came into the bedroom and said "Okay, let's kiss, you sleep and I'll watch "Alias". He refused to kiss me, then came out and screamed at me about the volume. I turned it down so low I needed to read the subtitles (English), but he came back again, snatched the remote and dashed it against the floor (thin carpet over concrete) which of course broke it completely. His argument being I should have known that what he meant was I wasn't allowed to watch it at all. So then we argued for another couple of hours or so, went to Home World, bought salt for our wounds (just joking) came home and I checked email and he went to sleep.
Hey, I got hired to Kim H.'s University, even though they know about Yonsei! Yay!
Monday June 14th
I got up fairly early, returned the student's Academic Writing papers through Cai Yun, about half of them need to rewrite to improve their grade. A couple copied so much it was sick. One, Lin Guohu, copied like KKK literature talking about home immigrants are bringing filthy diseases like AIDS to "our land" without even bothering to change it to say America. He didn't do something like say "this is an example of what people in the KKK think or feel" and then explain it, it was purely he was copying it as part of his paper, supposedly his voice! What an idiot! Other students copied 90% of the paper with just some bad transition sentences between copied parts.
The most interesting paper is by Shan Xuemei the Hui student from Linxia, and the best paper was by Leng Yuhong who is often the most meticulous.
Chinese Mining Accidents by Leng Yuhong
In the past year "Chinese mining accidents" became the most common news we can see. It was reported that 4,620 miners died last year. Mining accidents may have become one of the biggest headaches of the Chinese government.
Why did so many accidents happen? Why were so many lives lost in the accidents? It is not difficult for us to find that most of the accidents occurred in small, private mines. These mines were potentially dangerous, but were still protected by some local officials for economic profits. "Many small mines are related to the interests of county officers," said Huang Yi of the Administration of Work Safety. And on the other hand, the backward production methods and facilities of most of the small, private mines also amplified risks to miners. Moreover, the workers at these private mines are usually peasants who are poorly trained and lack work safety information. What they are concerned about is the money they need to raise their families.
The shocking number of deaths made the Chinese government put more emphasis on work safety. It was reported that since the middle of September last year, the ministry has sent four investigative groups to inspect mining management in 50 counties and townships and 40 mines in 20 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. According to the requirements of the State Council, the authority for approving mining licenses in localities is now done by provincial land and resource administrative departments. Provincial departments should provide evaluations before applying to provincial governments for their final project approval. Tian Fengshan, minister of Land and Resources, said that if mines are found conducting illegal or random exploration of resources, authorities will have their licences suspended and they will be given a grace period to make an appeal. Those who fail to meet the states's operational standards by June 2004 will have their operation licenses repealed. The government also said it would establish a new organization to improve work safety and punish officials who fail to enforce safety standards.
We can see that our government really wants to do something, but what about the lost lives? People should not die because of others' bad management, although they themselves lack safety information.
We can see that there are many reasons for the accidents: backward facilities, lack of education and so on. But what is the basic reasons behind all these? Economy. I think economy is the decisive reason. Everyone knows that after this "serious" period, those small mines will operate again, secretly. Why? Some areas in China are very poor. They haven't any other economic sources except these small mines. If these mines are closed, many people will starve to death. That is the very truth. It makes me feel that when a country is poor, sometimes people will neglect something important and only run after some short-time benefit. "If I can get money now, that's ok." But at the same time the "benefit" will hurt the country deeply. It will cost us a lot. So, the most important point is how to do the work continuously. In my opinion, our government should give more people more chances for education. People should know how to protect themselves, and they should learn to cherish their lives. But only when people can enjoy the life, they will cherish their lives. When people suffer a lot, how can they see the value of their lives? Money becomes most important. When "necessary", life can be used to make money. That's amazing. Besides education, our government should also gives more economic support to these areas, including some directions of experts to exploit some advantageous industry of the areas. Only by changing something basic, things terrible like this will not happen.
Followed by an excellent bibliography, by the way. And those are her errors- not many, right? She's excellent, she really is. She'll probably get a 98 or so for the entire course. Shan Xue-mei on the other hand is not careful and her paper is covered with the pink pen I was using to correct errors. A real mess, honestly. But it's super interesting, so wade through the errors. One major error- she uses dowry and brideprice interchangeably. This is probably because the Chinese term is unisex and she saw both in the English dictionary. She means brideprice.
Brideprices in Rural China by Shan Xuemei
Abstract:
In China, especially in some backwards countryside, brideprices and dowries are very popular. They are one of the heaven burdens of most farmers' families. This problem led to even more serious social problems.
Key words: rural China, dowry, brideprice, family burden, social problems
In ancient China, it was a custom for the bridegroom's family to give dowry to the bride's family. However, it becomes a kind of settled tradition and the sum of dowry is becoming higher and higher which forms one of the main burdens for ordinary farmers' families and caused many serious social problems.
The tradition of giving dowry was started from the Warring Period, at the beginning, dowry was a kind of gift given to the bride's family by the groom's family to express their thankfulness. Such gifts usually include tea, lotus seeds, longan, red beans, green beans, red dates, nutmeg, oranges, lily, bride-cakes, coconut, wine, money box and other stuff, depending on local custom and family(1). As time goes on, the forms of dowry become more and more variable. Except for the first engagement money, bicycles, sewing machines, refrigerators, televisions, VCD, DVD, washing machines, gold rings, necklaces, diamond, house, even in some places, graveyards are added to the list of dowry. The sum of dowry money increases from several hundred yuan to twenty or thirty thousand yuan or even higher. Compared with average income of farmers, it is incredible to earn such high amount of money within several years. Statistics show that the average income of a farmer in 2002 was as follows: Gansu 541.22, Guizhou, 578.10, Qinghai, 568.84, Xinjiang, 677.78. (This is annual income). How many years should the farmers spend in order to save up so much money?
These days, brideprices have increased four or three times in some rural areas. Before, the brideprice was about 8000 yuan, but now, the groom's family must pay more than 38,000 yuan in order to get their boy married. In addition to the dowry, the groom's family must invite all their relatives and friends to the wedding and give luxurious feast which will cost them another large amount of money. Some girl's parents charge such high dowry just want to keep up with the Joneses. They will feel ashamed if their girl get lower dowry than others. Some girl's parents get their girl engaged at early teenage in order to ask the groom's family to send yearly gift dowry till the time when their children get married. Yearly dowry gift include tea, wine, ciagaretttes, two or three suits of clothes for the girl and for their parents, some meat, and other gifts. The groom's family must send some other gift on festivals. Altogether, each year, it will cost them more than one thousand yuan. This is just like an astronomic amount of money for most farmers, some could not earn so much money in their lifelong time, and it is a very heavy burden for most farmers' families.
In this sense, marriage is just like a transaction of good. There is a saying in some villages: what I want is not to be the king, but to be a husband. Love or no love, that doesn't matter, only money can be the key to your bride's room. For those who could not afford such a high dowry and even have no way to borrow so much money, the only way is to be a bachelor in their whole life. Some people even take the risk to violate the law to buy a bridge from an even poorer place. In some poor families, they may use their own girl as the dowry to change a wife for their brothers, never caring about the girl's own feeling. That's why too many women were kidnapped and sold each year. That is why the divorcing rate in the countryside keeps very high. That is the origin of too many family tragedies and social problems.
After the wedding, the groom's family will always be in high debt. In order to pay off all the debt, the husband must go out to look for jobs and cannot come home for many years. All the family work and farming fall on the wife's shoulder alone. Even the couple will both go out to make money, who would take care of their little kids and older parents? Do they have any real happy in that way? Some boys drop out of school very early and start to work at their teenage in order to save up enough money to pay off their brother's dowry debt or to save up for themselves, which led to the decreasing of education situation: there are more and more illiterate and semi-illiterates in rural areas. In some cases, the groom's parents will blame the bride for the high debt and may ill-treat them. Some husbands will hate being surrounded by debt and may release their dissatisfaction on their wives, in such case, violence within th efamily will be aroused.
Many factors result in this ugly phenomena. It is the pernicious influence of feudalistic ideas which regard women as the inferior sex that can be traded. Women are just tools of manufacturing (both of product and of children). Why such things become more prosperous in our rural areas in the modern society which call on free marriage? Financial poverty is the main reason. Many family want to change their own financial situation by asking a high amount of money. In fact, they themselves also suffer from it. The most important thing is that their daughters will suffer much longer for it. Another very important point is that farmers nowadays still have too many backwards concepts, girls are believed as weaker sex which cannot do heavy farming work and cannot support the family as man usually do.
Urgent measures should be taken to improve such situation in rural areas. Both the government and the farmers are responsible for this problem. The government should invest more money to young farmers for them to start their own business in order to improve their own financial situation. At the same time, more government allowance should be give to the education in the countryside in order to change people's educational background, so that they could resist consciously such backwards opinions. On the other hand, the farmers themselves should give up old backwards concepts and put all their attention into economic construction. If all farmers are very rich and high educated, there is no need to worry about high level marriage expense. The Chinese have a famous saying: Only beautiful phoenix tree can attract phoenix to come.
This shocked me, cause I didn't know this was going on. I asked Karjam and he said, sure, even the poorest Tibetan family will give about 10,000 yuan. But he said in the cases of Tibetans they give money and then most of that money comes back, cause when the bride comes to her new house she's wearing fine clothes and has all the fancy accessories.
I spent too much of the day trying to get ready to send documents to Korea, and at the last minute called the DHL guy who was already on the way and said "Come tomorrow." I'd just -really- like to send my passport too and have them make me the visa. The problem being if they don't, I'm going to have to go from Lanzhou to Beijing and then to Qingdao, or just go to Beijing and come back, during my last time I have with Karjam, all because of getting a visa. If I have an E2 visa I can easily start my Korean language class on that visa, but the thing for the school is, if they give me my visa now, my visa will start now... but my contract starts at the end of August. Anyway, the school didn't answer my email about that, so I didn't send the other documents by DHL which took -forever- to prepare, mostly cause Mr. Liu didn't come back to his office from a trip to the airport.
The whole office was stirred up because of Amaya, she'd just left when I arrived, sweeping a large potted geranium onto the ground as she did so to emphasize some point. What point is that "I'm a spoiled girl who must get my way"? Her latest maneuver is she went to the president and threatened media coverage of her "mistreatment" and the president told Mr. Liu to sign another contract with her. Mr. Liu is still trying to wiggle out of it, they know that if Amaya stays she'll create a bad atmosphere among the teachers at Yuzhong. I also got to see her browbeat poor Xiao-xie the receptionist at the guesthouse. It was horrid.
At five Karjam called his former professor and asked (again) if he had time to have dinner, asking if he wanted to go out near NW Minorities University or near here, or come to our house to eat. The professor chose to come here, and I had ONE HOUR. The house was a mess, and I had to go buy stuff from the market in order to cook. Worse, Karjam decided the meat in the market wasn't good enough, so he went to Home World, which only each way takes 20 minutes, and at that time the wait in line for checkout is pretty long. So I knew drastic measures had to be taken and I went downstairs and found Hyun-sook who vacuumed the entry and living room, tidied and washed the dishes while I cooked and cleaned the bathroom. Hyun-sook really saved my ass, if she hadn't come, the house would have looked quite messy, or dinner would have been a long wait. Karjam arrived back five minutes before his professor called to say he was at the main gate. I prepared -so much- food. Karjam had bought an entire chicken, and mantou. I made suanla potatoes, a beef with cauliflower and tomatoes stir-fry, Korean cucumber salad, dwenjangchigae and egg with nori seaweed. Everything seemed to go down just fine, but it was too much food total. Then after dinner we had lychees, and I made them yogurt fruit cups with nectarine, watermelon and banana. Neither of them could open the lychees so I did it. The meeting seemed to be a success. The professor is advising Karjam how to proceed on wanting to go back to school, and supports it of course wholeheartedly.
After he left we didn't do much of anything, I mostly worked on the Internet, loaded some photos on Oz Images and tried to send Mina my speeches, but Yahoo was being annoying as usual these days, so I couldn't. Landa is publishing a journal with all the speeches from all of the teachers in it. That's cool cause I can add it to my publication credits.
Wednesday June 16th
Dream
There is this political scandal thing, really bad, career wrecker bad send you to prison bad, what does this have to do with us? We don't want people to know? La and I are in a dentist's office. La lives and works there. Kyle is far away and he has four phone numbers depending on time of day or week, and La writes them down to show me. She has them all memorized, they are her mom's phone numbers. She calls and talks to him about the problem, he advises, but what I hear her saying has more to do with their kids an dfuture than any other problem. I go to say good=bye and thank you to the dentist and his assistant, but the denstist is on lunch. I say to the assistanct, she's nice, tell her to tell him, too. We find out that the dentists is planning to rape and kill La, and the other guy is also bad, the boat campatain iss drunk and wandering around like an idtiot. He goes off, La kills the dentist who had the plan, his blood is seeping into the tan thick carpet, I kill the other guy? Not sure, but the bad guys are dead, but we've got to leave town somehow. La is the receptionist in this denstists office. But they try to make it impossible for her to use the phone. The phone out there has no way dial out.
We know everyday this drug dealer calls this one place, so we go there cause we have to find the drug dealer. We tell him we'll pay you (?) to get us out of town secretly. He is on cocaine, he's shaking. He says he can do it, but it'll ruin our car and we can't sleep, it's like four of us, plus him, we all get in this big blue like 70s style low rider car, a very medium blue, not dark at all, and we start driving down a flight of stairs, all overgrown, down this cliff, bump bump BUMP, it's sure to wreck the cars suspension completely, destroy the shocks. I can't believe we're doing this but he says "If you want to get out of town secretly, this is a great way". We're just going right down this cliff, all overgrown, into the wilds. We are going to drive cross country (find Kyle?).
We are back at the dentist's and am I on cocaine? I want to have sex so bad, and so does La and she goes to one room with her man (who?) and I go to another with Karjam, and I want to have sex, my body is aching for sex, is this the effect of the drug? Just when things are getting started we hear a groan and the boat captain is waking up from his drunken stupor and lying right there. Karjam whispers in my ear what I should say or do. So then he questions me, and I say, oh, (checking my watch), they closed up and went to go eat seafood. Of the five people two went up and three went down. I mean two died. The guy is all frustrated, belching, rubbing his belly, can't understand me, and I'm all sweet and say, "Sorry, my Chinese isn't perfect yet." And he accepts that as the reason why I'm being unclear and he goes into another room and lights a cigarette, I try to close the door, but can't, cause the door is off it's hinges, so I just prop one there in the doorway. It's a dark green door with many coats of paint.
La is my best friend. Her husband is Kyle. She is not close to her mom. I've never tried cocaine.
Tuesday went just fine, except for the ongoing lack of a remote, which prevents us from watching most of the DVDs, and even the ones that will start without the remote, we can't adjust the subtitles or the language. So, basically, we can't watch DVDs. So, the last two and a half episodes of "Alias" are haunting me. It's crazy. I did things, worked hard all day.
Today I started out by finishing my Financial Aid Application Essay, and polishing the Music Speech (so now all three speeches are polished). I printed the Essay and saved the speech to Mina's computer, made a phone call to Korea to check out if this guy was a decent candidate for Landa, he is, then went to the post office and sent photos to Kimberly, the Essay and coffee (instant) to a relative of Karjam's in Maqu who just opened a tea house and is thinking of having coffee, too.
Yahoo has expanded email to 100 MB per mailbox, I guess so we can receive more spam without going over our quota, and their site is slower than ever.
I'm sweating on my Korean 3 week study course plan, and how that is going to work. I guess they want the money right now, but they haven't told me how my application looks, and I don't know how I can pay it- by credit card? My money is all in Daegu Bank, it's SO frustrating.
This is the courtyard of an elementary school in Minhe. The brown building is the teacher's apartments, the grey and white to the left is the classroom building. I liked the energy to this shot. Maybe it's only me.
I desaturated the photo, then painted back in the color of the woman's clothes and fan. She's doing Tai'chi early in the morning.
I probably spent three hours plus connected to the Internet (three sessions) and never managed to get a single email to open! I did manage to send one to the Korean Language School, and I did other things on the Internet. Not sure if I mentioned, but I'm going to leave this computer here for Karjam, only taking the harddrive with me, or only taking CDs from the harddrive, one or the other. So that means I need to take care of things like uploading all the processed photos to Oz Images, finishing the half processed shots, etc. Karjam went off looking for an apartment, saw three and came back very grumpy vowing never to leave our nice apartment again. I think he's being unduly fussy. He loves the bathroom. He wants to find a new place with a bathroom that's at least kind of nice. One of the places he saw had a squat toilet with a visible overhead tank to flush. He's also worried about the prices of heating in the winter and electricity and stuff.
Thursday June 17th
I actually had quite a good day.
1. I brought home about 1/3 of an over-crowded aloe pot, then when getting soil from a construction site the workers told me it'd be bad for the plant, then went off for ten minutes and came back with a bag of "good soil", this was -after- their quitting time.
2. I didn't even come close to losing my temper at the elementary school, in fact, class was kind of fun.
3. Kimberly called me and we had a good talk!
4. I accomplished everything I wanted to do today.
5. A man was playing a traditional instrument (like a Korean Haegum) in the guesthouse and though he was kicked out of the common area for making too much noise, he invited me into his room and gave me a ten minute concert.
6. I had green beans for dinner- my favorite Chinese dish of the last three months or so.
7. My mom is coming in only one more week.
The only thing I really need to make today perfect is and orgasm, but it's pretty close to sleepy time, so that's probably not going to happen.
June 20th, 2004
We had a bad bad day, we had a good day, we had days where I couldn't open my email. My mom's coming soon. We bought Karjam a cell phone for 1,700 RMB. One reason was to give the number to mom in case she missed the flight in Beijing... but I forgot when she called me. We had an English teacher dinner, I got the table without Amaya, Sarra cried about loving Tom who doesn't love her back and being a bad friend and drinking too much, a crazy Chinese stalker woman came after Sarra at the dinner (first phone calls to Michael and Mr. Liu's cell, then she showed up, Mina headed her off, she came in, then she staked out the door till time to leave). This morning this guy called about going to do this TV thing TOMORROW, and I'm too busy, and I have to go and it's nearing midnight and I don't have a plan for my two hour speech on how to learn English. My student Chen Yuhong is coming to translate.
June 22nd, Tuesday
I had my last Academic Writing class this morning. It was fun. I had the students each write a short note about all the other students on a piece of paper, and I also gave them the papers that I wrote to each of them. Some of the papers you wouldn't have wanted to receive. In two cases I was pretty strong giving them a piece of my mind about their lazy attitude toward class. But for about ten of the students, you'd probably want to hold onto that paper for your whole life... a treasured badge of work well done. After class was over Ding Xuhui, Leng Yuhong and Shan Xuemei walked me back home and we talked for a bit. I really enjoyed those students a lot.
Yesterday was bullshit. We left at 6:50, we arrived around 9:30, then I changed clothes, talked for 1.5 hours with Chen Yuhong translating every few sentences (he did a great job, actually). Then we visited a few classrooms, went to a big lunch (with all these Huining officials and expensive packs of cigarettes on the tables) then visited more classrooms at the middle and high school, then visited two elementary schools, classroom by classroom from about third grade and above. It was exhausting, and the whole time I had all these officials tagging around with me and I had to be super polite to them. Of course I was also trying to keep my clothes and my hair looking good, as there were cameras at every angle. They kept trying to keep us there longer, to go to a park, to do this, do that, to have a big dinner, but at last I tore us away almost by force and we drove back to Lanzhou where I had to -again- tear Chen Yuhong and I away from the guy we went with and his driver who pulled up to a restaurant... but I managed it and got home by 6:15, exhausted, mostly wilted and richer by guess how much? 100! Ha! All that time and they gave me 100! They gave Chen Yuhong 50. What a crock of shit! I wonder if they kept a bunch in reserve so they could still all have a banquet dinner?
Just now Karjam, Jim and I returned from the computer marketplace. We bought a new harddrive for this computer, and some programs, including an Operating System. I will no longer (as of a few minutes from now) have Internet on my home computer, also I will not have this web editing program. I will continue to write my diary and probably just save it to disk, and perhaps I'll continue the blog when I am back in Korea. I'm not sure. I may just start a new blog for my post-China life in Korea. Regardless, I'll email my friends, especially the ones I knew were reading this blog if I continue or start a new one. Have a great summer, take care all!
Oh, and don't be afraid to email me. I'll just be checking my email in a smokey Internet Cafe instead of at home, that's the only difference.