Slightly Fries the Meat

This was the best-translated menu we were faced with during our entire time in Beijing. Feel free to play along at home and order a meal.

A Boy and his Mac

Rick is German and an engineer, so it really should come as no surprise that he likes the word “efficient”. When it comes to traveling, that’s not a word that can be applied to me – scattered, perhaps, and gullible. But not efficient.

But hey, I am German enough that I can understand the desire to do things with minimal effort, so why not apply that to travel? Why not see *all* of China in a *day* - *and* take Rick’s portraits of himself and his lovely Mac (they are inseparable, those two) along the way. I figured that was one feat of efficiency that you couldn’t really poke fun at unless you had a teleporter! So instead, I poke fun at Rick. Hey, he said I was allowed!

See, I’d already been to the Ethnic Culture Museum, so I knew that you could find idealized versions of all of the Chinese ethnic minorities’ regions, conveniently located on one large property with properly sized concrete trees and boat rentals on a pond the size of a prairie dugout. Oh yes! We were going to travel all of China. If the teleporter had been working, we could have followed that feat up with a trip to the Epcot Centre in Florida, and we would have pictures from *all over the world*. Instead, you will have to settle for pictures from our Chinese- adventure-in-a-day.

I could do this writeup that would actually require research and tell you a little bit about each culture (beyond “they live in x province and make buildings out of y materials, they number z.q million people). We painstakingly kept to our rigourous (sorry, *efficient*) order of 1. establishing shot of ethnic village, 2. Rick perched somewhere *in* village, telecommuting or whatever the geek word is. We were really very German about this whole process. But the efficiency on my part is reflected glory, and thus in *this* writeup, I’ve gone all higgledy-piggledy with which concrete tree belongs to what ethnic minority group. Instead, I’ll just upload a lot of pictures of Rick playing with his pooter and snigger and point and say “geek”. Maybe I’ll even make jokes that illustrate a mental age of 12 (what? One of the minorities is called Tu Long. And there was an arrow pointing in that direction, and the arrow was maybe a meter or so off the ground. Elementary school humour at its finest.)

You know, it was a pretty fun day. I liked the part where we went into the Mongolian yurt and they made us tea that tasted like it had roasted grain in it and the tables and chairs were so tiny that we thought the tables were benches. I think Rick liked the part where he deliberately misunderstood the danger! Danger! signs and climbed into the concrete tree and wandered around the sky above me. I was busy plotting my innocent bystander/random tourist routine in case he got arrested or something. Who, him? I don’t know him!

There you go, China in a day, very efficient! With not a single traffic snarl, not counting the taxi ride back to the hotel. The Ethnic Culture Museum was the most peaceful place I went in Beijing, but that's not that surprising: at 90 RMB for an unfinished museum, it's perhaps a bit steep (for comparison, the Forbidden City cost 45 RMB, and the two parks at the Wall combined came to no more than 90 RMB either).

Yeah, I know. The joke should have worn thin about an hour into the game. But we were tired, and we thought it was funny for at least three hours. After that, we had gone too far with our theme of the day to stop, so we kept taking goofy pictures... and really, spending an afternoon being silly vs. sitting inside a taxi or a hotel? Kind of a no-brainer. You would have had fun too, if you were there.

Geeks in China

I think it's pretty much a given that, if you go to Beijing, you need to visit the Great Wall of China. I suspect that if you play word association with a few random people right now and you say "China", they will say "Great Wall" even more often than "Olympics" and "chicken balls". And a lot of them would not register that the Great Wall of China, while great and rather extensive, is not everywhere in China (which is even more extensive than the Great Wall). Consequently, Rick - who had lived in China for four months or so earlier this year - had never even been there, and Rick has been everywhere. (Seriously. With the exception of my Canadian backcountry adventures, I have never been anywhere that Rick has not been). Please note that never having been there before hardly stopped Rick from taking charge and organizing an adventure. Eliezer and I did work-related things, and Rick made the adventure happen.

I was all in a-tizzy the night before. We were having an adventure! That involved hiking! I put my stuff in my pack, and insisted we all go to bed very early because tomorrow! we have adventure!

In the morning, I bounced out of bed all excited about the wall. Rick and Eliezer were less enthusiastic about the lack of daylight and having to leave cosy beds, but I didn't care! exciting! And then, Rick started rummaging, and proposing we share a pack, and that this be his pack, and he put his computer and a bunch of other things that were heavier than rocks in there. In the past, "sharing" a pack with Rick has meant that I am a big slacker and carry nothing, so I thought this was a grand plan. If he wants to drag a Mac over the Great Wall, that is up to him. (You may have noticed that Rick has a thing for pictures of himself with his Mac in exotic locations...)

So! It was 6 a.m. now. We needed to be at the Far East Youth Hostel (not that we knew the name of it at this point) at 7 a.m. We didn't know where that was, but that's what cab drivers are for! And there was a cab just dropping someone off outside, so we hopped in. And he waited for us to tell him where to go. Rick responded by pulling out his laptop, at which time he discovered that he never did know the name of the youth hostel and thus could not get it from his skype history. So he said we'd call the number, but there was no number in the history either. The only place the number would be would be in his cell phone's history. Except, of course, he'd had to buy a new SIM card the night before, because - despite really great sign language where he shoved paper currency into his cell phone, he couldn't recharge his account. The cab driver got annoyed and clearly wanted us out of his cab, but I was busy removing the new SIM card from the phone while Rick fished the old one out of his wallet. We did the switch. And discovered that Rick's phone had no juice. Thus, we borrowed the cabbie's phone to call the number, and then passed the phone to the cabbie to listen to the message. He responded by getting out of the cab and finding a security guard! Rick figured out he was trying to get directions, and realized he hadn't heard the whole message, and re-dialed and pressed the phone to the guy's ear again. And, miraculously, he got behind the wheel and started driving.

And driving and driving and driving. We saw at least three accidents. It was raining. After half an hour, our cabbie pulled over and made a phone call. Hmmmm. He started driving again. And then he pulled up at the start of a hutong and motioned us to get out. No youth hostel! This did not make us happy, but then I spotted a sign pointing to the Far East Youth Hostel and started crowing delightedly, and thus the boys pulled out some money and paid the cabbie and we're standing on a tiny, old, wet street and the cab drives away.

Yeah. We started walking down the street. It split into four directions. No more signs. So we split up. Now I was wandering down dark tiny lanes on my own. After a few minutes, I turned back, and went to the plaza. Nobody there (except for some vendors setting up for a market). So I tried a different direction, and found Eli, and he said he'd found a hostel and a bus. Next we needed to find Rick. We tried another direction, and went for some time without any luck. I told Eli to keep going and that I would go back to the plaza and wait.

At the plaza I found Rick. I told *him* to stay *put* and sprinted off after Eli - and actually found him! So, after a stop to buy many steamed dumplings, we trotted on off to the hostel. Eli and I disappeared to the coffee shop to order *coffee*. Except that took forever, because they first had to *grind* the coffee, and then use some fancy gadget to *make* the coffee - and it was delicious coffee, but Rick came to find us, telling us we were holding up the bus! Oops. Sorry. But we must have our coffees!

You've been looking at pretty pictures all along this writeup, don't you want to know where they were taken? Of course you do. Our bus' destination was Jin Shan Ling, which is 90 km northeast of Beijing. This converts to about three driving hours. Sigh. Rick fell asleep in the bus (after devouring many dumplings). I watched the world go by, and realized that parts of Beijing look like Mississauga, except with more karaoke bars. I didn't feel the need to wake Rick up until we were in a much more rural area, where Chinese oranges were piled beside the road, corn was strung up to dry, and there were intricate small-scale irrigation projects. Cool.

Jin Shan Ling is in Hebei province. The wall there was a "recent" (i.e. 16th Century) rebuild of an earlier wall. And the access point had only a handful of souvenier vendors, some toilets, and not much else. Rick handed me his pack while he explored the toilets, looking rather queasy (Eliezer said, dumplings! But Rick had expressed uneasy feelings along these lines earlier in the day, before the dumplings. Still, I had a moment of gladness that I hadn't eaten more than one! they didn't go with the coffee). I put the pack on. When Rick didn't even protest that I had put the bag-o-lead on my back when he came back from the toilet and only made a weak motion to take it back (so weak that even I saw right through it), I started to worry.

Our hike started with heading up to the wall (there was a cable car, but of course we shunned it). Three friendly women with good tourist-oriented English skills joined us and started chatting. They told us they were corn farmers. Ok, then. Corn farmers who hang out at the wall. I wondered what was in the bags they were all carrying, but for the time being, we played along. We had a grand goal: we were to hike for 10km along the wall, west to Simatai (which is where the bus would pick us up). We figured we'd lose the friendly corn farmers over the distance of a couple of cornfields.

Nope. We had semi-permanent escorts, hell-bent on being our guides. At one point I poked along behind, taking piccies (both Eli and I were obsessed with the picture-taking. Rick's attitude during this entire China adventure was that if there were two digital SLRs around, *he* certainly didn't need to carry a camera. Which is good, because his pack already contained things like hiking boots and a computer!) (He sported his usual socks and sandals look the entire day). Anyway, I had fallen behind, and made my way up to a tower and the three women energetically pointed me *up* the stairs in the tower, where I found Rick and Eli scratching their heads as to how to get rid of the escort (Eli and I just wanted pictures without people in them! and they were everywhere!). So we yelled down to keep going. They yelled up to buy a book. We yelled down no thanks. They offered us postcards instead. We said no no, they said cocacolawaterbeer? We said, no, we don't want to buy anything. They said, maybe later? We said, no, not maybe later, they said, we stay, we said, no thanks, they said, yes yes, you buy book. It looked like we would have to buy something to make them go away. And *that* pushed the wrong button with *all* of us. So the back and forth got more strenuous, and less polite...

And then some other tourists trundled onto the wall behind us, and the women left to find greener pastures and we were free! We met probably about 10 more cocacolawaterbeerbookpostcard? people along the way, but none subscribed to the epoxy yourself the the foreigner school of thought to the same extent. For the most part of the next six or seven kilometers, we were all alone! All! Alone! Yeah, *that's* why we didn't go to Badaling!

It was wonderful. For me, anyway, despite carrying a computer over the Great Wall of China... (it's a good thing I have a serious weakness for geeks. Geogeeks and computer geeks are fairly compatible, as long as there is mutual tolerance for each others' obsessions. I take too many pictures. Rick takes his Mac everywhere.) Rick probably had a far less wonderful day. He had to do a fair bit of extra hiking, on missions to get out of sight of the wall and fertilize Chinese forests (it is the dumplings! Eli said) Rick looked pretty green. But we had to get to Simatai! I did halfheartedly offer to abort the hike when we saw a road, but he was having none of that. Stoic Germans... (I *like* stoic!) So onward we trotted.

At one point we realized we had lost *everyone* from our bus. And that we had no idea how far we were, and that we might have to step up the pace to make our bus pick-up time! Oops. So we hiked a bit more energetically, but we still stopped for a million pictures. As Rick pointed out, "I think I remember the name of the town where our hotel is. Beijing or something like that". Good point.

It. Was. Wonderful. I really don't need to describe it. You can see the pictures, after all. And it was *more* beautiful than the pics. SLR or no SLR. Bee-yoo-tee-full. And a bit surprising, when we got to the exit for Simatai it was still over an hour until our pick-up time and the souvenier vendors (who were not pushy by the standards we'd experienced that day) said it would take 20 minutes to the parking lot. So we kept going, and had lunch high up on the wall west of Simatai. So. Worth. It. Even if Rick was more interested in where the toilets might be located than finding the bus when we finally got down.

We left Simatai at about 3:30. We reached our hotel at about 8:30. We had a massive hate on for Beijing traffic. We had no interest in negotiating a meal. We got home to a sign by the elevator saying the power would be cut at 9:00. Rick and Eli both had urgent internetting to do, so I left them to it, and did the unthinkable: I ventured out to go get Domino's Pizza. You must understand: I don't order pizza in Canada. Ever. The last time I'd had Domino's pizza was when I lived in residence in first year university. *That* was 17 years ago! That's how tired and cranky we were!

The pizza tasted no better than I remembered it, but we were hungry, and the pizza was not spicy so Eli was happy. I had a shower and smelled the boys and advised them to do the same, and then I put my headlamp on my head and waited for the power to be cut. Which it never was.

And thus ended the best day of the entire China trip. So. Worth. It. Except for the part where Rick finally figured out that I might actually be physically capable of carrying the pack. That's going to haunt me someday...

Big Sights of Beijing

I got lucky during my week in Beijing: the weather was uncharacteristically clear and wonderful. People who are not used to Canadian climate spent a lot of time complaining about how cold it was, but that was a load of wimpiness. After all, it never once went below freezing. During the day, I was usually in a long-sleeved shirt without a jacket. Is it *my* fault that tropical boy Rick thinks socks and sandals are "warm" footwear and that pantlegs are only for formal purposes, not for warmth? No, no it is not. Besides, it was fairly warm in the city when I got there, and all that did was make it look foggy and burn my throat. Of course, that weather system only lasted my first day, and that was before Rick and Eliezer showed up.

I was pretty happy when the tropical boys showed up, though, complaining or no complaining. I'd spent my first day going for a long wander by myself. I wanted to know what the big metal birdsnest that I could see from my room was. I figured it was construction associated with the Olympics (like everything else near where I was staying), and inside that metal mess was actually a stadium. Or something. Rick and I took timed exposures on our last night, and that's where the cool night pic comes from. At dusk and dawn, the whole thing glitters with all the welding activity. Google later told me that this is Beijing National Stadium. I got that from the search terms "nest" and "Beijing"...

During my exploring afternoon, I first got a better view of the nest, and then kept wandering. I liked the mobile bicycle mechanic's shop I saw next to an underpass. My wandering eventually took me along a very interesting looking fence and wall, and I wanted to know what was inside. I followed the wall until I found the entrance, and while I didn't really know what I was paying 90 yuan for, it seemed interesting. It turns out I found the Chinese Ethnic Culture Museum, which is also part of the Olympic construction and not yet finished. However, it has the potential to be incredibly cool: it has 55 pavilions of Chinese minority cultures (ok, 54. The Han culture is also included, but I can't see it as qualifying as "minority"!) I spent three hours wandering (until the museum closed) and decided to come back if I got a chance. More on that in a later entry...

Once Rick and Eli arrived, we devoted some time to see the big sights: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and Jing Shan Park. We started at Tiananmen Square, and worked our way north.

The first picture above is looking south toward the Maosoleum, and you can see the Monument to the People's Heroes in front of it. Next is the National Museum of China, which stands on the east side of Tiananmen Square. We didn't go in (the Maosoleum wasn't open, so we didn't go in there either). The kite flying there is identical to the ones we bought (one each). We realized after we bought the kites that we got taken and overpaid, and we were uninterested in buying the spool of kite string after that. Disinterest paid off, since we ended up with spools at 1/7th the original asking price. Obviously, you're a much better bargainer if you are already pissed off and disinterested... The third picture is looking north along the Imperial Way toward the Gate of Heavenly Peace (aka Tian/an Men). It is adorned by Chairman Mao's Portrait. No further comment on that. The last picture is a close-up of the National Museum.

More of the Monument to the People's Heroes and the spirit of enterprising kite sellers. We also encountered the spirit of enterprising art students, but my book had made some remarks about being approached by these clowns, so when two young men who spoke far better English than any hotel employee I encountered during my stay in Beijing started telling us about their paintings, Rick said that our book said there were a lot of art students in Tiananmen Square, why was that? They urgently needed to pee or something at that point, because poof! they were gone. The colourful detail is from Qian Men, aka the Front Gate, which is at the southern end of Tiananmen Square.

Continuing to tourist on the Square: a rather idyllic shot of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, monuments to the Three Gorges Dam and Tibet. Note the red flags flying above Tibet - a theme that was carried out all over the Square, as illustrated by yet another shot of the museum.

It looks pretty and impressive and glorious, all that red, doesn't it? There was certainly a lot of national pride present on Tiananmen Square (and the vast majority of the tourists there that day were domestic travellers). We couldn't really share those sentiments, and we needed to take a break. We wandered along the Forbidden City moat to get away from the Imperial Way and find some lunch. Lunch was at some hole in the wall (literally) where they were cooking rice noodles and dumplings, and we resorted to our pointing style to get some of the former and a whole lot of the latter, and we took over the small table on the street to eat. After that, we felt next to tackle the next item on our self-imposed itinerary: the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is old (the original version was completed in 1420) and it is big. There is something in the order of 1000 rooms (thoguh not all are open to the public). There are many areas of various meanings, but we stopped paying detailed attention to the audio guides by about the second room. You can google it yourself if you really want to know lots about it. We ended up being fascinated by much more modern things: the Starbucks, the groups of red-capped Chinese tourists following a guide. It was very pretty. The details I remember are that the the place of prolonging happiness was constructed in such a way that the happiness prolonger seemed like they were trapped inside a moat. And the number of little animals on the roof of a building indicated its importance.

We ran out of steam and enthusiasm for seeing the big sights (accompanied, of course, by many thousand other tourists) partway through the Forbidden City, but we were good and disoriented and had to spend an extra hour finding our way out. By now, we just wanted to go home, but getting to downtown Beijing is no easy task in the city of much traffic when you stay in a hotel far from the nearest metro station. Thus we hauled ourselves up the hill in Jing Shan Park and enjoyed the great view. There was much else to see there, but we were tired, and all other "big sights" were abandoned. We spent our remaining energy finding a taxi, in which Rick promptly fell asleep.

And that was our big tourist day. The only thing we still insisted on ticking off the Great Sights of Beijing list was the Great Wall, and we had no interest in seeing more red hats at Badaling. That story to come...

Generic Update

Hey, if you're looking for the China pics, I'm sorry... I just don't have them up yet. If you're looking for Alberta pics, perhaps you don't know where I am - it's not that scenic. But I'm going to upload some of those too, when I get around to it. If you're looking for a generic update, well, that I'll give you right now.

I last wrote anything while super-stressed in Beijing, faced with having to deal with switching rooms, lack of language skills (mine!), being responsible for two other people who were not there yet but who had to be kept informed as to where to find me using only sporadic email access (mine and theirs), the uncertainty of Rick actually making his amazing flight connections... I didn't sleep much that night.

The previous entry includes a picture of Rick, so obviously that worked out. Actually, it took me more than half the next day, but all that I had control over worked out. I did need to communicate that I needed technical support when the Chinese computer they supplied with the internet connection would do nothing but spit out Chinese porn and the connection didn't work with my laptop, and it did take about an hour to get me checked into the new place (and another hour to get the refund and checked out of the other one), but yes, it all worked. And yes, at the end of that, I felt like crashing - but I didn't, I went exploring, hoping that Eliezer would find me and Rick made his flights. At 7 p.m., I found Eli in the hotel lobby (it only took *him* two or so hours to make it there from the airport), and while we were studying menu pictures trying to figure out which of the pictures might *not* be a) turtle, b) intestines, c) innards, d) spicy (Eli can't eat spicy), Rick emailed saying he was checked in at Shenzin. It all worked out. Though perhaps I shouldn't say that until I have a chance to scrutinize my credit card statement...

I have a pile of pictures of Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City, and from the temple on the hill just north of there. I don't really have much commentary to go with them - I don't know *what* I can say about Tiananmen Square, really. It wasn't easy standing in that sea of red, with monuments to the marvel of Three Gorges and some railway in Tibet, and the Mao portrait, and think about things like the value of a break with the past. I'm not going to get into that sort of commentary, I don't know enough about it and gut reactions are something else entirely. It's not the sort of thing I can lightly poke fun at.

The Forbidden City was fun, because Rick and Eli made it fun. We rented audio guides - one in English, one en espanol. We learned about the significance of things like the little animals (animalitos!) on the roofs, and which parts of the complex were used for what (broadly, to be cheeky, the audio guide devoted a lot of time to explaining which areas were no-sex zones populated by eunuchs and which parts were for prolonging happiness - seriously, that was the phase used!). The funnest part of the Forbidden City was the Starbucks right at its heart. Think about it. The heart of imperial China...

Having Rick around was fantastic, particularly so since he did some research while Eli and I were doing our conferencing thing. As suggested by a commenter on this blog, he ended up using a youth hostel to arrange a super wonderful wall adventure. We went to the least-visited and still developed part, and got to hike along the wall (up down up down up up up down down down!) for 10km, and then catch a ride at the other end. It was a full-day adventure, primarily because it was far away and Beijing traffic is everything you've heard and worse. The wall trip was the absolute highlight of the entire China trip.

Eating in China was harder than I anticipated. I'm not picky, really, by North American standards. But the menus were not easily intepreted... if we hadn't had Rick, Eli and I would have ordered all of our meals by pointing at what other diners were eating... fortunately, Rick could order rice and translate "no have", and he recognized a few of the pictures. Still, the night we came back from the wall, I went out to get us Domino's pizza (we couldn't call for it, no language skills!), and on our last night, Eli was out and about and ended up at KFC and Rick and I got takeout that resembled U.S.-style Chinese food (it included egg rolls, fried rice and dumplings). We also got foot massages, but that was a whole other event (I fell asleep. And, according to Rick, snored. How very charming. And what a great friend, that he doesn't *wake* me when I am not only missing the fun but making a fool of myself! Grrrrr.)

That was China. Pics to come.

As for Alberta... I'm in southeastern Alberta, in what is known as the "Special Areas", doing some field research. The work is terribly interesting, but the landscape and current weather are a bit of a challenge. I miss trees. I miss above freezing temperatures. I miss elevation change. However, the people are incredibly friendly, and on chinook days I realize that the flatness and the big skies have grown on me. Especially when the light is low and the prairie is golden. Gwen and I have been taking many pictures of abandoned farmsteads, we are utterly fascinated by them. By now, we could put out a coffee table book. Though since the chinooking is all done now and it is really really cold again, we prefer to stay in the car. We've been spending many hours in the car, because the field work involves agricultural producers, and this is an area of huge (by Ontario standards) farms in terms of areal extent. So lots of driving. And long hours - we are out and about most every evening, and I'm not caught up with work email, so the thought of writing on the blog and sorting through pics is unappealing.

This weekend, we're escaping to the mountains to soak our frozen bodies in some hot springs. At the end of next week, we go to Lethbridge for a workshop, and then it's back to Toronto. We're already scheming about how we return to here. Like I said, the work is terribly interesting. If only it weren't so cold and dry. My skin is itching it's so dry.

It Was Like This

And now it's like this:

More to come.

Challenged

It's just after 3 a.m., local time, in China. At this point, I've given up trying to convert that. I don't know what I should convert to anyway. I know it's afternoon in Canada. Close enough.

I've never been to Asia before, and so far, I've not seen anything anyway. The flight was as pleasant as a 12 hour flight could be. I had my printout of the hotel address with me when I made my way to the taxi rank, and was promptly plopped into a taxi. That part worked. When we got to the "hotel" - which, it turns out, is a series of buildings labelled A to Q - my driver was confused. The instructions said building E. He got directed by a number of security guards, so far so good.

And here is where it started to get stressful for me. At reception at building E. my arrival prompted anxiety. One of the two people at the desk ran away. The other said, wait, and kept working on something. I waited. Finally, another person comes out - and we have English (he also seemed stressed by my presence, and I feel very bad that I don't speak the local language but that's why I'm checking into an "international" hotel. And my booking agent said all I would have to do is give them my passport and they would know what to do.) The passport showing and eliciting knowledgeable response, that didn't happen so much. My printout from the booking agent was met with a shrug. The man in the suit was clearly stressed. He kept asking me if I am going to this meeting that I am actually going to, and I kept trying to explain, yes yes, I am, but I didn't book through the meeting (at the time, the web rates I found with the booking agent were cheaper. Commence hilarious laughter if you are more seasoned traveller than I am).

We weren't making much progress. Finally, I got why he was so stressed - he had no record of my payment through the meeting. I assured him that all I had done was put down $60 with the booking agent as a deposit. That of course does not exist either, and will indubitably lead to further stress when I attempt to recover it. The magic of Visa fixed things, of course, but now we had a new problem: I had specified at the time of booking with the mysterious booking agent that I needed to book a room with in-room internet. I like this part, but Rick *needs* it, and since he said he'd try to come, I have realized that my math works like this:

I like Rick + I like internet + Rick needs internet = I must have internet or I throw hissyfit.

But I don't know how to throw a hissyfit in Mandarin. And it's not really something I'm good at in English, I am more the dogmatic repeat what I want until I get it sort when it comes to hotels. So I tried that. At which point my man in the suit tells me there is no internet in any of the rooms, it cannot happen, but there is coffeeshop! coffeeshop has internet! is very cheap!

What I *should* have done is insist they call the booking agent (though I have very little confidence there). What I did was pay for two nights up front, and wander to my room. Too tired to think. 24 hours without sleep. Stuff like that. I had a shower. I tried to see if I could pick up someone else's wireless. Nope. No luck. So, since I now have to talk to Rick, who is still in Bangkok, I need to go to the coffee shop that has internet.

It is not wireless internet. It is one elderly computer sitting in a corner, with one young person semi-permanently parked in front of it. No good. So back up to room, wondering if it would be totally unforgivable if I just crash and concluding yes. I turn on the computer by a different window, thinking I will get a little bit of work done and return to the coffee shop (what? I think I'm *brilliant* when I'm totally sleep deprived). And there is is. Someone's wireless is bleeding into my window, and my computer makes nice. Connected.

That sort of connected is of course not good enough - unreliable, and someone else's bandwidth. But I can now talk to Rick and explain where we are at. But Rick, who is not the sort of naive little dummy who gets sucked in by booking agents and who has had several months in China now, he was way ahead of me. He'd already discovered (using one of his Chinese speaking staff) that only some buildings in my so-called hotel have internet. And I confirmed that mine was not one of them. Enter Chad.

From here on, my contribution was to see if I could keep the computer located to not lose my fragile wireless signal (I have discovered the spot that seems consistent now). Chad started making phone calls. And now I have a plan for the morning. I must check out of this building, and go to a different building, where there is a reservation in my name for a room with cable internet. My obstacles will be to convince them that I do not want the second night here and want my money back, finding the other building, going through the whole what do you mean you have not heard of me dance again (but it might be even more entertaining, since the new building does not fall under the "international" designation), and hopefully, at the end of all that, end in an apartment much like this but with the magic feature that allows Rick to work and thus come explore the Great Wall with me, which makes me happy. I think this part is manageable, primarily because Chad gave me his cell phone nubmer. Not that *I* have a cell phone here, but it's a start! It will work out. It's just stressing me a bit right now. Must. Have. Internet.

(I'll be really disappointed if Rick's flights don't work out after this! Nothing is for sure around here.)

This whole adventure makes me feel like I'm about five years old, reaching for daddy's hand because I don't get it. Well, if I had the sort of daddy who had ever ventured further than church with me, which he didn't really do, and when we went anywhere with him we were already in Canada where *we* were the ones who understood the language and what to do. But that's what it feels like anyway. I have visions of being a grownup and arranging this trip and doing this by myself, and I am in the country *an hour* before Rick has to fix my mess-up! Sheesh!

When I was in Panama, I contentedly trundled along behind Rick (except when he led us into the jungle, then I apprehensively trundled along behind him). This was his world. I know that all the discoveries would be for me - he had seen everything he showed me a thousand times. And while that's wonderful (really wonderful), I also love when discovery of cool things is shared. I think we're going to have a repeat! Rick has not yet been to Beijing (that I know of), but he's already got some local contacts lined up. All I've got is someone else's wireless.

Yeah. Welcome to China. I saw a bright orange sunset in the cab on the way here from the airport. And I can't sleep.

I want to know

I want to know: if I am in Beijing, and Eliezer is there, and Rick is there, and we want to go see the Great Wall (of China!) and it is November and none of us speak any Mandarin and we are not good at standard tourist things because we get cranky, what is our best bet? I want to know.

It will be a story like this: this Panamanian-resident German, this Venezuelan, and this German who identifies as Canadian wanted to go to the Wall...

How do I complete? If you can continue the story, email me. Otherwise, check back here for hilarious misadventures in China soon.