Americanism: Abroad

November 2000- On a morale-draining cold and damp night eight years ago, I was on a train between Bruges, Belgium and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. America was still in the mists of the suffocating grip of the first “indecision” as all eyes were on the Florida recount. Instead of spending the few hours catching up on much needed sleep after an exhausting international conference, I sat through an hour plus lecture on the irresponsibility and narrow-mindedness of America.

In the near decade since, I have spent 447 days abroad (yes, I recently counted) including in places that are neither as friendly nor as safe as the border of Belgium and the Netherlands. Over and over again, I found myself in situations where I was requested, with various degrees of assertiveness, to justify policies that I had no part in formulating. Without even realizing it, I developed a defensive attitude about being American.

In an interesting paradox, America is both admired and despised abroad. Surprisingly some of the harshest criticism would come from the citizens of America’s closest political allies, and without question the highest acceptance of my nationality I’ve experienced was in China.

My master’s program in London is incredibly diverse as are my friends. I asked a group of them on Tuesday, how many of them ever pretended to be a different nationality abroad. The question was met with complete silence. Unfortunately, many American travelers would understand when I say that at times when people asked me, “Are you American?” with that certain hostility in their tone, the question was easier to answer, “No, I’m Canadian” than the truth. It had nothing to do with a personal unwillingness to defend the principles and virtues of the United States but more to do with a disinterest in being verbally crucified for decisions of a very controversial administration…again.

The world is not to blame for their frustration because, truthfully, they have a significant stake in the American elections. The world might not pay taxes, but I certainly have no claim to say I feel policy decisions more than an Iraqi or an Afghan citizen on the most extreme side of that spectrum. Seeing an American on the street is the closest that many global citizens are going to get to the American politicians who make those sweeping decisions. After all, as part of the American collective, I did vote them into office.

All the above makes this past week that much more heartwarming. I went to class on Wednesday after the elections like every other day though I was significantly more tired. Standing in the hall before class, one of my Norwegian classmates tackled me in a giant hug and kissed me on the cheek. Her intense joy left her speechless, which is very uncommon for those budding orators in the political field.

That incident was hardly the only one. Throughout the day, classmates came up to me and patted me on the back or gave me a hug like I had just swam the English Channel, saved a baby from a burning building, or some other noble feat. I heard so many “Congratulations” that by the end of the day, I actually started to respond, “Thank you”. Even strangers, as soon as they heard my accent, would cheer me. I am certainly not talking only about the British; London is a smorgasbord of cultures and passport holders.

I’m not going to discuss policy alternations or the ramifications of U.S. party changes on the global arena. What I can say for certain, is that for once, it’s nice to be an American Abroad.

In the Beginning

This story begins like many others before it with one restless student in the middle of a city of very non-restless people. After six weeks among the Tories and Tom Fooleries of London, she hoped on a bus and traveled to a mostly unknown town called Oxford.

Upon stepping off the bus, the young explorer realized that she was wholly unprepared for this wilder corner on England. The friend whom she was supposed to meet was nowhere to be found, and everyone around her stared, knowing that she did not belong among the ivory spirals and skyward towers of Middle Academia.

Help arrived in the form of a brief orientation of the land of Oxford and a map. Before long the explorer set out in the chilling day on a quest to discover the mysteries of the fabled city. Our formerly London sheltered student crossed the bridge, and just like stepping through a wardrobe, she found herself in a completely different environment filled with curious characters. Researchers and academics hovered over stacks of sources like dwarves over their treasure troves; tattered facility members mumbled odd formulas; and guards as thick as trolls patrolled the entrances to the different colleges.

As she stepped among the marbled scholarly sanctuaries, a harsh wind pulled at the ends of her coat. The weather had been cold in London but nothing like the frigid Oxford air. It made her wish that she grabbed one of her heavy Chinese coats before heading out the door. The Winter Queen maintained a strangling grip on the bustling village. She clung to the bell towers and pressed down on the cobbled streets and gothic buildings with a disheartening cold that stifled laugher at the very thought and hastened travelers to their destinations away from the cold.

The girl pressed onward on her little journey. Every turn unfettered a new amazement. The adventurer passed under covered bridges with stain glass windows sparking in the determined spurts of sunlight that cut through the clouds. She wandered though the endless courtyards within the library complex until she wrapped around a knoll-shaped library wing. The girl even watched in resigned jealousy as students filed into the courtyard of what she knew to be Hogwarts and wondered cynically if future witches and wizards knew a shortcut to completing her upcoming presentation.

As the sun set and a light rain began to fall, the girl scurried into a cozy pub thick with decades of memories of smoke and heated debates. The Owl and Child is known for once being the meeting place of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The two great authors would sit together and discuss the surreal fantasies of their literary worlds and are the inspiration for this post. Maybe visiting the pathways and pit stops once patronized by such imaginative masters will provide a little motivation to a certain London weary girl…

Football vs Football

I am well aware that what Americans call football is to the rest of the world, frankly not. While the British have tactfully tacked “American” in front of “football” to clarify, Americans need a little wider variation. We have “football” and “soccer”.

Yet, nothing could possibly be so contentious between British English speakers and American English speakers than what is REAL football with the obvious exception being the proper pronunciation of aluminum.

The lexicon Cold War is typically restricted to off-hand comments and friendly banter, but on Sunday that good-natured battle between neighbors across the pond reached Cuban Missile Crisis intensity. The New Orleans’ Saints hosted the San Francisco Chargers in London, and one popular sports bar decided to broadcast the game along with a soccer match between two embittered rivals. The mingling of fans was about as harmonious as a Love Boat Reunion at a Marilyn Manson concert.

The establishment made the best attempt to separate the two crowds with the televisions on one side of the bar showing one game and the opposite end of the room showing the other, yet the bar was located right in the middle of the sports demilitarized zone. Who can watch either footballs without a beer?

In that contested territory I learned one very important fact about American football. The game is in fact, “wussy rugby” because they wear protective gear.

To be fair, the fan base did not fall straight down nationality lines. Many Americans enjoy soccer, and some brave Brits spent four hours trying to decipher such novelty terms as sack, on-side-kick, and excessive celebration penalty. Other than a group of chaps dressed as cheerleaders who probably would fit in comfortably at a Marilyn Manson Love Boat Reunion, both groups of football fans maintained the proper decorum expected at a London sports pub.

Although the question of which sport deserves the title might remain unanswered, football and football managed to coexist peacefully for one night at least.

London Cornerstone

London is known for many of its endearing features: grand architecture, sophisticated-sounding accents; the Queen; and of course, the corner pub with the same on-tap offerings and gruff cliental since before the locales grumblingly accepted the need for electricity. In fact, I’m not convinced that the Grand Masters of this city actually knew how to square off a block without a pub as the cornerstone.

Therefore, my expectation for my first London pub experience was high.

The Victoria is nestled among appropriately enough Victorian style row houses cuddling Hyde Park. Modern torches behind the line of outside tables divided my first impression from wondering if the pub had caught fire to hoping it had resisted the call to modernize through electricity.

The inside felt more like a stiff great aunt’s formal parlor than a place that serves alcohol. Dark wood and what would probably be considered valuable antiques in America packed the room. My friends and I waded through the crowd of hard-working lads who were in the mist of their evening commute via the neighborhood pub.

We found a cozy table near the fireplace and under the watchful gaze of a 1700s family portrait. Next to us, an older man straight out of Brigadoon stared hypnotically into his dark brew, maybe wondering how to return to his fabled village.

At this point I reached the crossroads of my pub experience: which pint should I order? Out of the seven on-tap offerings, I only recognized Guinness. I settled on a selection with London in its title, astutely deducting that the brew was a local brand.

As I enjoyed the surprisingly unusual flavors of the drink, my friend bust from the crowd from her trip to find the bathroom located at the top of a very narrow and twisted staircase. “You guys,” she said, “they have a library and a fireplace upstairs along with another small bar.”

It’s decided: I’ve stumbled into a Jane Austen book…I love British pubs!

The Chatham House Rule

I had a set routine on Christmas mornings when I was a little girl. I woke up at 4am and stared, shook, and organized the presents until my siblings and I were finally able to drag our parents out of bed at around 6am.

The wonder and anticipation of those two hours still lingers in my memory more than any of the actual presents. The toys were always fun, but the endless potential of what could be under the wrapping paper riveted my imagination.

Growing up in America, education is just something kids do until that pinnacle moment of freedom known as high school graduation. Of course, in my case, scholarly emancipation was at my college graduation. I probably had my parent’s “You WILL go to college” speech memorized back when I was separating the “clothes” presents from the “toys” presents under the Christmas tree. Education, though valued, was not considered precious since school was just something that you had to do.

Now that I’m older and spent some time doing something other than trying to retain facts for an upcoming test, I’ve realized the immense importance of knowledge.

The same little-girl-anticipation for what presents might be under the tree hit me as I attended a lecture last night by Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl, who is considered an expert on counterinsurgency and assisted two of the current great military thinkers in writing the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. My wonder was intensified since the speech was under the Chatham House Rule.

The Rule takes into account the importance of workers and researchers in the field of international relations need for the most current and “on-the-ground” information while still protecting the identity and affiliation of the speaker…in other words, don’t start quoting verbatim in dissertations what gets said, who says it, or even who else is in the room listening.

Suddenly, all those mysteries hidden behind official lines and press releases are obtainable to be unwrapped. The excitement of real knowledge and not just the fragments and filtered pieces from journals and newspapers is available. I was hearing it from an expert…in person…under the Chatham House Rule so neither uniform nor loyalties would not keep him from speaking his honest opinion…

While the Lt. Colonel didn’t actually say anything that commonsense and basic reading between the lines could not also provide, the possibility filled me with the same excitement as when I was a little girl.

In fact, I’ve applied to be a member of the actual Chatham House here in London. Who knew it could be so exciting to be a student.

Among Giants

I knew coming into this program that I would come across “The Credentials”: people that have accomplished such amazing feats that I could have spent every day since my high school graduation watching Jerry Springer reruns and be about as close to their stratosphere as I would be actually putting in effort.

The intimidation-by-default begins with my professors. For anyone curious, knighthood titles come before academic titles. I know that now since I have a Sir Dr. as one of my instructors. I have heard of knighthood but never actually met anyone who has ever been in the same room as a queen (any queen to my knowledge), let alone have one hold a sword anywhere in the vicinity of major arteries.

Another professor was a foreign reporter in Afghanistan during the war with the USSR and then in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is considered an expert in Afghanistan although he was kind enough to not assign his books as part of our encyclopedia thick booklist. In essence, sitting in his class is like getting the book-on-tape version of the material.

Another professor apologetically canceled class for next week because the “President” of Chechnya invited her to the opening ceremony of a new Mosque, and she hates to turn down official invitations.

The material is just as daunting. The one class’s overview read like a laundry list of everything that I don’t know: Unresolved conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh (“Think I missed that class”); Disintegration and Reconciliation in Tajikistan (“I know where that country is on the map!”); critical assessments of events in Andijan, Uzbekistan that took place in May 2005 (“huh?”); the increasing influence of China in Central Asia and Xinjiang (“oh, oh, oh! I was there. Finally, I know something”).

My fellow classmates carry their own level of prestige. In one small class we went around and introduced ourselves. In the class is a Columbian drug enforcement officer, two UN staff members, a former peacekeeper in Rwanda and the Congo, two Norwegian soldiers who just returned from Afghanistan, a PriceWaterhouseCooper partner, a State Department officer…oh and me.

Someone much smarter than me, most likely my mom, told me once that regardless of what everyone else has done, if they are sitting in the same room as me, than they are at the exact same point in their lives as I am. When it became my turn to introduce myself, nobody chuckled or refused to meet my eye. I was even taken by surprise when my professor, one of the stratosphere-hovering Credentials, said, “Oh, Miami University in Ohio…good school; I’ve been there.”

I was accepted as a peer among them. Although this year is going to be insanely difficult, I have a feeling that it will all be okay.

Survivor: London

Being an avid reader and writer, I love bookstores and libraries. I can confidently say that I knew my undergraduate library as well as any of the part-time student librarians. I wonder through the stacks like a grocery shop, aimlessly picking up anything that looks interesting or odd.

I was positively giddy when I found King’s College’s library resembles a castle equipped with its own black cast-iron gate and garden. The hundreds of steps to reach the postgraduate study cubbies in the tower didn't even faze me. To add to the excitement, I felt like I stepped into an Escher painting when entering the bookstore near University College London. The converted old building has crisscrossing stairs leading to very specialized sections.

The book list for ONE class could probably substitute for a winter jacket considering its thickness. Armed with that guide, I forged through the stacks at both the bookstore and the library.

Thinking I had electronically requested a title now out of print, I confidently marched up to the check-out desk at the library. “I’m sorry, we only have two copies and both have already been check-out. You are in the queue. There are people waiting for the book before you.”

Two copies! As an undergraduate, the library was only heavily visited around finals. King’s classes only started this week. My devious classmates snuck in and reserved copies before me. Flipping through the pages and pages of readings, I wondered if any of the books were actually available. We have reverted to academic scavengers fighting each other for scraps of knowledge and dissertation resources.

At the bookstore, I thought that I was just searching in the wrong section. Should I be looking in Current Affairs, Security Issues, International Development, War History, or the dozens of other sections within the politics area of the mega store? I notice a title on my list in the arms of a girl scanning the same section. “Excuse me, where did you find Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing?”

The girl glanced up from the lower shelf, and we recognized each other simultaneously. She is in my class (i.e. competition). “This is the only copy.”

She notices that I was clutching Global Governance and the New Wars. Before she can ask, I say, “Only copy.”

We chat about the difficulty of finding books and how the prices on Amazon are the same between the British and America sites and just the dollar and pound signs have been switched. As two of the only American girls in the class, we come up with a book sharing scheme (an alliance!) although we both put orders in for The Fragmentation of Afghanistan. Some resources cannot be shared.

It appears survival of my postgraduate education will take a lot more (resource) strategy than my undergraduate degree.

MAd Tea Party

Between 1849 and attending Oxford in 1851 an unexplained gap exists in the life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the whimsical author behind Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland. I have unraveled the mystery of the missing years: the author attended my university. The experience provided inspiration for one of the most memorable chapters in the book: the Mad Tea Party.

I entered my department’s induction expecting to receive the answers to my most pressing questions. Alice wanted to find her way home; I want to know what classes I am going to take and when. Instead, I received riddles.

We filled out forms in the meeting listing our top ten choices of optional class although we only take two. We will find out next week, except classes start now…sort of. Geography classes begin this week, War Studies classes relating to Europe begin next week, and all other classes begin the following week.

What am I supposed to do until I know what actual classes I’m taking? Why, sit in all my top ten classes that I might be taking, of course.

Move Down!

I listed a geography class as my number six choice but could not find the time or location for the class. I waded through enrolling freshman to locate my Master’s department. The answer: “Ask the Geography department.”

Move Down!

I tried to open an international student bank account but didn’t have an acceptance letter with my London address on it. The school wouldn’t send an acceptance letter to a London address that I would not have until after I received confirmation that I would be an international student in London.

Move Down!

As our library resembles a castle more than an actual library, I signed up for a library tour. In the madness of 200 students trying to sign up at the same time, I couldn’t hold onto the sign-up sheet long enough to see where and when the session was being held. I asked a program coordinator and was told, “Monday, at the library training center.”

I arrived early on Monday and was fairly suspicious when nobody else appeared to wait outside the classroom. I entered the classroom to ask the instructor just finishing a session with obvious freshman. My training session is on Monday at this time and in this location but next week.

Instead of being late like the White Rabbit, it appears I was very, very early.

Into the Land of Harry Potter

Saturday night I went out in London for the very first time, and I instantly felt pulled into almost everyone's favorite children's book: Harry Potter.

We passed through King’s Cross Station although we did not stop to look for platform nine and three quarters. I was told however that people are constantly hovering around the train station, taking pictures as they pretend to smash luggage carts into the wall. No word if any hopelessly Potter obsessed nine year olds have suffered a concussion after actually charging into the wall.

After starting the evening at what I would consider a traditional pub that would fit in comfortably at Hogsmeade, we walked to Ester Square. I was struck by how much ridiculously drunk teenage boys resemble goblins or bumbling mountain trolls who stumble around causing destruction in their wake.

Once we left a club, we waited for a night bus in a gorgeous curved street off Piccadilly Circus. Yes, a real two story red knight bus! I was so excited when it came bustling down the street. When the doors flew open, I wanted to yell “Stan!”

Unfortunately, the bus driver was not the lovely red head from the book.

The ride was only slightly less mad than what is written on the page. I had no idea walking down the steps from the second story to the first could be so difficult when in motion.

We hopped off the bus and walked down the silent streets of a Julia Roberts movie worthly neighborhood. The grandeur of the buildings could not be masked even in darkness. We turned into our little square. Squeezed between the cheerfully yellow and white townhouses and boutique hotels is our own grey Number 12, Grimmauld Place: home.

So far I haven’t had any run-ins with death eaters, and I have yet to receive my first broom-flying lesson. Give it time though. I haven’t started classes yet, and it very much could be that I have Professor Snape or Professor Gilderoy Lockhart as my instructor.

Bad China Month

While I have not been in China for six weeks now, the ghost of Chinese deniability is still haunting me with severe financial consequences (considering I’m now a poor student in one of the most expensive cities in the world).

First, the Agricultural Bank of China stole nearly 400USD from my bank account. I meticulously check my bank accounts online and double check that every line item is something that I actually spent money on even if I regretted it later. Some of those rash purchases at the fabric market fall in that category.

When suddenly three withdraws on the same day appeared, I noticed, and complained, but I made no progress at the Chinese Bank. The Chinese bank’s official line is, “You will have to talk to your home bank about the problem”

My American bank was appalled and tried twice to file a complaint with the Agricultural Bank of China, which is insistent that a glitch never occurred.

Four hundred dollars gone…

Second, I apprehensively awaited the arrival of the last box I sent from China. Its contents included my very last purchases from the fabric market, which I already dearly miss. It did not arrive until four days after I left for London…I should say that the box arrived with two large slashes in it and no contents except an old bag I sent home with sentimental value. A gorgeous white cashmere coat, a pink coat I bought my sister, a full suit, the altered pants to two other suits, a silk jewelry box, and souvenirs that I bought for my entire family were all stolen.

The US Postal Service is looking for the “missing” items, but they were already gone before USPS even received the package. I’m not going to see them again.

Another four hundred dollars gone…

So some devious person is walking around with four hundred U.S dollars in my white coat that I bought for the cold London winters. Needless to say, it caused a very, very bitter impression within my parting memories of China.

Am I Still a Smart Postgraduate Student If...

I had some time to kill between the hours of queing to enrol and my department orientation so I decided to take the time to wonder around the “campus”


The Strand Campus of King’s College London consists of an attached addition to the Summerset House with a hideously ugly attached front building and a dozen attached row houses on one side, AND the attached former Strand subway station. The outside of these buildings are the same, but the inside has been cubed off into professor offices as I am quick to learn.

After spending hours in the original buildings, I thought a foray into the clustered side buildings could be fun.


I crossed a frosted glass bridge into that wing and entered a claustrophobic maze instantly. I went up a baby fight of stairs and then down another, dimly noting that the hall were narrowing like Willy Wolka’s factory.





What followed was a series of sharp twists, winding staircases, and swinging fire doors all along halls so slender that I could fan my fingers out down at my sides and still brush both walls. Only the change in side molding helped me distinguish when I was leaving one building and entering the next.

I bumbled into finding the object of my mission, the waterfront bar overlooking River Thames.

The trip back proved trickier. I thought I mentally mapped my route, but when I reached a sweeping staircase, I had no idea where I needed to go.


Working off faulty memories, I pushed through one heavy fire door after another almost bursting into a professor’s office because pop-up intersections lined with doors disoriented me. When I passed the stairs that stopped directly into the ceiling, I knew I was on the right path. At the multi-mini-stair intersection, I took the narrow stairs that wind around an old cage elevator painted bright blue, which didn’t lessen its creepiness.


Picking up speed, I almost took out a young British professor. I somehow missed the turn to the greenhouse bridge and entered a completely round room. I took old wooden steps into a tiny courtyard and made it back into the ugly front building that suddenly became a lot prettier.

Roly-Poly

I landed at Gatwick Airport in London after an uncharacteristically uneventful flight and realized that I probably should have created a better plan for making it to the dorm after twenty hours traveling.

The largest problem was that Gatwick is located about thirty miles from the center of London, and I didn't want to spend 160 dollars on a taxi to reach the city. (I hate the weak dollar.)

I went up to a friendly train ticket officer and told him that I needed to go to Paddington so I wanted to buy a ticket to Victoria. This exchange shouldn't have been difficult because we were both speaking English except I couldn't understand half of what he said. I did decipher: "Victoria is not possible"..."Go to Farringdon and change"...

I looked at the tickets and couldn't make sense of the zones that seemed more suited for a locker combination than a London map key. I just went to the platform he told me and jumped on the same train as everyone else with suitcases. Minding the gap is very difficult with a fifty pound suitcase, a thirty pound suitcase, and a computer bag.

Forty minutes into the ride, the next station was announced as Victoria. Very confused, I dragged my suitcases off the train and decided it would be best to take a taxi.

The taxis are huge! They also don't have trunks. My driver, whose abilities are probably more suitable for a Mad Max remake, zipped around the corners with no regard to the fact that my suitcases have very well performing wheels. I felt like I was in a London cab washing machine as I tried to balance both suitcases and keep them from knocking me unconscious.

Within moments after beginning the ride, we passed a Rolls Royce with an old lady in a goofy hat. Instantly I thought, "The queen!"

Of course, the cabby entered a round-about at that moment, and I was flattered against the window. On closer inspection the woman wasn't the queen. I think her majesty rides in a carriage anyway

Goodbye China!

My year in China includes some of the funniest moments, greatest friends, and hardest-earned accomplishments (and I have a broken bone in my foot to prove it). Now it's time to move onto the next chapter of my life: London. The story continues...

Home Base

In some odd combination of purpose and accident, I have spent a lot of time wandering, yet I still always come back to the place I consider home base. When my time in China ended, I returned to the cornfields of Ohio.

My hometown is still a place where post office workers and grocery store clerks ask about my family in unexplainable southern accents considering how far we are from the Mason-Dixie Line. It’s a town where music simply stopped in 1986, and the Eagles and CCR are still kings of the radio. American flags are hung from lamp posts during every summer holiday and a giant Ohio flag is painted on the grain silos on the edge of town. Teenagers ride along winding country roads with sunroofs down, trying to catch fireflies and bridge jump along dusty and deserted gravel roads.

I came home in the heat of August when the humidity thickens to the point of practically requiring swimmies. Just at that point thunder rolls across the horizon bringing the green skies and rapid fire lighting of some of the fiercest thunderstorms that I’ve seen in the world. When the rain clears, a mist lingers within the meadows so that only the tops of the wild flowers and tall grass rise above the haze.

Summer in Ohio also brings every possible festival imaginable besides the county fair. The summer holds the Strawberry Festival, Strut Your Mutt, multitudes of car shows and races, the Street Carnival, and maybe the most famous in my personal history: Balloon Fest, the hot air balloon spectacular.

My trip home was only for a month of respite. I will move from a teacher to a student as I attend school in London this fall to obtain a Master’s degree. When the year is over, I will once again return to the drive-in theaters, old-time carousel, and football obsession of my hometown.

In the Name of Security

Many, many people ask me if I feel safe in China when in reality I do not think I have even lived, visited, or thought of visiting anyplace nearly as secure. In Shanghai I rarely saw People’s Liberation Army officers or police officers. Actually, the only times I see cops are when they hassle the street vendors for selling food without a license.

Xinjiang Province is different. I was stopped at a police checkpoint sometimes as often as every ten minutes along a straight desert road. Occasionally we were even treated to an overzealous young guard who inspected the engine and car for explosives. I’m not sure how accurate some of their tools are though since my bag set off one of the wands. I think only sudden panic of being buried under a mound of Western underwear drove the young cadet to stop me from opening my bag for a closer look.

Even some local Uyghur towns took up the security cause and set up make-shift check points with slender poplar trunk barriers counterweighed with hanging boulders, making them easily drawn.

Our protection was taken so seriously that the military manned the checkpoint as we traveled to Karakol Lake, thirty kilometers from the gateway to Afghanistan and Pakistan. We were even protected from our Uyghur guides and had to use a Han Chinese guide to take us up to near oxygen-needed altitudes on a little sibling to the nearby K2.

To continue with the theme of protection, Uyghur dominated Old Town Kashgar was scheduled for demolition. The government feels the two story stone and brick buildings that have stood for hundreds of years might not survive a massive earthquake so the entire population is being relocated to tall skyscrapers on the edge of town. The destruction was scheduled for one week after we left.

A labyrinth of narrow alleys opened to courtyards and mosques. The domain of laughing children, they ran passed us playing games with rules made up on the spot. The larger streets felt even smaller with vendors packed along each side selling their wares of everything from wool caps to raisins and loose tea. As a brilliant marketing tool, pedestrians were forced to walk close to the stands while donkey carts forged through the center of the road along with small flocks of herded sheep. All will be gone soon in the name of security.

Addendum: The struggles in Xinjiang are quite real and felt constantly. A week after I left the area a checkpoint outside Kashgar was attacked and sixteen police officers were killed. Most in the minority group are so fearful of retribution and wiretapping that they are too weary to say a word against the government to foreigners at least.

And of course, the large oil reserves in the province complicate matters…

Not in Kansas Anymore

After two weeks of hitting the places-I-couldn’t-live-in-China-and-not visit as well as some more unique and rustic corners of the Chinese map, I hopped on a plane to Xinjiang. Xinjiang is the largest Chinese province and the farthest west yet the ethnic group from the area, the Uyghur, has more in common with Turkey in culture, language, and religion than the Middle Kingdom. The difference became apparent the moment our flight landed.

Our smiling guide met my friend and I at the airport, and I was instantly praised for my German ancestry. (Later I found out that our guides nickname in “German” because he loves the German people so much.) Immediately after that unusual statement, our guide announced that he was Uyghur and Muslim and that we would be leaving Urumqi immediately because the city contained too many Han Chinese.

The cityscape gave way to desert on our drive to the oasis town of Turpan. Fields of trellised grapes only days away from harvesting flew by our car window. Dotted among the fields were patches of poplar trees shading sun-baked homes in no danger of melting in the hottest place in China, which received no real rain. Occasionally we passed a donkey cart filled with watermelon or carrying colorfully-clod woman and children catching a ride.

Before dinner I took a stroll through the local market that smelled significantly better than the markets of Shanghai. Instead of oil drum lid-fryers cooking stinky tofu, white dressed men pulled nan from ancient wood-burning stoves. Instead of hanging chickens next to butcher’s stall were giant racks of lamb.

My first dinner in Xinjiang can only be described as discombobulating. It started off innocently enough. Our large group of travelers settled down within a restaurant sheltered under hallways of grapevines. We were served in the familiar buffet style of too many dishes of odd food that none of us would ever order on our own.

Everything was going fine until the entertainment started. Somehow the traditional dancers twirling to traditional songs turned into Uyghur Disco with tiny lead dancers moving to the very not traditional “Gasolina” as strobe lights flashed. At about that time, the entire sheep (not lamb) on a spit was plopped on our table. Nothing associated with Silence of the Lambs could possibly be as terrifying as that cooked carcass. Prepared by the King of Lamb, the meat was supposed to be the best in town.

Whle our host was trying to figure out how to carve the massive entrée, the head tiny dancer managed drag me onto the dance floor to teach me their style of dancing, which the only part I understood was waving my arms in the air to what sounded like a Middle Eastern influenced song put to a techno beat. While spinning in a circle with dozens of local woman, the lights flashed so slowly that more than once I crashed into someone because I just couldn’t see.

As one of my fellow travelers put it, this scene might be one of the oddest of his life. I quickly had the realization that I was NOT in the China that I know.

Hiking History

When people think of China, the Great Wall is among the first images that come to mind right behind the scrawny kid with half-face glasses winning a computer game competition and before a bedazzling contest, but maybe that's just me. Unfortunately, with a billion people all raving up for China's Coming Out Party during the Beijing Olympics, the last place a tour-group-hating traveler wants to be is the Great Wall of China.

The solution was to drive to a portion of the Wall in a different province and hike ten kilometers on the Wall back into the district of Beijing. Two hours plus and one road checkpoint later, we reached a section of the Wall without the lines of mega buses and the perky tour guide flags that I have grown to dispise.

A couple in Inner Mongolia hiked the same portion of the Great Wall and forewarned us that if we didn't outrun the vendors at the very beginning, they would stay with us the entire time. Jogging a kilometer is not really a challenging feat except when being performed on the crumbling stairs of the Great Wall that had degraded to such an extreme in some spots that they were nothing more than bits of pebbles in a steep decline. Our up and down climbing would be appropriate in a chase sequence of a Scooby Doo episode.

The older vendors gave up fairly quickly, but some of the younger men were still in pursuit, taunting us to try and out run them. What they weren't expecting was someone who understood their language well enough to turn around and yell at them to stop. The ringleader, who I selected to confront, had a few choice words for me, which I only recently learned but never used. Still, they backed off.

My friends and I kept a brisk pace and kept a guard tower between us and where the more determined vendor-stalkers maintained a distance. They finally stopped chasing us around the seventh guard tower, which could be due to the fact that climbing a sixty-foot ladder would be less steep and less treacherous than the hazardous incline of the that part of the Wall.

The guard tower at the top was more intact than many of the others we had seen so far in that it still had a roof. Light filtered in from the windows splashing spots of illumination across the miniature maze of the tower's stone columns. Looking out, the Great Wall zigzagged to the horizon, haphazardly thrown on the ridges and into the valleys of the mountain peaks like a child's forgotten toy train track, still mostly intact.

The rest of the hike was serenely breathtaking. We did give the bored Wall guards something to do when we accidently climbed to a ancient guard tower off limits. We discovered belatedly that the Wall on the other side had collapsed.

Contrary to my preconceived misgivings, trekking the Great Wall proved to be one of the highlights of our trip even with the predatory vendors and pulverized steps. For the sake of all the future China explorers hoping for a shred of authenticity, I hope the Chinese government never gets around to "restoring" this section of the Great Wall, though ziplining down to the bottom of it was really fun!

Beijing: Olympic Countdown

The timing was completely unintentional, but I happened to move to China during the same year that Beijing is hosting the Olympics. Those cuddly mascots are plastered on posters, tee-shirts, the sides of buildings, and everything in between. The Olympic Games are given credit for every major accomplishment of modernity and justification for both the opening and closing of the country. Needless to say, this year has been very interesting.

I arrived in Beijing expecting all the colorful festivities of Disney World on Christmas day on whatever anniversary they decide to celebrate that year. While I enjoyed the specially designated lane on the highway for the Olympics, I was not drowning in Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini mascot merchandise like I thought. A month out from the Olympics, Beijing seems to have made massive progress; however, it still might have a little way to go.

1. With the exception of Hohhot, Longji, and the area around Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan, many people in the service and tourism industry speak at least a little English. Unfortunately, Beijing appears to be lagging behind that curve. So much for the English-First campaign whose advertisements appear everywhere.

HOWEVER, I am really practising my Chinese. In addition, I stopped by the Pearl Market to buy a fleece and found most vendors' English could rivial some of my native level Engilsh students. Non-Chinese speaking purse buyers rejoice!

2. Similar to number one, the friendliest, best English speaking taxi drivers huddle around the mega-tourist sites like the Summer Palace to lure in hapless foreign tourists and charge ridiculous non-metered prices or tack on Olympian stadium tours.

HOWEVER, we did have an adorable taxi driver pull out a laminated card from his visor when I told him where we wanted to go. He tried to match the Chinese characters for the major tourist attractions with the English words that correspond. Of course, I was speaking to him in Chinese and the place we wanted to go doesn't seem to exist anymore. The effort was endearing regardless.

3. Beijing built a huge new terminal to handle all the air traffic but built it far away from the other two. Travelers will have to know which terminal that they need, which is probably not going to be the case for many foreigners.

HOWEVER, I managed to correctly "guess" the word for terminal, which is NOT in my Lonely Planet phrasebook based on a conversation that I had with a Shangaiese taxi driver weeks ago. Everyone else is out of luck.

4. The subway closes at 11PM. My friend and I barely made the last train after only dinner and a stroll around a new hip walking atreet. Younger Olympic goes hoping yo celebrate their team's win in shotput or archery might have difficulty getting home if they don't know their hotel's cross streets.

HOWEVER, the subways are excellent. They are modern and are easy to use.

5. In an effort to clear all the air pollution to give Beijing uncharacteristic blue skies, China has been seeding clouds and forcing it to rain...every day. Unfortunately, if they succeed, pasty Westerners are going to be caught off guard when they can't buy suntan lotion though skin whiterning products are always readily available.

HOWEVER, all the rain and landscaping have made Beijing explode with color whne I've never heard Beijing described as beautiful before now.

6. While the subways are great, the bus system needs some work. We never managed to catch a single bus eventhough we tried a couple of times. Sometimes Lonely PLanet was at fault when it didn't specify where to catch the bus. Other times were more frustrating like how the bus station for the Summer Palace is impossible to find.

HOWEVER...well, I can't think of anything positive about this one.

AFter such a tragic year for China, I hope the Olympics are everything that China hopes that they will be. Still, lets hope in the next month that the government makes a few more improvements.

Home on the Inner Mongolian Range

Up to this point in our cross-China journey, my friends and I have not really veered much off the China tourist path. Longji Rice Terrace was slightly less traveled but still appeared in flyer advertisements plastered around Guilin and Yangshuo. Weighing the tourist factor based on how many pages are dedicated to the place in Lonely Planet China, the city of Shanghai has fourty-one pages, the city of Xi'an has fourteen pages, and the vllage of Yangshuo has ten pages. Our next stop is significantly more rugged. The entire region of Inner Mongolia has only twelve pages. Hohhot, the largest city in the area, doesn't even have its own listing.

I'm fairly convinced that Hohhot has only one guesthouse and that situation is only because the owner of the elite guesthouse is very entrepreneur. The owner picked us up at the airport in his family's beat-up sudan like he would a visiting family member. When we arrived at the guesthouse, his wife hurried us into the kitchen for welcoming tea.

We weren't staying at a guesthouse, not really. We were staying at the family's home, which they opened to foreign tourists. Their toothbrushes were neatly stacked on the shelves in the bathroom and their clothes hung on the laundary line in the courtyard. We even watched a Ricky Martin behind-the-scenes documentary with the owner's twelve-year old son, Donetello, while we waited for dinner to be served.

We were tired from our Xi'an trip and would have been happy with just a simple rice dish for dinner, but the owner's wife had something else in mind. She spent nearly three hours preparing a traditional Mongolian mutton dumpling dish that was simply phenomenal. The meals was one of the best that we have had on the trip.

Travelers come to Inner Mongolia to visit the grasslands, and we were no different. Instead of staying in one of the fenced off "tourist camps" of yurt-shaped cement, we spent the night with the guesthouse owner's Mongolian family friend on the grasslands. In the morning, the owner, his son, his niece, his college age friend, who spoke English almost fluently, and the three of us piled in the van like we were going to visit grandmother's house.

When we reached the range house, we were ushered into their yurt in front of their house for additional welcoming milk tea. Around the tea were bowls and small dishes that I could not identify. They turned out to be items that could be added to the tea like a grain called millet, Mongolian butter, something that looked like cheetos without the flaming orange cheese, and something that tasted like flanks of pie crust. I became fond of the Mongolian cheese. It had the crunchy texture of how I would imagine pool chalk tastes, but it still had a sweet aftertaste that I found intriguing.

We spent the day roaming around the grasslands and playing with the family's goats, particularly one energetic baby goat that tried to eat my camera. We horseback rode to a crude circular tower made out of tiered levels of stone and honored the Mongolian tradition of circling the monument three times while tossing stones at it. As far as we could see were the rolling hills of grasslands blanketed with silence except for the whistling of the wind.

That night we tried on traditional Mongolian formal dresses with our surrogate family from the guesthouse. We made a bonfire out of dried dung and gazed at the multitude of stars visible without light pollution of any kind. One other fire was spotted miles away but other than that interference, we had nothing but stars.

A day later we went on another "family outing" with the college-age friend and the owner's niece to the Gobi Desert. The desert was an amusement park for Inner Mongolia, equipped with four wheelers, zip-lines, slides down the dunes, and what I can only describe as the DC Duck supped up to roll over the massive dunes. I felt like I was on a desert ship designed by Mad Max.

We rode two hump camels, and I happened to get the only almost pure white one. I affectionately named mine Booboo while my friend named her camel George. We came up with goofy Saturday cartoon-worthy antics for the camels as we rode through the water-smooth sand.

When we left Inner Mongolia, it felt like we were leaving an adoptive family. Our experience in the region certainly goes well beyond the twelve pages denoted to it in the brick-size Lonely Planet guide. Inner Mongolia proved to be the perfect respite in our cross-China trek.

Travel Nightmares and Intriques

Traveling always involves a few headaches: delayed flights; traffic jams; travel buddies who suddenly become arch enemies when finding themselves in a room with four other girls and one bathroom.

Since early March, I have researched, organized, compared, and confirmed the cross-China trip with two of my childhood friends to the point that I actually used grading as a break.

Even with as meticulously thought-out plans, problems arise that leave people racing through airports or spending the night with their head down on the bathroom floor, wishing that they had remembered to pack stronger upset stomach medicine.

We were already tired when we reached our guesthouse in Xi'an. I spend weeks looking for this hotel alone since I did not like any of the standard hotels in the ancient city.

The guesthouse that we reserved used to be a former emperor's brother's house and is a beautiful traditional stone building with three internal courtuards. The residence had only been open as a guesthouse for a year and five days (according to the manager, who I got to know really well before we left Xi'an).

We checked in, planning to flop our bags down and grab dinner before heading to bed early. I was already thinking about how nice it would be to relax as the front desk receptionist handed me our key and told me that we had a four bed room without a bathroom. I halted my hand midgrab; I reserved a three bed room with a bathroom and confirmed it...twice.

The receptionist's response was, "We held your room until today. The family staying in the room couldn't get train tickets and wanted to stay another night."

I dealt with the isses without anyone at the hotel losing face and without being anything but respectful and patient; however, when told over and over again that they reserved the room until today and that excuse expected to allieviate all our concerns was a little trying.

It took two hours. The manager was called. The "Big Boss" was called. Half a dozen other hotels and hostels were called. The manager ended up paying the difference between what we owed for our reserved room (up until that day)and two rooms in a hotel nearby for the first night in Xi'an. The second night we returned to the guesthouse and received the penthouse family suite with the bedroom on the vaulted second story. Not bad for never raising my voice.

On many occasions Chinese tour groups have been a major obstacle for my China teacher friends' travel experiences (flashback to Huangshan); however, we only came to Xi'an to see the Terra Cotta Warriors and joined a tour through our guesthouse to do it.

The unscheduled visit to the extinct for 6,000 years Banpo camp was interesting, mostly because we went there first in the morning. The tourist trap banquet was not amusing at all. The foor was a step-up from Chinese airplane food but not much more. The drinks were hot: hot straight-from-powder orange juice; hot straight-from-powder corn juice; hot straight-from-powder watermelon juice. The temperature forced tourists to pay fifteen yuan for a cold drink as the waitresses made abundantly clear. Ours kept yelling "cold" in Chinese at me when I bulked at the price. The Chinese tourism industry still hasn't quite mastered the art of subtlty in some cases.

The town outside the Terra Cotta Warriors is also bazaar. The government took the land from the farmers who discovered the "eighth wonder of the world", and it built the farmers a modern town to make up for the land-grab for historical significance. The townhouse subdivision was a Chinese fascade slapped on a Western design. Take away the Qing era roofs with dragon corner statues and throw on some shutters and the neighborhood would fit in comfortably in suburbia, USA. The attached garages were particularly out of place.

The town square with its water fatures was in the wrong continent. Put in a few more trees and take out the impromptu statue of the Beijing Olympics characters, and it could have been Brunswick or any other small town in the midwest.

The solitude of the town gave it an eerie quality. The new buildings stood empty with a dust film on all the windows. The scattering of vendors set up small roll-away stands along the main walking street while the store fronts on either side were vacent. I felt like I entered an apocalypic zombie movie but instead of the undead flying through store windows and flooding the town square, ghost of the Terra Cotta Warriors would tackle us and demand their terra cotta memorabilia back.

The Terra Cotta Warriors were fascinating, especially how much of the site still hasn't been unearthed. Of course, the automatic crossbow booby-traps and mercury gas are effecient deterents against opening the emperor's tomb.

Our Xi'an trip ended as borderline disasterous as it began. Our flight times changed last week, and I confusingly thought we were taking the later flight. I happened to check the times at noon and realized that our flight left at 1:40PM. The airport was fifty minutes away. We made our flight and so did our bags, which is lucky because I did not want to use my diplomatic calm to handle negotiating another flight. Hopefully my friends and I have fulfilled our quota on travel nightmares, and the rest of our trip will run smoothly.

Longji Rice Terrace: the Game

I'll admit it: I was mildly obsessed with video games for a few years in my youth. Bubble Bobble was my favorite, and I had pretty decent aim in duck hunt. I outgrew the phrase almost as quickly as I fell into it so that I have no idea what my students are talking about when they drone on about their PSPs

My trip to Longji Rice Terrace brough numberous similarities to some of the best elements of my favorite games.

While toted as being located "outside Guilin", the Dragon Backbone Terrace is actually a three-hour car ride, zigzagging through a rugged mountain range that could easily fit in among the courses of Mario Cart. The amount of switchbacks and lumpy curves would keep the more streamlined mushroom character on his mushroom toes.

We reached a significantly high altitude when the road just stopped, and we had to go the rest of the way on foot. After hiring incredibly physically fit grandmothers to sherpa our bags, our merry party set out up the mountain like Dizzy, the walking, talking egg video game character on a quest for...something or another. While his journey transversed forests and treehouse towns, we trekked a dizzying path through lush gullies and through wooden villages built at such extreme angles on the mountainside that they were given the appearance of dizzy's eggfolk's treehouses (or Ewok residences...pick your reference).

The villages were helter-skelter, multi-level jigsaw pizzles straight out of Donkey Kong, where bridges over fifteen-feet deep duck pond pits could be nothing more than an ancient, wobbly plank. Wooden buildings with second stories jetting out formed tunnels over the path. Gutter-sized open aquducts appeared out of the most unexpected places and contained such unique turns that it would make an amazng waterslide for a hamster.

We reached our guesthouse near the summit with the same level of excitement and wonder as a little kid whose character just climbed up the magic beanstock for the first time to reach the hidden cloud level in Super Mario Brothers 3. We seemed to step into our own cloud kingdom. Our completely wooden room felt like a ship cabin hovering above the rice terraces, which followed the curves of the mountains to the horizon on either side. Directly in front of us, we could not even see the valley where the road ended. The rice patties abruptly stopped on the edge of a cliff, yet somewhere far below was the river and the road. I kept expecting Princess Toadstool to pop up offering milk tea, but it never happened.

After a delicious lunch, we hiked through the rolling rice terraces in the same complex, tiered maze as The Legend of Zelda. We twisted around the mountains and forged up the engineering marvel of the rice terrace steps, where water trickled from the flooded top to the tiers below it.

We wondered along the path on a mission to find the best views. Every once in awhile we would stumble across a waterfall on the upper edge of the rice terrace and would splash cold water on our arms and face. We passed small houses belonging to the Zhaung minority group who lives on the mountain and walked through slender rows of corn when the land was too rocky or dry to grow rice.

My friends and I had to be weary. Hot pink clod women would appear from behind bends, wanting us to pay to see their long hair (since that ethnic group does not cut their hair, and it can reach their ankles). While we enjoyed seeing an enterprising spirit is thriving in rural China, te women were deafly persistent to the point that I felt like Pac Man fleeing those pesky mulri-colored ghosts.

While I might compare our experience to a video game, the area was completely devoid of the kitchy music and flashy nuiances of the games. The Longji Rice Terrace is simply peaceful and a place where a person could completely lose herself for a much time needed.

A Year of Firsts

Everything in China has been a little bit of an adventure and stufffed with firsts from first time being hit by a moped to the first time wading through buckets of live frogs and turtles in a Chinese grocery store. The end of my tenure as an English teacher in Shanghai (and my temporary disappearance from the blogging world) is the beginning of a five-week trek through China with two of my closest childhood friends.

I never realized what I have already grown accustom to until I saw my friends experience it for the first time: the hard beds; the power structure of Right of Way going from biggest to smallest so pedestrians are defintely at the bottom of the food chain; the poetry-worthy deliciousness of street food like xiao long bao; the distaste for forming lines and fondness for shoving; and the absolute insanity of Shanghaiese taxi drivers.

After 50 hours in Shanghai (in a hectic whirlwind that they probably don't remember in their jetlagged stuper) we headed to Yangshuo. Completely bypassing the city of Guilin, I led my friends to one of those odd places commmon in China: a modern art sculpture garden in the middle of nowhere among the unusual mountains of the area. The park was completely empty except for us and dozens of diligently working gardeners.

The village of Yanghshuo has some of the most breathtaking scenery in all China. Tree-speckled mountains pop out of the earth like multi-shaped mushrooms while every sliver of semi-flat land is used for argriculture. I've been here before, and I love the slow pace of the countryside so I arranged a stay in a blink-and-you-will miss it village outside Yangshuo. My friends knew we were staying at a 'farm, but I'm not sure they were expecting freely roaming chickens, sun-baked brick structures that were identical to the home the chickens picked to roost, and wood everything that never fit or closed quite right. Oh, and mosquito nets draped over the beds. The inns were rustic, and I loved it though we weren't expecting an additional cabin-mate in the form of a four-inch long hunter spider, which would rival Roadrunner in a foot race.

Yangshuo morphed into a number of firsts for me the second time in the area. I went rock climbing for the first time. I spend the majority of my time hugging the mountain face as tightly as a sailing mast of a hurricane tossed ship. My legs are covered with bruises to prove it. I did strike up a conversation with a New Zealander while I was stuck about seventy seet up. Turns out he was also a teacher in Shanghai. Funny where you meet people. Regardless of his advice though, I still couldn't get pass the slight overhang above me and slipped. I figured I shouldn't let the professionals holding my rope get too bored since they seem to be able to manage their duties of anchoring the rope and talking on their cellphones at the same time.

In the evening we took a sunset hotair balloon trip, which was the first for both of my friends. We had a little trouble taking off as we hit and almost knocked over a structure on stilts in a rice patty. We also had six people crammed into a basket that could comfortably fit four so that our balloon operator sat on the edge of the basket (half the time also on his cell phone). In addition, the burners were very low so that everytime the operator turned them on, I felt the little curls on the top of my head melting. We were told we had the second best balloon operator in China so I wasn't worried.

Eventually we did make it completely over the top of Moon Mountain and witnessed some of the most unbelievable views. If Doctor Seuss and the location selector of Lord of the Rings combined talent, they might have the right amount of quirk and eye for beauty to create the army of droopy, pointy, and floppy mountains in Yangshuo.

I've ridden in a hotair balloon before, but this experience was the first time we almost took out a water buffalo when we came to a bouncing stop in its muddy pasture.

With our first leg of our trip in China successfully completed, we are leaving the countryside of Yangshuo and heading to the sever, middle-of-nowhere Chinese countryside of Longji Rice Terrace. The rest of the trip will be all first for me.

Honoring Traditions: The Dragon Boat Festival

Last weekend was Dragon Boat Festival and what better way to celebration the protest-by-drowning of a national hero than dressing up in ridiculously gaudy headscarves and attempting a time-honored Chinese sport!

My dragon boat experience can be broken down chronologically of Chinese eccentricity and general mismanagement.

5:30AM: I woke up at an hour that should be reserved for soldiers, mothers, and other combat professionals.

6:30AM: Those reckless enough to attempt dragon boat racing headed downtown towards coffee. Funny, how I didn’t start drinking that potent life-support elixir until I move to a place that requires a taxi to reach.

7:50AM: Packs of expats converged on the Portman Ritz-Carlton, the designated meeting spot. Somehow sculpted mash potato mountains and strategically blinking lights used for alien communication should have somehow been involved in this process. It might have been more successful.

8:10AM: People in pastel pink appear among the crowd carrying cryptic signs that read “Bus 2” and “Bus 7”.

8:17AM: After realizing that we had to approach each bus representative to determine if we were on their list, we waited under the sign for Bus 6 until everyone else figured it out and debated what concentration of “expert” the stragglers were that they were able to receive their Chinese residency visa.

8:37AM: On our bus we are given event t-shirts, which turned out to be XXXL white polo shirts with the sponsors’ logos ironed on the back.

8:50AM: After the amused furor over the polo shirts died down, we were given our matching team zebra -print silk scarves.

8:52AM: We spent the next twenty minutes acting out every possible technique to wear our team colors: Hee Haw neckerchief; Rosie Rivet bandana; bee bop pony tail tie; train robber face mask; blind fold...

9:15AM: After passing buses with Team Sorbet Swirl and Team Tiny Pink Flowers, we decided to embrace the zebra.

9:17AM: The method of zebra-pride is finally decided: ode to Olivia Newton-John headband in “Physical”.

9:30AM: We reached the combination of Disneyland and Waco compound where our race was held. Boating mass chaos began.

9:48AM: Mass chaos continues. Boat leaders were frantically waving flags while nobody paid attention. Life jackets were donned that were either too large to fit the person or too small to keep the wearer afloat. Olympian-sized female rowers were scared out of the canal.

10:28AM: The schedule said that we would be learning the traditional techniques of dragon boat racing. Who knew Richard Simmons got his moves from the exercises involved in warming up for dragon boat racing. I discovered a copyright infringement lawsuit waiting to happen.

10:40AM: Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges could learn something from our disorganized organization in lining up in two straight, balanced lines before actually stepping into the boat. Eighteen completely clueless novices with bright yellow life jackets and paddles pulled and jostled each other forward and backward in line.

11:15AM: We finally jumped into the suspiciously flimsy and nervously old wooden dragon boat. Somehow we manage to accomplish this feat without tipping and without sinking.

11:17AM: With a fellow teacher’s ten-year-old cousin manning the oversized drum, we practiced the highly complicated paddling procedure while not knocking anyone overboard or unconscious. Dragon boat racing is literally sprinting in a canoe. The object is to paddle as hard as possible as fast as possible. Ideally, the drummer keeps the beat to let the paddlers know when to dip the oars, but in reality we were all at the mercy of the person four inches in front of us and four inches behind.

11:28AM: DRAGON BOAT RACE BEGAN!

11:36AM: The race ended.

We didn’t win, but the German team was really scary and big. While I do not have professional dragon boat racing in my future, the event was another in a long line of quirky Chinese adventures.