June 24, 2002

Final exams are next week, so my thinking is that this may be my last journal entry before heading back to the States for a vacation. Once there, I plan on spending a few days in my hometown then head to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to hang out with my family. Should be a good time and I am really looking forward to it. One thing I am not looking forward to are the final exams! I haven't been able to prepare for these tests the way I want to because I have been on some heavy-duty painkillers for the past week or so. Seems I somehow pinched a nerve in my shoulder from sleeping badly, then foolish me aggravated it by going out dancing the next night. Anyway, the pain was so bad that until I went to the hospital and got the medicine, I couldn't sleep at night, and found the only tolerable position to be in was standing up. The final straw before making a visit to the hospital was losing feeling in my thumb. Thankfully, the painkillers are allowing me to sleep at night and they also have taken the very hard edge off of the pain. Problem is that while I am on them I am basically a drugged-out idiot and find things like reading a book and riding a bike nearly impossible. When I am not under the spell of the painkillers, I am at the mercy of the pain and can't do much of anything else anyway. Can't ride a bike, and can't tilt my head down to read. Because of this, I had to skip nearly all of my classes last week. Combine all that and the prospects of doing well on the exam are not too good. Really pretty bummed about the whole thing, but there's nothing I can do.

As you have already probably pieced together, I have decided to sign-up for another semester here at BLCU. The decision was not a hard one to make because I still have difficulty doing many of the simple things like reading a menu, enjoying TV, and freewheel conversing about anything under the sun. The foundation has been established with the first semester curriculum and studies, so I am quite pleased with my current situation heading into the future. I just can't wait to be able to pick up a newspaper here and understand most of the characters in it. Heck, I might even get to the point where I could read Chinese instructions for putting something together like an entertainment center!! Can you imagine how useful I could be on Christmas if someone discovered the instructions included with their gift were only in Chinese? Oh, the prospects of it all!! Ha-ha-ha!!

Hey, there's something else coming up on the horizon! A few days after returning here from my vacation, I will be heading to Anhui province to spend three weeks teaching some high school kids conversational English. Basically the same kind of thing I was doing with my friend Mike, but here I will be doing it 4 and a half hours a day, 6 days a week. Seems like a LONG time, and I only hope the kids like and respect me once the novelty of having a Western teacher wears off. My guess is that will happen around day 5. Anyway, I will be located in the city of Bo Zhou which is famous in China as the main commercial and distribution center for herbs. In fact, it's supposed to be the biggest in the world! Sorry, because of limited luggage space, I am going to have to decline pre-orders for the much sought after Horny Goat Weed. :) By the way, the whole thing is supposedly sponsored by the local government in that area, which is kind of interesting. Can you imagine me, after a disgraceful stint, being tarred and feathered and run out of town? Going to do everything in my power to avoid that one!! Ha-ha!! So are you wondering why I would want to spend a part of my summer doing something like this? Well, I guess the biggest draw is the opportunity to visit and spend time working in another area of the country. I expect it will be fairly difficult compared to Beijing, but this is also something that makes me want to try it out. Continuing my experience teaching English may open up opportunities down the road as well. As an immediate benefit, I am to be paid (not a lot) and will be put-up in a hotel in the city. All in all, I'm looking forward to it, and will enjoy sharing the experiences with you once I return. It would be great to do so while I am actually there, but I don't know if I can bring my laptop with me. If not, I am gonna miss my little baby!!

Should mention here that my recent teaching gig with Mike has concluded. I really had a good time throughout, and the student's themselves were some of the nicest people I have ever met. In fact, they made waking up early on a Sunday morning more than a worthwhile thing. To better illustrate just how nice these students were, I would like to share an experience I had a few weeks ago. At that time I had a very bad stomach flu and was having to make trips to the bathroom with alarming regularity. Unfortunately, the worst of it took place on a Sunday morning leaving me with no choice but to call Mike and tell him I just couldn't make it. As expected, he was very cool about it, and told the students why I wasn't able to teach the class with him that day. Well, some of these students actually took the time to write me e-mails wishing me a speedy recovery, and I even got a phone call from another asking me how I was feeling!! All of this the nicer because it wasn't just an over-the-top attempt at brown-nosing the teacher. The class didn't hand out grades or anything reflecting how good or bad they were! These e-mails and the phone call came from pure concern and nothing else! Would this sort of thing happen back home? Rarely, if ever!! The whole darn thing makes me feel a bit soft inside.....hold on I might weep. :) Seriously though, by the end of our last day teaching, I realized that I may not ever see most of these students ever again. The whole good-bye thing was pretty sad. As far as teaching class with Mike, I am going to miss that too. I think we both worked really well together and we had a fun time with it. Was starting to really get used to seeing the guy dragging rear every Sunday morning!

So what's this about Chinese television? Am I some sort of TV critic who can authoritatively pass judgment on such a thing? Um, that would be a big fat NO. In fact I probably shouldn't be saying much of anything since I can't understand 90% of what's being shown anyway. However, it isn't going to stop me from making some observations based on this very ignorance! Ha-ha-ha! In fact, I am probably going to pass along to you the same things you would comment on if you saw some of this stuff. It's just so different at times that you still end up watching it despite your inability to understand it.

The biggest thing you notice right away are the commercials. This is probably because on most of the channels you may end up seeing about a dozen of them in a row before you are returned to real programming. This doesn't just make enough time to run to the kitchen and make a sandwich.....you have time to prepare a whole meal!! You can forget about me explaining what the possibilities are for those of you that normally take this time to go to the bathroom!! Pill commercials are the ones that really get to me. Sometimes like four of them in a row, and most of them with crazy little animations of what is happening in your body as a result of taking the product. It doesn't even bother me that I don't know what they are for. I wouldn't be buying them anyway based on the cartoons! Other commercials leave you wondering if you are really back home and are simply suffering from complications following brain surgery. This is basically the case where the images are Western, but the language isn't. You know the Tide commercial where they knock on someone's door and offer them a box of Tide for doing the laundry? Well, they are actually using that same thing here, only in a Chinese household setting. Or how about that McDonald's commercial where the baby is swinging back and forth and alternately smiling and crying. This as a result of being able to see the golden arches through the window and then not being able to. Well, they have that here too, but this time it's an ultra cute Chinese baby. To all those thinking China is a Communist state devoid of many Western business practices, all I can say is come on out here and turn on the tube!! You'll get your fill of infomercials and the like just as quickly as you would back home! Capitalism is definitely here!

Another odd thing seen on TV here is the dubbing over of the actors and actresses voices. Now, this is so prevalent that I have made inquiries as to why this is happening. Many reasons have been put forward including, "Well, the real actors voice isn't that good and they wanted to use a better one.", or "This show was made in Hong Kong and they needed to switch from Cantonese to Mandarin so mainland Chinese could understand it.", and finally "They saved money on production costs and did the voices later in studio." I guess these are reasons enough, but after dealing with Chinese movies back home having the lips out of synch with the voice you would think the situation would be different here. Guess not!

Chinese television has the same kind of variety as seen back home. There are soap opera type productions, some of them set way back in history, there are talk shows, sport shows, news shows, and early morning exercise shows. The most amusing shows here are the game shows. You are often treated to some of the "busiest" things ever put on a television screen. When I say busy, I mean really busy!! Crazily designed sets with an excess of flashing lights and mismatched color schemes. On screen graphics that serve no purpose other than to decorate and make your head spin. Many of them flashing on and off or whipping across the screen. Heck, they should have warnings like those seen on video games back home for people that can have seizures triggered as a result of seeing stuff like that! Another wacky thing is the make-up of the studio audiences. Never in your life have you seen such attention paid to color coordination. On many shows the audience members have been given shirts or sweaters and made to sit in sections with others who wear the same color. Sometimes this is done to great affect like a rainbow or something.

Well there you have it. Not the best and certainly not complete as I just haven't watched a lot of television out here. I will add more TV stuff to this page in the future. Right now I am going to TRY and get some studying done. Gonna be tough cuz now I have painkiller running in my blood. It is wearing out and I can think more clearly, but the pain is going to stop me soon from being able to do any reading and I'll be forced to pop another one. Ugh.