I’m Alive, I Swear!

Okay, so the last time I posted I was sitting in my dad’s car at a Seattle ferry terminal using my brand new wireless connection to post. This time I’m sitting in Chapter One, a cafe below my house in Kunming listening to “Tragedy” by the Bee Gees(?) and other disco favorites and posting yet again. I can’t believe it’s been so long!

To recap briefly, my last month or so has been good, if not crazy/busy (are we noticing a trend). Shortly after my last post I went to some Whitman friends’ wedding reception on the beautiful island of Bainbridge. It was great times and I got to see some people I hadn’t seen in quite some time. But my grand US adventure did not end there, oh no. In fact, it was only beginning.

After spending several days on Bainbridge, seeing a David Gray concert in Seattle with my sister in the meanwhile, I traveled in a whirlwind-like fashion down to Portland, Coos Bay (which is almost in California for reference), Philomath (podunkier than Walla Walla and Greeley combined), and back to Portland. Again, I spent lots of good times with friends and family, ate and drank too much. After that, it was a race up to Seattle to pick my dad up at the airport, which I even managed to do on time :o). After several good days in Seattle, including some Salsa-ing, it was up for a quick visit to Mt. Vernon and beyond, passing through the US/Canada border sans problème/without any problem.

The Vancouver to Beijing flight went pretty well, and I was even able to sleep (which is abnormal for me on planes, although I can do it basically every where else you’ve ever wanted to—just as I’m about to fall asleep I always feel like I’m falling). As Air China has wont to do, my bags arrived about an hour after touchdown in Beijing broken…at least it gave me something to take care of during my four hour layover there.

I arrived in Kunming to the sight of my two new roommates for the year: Chris and Andrew. Both of them are Whitties over here on the same program I was on last year. When we pulled (almost) up to our apartment, I discovered a 文林街 (WenLin Jie, or Culture Forest street) with less Wen and even less Lin—it is currently undergoing a major overall/widening. So, trudging up a dirt path that looked like it could be in the middle of nowhere rather than the middle of a city, I arrived home.

And boy has the construction been fun…or something. Andrew was busy buying furniture for the first few days he was here, and as if carrying a wardrobe up 8 flights of stairs isn’t difficult enough, getting it through the construction site was. It took four of us to carry it over a pile of small stones, down a small dirt path bordered by none other than the troughs they were digging to put in new sewage lines, over a manhole covered with a plank of plywood that we had to jump a foot down to get on and then finally inside. Talk about an obstacle course. But, as I like to say, if you’re not about to die while you’re in China, you must be doing something wrong.

Classes started last week, and have been going well so far. I’m taking Chinese classes in the morning (except for Mondays and Wednesdays when I teach at the campus 45 minutes out of town) and teach in the afternoons. Put all the hours together and it’s like having a full time job, and who does that?! But I really do enjoy my classes. I’m teaching American Culture and Society in addition to my English Composition and Oral English courses, so that’s really fun.

In the end, I’m happy I’m back. People have asked if I feel like I made the right decision to come back to Kunming, and all I can say is that I’m happy to be here. Does it mean I wouldn’t have been happy in Taiwan, absolutely not. But already knowing people makes life so much easier, and I do really like my apartment. So, what's there to complain about?