A great sunday

Sunday morning i woke up at 6:45- even though it is almost november, it is already full daylight at 6:45 here. I had arranged to meet one of my students from SKor to go to the Roman C Ch here in town. I woke up to snow falling heavily, and mountains blanketed in snow. In the soft morning light the frigid stone halways of our school seemed cold, exactly the kind of day to stay warm in bed. Instead I met my student, and upon discovering that the cafeteria was not open yet, invited him to my messy room for an impromptu breakfast of huevos rancheros, and cereal i imported from Shanghai. With gloves on my hands (we'll see how long it is before i lose them) and my sturdy boots on, we rode the little bumpy minibus down the hill to the quite unimpressive looking grey Catholic ch. The inside was as cold as the outside, reminding me of the cold cement st. casimir's church behind LCC. it was barely decorated, and mostly it was old korean ladies, covered with cheap white prayer shawls, braving the freezing cold and mud streets at such an early hour. Even though i only know a few words in korean, it seemed very familiar to go to mass- the same rhythms and components that people around the world do. An Italian priest intoned the mass in perfect korean, attended by two mismatched chubby korean alter boys. I got in a really good conversation with my student, which was the point. I was impressed at how orthodox and austere the service was, matching the building- no saints, no mary, no candles, or shrines or altars... just a simple straightforward homily about our Master.

Then i trudged back up the snowy hill to go to our english language service. An incredibly motley crue of nationalities, styles, personalities, conceptions of Xity. Mainly yust staff and faculty, some foreign students, other random people who live and work around yanbian. it was a great service. authentic. heartfelt if not professional worship songs, some great hymns. An honest message. in that room are people who have risked and are risking so much, that small gathering would not be the fellowship i would pick were i to live in the United states, but i do appreciate these little outpost fellowships, made up of random and assorted people whose only common bond is the Master, whose worship is unstudied and rough-around-the-edges yet real.

This was followed by the worst cafeteria meal ever- i only ate the rice, and tried a little bit of the grass, but the after-taste was, well, grassy. Had a good talk with Vic, from Georgia, over lunch, about our responsibilities here and the often conflicting situations we are put in. Watched 15 minutes of "America's Next Supermodel"- the weekly ritual of some of our english faculty. A great reminder why i am not living in the US :) The contrast between the old ChosunJok (korean-chinese) ladies i had seen that morning, muddied and freezing from the trek to mass, and these self-absorbed, b**chy models couldn't have been greater.

My muscles still sore from a three-hour long sweet American football game the day before (which necessitated me hopping back and forth between English, Russian, and German), i next headed to a faculty meeting. I love my life some days- where else can I play American football on a ghetto pitch overlooking the gritty coal smudged skyline of Yanji and snowcapped mountains receding toward NK, calling out plays in russian, as a Quarterback, and the next day attending a faculty meeting all in korean. The faculty meetings, which are usually inadequately translated and overly boring, are notorious here at YUST for us non-Koreans, but it wasn't so bad. I took my new Korean book with me, and learned all kinds of cool things. Did you know that Korean puts their causal complementizer ("because") inside their verbs, after the stem, but before the tense-agreement information (I node). I don't get how that is syntactically possible. How can the C information which modifies the IP be dominated by the I node??? I have been trying to draw trees to figure it out.

Chonun aju bapa-yo hangukmalul kongbuhaNEULAGO-yo.
I-TOP very busy-DECL Korean -OBJ study BECAUSE-DECL
"As for me, I am very busy, because i am studying Korean"

Chonun kayo choha- NEULAGO- yo.
I-TOP go-DECL be good BECAUSE-DECL
"As for me, I go, because it is good"

Only linguistics dorks will care about this, but that was more than enough to fascinate me during my meeting. I must say though, our president is really an inspiring man, and totally optimistic- his vision is contagious


After that, I got to take a delicious 35 minute nap. Then I went to the warm, yellow, cozy apartment of Richard and Susanne Schwemer. Richard was once an administrator for the Munich School District in Bavaria, and is here with his wife for a year teaching German. I really appreciate their insights and hospitality. They invited the whole German community here (of which I am an ingrafted part) to an amazing meal. We had pasta salad, bavarian onion bacon and cheese cakes, roast meats, with great german sauces, garlic salad, bread, and of course kimbap!(it couldn't be ALL german). I am amazed they could throw that together with ingredients found in Yanji, and it was the best meal i have had in so long. Had such a great conversation, laughing, talking about life here in Yanji. It was so filling, not just for my stomach. I reluctantly tore myself away, armed with my new flashlight (which i had gotten at our very Korean new teachers reception dinner the night before), and trudged through the shuddering bear apple-pear orchards, avoiding the complaining geese, through the darkness towards the little warmly lit chapel across the valley. There is nothing like being in a freezing and dark night and approaching a chapel with warm yellow light streaming out the windows, the sounds of Russian praise choruses growing louder as you approach. I really like that group of brothers and sisters, and that simple service (yes, the third one of my day). It is good for my russian, but i really appreciate their warmth and interest. We in my small group had a really good discussion about luke, and i just realized that man, these are really great brothers and sisters. I felt so much at home there, and joking on the dark road back toward YUST at the end of the evening.

I spent the last hour of my day cleaning my floor, then getting cozy under my blankets, enjoying the company of my electric space heater and huge plant, and red a short story by Chekhov in Russian, and some German poetry. Reading Chekhov in Russian was one of those things on my life list of things to do before I die. I read it slowly, and still need to consult my dictionary, but i am doing it! Cross one thing off the list! I still have on the list though to write a poem in russian.

So that's a day in my life

PS: One thing that has happened a lot recently is power outages. Today i taught my last class, a 4 o'clock class, in the dying light of twilight. When it got to dark to read, all the students turned on their cell phones and aimed them at the blackboard and it was light enough to see actually! So much for candlelight. Maybe thats why its almost impossible to find a candle here in Yanji. Still its kind of cool and cozy to sit around in the dark office and chat with my colleagues. Its also a convenient procrastination excuse.

PPS: im thinking of going to lithuania for my two month winter break, help out at LCC however I can...- looking at cheap ways to cross this great landmass... another good procrastination tool.

Ok- some more random things i have either seen, or learned about life here, since my last posting to this blog, which was ages ago! Sorry for the uncharachteristic silence faithful readers!

- I was overjoyed to discover that cilantro is abundant in China, it being the food that i missed most in Lithuania. What surprises me most is that Koreans on principle HATE cilantro. Something about the smell/taste drives them crazy, kind of the proverbial liver/brussels sprouts for Americans. I will never understand this reaction to something as amazing as cilantro from a people who have no qualms at eating every sort of rotten fermented vegetable under the sun. (and under the waves!)

- In one day in Wuxi I saw:

a shagnasty comatose panda

thirty old chinese people doing the electric slide in a park

people beating dogs with sticks and getting them to attack their arms, which were covered by a protective shield

a giant topiary that was part brontosaurus part elephant

cats in a monkey cage

people throwing their trash (hard) at bears in tiny rancid cement zoo cages trying to get them to make noises

panda bear shaped paddleboats

boiled corn on the cob that was so soggy and nasty that i almost rolfed when i bit in to it

a bright pink fake pagoda

GIGANTIC hornets

- In Shanghai, I saw many old men with "stat sheets" on sons and daughters who were too busy working to actually meet people to date. The parents basically haggle in the park all day trying to match up propitious marriages either among each others progeny, or with helpless bystanders. Given that the prospective marriage partners are too busy to actually meet people, i would say this doesn't bode well for the quality of those marriages. I laughed watching the desperate scene, but was also stuck by the tragedy of the frenzied capitalism here. mao is surely rolling in his grave, if he were to see the parade of guccis and starbucks and western tourists.

- in the oldest building of Shanghai, there is a gigantic starbucks on the first floor. In the ancient temple complex in Wuxi, a McDonald's adds an authentic oriental touch. Even little Yanji is due to have its first Walmart this spring!! (which normally i would abhor on principle, but given that my chances of finding decent cheese and possibly even tomato sauce will skyrocket upon its opening, i must begrudgingly admit an amount of eager expectation on my part).

- China is an urban planners dream. I remember walking through the halls of the UPLA building at MSU thinking how cool the projects were that the students were doing, redesigning little parks or neighborhoods. Here China is redeveloping massive hundreds of square mile tracts of land into cities. The advantage of communism- no red tape. Seriously, the projects here are MASSIVE, and surprisingly well done. China is building a modern harbor way out in the middle of the East China Sea, based around what is currently a small cluster of islets. It will be connected to the hungry markets of the mainland by a huge superhighway bridge, 35 miles long. They are already in the middle of doing this. A building is halfway finished in Pudong that will dwarf the Sears Tower, all of Chongming Island is being redeveloped into a massive exhibition of green living and environmentally friendly city-scape. Gigantic concentric park cities, harbor cities, StarWars-like in scale and farm are sprouting along the Chinese coast. Jaw-dropping, absoultely jaw-dropping. I dont see how a country that hasnt yet figured out that concrete sealant could keep buildings from crumbling after 5 years, or how to run a waste management system can pull this off.

- I wasn't kidding about the buildings here. Everywhere you see construction, but the problem is that buildings that are only 5 years old look like they are 20 years old. the construction quality is so bad, that all these buildings will probably have to be all built again within a decade or two.

-the scale of shanghai is mind blowing. there is no center, the way we think of it. you can take an hour train ride through the city, and basically never experience a change of density. As far as you see, 50 story towers crowd each other out, along narrow streets, old style chinese houses are being torn down everywhere that they still exist to make room for these towers. I have experienced density, as in manhattan. But such density sustained over such a large area- that is something i have never come close to experiencing and can't describe. Even Hong Kong is squeezed basically into a very small area, instead of sprawling across a huge area, the way that Shanghai is.

- remember the 80's game frogger? it has nothing on crossing streets in Chinese cities. No vehicle ever has any intention of stopping, swerving, or arresting speed for the sake of a paltry pedestrian. I thought tbilisi was bad. It is a mystery to me i haven't seen any human roadkill.

- just a short walk from YUST i am in a total wilderness, total agrarian landscape. I am so glad that i live outside of Yanji up on this hillside. Even in these crystal clear golden october days, often there is a huge cloud of smog which totally blocks the view out over the city.

- i was able to go to the meat market all by myself.. i wish i could take pictures there, but i think they'd construe that as rude. Seeing the filetted dogs, and random pieces of meat and every available sea creature. First you buy the meat, then you take it to ladies who grind it for you in a meat grinder. There are 6 of them and they all yell at you and try to get you to come to them. I don't discern any difference in the grinding abilities among the ladies so it is always hard for me to choose which one to use as they all shout at me. The reward for this is sometime this week i will cook some ground lamb with onions and cilantro and eat it on homemade tortillas- on a day when i cant stomach the caf food that will be the perfect treat.

- apparently ice your muffins with your ersatz evaporated-milk/non-dairy-coffee-creamer frosting BEFORE you bake them in your toaster oven.

- i played Mafia the other night... in Chinese... the official party game of Chr'stendom. I think i have played mafia in 10 countries and probably 6 languages. a good way to learn some vocab

- When i was in Wuxi i went crazy on the western food- i was so happy. i ate at a mcdonalds twice, starbucks once, and TGI Fridays. I was never so happy to see a hamburger. You know the movie Office Space, where Jennifer Anniston has to wear all those "pieces of flair"? Well we (kathryn and I) had a waiter, who was so covered in flair that he could barely move. Buttons, ribbons, spangles left and right, the combination of that, plus a slightly nerdy physique and the awkward Chinese accent--- poor kathryn- was in tears... It was a perfect random end to a random day that included me randomly attending the prewedding reception of a chinese couple i had no clue who they were. they had a really bold event though, declaringly publically their belief.

-Wuxi has giant 5 foot fake water lilies that glow at night. i am used to fake many things here, including (according to kathryn) fake rocks, that make fake "nature sounds". but somehow these water lilies managed to pull it off.

- it is pitch dark by 5 pm, and there is no heat yet- i am freezing.

- i am slowly learning my way around chinese food- had two amazing successive dinners of ordered in chinese food at chunhua's flat.

- i feel like i could sleep forever here- little things are so draining. i need to be cautious that i dont get too much sleep.

- i finally got a korean textbook today- a gift from its author!! a korean sociolinguist who studied under Bill Labov and did the seminal study of sociolinguistics of Seoul korean.

OK enough trivia for now. stay tuned for more- these are the kinds of things i dont think its worthwhile to send out in a support letter, but are nonetheless maybe interesting to someone.