July 6 - Settling In at Bijie University

Ni Hao, Dear Readers!

It has been both a challenging and rewarding day in Bijie. The challenges are frustrating and overwhelming, and to be honest, left me in tears for a short time this evening. Here's what happening on the frustrating front...

1. We have only squatter toilets in our apartment.

2. The water keeps going out... about two hours this morning... and now for about the last eight hours.

3. When the water goes out, the squatter becomes very messy and difficult to use (use your imagination to picture this scenario).

4. It apparently rains a great deal here, and with the campus under so much construction, it is like walking through a huge mud hole

5. There are many flies and mosquitos

6. We are in a very remote site. Usually, there are weekend treks to attractions around the actual site, but there is nothing much within any reasonable distance to explore on the weekends. At other sites, the teachers are able to walk to town and relax after teaching, but the city proper is a 50 minute walk from campus, and walking at night is not advised.

7. The key to our apartment is very difficult to use, resulting in our calling the facillitator to help us when we returned from a walk this evening.

So, much is different than we thought it might be. On the other hand, there are some wonderful things happening too, which I will need to focus on to keep my spirit bouyant.

1. Our actual apartments are quite nice. I am staying in the apartment where the Peace Corps volunteers usually stay. It is well stocked with books, movies, and encouraging messages to us as the current Bijie volunteer workers.

2. Our facillitator, Tang Gang, is so very gracious and accomodating. He has many rules and regulations to follow, including getting us registered with the prefecture police because we are going to be here for more than 20 days. He worked very hard to get a computer and internet connection for me today, too. Unfortunately, the set up keeps switching to Chinese characters, so I am typing on Nancy's (my teaching partner) computer.

3. The head of the kitchen on campus spent a while with us today, asking us what we would like to have prepared while we are here. We asked for no fish, because it tends to be prepared in a very slimy fashion in this region. We also asked for less oil and no lard. We also asked for no dog or cat meat. He about rolled on the floor laughing when we made that request. Tang told us he may try to disguise the dog meat by cutting it up really small and passing it off as pork. We have a wonderful joking, bantering relationship with Tang, so we do a lot of teasing back and forth. As we tease, we introduce additional American idioms to him, terms like "pulling my leg" and "messing with my head." We all had a good laugh after he teased us about the dog meat as he told me, "I am messing up your head, yes???"

4. As we walked around campus tonight, we found a beautiful lily pad pond where students hang out, read, and study. We were approached by three young men who simply wanted to try their English out on us. They did a beautiful job, and they were so pleased that we understood their English. One of the boys told us we were the very first foreigners he had ever actually talked to. He was so excited that I thought he was going to jump right out of his skin. It took a great deal of courage for these young men to walk up to strangers and start a conversation. We are finding the Chinese people to be very friendly and very kind. The look of absolute joy on the faces of those three young men will, I believe, sustain me through all the challenging living details I chronicled above. Such joy...

5. The actual teaching is being delayed three days due to registration for students beginning a bit later than scheduled originally. Nancy and I felt that we might go absolutely stir crazy waiting to get into the classroom with our students, so we are planning an adventure. We will take the bus from Bijie to Kaili, which is the gateway to the many ethnic minoritiy villages in the Guizhou Province. The bus will be very cheap, but it will be a crampy and sticky 6 hour trek. Once we arrive there, a friend of the director's will meet us and help us navigate the villages within a 2 hour range of Kaili. This area is especially known for it textiles and handicrafts, so I will be in embroidery paradise.

6. My family in East Lansing is concerned about my bamboo saxophone purchase. They wondered at the folly of trying to pack a saxophone when my carrying space is so limited. However, this sax is basically a reeded recorder instrument that takes up very little space.

7. We had a phenomenal Opening Ceremony Dinner back in Guiyang before we left for Bijie. Lots of short speeches by dignitaries, followed by numerous toast with a type of "spirits" they call Mou Tai, a 106 proof liquor dating back to the Han Dynasty. This spirit basically looks and tastes like lighter fluid. It is served in a very tiny shot glass with a stem, and after the toast everyone shouts "Gan Bei," which means bottoms up. The wait staff keeps your Mou Tai cup filled throughout the evening as people propose one friendship toast after another. This is a peace-loving, bridge-building group of humans who are involved in this cooperative endeavor between China and the United States.

8. After the Opening Ceremony dinner, we we taken up the winding road of a mountain to a beautiful Tea House. The Tea House was actually closed, but one of our Ministers of Education made special arrangements for it to re-open late for us. We watched two young girls perform the tea ceremony, which has very specific parts. It was a lovely night atop a mountain that I will never forget.

9. Last night, in the pouring rain, we decided to wander out and explore the downtown region of Bijie. We roamed around the wonderfully colorful marketplace, which was alive with people. Some specialities here are a wide assortment of teas, potatoes, pig snout, huge slabs of lard, and chicken feet. We are a curiostiy in town, so wherever we go, people stare at us. It is funny to watch the first person in a group catch a glimpse of "the foreigners" - and then they quickly inform their friends by pointing at us and telling them to "look." For many here, we may be the first foreigners they have ever seen. A group of young girls followed us through the market, giggling and smiling back and forth with us.

The poverty here is impossible to describe and heart-shattering to see. The faces of the people in this area seem old before their time, as much of the work involves very demanding physical labor. Many families have a cement slab front to sell wares, and they live on the back of the slab with their families. They work very hard to sustain themselves day to day.

Since we will be traveling to Kaili in the morning, I may not have internet access for a few days. If the water doesn't come back on by morning, we will begin this journey unshowered. And so it goes... I will tell you about my Kaili explorations in the next blog.

In the meantime, I hope you will take a moment to think about what you have in your life that brings you joy, what you have that makes you grateful. We live in unbelievably plush circumstances compared to much of the world. The challenges we face as we are here will be challenges only for a few weeks. The people who live in this region live with these challenges every day of their lives. This is their home...