The latest gossip here is that Kunming isn't happening. At least not this semester. Julian said that TMAMW told him that on Sunday. Which is odd, since on Saturday, TMAMW and HM had a talk with me about going to Kunming. He also heard it from another teacher. I'm going to see how long it takes people to tell me.
And if you get a mysterious postcard from China, it's probably from a writing assignment I gave my teens. If you don't, it's not that I don't love you, it's just that some people requested boys or girls, so it was kind of lopsided and I don't have that many teen students.
I just had dinner and HM told me (much to her son's chagrin- teenagers!) that he got first in his grade on his English exam. I take all the credit. Also, his cousin, whom I also tutor, got number 1 in her grade, and another girl in my teen class is #1 in hers. All my students, all #1. Coincidence? God, I should be getting a Nobel Prize or something.
On Sunday I was heading home from school and stopped off at the supermarket and while making my regular browse through the alcohol aisle in order to depress myself I ---
God, Psycho Little Kitchen Girl is annoying. She keeps coming in here to tend to the coal stove. I didn't realize stoves needed to be tended to every fifteen minutes. She's a goddamn stalker. When I am at school, I expect that I won't be stared at like I'm in the street. It's damn annoying.
--- Anyway, the supermarket. I was checking out the terrible Chinese wines, including Great Wall and Greet Will, when suddenly, practically jumping off the shelf in front of me (though not really, which is good, b/c I would have had to make a diving save and would still be pulling glass shards out of myself as we speak) was Jack Daniels!! Kentucky, 7 year aged, Black Label whisky, or something, for only Y200! I stood there for a few seconds with my hand clasped over my mouth in surprise and then in the hope that some "helpful" clerk would wander by and try to talk to me and I could explain in my best English why this was so amazing. I suppose I could take this opportunity to make some comment about the westernization of the town and my ambivalence, but let's save that for Britney and just be thankful for Jack.
Vacation: Escape from Huajiang Canyon
Now, about that vacation. I don't really feel like writing about it so I'm going to do a quick version. I should get a laptop. Then I could sit at home in my robe and sheepskin slippers and write. And eat Snickers. Evil! Right...
Julian and I left last Monday for Guiyang. We had lunch at Shakeys and then got on a bus to Anshun (also the site of Huangguoshu, China's largest waterfall). We spent the night in a hotel in Anshun and in the morning set off for Huajiang. Julian doesn't like to take medication, but he gets motion sickness so by the time we arrived, he was feeling a bit queasy and decided not to partake in dog. More for me! Also, he's a really picky eater. Mom and Dad sent him Kraft Mac and Cheese in their package. He eats it with ketchup.
We discussed what we were trying to do with the villagers and they were quite "helpful", if by helpful, you mean cheerfully doling out advice that is all lies. We told them we were trying to see the cave paintings and showed them a picture of the famous one. We were told that if we went to this hotel in Huajiang Canyon we could hike there. Fine. So we went to the hotel and told the hotel people our plans and they were quite agreeable. Whether or not they actually said, "the cave paintings are here" would take a trailor-trash-talking Chinese lawyer to figure out. We were given that impression. So we hiked for a few hours and found a pretty waterfall, but no paintings. The hotel was cute. It had a bungalow theme. Julian wasn't feeling well, so he headed back from our hike before me and worked on gathering information. Turns out the cave paintings weren't there at all. They are at the village that we first asked to be taken to. It's so frustrating; asking "yes or no" questions will get you lies, but asking questions that require actual answers always gets mixed up in translation.
The hotel called a cab for us and we waited. After an hour, Julian asked the hotel guy where the cab was. The guy said that the cabbie had called and said that he didnt' want to go to the other village, so he wasn't coming. To the best of my knowledge, the hotel guy didn't have any particular plans to tell us this. So Julian got really mad and threw his water bottle on the ground and hit the guy. Not quite a punch. More an open-handed hit on the upper arm. The guy, of course, did nothing and Julian proceeded to yell at him for five minutes. He will not be traveling with me through Southeast Asia. So we gave up on the cab and decided to take the "dangerous" trail that went along the river. We had been told by the hotel people that the trails on both sides of the river led to the cave paintings. Those comedians! Ours went along for a couple of kilometers and then turned into stairs. I told Julian that it didn't look that bad and the path might continue on a bit higher. I failed to mention that the other possibility was that the path was insane and the stairs led out of the canyon. No need to dampen the spirits at the beginning of a staircase that leads from the canyon floor out over the surrounding mountains. Fortunately, we had stopped and eaten a lunch of my Nature Valley oats and honey granola bars and oranges we had bought that morning. Julian joked that he would have to write to his parents asking them to send (replacement) granola bars (about a pack), so I would let him go (from being held hostage). I told him that would be a good idea, or in the future, when he was hungry and hadn't thought to pack any food, I might not be so generous.
So we began our ascent. Hum-de-dum. Tra-la-la. Still ascending. Yup. Still going. Now? Yup. Hey, look, more stairs! I thought Hell was down. We're walking, we're walking. We're climbing, we're dying. Over an hour later, when I had run out of water and was starting to seriously worry about our situation, we saw the observation point ahead and figured there must be a road there and a place to buy water and call a cab. We were, of course, wrong. However, we did find a small village and there was a woman who spoke proper Mandarin! I can't understand the local dialect there. I should have noticed at first. I came to a few houses and saw a woman and said that I wanted to buy water. She said that you couldn't buy water there, but she could give me some. I was pretty surprised that someone actually understood what I was saying. It usually takes a few tries. I went up to her house and she gave me water and we started talking. She said she wasn't a Guizhou person, but I thought perhaps she meant she was a minority person. Julian arrived about that time and I asked him to help translate. The place where she was saying she was from is north of Beijing, which is why she understood me. Her Mandarin was the first thing Julian had noticed and we spent some time talking to her, drinking water, eating the oranges she gave us, and looking at the goats, chickens, and pigs that inhabited her front yard. It was quite strange to see someone who speaks the equivalent of BBC English living in this middle-of-nowhere village. Her husband had been working up north and she came back with him. I would almost venture to say that he must be quite a guy, but as he is a Chinese man, I have reservations.
A little while later an old woman came by and talked to the young woman in Huajiang-hua (hua=speak). Then she tried to talk to Julian, who had no idea what she was saying and it occurred to me that perhaps my Mandarin isn't the problem (okay, isn't the *whole* problem. it definitely is most of the problem); perhaps it's that the people here don't speak proper Chinese. A heartening moment. Soon after, we took off, with the instructions to stay to the left-hand trail and keep walking until we get to the road. It was supposed to take 40 minutes and not be so steep. It took more like an hour-and-a-half and yes, it was steep. I think she was trying to make us feel better, since an hour-and-a-half steep climb would not a happy Jenny have made. Eventually we made it out of the canyon after climbing over the mountains that surrounded it. Not exactly Everest, but then, I didn't have a Sherpa. We took a cab back to town, a bus to Anshun, spent the night there, the next day took a bus to Guiyang, had lunch in a nice hotel that serves western food, bought a small wheel of Camembert in their bakery, and got on a bus to Zunyi so I could be back to teach HM's son that night.
There you go.