another weekend in Changchun

So it rained like crazy on Wednesday. This apparently led to some issues that required JCI to shut down on Friday. My interpreter told me on Thursday afternoon. 'Dont't come to work tomorrow. No water.' Not exactly sure what that means, but I just went with the flow. Unfortunately the flow meant going to language class thurs night, going to bed at midnight, forgetting to take a sleeping pill, and tossed and turned until 5:30 and got up. Got a couple things done and by 8 I was ready for a nap. Turns out if you don't set an alarm on a nap when you're body is all jacked up with jetlag, you can sleep 10 hours during the day. I was a little confused when the clock said 6:00. I recovered and went to KFC for dinner. Thought I would try out some of my finely honed language skills and try to order with words and pointing and not just pointing. Turns out my language skills still have a little way to go. I thought I clearly indicated I wanted meal #3. She clearly heard me say I wanted 3 sandwiches. At least the chicken nugget wrapped in a tortilla with lettuce and mayo was pretty tasty, but 3 was a bit much. It also turns out that spicy chicken from KFC has the same effect on you as the regular chicken except its hotter on both sides of the equation. Fuego. After KFC, went shopping a picked up a pint of blueberry milk. I was curious if the label just made it look like blueberry milk or if chinese folks actually drink blueberry milk. Turns out the latter would be the correct answer. It's actually less disgusting than it sounds at first. The fruit flavor is pretty subtle. I couldn't taste it at all in my french toast. So there went Friday. I was awake for like 5 hours of the day. Took 2 sleeping pills to make up for the night before and hit the sack. Sat went for another bike ride (which is where the pictures are from). There is a giant soccer stadium just down the road from us. Not sure how often games are played there, but its quite the complex with shops around the stadium selling columbia, north face, and sea doo's. Not sure about this last one, but there it was. I didn't think to check how much it cost. Behind the stadium there was also a track around a soccer pitch and some b-ball hoops. Not sure if this is public access or not, but this whitey is going to claim foreign priviledge/ignorance and assume these resources are available for me and my family until someone gets up the nerve to try and tell us that we are not welcome there. That should be interesting. After the stadium was the park. Kinda changchun's version of central park. Lots of trees, a big lake with paddle boats for rent, lots of vendors selling pepsi and 7-up. Had 2 girls ask if they could take their picture with me. First time that's ever happened. I'm assuming Jonathan will get a lot more of that than me. More singing in the park. These folks love to sing and they don't let their complete lack of talent stand in their way. Give me a microphone and I'm ready to start squawking out some hits. It rained all morning while I was out biking. Kind of a bummer when you don't have any fenders on your bike. Almost forgot, I did have the 'i've got to use the WC right now' moment in the park. Luckily they had many public restrooms. Not so lucky would be the stagnant water on the floor of the chinese toilet and the door that wouldn't shut. Only got walked in on 3 times and I'm pretty sure all 3 people wanted to tell me I was doing it wrong, but figured I wouldn't understand them anyway. It's pretty demoralizing when you're not smart enough/coordinated enough to use a toilet without getting your shorts wet/dirty. I haven't tipped over yet, but that day is probably coming. After the bike ride came the trip to the pool in the main floor of our apartment. Pretty straight forward process once they show you where to go. Turns out the chinese swim the same way they drive and eat their food. The pool is a 25 meter pool with 4 marked swim lanes. there were probably 30 people in the pool and they were all going everywhere. I realized that all the chinese swimmers do the butterfly so they can keep their head out of the water most of the time so they can swim around the other 30 folks who are swimming in different directions. Being the uninformed american, I thought I would try and just to some free style laps. Turns out this was good triathlon training as I was constantly running into people and getting kicked in the head. I also needed a swim cap apparently. No one ever told me that. The lifeguard let me use his. I'm pretty sure most folks thought I was from mars. Except when I was getting ready to go, two high school age kids came up to me and asked me a series of very intense questions. I told them that I didn't speak mandarin and asked them if they spoke english. They said no. I'm pretty sure they wanted me to teach them how to swim freestyle since I don't think they had ever seen anyone swim that way before. Instead I tried to ask them questions in chinese and we got no where. Maybe they will be in the pool next year when I know the word for 'teach'. Now off to host a couple of visiting JCI engineers for dinner. Peace out.

The big rain of July 27th

To celebrate 14 years of marriage for Dee and I, God decided to send a few extra inches of rain to changchun. Turns out that a city that can't handle a little rain, really can't handle a lot of rain. Not sure if the pictures do it justice, but there was crazy water everywhere. The JCI parking lot had a continuous river of water flowing through it all day several inches deep. Anyway, probably had to be here to get a sense of the zaniness, but I guess the pictures will mean something to me anyway. Peace.

Video footage I forgot to post.

Forgot that I took some videos on the way to the rafting. Enjoy. . .

white water rafting

So I will try and describe the strangest day of my life, but I'm pretty sure the description will not do it justice. Still, I'm willing to try. . .

The engineering team at JCI decided to go on a team outing. A nice 3 hour white water rafting trip 4.5 hours outside of town. So 35 folks got on a bus at 5:30 am and headed out for our little adventure.

Crazy item #1: Two guys were late for the 5:30 departure. Their punishment. Unaccompanied Karoke with the song of their choosing. I'm pretty sure if we were in America, the offending parties would have given the tour leader the bird and sat down and fell asleep. In china, you stand up and take your medicine like a man. Albeit a warbling man, a man none-the-less.

Crazy item #2: Traveling games. Pass the ring with the straw without using your hands. 4 teams racing up and down the bus. Refer to crazy item #1 for how americans would have handled this suggestion. Next, 'describe your perfect mate' game. Me being the whitey in front got to get it started. All the women in the bus stood up. The host would ask me questions and I would give my preference. If you met the criteria you stayed standing. The best part about this game was seeing how chinese would delineate physical attributes. Height and hair length made sense, but then when they could not use hair color or eye color, they went with eye shape. Big eyes or small eyes. I don't really know what this meant, but decided to go with big eyes (I'm still hoping this was not a euphemism). The winning lady then got to pick her ideal mate. Luckily, I lost. Final game: Telephone. In english. Turns out the chinese are very good at copying things, so they were able to take a series of sentences they did not understand and transmit it through 9 retellings and still end up with 95% accuracy of the original statement. I've played this game in the US with everyone understanding the language and ended up with 50% accuracy at best.

Crazy item #3: Cases of beer on a work outing. Not used to that. Also not used to being offered a beer at 7 am. I think the 2 white guys were the only ones who said no to this offer. Also the bring your own lunch was a little different between the chinese and me. I brought PB&J. No one else did. They all brought meat sticks, cucumbers, soy based pita stuff with crazy spicy dipping sauce, etc. . . If they knew what PB&J was, they definitely would have brought this instead of what they brought.

Crazy item #4: Bathroom break. This is where words begin to fail. An outhouse with 3 rectangular slots in the floor. No walls, no barriers. Just a small room with 3 holes. The bathroom was up on stilts to allow fresh air to flow over the waste products which was nice for managing any offending smells, but it did provide a little too much light on the subject. Unfortunately it was also easy to see that the ground had been graded to facilitate the flow of the waste into the passing stream immediately adjacent. This is was a bit disconcerting being on a trip to go rafting downriver later in the day. Sometimes its better not to think about such things.

Crazy item #5: Arrival in town/base camp. Lots of people selling squirt guns and metal bowls. I mean a lot of people. This is where we were supposed to change into our swimsuits, except there were no 'places' to change. Apparently the bus was the place to change. A little odd on a co-ed work outing. I think the locals are so used to being around a gazillion people that they have become experts at creating their own mental state of privacy, wholly independent of the reality around them.

Crazy item #6: The rafting infrastructure. So how do you get 10,000 chinese folks out of their buses/cars, into rafts, down the river, out of their rafts, and back to their bus. Interesting question with a very well thought out answer. All of the folks are dropped off in this wharehouse by the river. The people are routed through 10 cattle chutes, where life jackets (and squirt guns) are handed out. The rafts are all on the 2nd floor and are sent down to the waiting people on free-wheeled conveyors. People get in and float down the river. Good system. Good plan. Horrible execution. The people in the chutes plunge into the river en masse. The boats come down the ramps and are claimed by the most aggressive person willing to claim the boat. This leads to people climbing up the ramps to jump in the boat on its way down the ramp. Pure chaos. Literally 1000 chinese folks in bright orange life jackets all along the rivers edge fighting for each raft that gets thrown out to the masses. Absolutely crazy.

Crazy item #7: So no instructions. No warnings. No 'what to do if you fall out of your boat'. Just a 'here is your squirt gun and your one paddle for the 8 of you. Good luck'.

Crazy item #8: So it turns out white water rafting in China is actually just an excuse to act like a 3rd grader for 3 hours. I don't mean this in a prejorative way. Just imagine what 1000 3rd graders would do if they were all floating down a river with each other. They would be unihibited and would splash each other for 3 hours straight. Exactly. Literally 3 hours straight of water guns and metal bowls hurling water at anything that moves. There did not appear to be any special rules of who to get or not get. If you were on the water, you were fair game. Although I must say that being in a boat as 1 of 2 white guys made for some special treatment. About every 5 minutes, we would float near a new group of people. One of the persons in that group would see the 2 gringos. You would hear him mutter something to his compatriots, and then 20 heads would immediately swivel on their necks and stare at our boat. Big smiles would spread across their faces, and fingers would begin pointing. My Chinese is still a bit rough, but I'm pretty sure I could translate what followed as something akin to 'hey, check it out. We got a couple of crackers on our river. What do you say we show em a little hospitality'. This was then followed by water cascading toward us from every angle. After this went on for 60 seconds, mercy would begin to set in. Then to finish us off, they would always want us to know that could 'speak english', so they would all shout 'hello' and giggle amongst themselves. This set of events was repeated identically every 5 minutes for 3 hours.

Crazy item #9: The bathing suits. So the guys wore these hip hugger spandex suits and the women just wore their regular clothes. Not sure if women don't wear bathing suits in china or if you just don't wear them on a white water rafting trip. Curious.

Crazy item #10: The system for retrieving the boats was quite impressive as well. 24 rafts stacked on the back of the trailer. Very efficient. Also, the life jacket hopper filled up for the return to the start. Not so crazy I guess, but amazing to watch.

Crazy item #11: The group shower after rafting. Probaly not so crazy in light of crazy item #4, but still strange getting in a big group shower with your colleagues.

Crazy item #12: Riding home on the bus and watching movies. There was the japanese movie with chinese sub-titles and the french movie with chinese sub-titles. It struck me that I was seeing three different cultures represented and mine was none of the 3.

Final crazy item, #13: Bathroom break on the way home. New town. Same facility. Same little creek. Same 3 slots. I don't normally have a shy bladder, but I managed to go the entire day without using the restroom. Funny what the mind can do to the body.

Church

So I finally made it to church today. It took me awhile to get an address from the people at work. Supposedly there is one catholic church and one protestant church in town. The person who got me the address could only find the catholic church so that's where I ended up. They have a 2:30 in the afternoon service for english speakers. The service was not too different than a service at SSCRC with similar songs and liturgy. There were probably 15-20 in the basement chapel. Kind of an interesting mix of chinese, philipino, korean, african, and two americans (me being the second. Also kind of funny that the other american had a Kalamazoo College t-shirt on. Small world)

After the service, there was a small group discussion (kind of funny that a church of 15 has a small groups program) on the sermon (power of an active prayer life.
After the small group discussion, 5 of us went out for dinner together at a little restaurant around the corner and had a delightful bite to eat. It was kind of nice that everyone was on a cash conservation plan, so there was no expectation to do anything lavish. $4 for a 6 course meal. (which was $1 cheaper than KFC) I think I found my kind of people. They all took the bus to church (including the priest who is also and english teacher at the college and living in the college sponsored housing). I rode my bike to church so had a nice ride home (before sprinting to the apartment restroom which it turns out is not all that unusual of an experience these days)

Unfortunately I forgot to take my phone to church, so I didn't get any pictures. Next time.

I will also have a post about yesterday's all day white water rafting trip, but I need to wait til I can get the pictures from the 'office photagrapher' who had the waterproof camera. Some time this week. . .

Friday night out on the town

So I decided to have a rockin Friday night and go out for dinner at the KFC down the street. It's about a 2 mile bike ride, so no worries getting there. (although there were an unusually large number of men wizzin on the side of the street tonight. Not sure why).
Made it to KFC and locked up my bike on the bike rack. When in with my extensive mandarin skills and was committed to ordering something Western. Turns out ordering food in a KFC can be done entirely without talking. I point to the little picture on the counter. She points to the side options with a questioning look on her face. I point to the french fries. She points at the ground and then out the window. I point at the ground and my order has been placed. Turns out the only whole chicken pieces they sell are wings (would have been nice to have a breast, but at least it wasn't the feet). They also had 'processed' chicken patties, but that made me nervous as one picture had a cross section through a sandwich and the patty looked like the climax scene from Aliens where there are all kinds of bugs and critter climbing all over each other. I went with the wings.
So the pictures go in order from there. 1) A nice pleasant place setting at KFC. 2) A polished off meal at KFC. 3) The emergency sprint to the chinese toilet to accomodate the fact that my body has not had deep fried food in a long time. It wasn't much, but I was pretty thankful for anything I could get.

The beer pictures were from the grocery store right next door to the kfc. It was alot like walmart, but with more beer. I thought it odd (in a lovely, quaint sort of way) that you could buy PBR in the small bottle, the 40 oz bottle, the tall can, the short can, and the short can with a different label. I had no idea that PBR made so many different 'varieties' of offerings. Its even pretty reasonable (which maybe I should have expected), but it was not the cheapest as that award went to the blue diamond at $.30 a can. (which I thought the cans looked an awful lot like the PBR cans. I think blue diamond is taking a page out of PBR's american playbook). Oh, and the final PBR can with the WWII dedication to the American soldier. Not sure if this helps sell american beer to chinese folks who can't read english or not. I appreciated the sentiment even if my fellow Changchuners might not.

It was refreshing to see bags of cheetohs and lays potato chips for $.50 each.
I thought the shopping cars were sweet. They had wheels on the bottom and two handles. One so you could pull the cart around like a piece of luggage and one if you wanted to sling the cart under your arm. Pretty nifty little design action there.
The bunny rabbit was just a fun picture of the security guard stand at our apartment. Not sure if the bunny is meant to create an ominous tough guy persona for the security guard, but if it is, it's not working. He's just a nice little short man who smiles and waves alot. Not sure I am any safer with him in the building, but at least he is a pleasant beginning and ending to my days.

welcome luncheon

So we had a cool little welcome luncheon for me today at work. It was interesting in that all the food was spread out on the table, everyone grabbed a tiny plate and some chopsticks and then proceeded to stand around the table and eat. No one sat down. The circle didn't move in any particular direction. You should saw what you wanted and stood in front of it until you got elbowed out of the way. This is exactly how they drive as well. Something inside them despises order and efficiency.
They also hold their plates differently than Americans. Everybody holds their plates just below their necks while they eat. They lower it to scoop food onto it, but while eating or just standing with an empty plate, its always up above their chest. I guess that's how they eat their noodles, so you just get used to having your arms in that position.
While we were still eating, the 3 non-chines folks in the office all had to give a biographical sketch. I put together a little .ppt of my life back home. I used simple subtitles in english and then used google translator to put chinese characters underneath. It turns out my name in chinese is 'jeff dark beer with much liquor'. And referring to my wife as 'the love of my life' turned into 'my lover for life'. That got a bit of a giggle out of the crowd. Everyone thought Jonathan was too cute. We're in trouble.
Anyway, the lunch was a highlight because they had chicken nuggets and dove milk chocolate bars for dessert.

Sunday bike ride

Went for a ride again this afternoon. It had rained earlier in the day and I didn't think about the city's drainage problem. I spent a lot of time dodging massive puddles and spent a lot of time in the shower being disturbed by the stuff that was coming off my body. Didn't look like the dirt I'm used to seeing after a rain. Anyway checked out the SE corner of the city down by moon lake. Pretty cool ride. I again forgot to take my wallet so I couldn't actually go into moon lake, but it made for some nice 'bad english' pictures on the welcome board. Also came across the Sunday night line dancing in a different parking lot. This one with costumes. Not sure why. There were also two dudes in jester outfit with chicken cages hanging from a pole across their shoulders. I'm bummed I didn't get that on film. I also found a KFC 1.5 miles from our place. I might have to walk their for dinner some night this week. That might make for some interesting pictures. 'would you like your chicken feet extra crispy or with colonel's original recipe?'

bike ride

So I went for a 3 hour bike ride to check out a bit more of the city. Couple of observations:

1) The little river with stagnant water and all kinds of junk floating in it still attracts the local fisherman. Not being a fisherman, I don't see the appeal. But maybe if you're hungry, you get pretty motivated.
2) Solitary dude laying sidewalk bricks on saturday afternoon. I'd love to know his story.
3) Sculpture park cost $5 to get in. Didn't think to brink my wallet on the trip so I just had to snap the photo from the gate. Pretty big park with some cool manicured grounds. Can't imagine the kids liking it, but looked like a pretty cool respite.
4) The dude on the scooter with the boombox on the back. Not a great photo but its tough to catch these guys for a photo even though they are everywhere. Apparently this is thee way to pick up chicks in Changchun. How could you resist a man with transportation and a boombox. The only thing better is the upgrade with the red and blue strobe lights and the police siren. They actually look like an official police vehicle for about .5 seconds and then you realize its just another young man putting his hook in the water. . .
5) I had to take a picture of the electric bike guy. These things are also everywhere although a little underpowered because I had no issuues keeping up with him. The nice thing was I could follow him through the intersections. If he went, apparently it was ok to go even if all the lights and the oncoming traffic were telling my american mind that maybe it was not our turn. I also kept him on my left shoulder so if my trust in him as a knowledgable local failed, I would have time to react after he got hit. Caution never takes a holiday.
6) I still have not gotten over my hesitation to just take pictures of Chinese folks doing strange things. There was one dude in the park laying on a bench doing leg lifts in his tighty whiteys and another dude down by the rier doing tai chi stripped down to his shorts. Apparently getting into your zen state requires the absence of clothes. I've found a nation of kindred spirits for team Jacques.

40th birthday party

Just cleaning out the camera and I can't remember if I posted any of these pictures or not. Anyway, a guy at work had his 40th birthday so we had a little party over lunch. Kind of funny that the happy birthday song works just as well in nowhere china as it does in Michigan. Not sure exactly what the Chinese words are, but the tune is identical.
The cake and the fruit display were pretty amazing. For not having any ovens in this town, they made a mean white cake.

random pictures

So 3 images in this post:
1) Picture of TV monitor. This is a display at work that shows general HR stuff. Event advertising, pictures of teambuilding events, Examples of good engineering documents (don't laugh, we get pretty excited about engr documents). In this case, they were showing an inspirational video clip where a football coach drives his best player to deliver more than he has by begging him to give his all. Not all that original or worth the picture, but. . . The clip comes from a movie called 'facing the giants' which is a film produced by a local church in Georgia. It was a low budget film with no 'hollywood expert' support other than the folks who went to that church. It was never shown in theaters. I'm curious to know who had the movie, how they got it, and what they thought about the movie's very explicit message of 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him. . .'.
2) T-shirt for sale at Walmart. I've spent a lot of time trying to guess at what the creators of this shirt were trying to get at, but all I've been able to come up with is they had an english dictionary and they just flipped open to page 67 and grabbed a word and then went to page 110 and then. . . Although I'm a little troubled by the expression 'girl's things'.
3) On my way to the only italian restaurant in town, we passed the Eiffel tower. I had no idea it had been moved, but there it was. There is more culture in this town than I knew. Also by the way, Stromboli at the italian restaurant will cost you about $10. The glass of German beer will cost you $8. Not a cheap place to have 3 beers (I now know).

New furniture

So the installing guys came today and we got a new oven and new bunkbeds. Very exciting day in Changchun. Of course the mattress on the top bunk is about 1.5" thick. Comfort doesn't carry a high priority in this town.

So its rained here the last couple of days and I discovered something about the Chinese. They don't believe in putting sewer drains at the low points in the road. They put in plenty of drains, they just don't actually drain any water cuz of that whole pesky gravity thing. But, its a great excuse to pay people to sweep rain water out of the puddles and into the drain 20 feet away. I haven't had my camera ready quick enough to snap a shot yet, but I'll get it one of these days.