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.