Homebound Thoughts

I take very few showers here in this apartment. The water they use for the shower is solar heated, which is basically another way of saying it is cold water. I guess it is a very good way to conserve on energy, both in gas and in water because you rarely use any of either. I assume I am smelling pretty bad at the moment, but luckily I have a cold and cannot smell much of anything.

When last I blogged, I was not very sure about the place that I was staying in nor about the people that I am staying with. I am still not really sure about either, but I do know now that I will, most likely, be staying here for another month in Jiaozuo. Late in October I will travel to Shanghai and meet up with an old friend of mine, Alan and his mother. They will be on vacation for a about 3 weeks. I will stay with them and travel to Beijing with them as well. I am extremely excited to be meeting up with Alan. Prior to me leaving for this leg of my travels in February, I was trying to meet with as many of my friends and family as I could before I left. Alan was one of the people that I tried to connect with before I left, but was never able to. I am not sure how many years it has been since I have seen Alan, but it has been a very long time. It is nice that I will also be going to back to Beijing because there are many things that I intended on seeing when I was there, but never got the chance to. Being with Alan and his mom will also be a welcome change since they are people that I implicitly trust; I cannot say that about the people that I am living with now, unfortunately.

After my travels with Alan and his mother, I will be returning home for the holidays. I booked my flight and I will be returning to San Francisco International on November 14th. I cannot really explain what it feels like to know that I will be traveling home so soon. In a way, I do not really believe it. All this time that I have been away, I have been thinking about the day that I would return home and under what circumstances that would happen. My mind has run through countless scenarios about when, where, how and why this would happen. Pointless scenarios, yet that is what my mind does. So to now know the answers to those questions, it is almost as though my mind is just discounting these thoughts as mere possibilies of a return home and not the reality of actually coming home.

I do not know how long I will be home for. There are many ideas in my head for what I can do. I am just going to wait and see how I feel once I am home. There are to many what ifs that are still floating around for me to be able to know what is going to happen. My main goal will be to spend as much time as I can with my family and friends as possible. I want to see everyone and I am looking forward to being home for the holidays at the very least.

I am also very excited that by the time I get back everyone will know who the next President of the United States will be. I watched the first of the presidential debates today. This debate was much more tame then I remember the debates of Gore/Bush and Kerry/Bush being. Both candidates seemed to be very respectful towards one another, which took me by surprise. Since leaving in February, I have been very disconnected with the general feeling of the country on the elections. As I travel I have had many, many people ask me about who I thought was going to win and who I wanted to have win the election. I found it somewhat strange because this is not a conversation I am used to having in America. We in America seem to feel it is off limits to talk about politics unless you are very good friends with the person you are speaking to. It was nice to be able to have these conversations freely without worrying about offending anyone. Anyway, prior to me leaving I had no reservations in saying that Obama was going to wipe the floor with McCain. Although, it was hard to be able to say that as of late considering just how long I have been away and how disconnected I am with the feelings of other Americans. After watching the debates though, I feel I can state once again that I believe there is only a slight chance that McCain will be victorious. Obama is certainly the stronger candidate and the McCain campaign is not anywhere near the caliber of what the Bush campaigns were in 2000 and 2004. Next week will bring the debate between the vice president candidates which will be very interesting for me to watch. I have been very distant and disconnected from all the controversy surrounding Palin. I do not know very much about Biden either so it will be an educational experience for me to see the two duke it out. One more note on the elections: I can say that if McCain were to win the presidency, many people in many countries around the world will pretty much write off Americans as being naive, ignorant, and/or just plain stupid based off of many conversations that I have had with people about it. Many people in the countries that I have visited are still very confused about why the American people elected Bush into a second term and they are very afraid that we will elect McCain.

The other day I was walking through the streets of Jiaozuo trying to find some good things to take pictures of (there really are not that many I have found). While walking, this chinese girl comes up to me out of no where and starts talking to me in broken English saying she wants to be my friend. I said, okay. So now I have a friend here in Jiaozuo named Nana. We do not always understand each other because she has only taken 2 years of English, but we figure it out most of the time. She is a very nice person and has since taken me to her families house. Nana's mom cooked me a huge welcoming meal full for delicious food and I met her brother and her brother's friends who also speaks some English. They were very excited to see a foreigner, and of course, asked to take a picture with me. I am looking forward to spending some more time with my new friends in Jiaozuo. I trust them more than the people I am staying with.

Things with Yao and his girl friend are pretty much the same as when I got here. I am occasionally helping to teach English. When I am not teaching English...which is very often, I am reading and on the internet, of course. However, I have been spending a lot of time learning Taichi. I have been waking up at 5:30 in the morning and riding Yaos scooter a couple of miles to a square where a very nice 74 year old ex-doctor is teaching me Taichi. Then in the evening around 8:30 or so, I am learning from another Taichi master. Taichi is much more difficult then I every imagined it would be. When I was working for BART in Oakland, I used to watch the Chinese community come out in the early morning hours to do Taichi. It never looked all that hard when I used to watch. So it came as quite a surprise when I started just to do some "warm up" exercises the first day and was sweating and in pain just from stretches. Only after a few days though my body is feeling very good and I can tell that it has helped me out quite a bit. I feel like I am standing up straighter in general. Prior to me starting Taichi, my back was hurting a lot and felt very weak in general. After two days of Taichi my back stopped hurting and feels strong again. It is good stuff this Taichi and I hope to learn a fair amount of it prior to returning home. Hopefully I can continue with what I have already learned once I am back, and perhaps find a teacher near home where I can continue learning. I think, if it was not for the Taichi, I probably would not be staying here with Yao and his girlfriend as I do not feel like I am being very productive as a volunteer.

I have added some more pictures to my China album:

China