Ariel's Wedding

First of all, my internet access is erratic right now, so it is just luck that I can update now. Updates might be slow for a few weeks (slow, you say? This blog? Never!).

Last week Ariel got married! She invited me to the wedding, and as it turns out I was the only one at our school to go. The other Chinese teachers had to work too early to be able to come (they start at 2pm, I started at 5:30pm, and I only just made it back in time), and Ivy couldn't get time off from her other job. However, the wedding was not lacking for people - there were over a hundred by my (extremely poor) estimate.

I woke up at a ridiculous time in the morning, and in the relative warmth of my apartment decided that this was as good an occasion as any to wear my suit. Walking to the bus stop at a cold, sunless 6am, however, made me wonder if it was such a good idea after all; standing there waiting for Ariel's sister-in-law to pick me up made me decide that no, it wasn't so clever. However, I got to the hotel Ariel was staying at, and so it was okay.

At the hotel I first saw Ariel in her wedding dress, and she was very beautiful. Don't just take my word for it:



The groom (I still have a hard time remembering Chinese names, and I've forgotten his) met her at the hotel room, and there was a quick and frantic search for the shoes - they'd been hidden behind my seat earlier. It's tradition, I think, to hide the shoes to stop the bride from being able to leave. The groom carried her from the hotel room to the car, but not without incident - they fell down the stairs! Ariel came away unscathed, but the groom sported some impressive bruises and grazes on his foot and arm. There were the customary firecrackers outside, along with a five-piece brass ensemble that piped up whenever it seemed appropriate.

The wedding itself was held at the groom's parents' house, which turned out to be a pretty big two-storey house in a small country village. By the standards of Chinese city apartments, the house is immense; it's only because it's so far from the city that they're able to have such a large house (or just a standalone house at all, for that matter). The ceremony was just around the corner from the house:



In the background is the dining area. I'll come back to that later. Most of the people there are behind me, so you can't see them all. Since the last shot was from behind, once again, the bride and groom:



In the background is a stage with the same five-piece band that were at the hotel.

I didn't understand anything the minister in charge of the ceremony said, but there wasn't a lot of standing around at the ceremony. Ariel and the groom were always doing something, whether it was lighting incense, giving their respective parents glasses of wine, or pinning corsages to each other:



This was one of the funnier and more bizarre customs:



If you can't work it out, those are the groom's parents. The one with soot on his face (another custom, or simply a practical joke by one of the other guests, I don't know) is his father, the one trying to get away is his mother. The others are trying to put that rope - tied to a cabbage - around them both. Don't ask me what it means, but the struggles were amusing!

Then there was the exchange of rings, with the customary "oh crap where did I leave the ring" search by the groom:



Where did he leave the ring? It was already on Ariel's finger!

Then, Ariel asked me to get up and make a speech. I was the only one to make a speech at the ceremony; I felt very honoured. The minister gave me the microphone, and I ended up making a fairly short speech. I can't make long and memorable speeches, but I told Ariel what a great friend she was and how happy I was for her, and nearly cried in the process.

The speech was in English, of course, and since I was the only foreigner there, and maybe three people at the wedding could speak enough English to understand me, Lily translated for the benefit of everyone else at the wedding.

After the wedding, I took a few more photos. Here's Ariel and her dad in the back yard of the house:



And here are the couple with the groom's side of the family:



Later, Ariel changed from her western-style wedding dress into a traditional Chinese dress. Here she is, along with some of her old vocational school students, and me, in a group hug:



This last picture is Ariel and an unknown but very stylish foreigner:



After all the photos I went for a walk with Lily and the rest of Ariel's old students, and by the time we came back it was time for lunch. This was held in the pavilion behind the wedding ceremony, and this is where my estimate of the number of guests comes from: there were twenty tables, and each one seating eight people. I don't know if they all filled up, but certainly more than half did.

Lunch was seven kinds of awesome. Although most Chinese food is served as a series of dishes in the middle of the table, with each person having their own bowl of rice, this lunch was exactly like that - just without the rice, since there was so much food that no-one needed it. I don't remember much about the cold dishes (equivalent to the entrée), but the hot dishes were great. There was roast chicken, roast beef, duck, rice pudding, and the most delicious, fattening thing you have ever heard of: slices of pig fat. This dish is just slices of the fat layer of pork, cooked until it is soft, jelly-like, and sweet, and served with green vegetables.

They also served baijiu, which I've mentioned before - although often translated as "white wine", it's really a clear spirit more similar to vodka, with a 50% alcohol content. I had a little, only intending to keep it as a little, but Ariel's grandfather kept refilling my cup, and three separate people came around the tables giving everyone a drink. The result was that before lunch was over, I was a little drunk. Not too much, fortunately, but enough to make me stagger when I tried to get up and go. Later I worried that I would still be drunk, or smell of baijiu, when I went to work later that day, but fortunately it wore off. I think I slept most of it off on the bus ride back.

I took the bus back with Lily and her friends, and I really can't help that every time I see Lily I fall for her just a little bit more. Only a little, but a little is enough. I talked to Ariel about it, and she had something to say that's right on the nail: I give up very easily. If someone doesn't show interest in me I won't show interest in them; I keep myself protected, so that I won't get hurt. If I want to accomplish something, if I want to find someone, then I need to put myself out there. I need to accept that maybe the other person won't return my feelings. You know, the whole "it's better to have loved and lost..." spiel. She's right, at any rate. It made things a whole lot clearer for me, and so I'm not going to be so passive anymore, and despite the problems (and there are a few, mostly to do with Lily being a fair bit younger than me), I'm not going to sit back and hope for someone to smack me in the face and say "I love you": I'm going to chase after Lily, and do something active for once.

It's going well so far. I'm taking her to lunch today, although events have been conspiring against me. I lost my phone yesterday - or more likely, it was stolen on the bus. I got a new one so that she would be able to call me today to tell me when she is available, but last night I was told Ivy and I need to present our passports to the local police station, today, at 2pm, which doesn't leave much time for lunch on the other side of the city. Fortunately I've pushed that back to 3pm; now I just have to hope Lily is available earlier, rather than later. I'll take her to Pizza Hut (I know, it doesn't sound that romantic, but I swear, Pizza Hut is a far more up-scale establishment in this part of the world) and give her flowers.

Right now, though, I'm frozen, and can't feel my fingers anymore. Goodbye!

NaNoWriMo

If you don't know already, November is National Novel Writing Month. If you haven't heard about it, you should look at the website and join. I only just started myself due to being very busy, so losing a few days at the start is no big deal. There's plenty of time to catch up, and even if you never catch up, the forums there are a lot of fun.

What this means as far as this blog is concerned is that there will probably be no updates for the rest of November, because I will be too busy writing my story! Not that you'll notice a difference. I'm sure you're all used to my haphazard updating schedule by now.

The Terracotta Warriors

After leaving Huaqing hot springs, I caught the bus onwards to the final destination: the Terracotta Warriors. As I did at the Huaqing hot springs, I tried to get off the bus a stop too early, and the conductor (a man this time, not nearly as pretty as the previous conductor) prevented me from making that mistake.

On the way there, I took a few photos of the countryside. This gives you an idea of what it's like: flat, trees everywhere, and ramshackle buildings just visible past the trees.


Once there, I made my way through the carpark where this fellow stood guard:


- and was immediately approached by a tour guide offering her services. She was very insistent that I hire her, as even the Chinese people that come here hire a guide, otherwise they will miss out of very important historical information. I declined, politely, several times. I was approached by another woman once I was inside the gates, who did tell me the ticket price at least (and once I was told, I was able to see it staring me right in the face). I wasn't grateful enough to hire her, either, but at least she wasn't as brash as the other woman. I got my ticket and walked to the main gate. After that there was a walk through a pleasant and pretty big park. There were many paths through it, but a moment's consideration showed they all lead to the same place. I took the path with the fewest people on it.

From the path I was able to see the complex I was approaching:


When I reached the main complex itself, the wooded park opened up into a wide open area with several large buildings to choose from. I chose the one right in front of me, which turned out to be the main exhibition hall, containing most of the Terracotta Warriors themselves. It was very big, and very full of tourists. I haven't seen so many people who aren't Chinese since I came here. I didn't take photos of them (except for the Japanese tour group, because I thought the women in kimonos were cool), but I did take photos inside the exhibition hall. You only get a little idea of how big it is from this.


Since the tour guides were so insistent I would miss out important historical information, and since there were numbers corresponding to the audio tour which you could also purchase dotted all around the place, I figured I would take a friend's advice and just make up my own historical information.

Here we have a faithful re-creation of Qin dynasty soldiers leading their horses in the most solemn of rituals, the walk before applying styling mousse to their horses' manes.


This set of statues commemorates a particularly hard night of drinking on the part of the imperial soldiers. As you can see, most of them are so sloshed that they haven't even noticed that they are no longer holding their cups - only air. The superb training of the soldiers shows in their ability to stand at attention, but while none of them are legless, poor Johnson in the back has drunk his head right off.


After the party, Jones really really needed to pee, so Terry stood lookout while he relieved himself.


This is the aftermath of the ill-fated Pottery Rebellion, shortly after the emperor's death. Which side won is lost to the ravages of time, but judging from this scene, it is safe to say: neither. Eric, in the back, appears to be the sole survivor, but despite his stoic demeanour he did not come away without injury. Without his arms, he will never complete the quilt he started before he left for the war.


"Doctor, hurry! I don't know what came over him! We just found him lying there!"
"Oh dear, let me have a look."
"How is it? Will he be alright?"
"He's - he's stone cold."
"Is that bad?"
"I don't want to alarm you, so please don't take this as being a bad sign, but yes, it's very bad."
"Oh! Can - can you do anything for him?"
"Sorry. It's too late. He's - well, there's no easy way to put this. He's a statue."


"Joe, I'm having problems. The pressure is getting to me. I'm starting to crack, man. It's too much. I'm coming apart at the seams."


One of the other buildings turned out to be the museum, and one of the more interesting exhibits was an exhibition by a contemporary Chinese artist inspired by the Terracotta Warriors. I thought this was the pick of the crop:


It looks a lot better in person. Photography doesn't do it any favours.

This poster brought much glee when I saw it. It's the first real example I've seen of government propoganda, and a particularly unsubtle one too, much to my delight. It's pretty mild, but it was nice to see "adhering to take Communist Party's line and policy as guiding ideology".



Finally, after seeing the warriors and the museum, I was ready to leave. This was my parting shot, from the steps of the museum:


Those mountains are closer than they appear. Although it took an hour, maybe, to get there, the smog from the city still lies around the place, and makes the distances seem greater. Despite the smog, it's a pretty scene, and you can get some idea of how well-presented this place is - manicured gardens, wide-open and well-designed public areas, and even a scenic setting.

This isn't the actual dig site, of course. That's a fair distance away - off to the right, going by the picture above. If you followed those mountains, staying the same distance away as the spot this photo was taken from, you'd come to it. It's closed to the public, though.

When I got on the bus to go home, I noticed an unusual sign on the door, so I took a photo. I still haven't taken it to someone who reads Chinese to find out what it really says, but my sister thinks it means "no crowding to get on the bus" or something similar.


I, however, stand by my original interpretation of the image: no showering on the bus, or perhaps: no peeing on the door.

Huaqing Hot Springs

While on the bus to see the Terracotta Warriors, two things worth mentioning happened. The first is that there was one other foreigner on the bus, a slightly manic Israeli. He was stunned at how little people earn per month over here ("Seriously? I spent that in a day!") and his accent was very thick. It took me most of the bus trip to adjust to it enough to understnd more than half of what he said. He was very busy, too - he had one of those hectic tourist schedules that means he only has X amount of time for this because he has to be on a plane to somewhere else that evening.

That was why he didn't succumb to the bus conductor's spiel about Huaqing hot springs. It took me a while to work out what she was saying - she knew exactly enough English to almost articulate what it was she was trying to say. I didn't even realise she was saying "hot springs" until I got off the bus - it sounded more like "hostel". I did manage to figure out it was a garden of some kind, with several thousand years' worth of history behind it. Much more than that was lost in translation. The girl tried hard, though, and I figured, why not? I'm already pretending I'm a tourist today, I might as well see everything. Having figured it out for myself I was able to tell the Israeli guy what the hell she was going on about, since he understood her even less than me. He declined, due to his schedule.

Once I got off the bus and saw the signs saying "Huaqing Hot Springs" I realised what it was the conductor was trying to say, and laughed. I read the description outside, and figured it was worth a look. And, it was.

Huaqing hot springs are famous for two reasons. The first is that they're the scene of a famous romance, between an emperor and his concubine. That's obviously the main focus of the tourist attraction. The second is that they're the site of the "Xi'an incident" - a chapter in China's more modern history. I'll relate that here, since I never did figure out which building it happened in, so it doesn't turn up in the photos.

Sometime between the first and second world wars, China was divided, and in the middle of an attempt at a communist revolution. Unfortunately for them, they were also being attacked by the Japanese. One general took the leader of the the not-communists prisoner at the Huaqing hot springs, and the resulting negotiations led to his release and a truce between the two parties, allowing them to unite against Japan. The main reason the leader was recovered by negotiation rather than force was because of Stalin's involvement; China needed Russia's support at that time. It's a bit more involved and political than that, and I've probably botched something important in my retelling; go research it yourself if it interests you. At any rate, it's called "the Xi'an incident", and Huaqing is where it happened.

The first thing that happened was that I was persuaded to pay for an electric car to whisk me around. I did this because I thought it would be necessary. It's really not. All the places the cars will take you to are entirely walkable, and why else are you there if not to dawdle and see the sights? I got off the car at the first stop.

Once I got off, this is where I found myself:


If you look carefully, you can see that the people in the background are lined up at the edge of a pool. This is what they're looking at:


This is another shot of the same pool. I have no idea what the building is for. All the other tourists (all Chinese - I didn't see any other foreigners while here) were keen on taking photos of it, though.


Just around the corner was this much less crowded, and very picturesque pool:



As well as this secluded little spot:


A bit more wandering took me to this statue of, it seems, naked women with water pitchers. It's a nice statue, but I couldn't help but feel I was there at the wrong time of day - there must be a time when it catches the sunlight.


I'm fairly sure the naked statues are because people at a hot spring were probably naked a lot. This particular statue was very popular amongst the other tourists, as you can see. I don't know who it is, but given the story of this place, I imagine it is the emperor's courtesan. As a side note: the statuary here is, as you can see, very good, easily on a par with the more famous Greek statues. Given the tendency for two-dimensional Chinese art to lean towards symbolism and minimalism, it came as something of a surprise.


Speaking of two-dimensional art, this was inside one of the bath houses. All the bath houses are empty of water, by the way; this is strictly a tourist destination now, you don't go here to actually bathe.


This picture is part of a series of a few dozen, telling the story of the emperor and his concubine. This one isn't particularly descriptive; I chose this one to take a photo of because I liked it. It was a wonderful moody atmosphere, with a bare minimum of brush strokes (that part is not so obvious from the photo). However, all the pictures were, when it comes down to it, excellent. They told the story on their own, although it would undoubtedly have helped if I could read the captions. I probably should have taken photos of all of them, but I couldn't be bothered, and I wasn't sure how well any of them would come out in the dim interior anyway. As it is, I've forgotten most of the story that I was able to figure out; but the most lasting image is of the emperor and the concubine planting a seedling together, and seeing the same seedling in later images as a grown tree, as a recurring symbol of their love.

There's no story to this next photo: I just love ivy-covered buildings.


It's not immediately obvious from this photo, but if you keep looking you will notice what look like terraces in the background. They are actually part of a very windy staircase that looked marvellous, but that I couldn't find a way to get to. I suspect it's not one of the parts tourists are supposed to go to.


And finally, an empty pavilion. This is a rare find in a tourist attraction with tourists all over the place, but here it was. Naturally, it was in a more out-of-the-way corner of the hot springs.


Next up: the Terracotta Warriors!

Oops! And a Trip to the Zoo

I thought I'd already written about these things! I knew the zoo was missing, but I thought I'd at least gotten around to the Terracotta Warriors. I distinctly remember writing captions for the photos. Well, let's remedy this!

First, the trip to the zoo. On the 12th of October, our school planned a trip to the Xi'an zoo for all our students. None of the older senior-level kids came along, but there were still a good hundred or so students, with ten adults to manage them.

To begin with, we arrived at work far too early for a reasonable person, and then waited for the kids to arrive. After that we herded them back out again and into the buses - I forget if we all piled into two or three. They were big buses.

This brings us to the first photos! Namely, of kids on buses, and not being very badly behaved either. Good on them. This lot of kids is all of J4O that showed up, plus a random kid from J4C. They're good kids, actually, even for a class that only has boys in it. From left to right: Austin, Tony, Jake and Mark. I don't know who the kid in the background is; she's not in any of my classes.


These kids are from J2H, which I used to teach, once upon a time, before I was put in the awful S11D class because no-one else could teach it. From left to right: Helen, Shannon, Cici and Janet.


If you thought these kids looked younger than the others, you're right. They're from K2F, and are five years old, I think. They're adorable kids, although the one on the left is trouble. Mostly adorable trouble. The one on the right is a good kid; she likes to play and run around screaming outside of class like everyone else, but she knows how to listen when she's actually in the class. From left to right: Lily and Fancy. Yes, some parents here are working hard to make the namespace of English speakers larger and a little weirder.


These three are from J4C. The one in the middle is the most trouble, although that's not saying much; this is a very good class, I never have any problems with it. From left to right: Betty, Becky, and Emily.


After we finally made it to the zoo (the bus trip was over an hour), we stopped for more photos after herding the kids together, just before going in. I'm there! So is Ivy. This is two groups merged together; each group had one foreign teacher and one or two Chinese teachers.


One of the first stops we made was to a circus in the middle of the zoo. They had a man and a young girl doing acrobatics while being swung around the inside of the cage, suspended from a length of fabric. If you've ever seen anyone "climbing the silken ladder" then you know the deal - I don't know what the real name for this kind of acrobatics is. I also don't have any photos of that - I rather sensibly took movies instead, which I can't be bothered uploading. Sorry! I did take photos of what came before, since I was still wildly optimistic about my camera's ability to take photos in the dark interior at that point. So, before the acrobatics, we had:


Alright, so it's kinda hard to see what we had in this picture. We had boxing bears! Yes, those fuzzy brown things are bears, wearing boxing gloves. At first I was a little horrified, the bears go for each other very convincingly. I never really felt comfortable watching it, but eventually I saw the funny side, after realising that they can't have been hurting each other. The oversized boxing gloves saw to that, preventing their claws from causing what would be real damage. Also, they never bit each other, and they always backed off immediately at the end of each round. After the boxing, the gloves were taken off and the bears performed acrobatics tricks on parallel bars, among other things.

Then we had tigers! Yay, tigers! The big cats put on the kind of show you can expect, seeing the picture below. Standard circus stuff, including jumping through flaming hoops. The tigers were very uncooperative that day, and several times didn't do what they were told. At any rate, the tigers at Dreamworld are much better; this isn't the place to go for an impressive tiger show. However, they're still tigers, and tigers are still worth watching.


This picture doesn't really need much of a caption. It's two kids and an elephant. I took it mostly to tease the kid on the right, as we'd been making fun of each other. I don't know the names of either of these kids, though, as they're not in any of my classes.


This is me again, with some of the kids from my group, in the stuffed animal exhibit.


This is from another part of the same place. You can see Ariel amongst the kids there; she was the Chinese teacher in charge of our group. The kid in the front wasn't originally in frame; he ran in to steal the show just before taking the picture.


There were other things at the zoo - a seal show, for example, that was pretty good - but I forget most of it now, so I'll skip straight to the monkeys! The baby monkeys were dead cute:


Especially this one, who become enamoured of a plastic bottle that ended up inside the enclosure:


Eventually we'd all seen enough, and went to lunch. We swarmed a restaurant and took over all of the seats they had upstairs, and a table or two downstairs as well. Have you ever been to a child's birthday party at McDonalds? Imagine that, only with three or four times as many kids. On the plus side, we just had traditional Chinese food instead of McDonalds, so it was actually pretty good. The restaurant is run by what is, from the sounds of it, a farmers' collective. The restaurant is a very large place, with a lot of the eating areas outside; the complex doubles as the farmers' homes. Lunch was several dishes in the middle of each table, from which you helped yourself. The kids decided they were full long before any of the teachers did, so they ran around downstairs while we finished up.

After another long bus ride we got back, and got all the kids to the right parents. Nobody got left behind, so it was, overall, successful. Some parents took their time coming to pick up their kids; Fancy, who you should recall from an earlier picture, was the last kid to leave; she stayed at the school for a good half an hour after everyone else had gone. She didn't seem to mind it; she's not a kid that cries easily, and we (well, mostly I) entertained her by running through the hall and playing games.

After everyone left, we had one last group picture, just the teachers. From left to right: me, Sally, Vivi, Ivy, Kiko, Melinda, and Apple.


Later today I will finish my backlog and post about the Hauqing hot spring and the Terracotta Warriors!

National Day Holidays

I've been very slack about updating this!

Last night I went out with Dane, a guy I met at the TESOL course in Australia and who ended up working in the same city as me, along with the girl who's tutoring him in Chinese, some of her friends, and some other people I didn't know. We had dinner at a "Latin restaurant", although I'm not really sure where the Latin part came into it. Perhaps the sushi was Latin sushi? It doesn't matter much either way - it was enjoyable, and I liked most of the people I met.

After dinner we went to a bar at a youth hostel, and had a lot of fun with drinking games. Nobody got particularly drunk despite that, but I now know some awfully fun games! Finally, Daphne (Dane's tutor) mentioned that the bar would give a free drink to anyone who would sing a song. Apparently they didn't really mind what sort of song, so I put my hand up. We had to wait a while, so by the time I got up to sing everyone was ready to go. I sang "A Formidable Marinade", by Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen. It's a great song, especially when surrounded by ex-pats who do understand the lyrics and locals who sometimes understand some of them. Look up the lyrics if you don't know the song, to see why it was so amusing to sing. It also turns out that I can hold a note a lot better when I've had several drinks. Who'd have guessed.

I didn't have any trouble waking up this morning, so I went to yoga - the last three days there hasn't been any yoga, since they get holidays too, after all. After yoga, the owner invited me to lunch with one of the teachers and the girl who actually speaks English. We went to a little noodle restaurant just down the road, and it was mighty good. Much better than the buffet the night before that was five times more expensive! I like the little diner-style restaurants over here, they're always the best way to eat.

So, the last couple of days have been pretty darn good, even though I didn't get out of the city like I'd planned.

Mostly About Yoga

Several weeks ago I tried a yoga class with Ariel. I enjoyed it at the time, but I didn't follow up on it - Ariel said the other women in the class felt uncomfortable with me around, since I was the only man there.

However, it turns out that we were mistaken. One of the staff asked Ariel if I would be coming back, and told her that I was perfectly welcome to join. I needed no more prompting than that, and on Monday I went along and signed up for three months - about the same amount of time I have left in China. How time flies.

Originally Mauritte, the new foreign teacher (South African woman, very enthusiastic about just about everything, lovely lady), was going to come too - she'd expressed an interest in yoga - but the class was too far away from where she lived.

Before the class itself, Ariel gave me a quick lesson in Chinese - specifically, the things the instructor would say while we were supposed to have our eyes closed. These are also things that aren't easy to spot just by copying what the instructor is doing, even with your eyes open - things like breath from your belly, not your chest. I forgot most of it almost immediately, of course, and even after doing it for five days straight now I still have to peek occasionally so I know when they get to the neck stretches. However, I am picking up a few words here and there. Soon I'll be able to have entire conversations about the various parts of the body and how to twist them out of recognition, all in Chinese!

The first word I learned in yoga class was "fangsong", pronounced more like "fung soong" for those of you unfamiliar with pinyin. It means "relax", and is repeated very regularly during the class - which is why I remember it so easily. The yoga lessons begin with relaxation and breathing before moving to the stretching that most people associate with yoga, and finish again with relaxation. Unsurprisingly, it's all very relaxing.

That doesn't make it easy, though. Today was the hardest day yet. There are two or three instructors that are rotated through the classes, and the instructor today was beautiful, graceful, and very demanding. All the instructors will correct your posture as needed during the exercises, but today this instructor pushed all of us to our limits - and then some. Most of it was fine with me - there are many stretches that my body can do easily enough, but my arms are not strong enough to pull myself into all the way. Just a little push on my back does wonders.

This one stretch, though, was murder. It stretches the upper thigh and hip, and all week I'd been wondering if I was doing it properly. The instructor would tell us to look at the ceiling, but many of the other students would just look up a little, not straight up. Since I don't actually understand the Chinese instructions, I mostly followed suit. Today, the instructor dispelled any doubts I had about the right way to do it, without saying a word. The problem is that I'm pretty flexible, and the right way for me to do it is not just to look up, but behind as far as I can, all the while pushing down, until the nerves in your hip shout themselves hoarse and finally say: "bugger this, I'm clocking out. See you in an hour." All the other stretches I reach the limit of my flexibility fairly obviously, and even the instructor can't push me further - because my head is touching my legs, or because my legs are flat on the floor, for example. This stretch, not so. The only physical limits it's possible to reach with this one are having your head touch your knee - from the back - and to have your hips actually touch the floor - from a lunge position.

That was the first time I took a break in the middle of an exercise. All the other students did too - she put all of us through this, it's not like she was picking on me or anything. Still, I don't like giving up, but oh god my hips.

Having said all that - afterwards, I felt great. Absolutely amazing. On Wednesday I wasn't going to come, as the first two days had left me stiff and sore, but I went anyway, and was glad for it, since I felt great afterwards. Since then I haven't had similar soreness tempting me not to go, and I always feel good afterwards. Today hurt, but it hurt so good. That's five days. I'll take a break over the weekend - I have to anyway, I have to work all day. Mostly all day - I could, in theory, go to the morning class on Sunday - but I think I'll let myself rest. I don't need to jump straight into yoga by doing seven hours a week. I'll work myself up to it.

I will do some light exercise though. Although I'm flexible enough to do most of the positions without much trouble, I can't hold them for long without shaking, because I'm pretty pathetically weak. My abs and shoulders in particular need to be focused on, so it's crunches and push-ups in the mornings instead of yoga this weekend.

I'll reiterate what I said just before - it makes me feel great. It's not just internal bliss either, the teachers at work have been saying all this week that I look better, too! I can heartily recommend it, even if you aren't flexible to start out with.

Tianshui

Sorry about the lack of updates here recently! Here's a long one to make up for it.

On Thursday evening I left for Tianshui, a small city in Gansu province, with Linda. Compared to most other places in China, it's close to Xi'an - it only took 4 hours to get there by train.

We very nearly missed the train, too. We were having dinner at Ivy's place with Alice, and both of them got mad at us for not telling them when we were leaving when we told them it was that night. I thought we'd already told them that! Alice was mad because Linda got to go away and she had to cover Linda's class. I'm sure they'll both forgive us, though - we brought back peaches. We were talking for a while after dinner, and it was only after the exchange of outrage that we thought to check what time it was, and realised that we only had a short time to get to the train station. I hadn't packed yet, so I ran upstairs, packed, forgot that my camera battery was still in the charger, left the light on (for four days), and then we caught a taxi. We ran to the train station, through the gates, to the right platform and on the train. We had one minute to spare. There isn't much to say about the train; we both caught a bit of sleep. Here's what it looked like from inside:



We arrived at 3am, and took a taxi to Linda's parents' house. I met her parents - both nice people, but they can't speak any English, so I didn't talk with them at all. They were very hospitable, and made me feel right at home. At some later point I met her grandma, too, who is very old, and quite infirm. She only came out of her room - very slowly, leaning against the wall - to eat, and she barely spoke the whole time I was there.

We slept a bit better than we did on the train, and in the morning Linda made me French toast, since that's what I eat most mornings here.

The rest of the day was spent out with Linda and her mum, hopping through a series of shops looking for clothes and shoes. Linda wanted new clothes, partly because she could now dress herself in things her ex-boyfriend didn't like, and partly to re-invent herself, to help get over the ex. This meant dresses and high heels, instead of the jeans and flat shoes she always used to wear. If you're a woman, you know exactly how this expedition would have gone. If you're a man and you've never gone shopping with a woman for clothes - or shoes - before, then let me explain:

I'm sure it's come to your attention just how many women's clothing stores there are in any given shopping location; they are equalled in number by the shoe stores, as well. What you might not have known is that every single store must be visited during a shopping trip, and there are more there than you realised at first, because really, who pays attention to women's clothing stores? Because Linda wasn't the one paying for it, she was very conscious of the price, too - she didn't want her mum to spend too much, so even if she found something she liked, it might not be the right price, so the search would continue. She did eventually find a dress, but the shoe hunt was not so successful - Linda is tall for a Chinese girl, and her feet are one size larger than most stores carry. She did find a pair she liked, in her size, but they were too expensive.

We had local Tianshui food for lunch - chao mien pien, which is made with flat pieces of torn up noodle in a mutton broth. It's not something you can get in Xi'an, and it tasted really good. For dinner that night we had something similar, but with chopped noodles instead of torn, and made by Linda's mum instead of a restaurant, and that was even better. After dinner we watched the opening ceremony for the Olympics, which I don't need to tell you about because you've seen it for yourself. If you haven't, find it on the internet and do so, it was great!

The next day I had more local food, for breakfast this time - something called guagua, and I have no idea what it is or what it's made of. It's some kind of crumbly stuff, mixed together with spicy sauce, and it's very good. People in Gansu province are just as fond of spicy food as the people in Shaanxi, everything here is spicy. For lunch we had the standard fare in China, dishes and rice made by Linda's mum, and then Linda and I went for a wander around town. She took me to Fuxi temple - Fuxi is an old Chinese god, who created the first people. I took a few photos here, but my camera died shortly afterwards, since - as I mentioned above - I left the spare battery in the charger at home, and the one in the camera was almost out.

This is the entrance to the temple grounds:



And this is the temple grounds. You can also see in this photo that Tianshui has a real sky, blue with clouds in it, not like Xi'an's grey blanket.



This was the cutest thing ever:



Linda and me! We didn't go inside the temple proper, which is why there are no photos of it. They charged an entrance fee for that, and I was happy with the grounds around it, they were pretty enough for my liking.



This is from when we left the temple and were just wandering around. This is what downtown Tianshui looks like, and that's Linda in the middle there.



Finally, another shot of downtown Tianshui. It's quite a pretty little city.



For dinner, we had leftover lunch, and then Linda's sister came over. She bought two big boxes of peaches with her, which immediately made her a good and worthy person in my eyes. Linda looks up to her big sister quite a bit, even now they're both adults (and even now that Linda is taller). She always goes on about how beautiful her sister is - which is true, but Linda is just as beautiful.

The next day we were going to walk to the hills around the city, and we were going to wake up at 5:30 to do so, to avoid the heat of the day. We didn't wake up then, surprisingly; in fact, we didn't leave the house that day until after eleven. Linda's sister and mum went to wedding receptions for their respective friends, and Linda and I had lunch. Afterwards, we went to help her sister choose her wedding photos. Her sister is getting married in October, and all the photos have already been taken, it was just a matter of choosing which ones to keep. This is a pretty long process as it turns out - first her sister chose all the ones she didn't want, then talked prices with the photo shop, since the agreed price is only for 50 or so photos, and there were many more than that left. This is the way it always work here in China - they show you all the beautiful photos, but the initial price only covers some of them, so you have to pay extra if you want them all. After that, they have to choose which photos will be poster-sized, which will be keyring-sized, and so on. The staff at the shop were openly surprised at Linda and me speaking English together; I think it was mostly that Linda was obviously able to understand and talk to a foreigner that impressed them.

Linda and I didn't stay for the whole thing - we went for a walk, and after much convincing I bought Linda a dress she'd taken a liking to the first day we went shopping - she didn't get it at the time because her mum liked another one better. But now, she has both!

Later on we had barbecue for dinner with her dad, then went to the bridge by the river. She met one of her old friends there, and they talked until nearly midnight. It was a nice spot there by the river, but my camera was dead by then; besides, it was night.

On the last day we went to a kindergarten that Linda's friend works at, and listened to a training session for the new teachers - which wasn't that interesting, since I didn't understand any of it. We went back home and Linda's mum made noodles for lunch - very much like fettucine. The afternoon was spent resting, and for the farewell meal we had wraps, which are very similar to the same food so common in Western countries, but much smaller, and you make them yourself. At the restaurant we had a big plate of pancakes (not the sweet kind) and three different dishes - one of meat, one of vegetables, and one of noodles. You get a pancake, put stuff in it, and roll it up. Like everything else I ate while I was there, it was absolutely delicious.

Then it was time to leave. We took a box of peaches with us, and caught a bus to the train station. We were there in plenty of time this time, which meant a long time standing in line before the train came, and then a lot of pushing and shoving to get on the train. Unlike the trip there, we didn't have a seat for the trip back, so it was 4 and a half hours of trying our best to make ourselves comfortable in the aisle. Needless to say, that part wasn't fun.

Tianshui translates as "sky water", and true to its name it rained just as we left.