Rabbit, rabbit.
This morning, I had this extremely boring dream where I was back in Seattle and doing the stuff I usually did everyday (like count the airplanes flying overhead yuk yuk). When I woke up, and realized it was just a dream, I wasn’t too happy. Especially considering it was someone knocking at my door that woke me from my wistful reverie. Reed was there, talking about his awesome dream involving murder, bullet dodging, espionage, and snipers.
I wish my dreams were that cool.
These past few days have been hot as a proverbial mutha in an oven. It’s not “hot” hot but more “humid-as-hell” hot, which makes it that much less bearable. Walking around feels like swimming, and biking feels like… biking in a swimming pool full of water.
At least I’m keeping up-to-date on all the latest crazy American hit movies that are making there way into my DVD player thanks to crazy foos in theaters with video cameras. Thanks, whoever you are, for keeping me from ending this humid misery here by impaling my eye with an ice pick!
As you can probably tell, I’m just about ready to go home. Home, where people all speak the same language. Home, where I can get decent food. Home, where I can sit down when I move my bowels.
If you don’t know, squatters are the form of toilet in use here. It consists basically of a porcelain hole in the ground where you do your business. Luckily, our dorm rooms have good ol’ sit down toilets, but the majority of the rest of the country does not. The Man tries to tell me it’s more sanitary than sit down toilets. Well The Man has never tried using one of these things! It’s an art form to maneuver your pants/shorts around in such a way as to not get fecal matter in em.
We spent last weekend at some peasents homes close to the Great Wall, which we also climbed. I’m guessing we stayed there in order to give us some sort of inkling as to what real peasent life is like in China. Judging from that experiance, I’d say peasents have cell phones, nice gardens, TV’s, and even DVD players (These weren’t exactly “poor” peasents). A few of the people in the village worked in Beijing, and spent their weekends a 3-hour drive away, which could explain the noticable amount of material goods. But this isn’t to say that everything was clean and nice and dandy either. Chalk it up us a character building cultural learning experience, I suppose.
The Great Wall (at Simatai) was, well, great. Great and steep and difficult to climb. Up near the top were some drink sellers, and not-so-surprisingly, shafted us weary tourists with near-American prices on drinks. Of course, we still payed for them. The seller guy had a small enclave where he slept. Apparently, he lived up there, selling drinks, and only going back down to restock his inventory. On our way down, we were so tired that we payed rip-off prices for a lift down in mini gondolas. They don’t charge you to go up, but they’ll charge you to go back down, I suppose.
I’m too lazy/bored/stupid to think of anything else. Maybe I’ll upload some pictures next time.
-f.w.
