Adventures in Kunming and Beyond

Well, the semester that was supposed to be the “easy” downward spiral has more or less spiraled out of control instead! First off, Spring Festival was amazing. It was great to see my family and Ryan, Beijing was freezing and Thailand was awesome! The day I left for the break, I came back to my apartment to find that the water pipes in the apartment above me had broken and my apartment had been turned into a swimming pool. Thankfully my family was here, so we cleaned it up as best we could and still made our flight to Beijing that afternoon. But, the apartment was a disaster, and although the Foreign Affairs Office promised to check the pipes and open the windows, I came back a month later to find that…my water heater had leaked the whole time AND my bedroom was in a state of mold infestation! Unreal. So much for checking the apartment. So that started off the semester on a very negative note. Mold doesn’t seem to be a huge issue here, or the fact that it will spread and make people sick. Anyway, it took a little more than a month, but I finally found the right combination of cleaning supplies to rid the apartment of most of it. That meant a month sleeping on the couch. And my closets had to be taken out, so I live out of boxes now (I knew those leftover DHL ones would come in handy, Ryan!). Anyway, so after that start, there were only MORE random events to come. Here are some of the highlights:

About two weeks after I got back, I was hit by a city bus. Random. Anyway, it hit my head, back and foot, so I got to experience Chinese healthcare firsthand. Not good. If I didn’t already want to die, staying at the hospital for a prolonged period of time would have killed me anyway. Needless to say, I’ve spent the last few months hoping I never need medical attention the rest of the time I’m in China! No head injuries (we only know this because I spent that night at Havvah’s and she woke me up every two hours to make sure I didn’t have a concussion), and according to the X-ray of my foot (for which they X-rayed the WRONG side of my foot), it was ok. Our best guess (from qualified English teachers’ non-medical perspectives) is that it was a fracture. It was pretty messed up for a while, but not much to be done, I guess. But it’s a great story to tell at parties, right? : )

I got nailed with six writing classes this semester and two speaking, all for the English Department. WOW. That many writing classes make it impossible to ever get caught up. Of course, most of my students loathe the fact that they have to take writing, as if it were my decision to make them! Oh well. We’re coping the best we can, but not without lots of power struggles. Let’s just say that the sophomores have been putting up quite a fight. Character building, right?

Of course, in general, 2008 has been wild for China as a whole. All of the Olympic hooplah is crazy. Being in Yunnan province makes things even more intense since we border Tibet and Sichuan province, in addition to Burma. Scary. It has definitely been an interesting year to be here with everything going on politically and environmentally.

I have managed to squeeze in some traveling, even though I teach everyday, so taking long weekend trips requires trying to get time off. Our school took us on a weekend trip to Wuding in April. It was pretty, but the altitude on Lion Mountain killed me! Two weekends later Havvah and I went to Lijiang. The altitude wasn’t very friendly there, either, but not as bad as Wuding. My overall impression of Lijiang is that it’s like Chinese Disneyland—touristy, commercialized and not somewhere I’d need to visit again. It was really pretty, but I preferred Dali. Finally, I just got back from Vietnam about two weeks ago. A friend from high school was vacationing there, so I finagled the time off (at the eleventh hour!) and made it to Hanoi alone via night train, buses and border crossings. Once I made it there, we had a blast! We spent a few days in Hanoi and then headed to Halong Bay for a three day boat trip. It was a much-needed break from the semester.

So, I’ve been very busy with everything so far this semester. We just finished midterms last week, so the end-of-school feeling has hit. In typical China fashion, I have no idea when I’ll finally be finished with my finals, but still starting to think about coming home, probably sometime in August.