Black/White and/or Orange Champagne Goodbye/Birthday Party

From amazement to adaption to normal and at times incredibly annoying, but overall an absolutely great experience!!

5242 pictures taken, 3585 cycling kilometers, ±800 times of eating out, 441 days away from "home", 275 hours of teaching, 135 days of traveling, 3 apartments, and zero bike crashes.
That is about what I did in China :-)

Last Saturday Shosh and I organized a party to "celebrate" our leaving and my birthday. Just like Sander and Susan did half a year ago we labeled the party: Black & White Champagne Party. However since Holland was playing later that night we decided that people could/should also wear orange. Besides our foreign friends I invited all my students and Shosh invited her six most favorite ones. And the turn up was great!!! I never expected so many of my students to be willing to leave their campus at 19.00 only being able to return at 7.30 the next morning. Between these times there are no buses between the campuses and taxis are way too expensive for my students.


As good Chinese people ought to my students showed up way too early... I told them to be here at 21.00 and the first ones arrived at 20.15! The foreigners did it exactly the opposite way: I told them the party would start at 20.30 and they started arriving at 21.00. Once again a beautiful example of cultural differences :-)
Besides talking, drinking and having a good time we took many, many pictures. And as usual they give a much better impression of the evening than anything I could write. See for yourself.



We planned to leave our place around midnight and go to The Hump to party on and watch the game. But it got a little later and Marc was just about to surprise us with one of his goodbye presents when it happened: the police arrived. Just before 0.30 they were at our door telling us to end the party... And we did, but not without making a little fun of them such as offering beer, inviting them in and so on (which we probably only got away with because we are foreigners a.k.a. laowai/waiguoren).

As everyone knows the Dutch team sucked that night and lost hopelessly from the Russians. I have to admit that I missed most of the game because I was sleeping on a couch in The Hump. At least I saw the Dutch goal and the extra time... after the game we said our goodbyes and arrived home at 7.10. And then it struck me... where is my camera?? The entire evening everyone had been using it to take pictures, but I couldn't remember taking it to The Hump. Texting my students and other people, asking them who knew where the thing was, but no one had a clue. Really pissed that I lost the camera and all the pictures I got out of bed after an hour and started cleaning. It wasn't till 15.00 that Marc texted me with the simple message: "do you know that I still have your camera here?" What a relieve!!!

Yesterday and today are again days of packing things, giving away things, exchanging Renminbi into US Dollars, picking up suits... but we are doing fine. Everything is going as planned and I am positive that tomorrow we can get in a taxi to the train station without worrying that we forgot something.

The next post will almost certainly be from the United States where we'll arrive in Tacoma some time on Thursday evening after a 27,5 hour train ride, another 2 hour train ride, 12 hours in a plane and 6 hours in a bus ;-)

China... Goodbye!!!
Birthday Boy Ruud

Just one more week...

Busy, busy, busy...

Since we are leaving in a week, a lot of things need to be arranged such as money transfers, shipping boxes home, giving stuff to friends and so on. But most of all we need to say goodbye to everyone. So we already had a bunch of dinners with Shoshannah's students and of course those "parties" involve going to KTV as well...

Last weekend we also celebrates Sandhya's birthday and that was really fun! Marc arranged a couple of tricycles to drive us around the northern part of Kunming. But of course we took control and ordered the drivers to go sit in the back and we cycled a.k.a. raced against each other... add a couple of boxes of beer and a megaphone to this and the party is complete. Later that night we were invited to Kundu but only stayed very short since we were both exhausted.


Why exhausted..? Simple! Besides all the stuff we have to do before we leave we also have to watch Holland on their way to become European Champion!!! No problem you would think, but don't forget about the time difference! All games Holland played started here at 2.45 at night... Not the best time to watch football matches haha! But still great to see the Dutchies kick those Italians, French and Romanian asses!!!
Now what? Well, I am grading the final exams of my students and packing more things. We also had a bunch of suits made, so we needed to go and try them on. And we are preparing for our big "Black & White (& Orange) Champagne Party 2nd Edition" this Saturday. Besides all of our foreign friends Shos invited her favorite students and I just invited all of my students (most of them are in the picture below. And believe it or not, I am not standing on my toes or anything else. The average Chinese just isn't very tall...).
We don't know how many will actually show up but we are preparing for the "worst"! First drinks and snacks at our place and then we head out towards a bar to drink more and watch the quarter final of the Euro Cup!!! Hup Holland Hup!!!
For now, that is it. I have to get back to actually doing things so we can leave China next week without freaking out about last minute sh*t we forgot ;-)

Zaijian,
Ruud laowai

Cycling & Olympic Torch

The Beauty and the Beast

This entire post will be about China. Not about what I do in China, but more about what I think of China... I'll start with something that you can see (quite regularly) at Chinese restaurants: drunk people. It seems that Chinese do not have a very high alcohol tolerance and this manifests itself in drunk people. Their favorite drink, baijiu ("white alcohol"), is pretty heavy and scenes like the one below are what you get when you had a cup or two too many... (ps: this is at seven in the afternoon!)

Then the beauty of China or more specifically Yunnan Province. Last Sunday I went cycling with a group of Chinese people and they took me to one of the most beautiful parts of Yunnan I have ever seen. And we did not even have to take a bus to go there since it is just north-west of Kunming. It was a trip of almost 140km with some killer mountains in it, but worth every cent of pain! I could talk on about it but just look at the pictures and see for yourselves!


And then the beast...
The Olympic Torch Relay of June 09, 2008 in Kunming.

Everyone was excited about seeing the torch and was planning on standing somewhere along the route that would lead through the entire city. Mind you, I am not just talking about foreigners, but in particular the Chinese were extremely looking forward to the event. T-shirts, hats, flags, stickers and so on were being sold in the past days (on the streets of course, even though the government warned that they would be very strict against the sale of illegal Beijing Olympics merchandise... haha).

But this morning it happened... text messages, phone calls... the route had been changed yesterday... The entire innercity had been cut out of the route and now it was going from the World Expo Gardens to the Minorities Village. Not in a straight line but over the third (yes, third!!!) ring road of Kunming. Stressssssssss, because where should we go to watch it..? Of course Dianchi Lu, the only street that seemed to be somewhat accessible. Getting there was horrible because the nice Kunming government decided to cancel all public buses going in that direction and taxis and other vehicles were stopped 5km from where you actually wanted to be. And then you end up at a square like the one below together with 200.000 other Chinese...


Still no worries because we can just walk down the street and go see the torch, right..? NOT!!! All streets were closed, even for pedestrians. People rushing forward, talking to police officers, coming back, moving in different directions... nobody knew where to go. We decided to try to walk around, but no way that you could get anywhere near the official route. After about 2 hours we found a big TV screen and decided to watch the remainder of the relay on it together with a bunch of Chinese "Olympic fans".

And this was the moment I decided that I really despise everything that has to do with Chinese politics. As we could see on the TV along the route people were lined up maybe three rows thick (and only on one side of the street that is!). And along the last stretch the only onlookers were police officers!!! Just on the streets we walked there were enough people to make the lines 5x as thick! I couldn't help but to feel sorry for all those poor people that were so excited about the relay and all they could see were other dressed up, disappointed Chinese... They never stood a chance!

Conclusion: The entire torch relay was a typical example of how China turns the PEOPLE'S GAMES into a private, retarded parade that is IMPOSSIBLE for REGULAR PEOPLE to experience!

CHINA (KUNMING)... SHAME ON YOU!!!

Our high note of the entire farce: It was great seeing the enthousiasm of the people!!! Oh yeah and we got to see the buses with all the torch bearers in them drive by... ;-)

Now on to the more important things in life: EURO 2008!!! Tonight the first Dutch game and I am excited about it! Too bad that 20.45 European time means 02.45 in China... Not the best time to watch live games especially if you have to work the next day at 8.30! But I'll pull an all-nighter and if (or better: when) we beat those Italians, I'll teach in my orange suit tomorrow :-)

Hup Holland Hup!!!
De Chinese Oranjeleeuw

The end is near...

Three more weeks before China is "history"

So what does that mean for Shos and me? Well, it means that we've been thinking hard about what to take with us, what to send back and what to donate to friends here in Kunming. We both can take two big bags and we already filled a package of 20kg to send home. We also already gave away a bunch of our stuff and even though the apartment is getting emptier, there still is a lot of stuff lying around.
Last week I received an urgent e-mail from Susan (who was here last semester together with Sander). Supposedly they are about to graduate but were missing some pictures of a certain part of Kunming (they are doing landscape architecture...). Of course this wasn't an area close to where we live but in the southern part of Kunming. And the day we went to take the pictures Shos discovered just how big Kunming is. Cycling there, taking pictures at various locations and cycling back took five hours and a total of over 70km... But it was a nice, although rough, ride and we saw a beautiful part of Kunming.


Today I am going to Wolfgang to give him some more computer lessons and install Internet in his new apartment. After that Shos and I are going to the wholesale market to shop for some souvenirs and see if we can have some clothing made.

Knowing that you'll leave Kunming so soon is kind of a strange experience. Packing, only having to teach for two more times, preparing to say goodbye to some very good friends. But on the other side we're also very excited since new adventures lie ahead of us!

Cheers,
Ruudje

Flying over Yunnan

Paragliding from a mountain in Anning

Saturday it finally happened: we went paragliding! The original plan was to do it last week on Shos's birthday, but due to bad weather conditions it didn't happen. Since last Tuesday, however, the weather in Kunming is great again! So we (Shos, Stephanie, Marc and me) planned to go on Saturday. We met at 7.30 in the morning (which is hard if you went out until 5.00...) with the other flyers and the instructor. An hour and a half later we arrived on top of a 2500 meter high mountain next to the town of Anning. The sun was burning down on us and there wasn't a single tree or other shady spot in sight...

We decided that Marc should go first and so it happened. But unfortunately things did not go exactly as planned... the idea was to land back on the mountain, but the instructor was having difficulties finding a good thermal (hot air that you need to go up) so instead of landing at the top they landed in the valley. Not a big deal, but now we had to wait for almost three hours for the Jeep to go down, pick them up and drive back up again... not fun when the sun is trying to melt you and there's no hiding from it!

After two more flights (Dennis and Stephanie) it was Shoshannah's turn. Buckled up and excited she was ready to "fly" for the first time in her life. And she got lucky, right after take off the "wing" (as that paragliding thing is called) caught a big thermal and they went up and up and up... after a couple of minutes they reached almost 3200 meters and as we heard from her afterwards it was really amazing to experience the difference in altitude and layers of warm and cold air. Approx. 30 minutes she was back on the mountain and it was my turn.

For me it too would be the first time to do anything like this. Unfortunately I have never done bungyjumping, parasailing, kitesurfing or any of those other exciting things... But now it was going to happen. After a failed take-off, the wing caught a bad wind and dragged us back on our asses instead of lifting us up, we succeeded in becoming airborne!!!


During my flight the instructor (Mike) had the same problem as during Marc's flight, he couldn't find a thermal to bring us back up again. The cool part was that he decided to fly away from the mountain and look for some good air on the highland. And we found a good air stream! Nothing big, but strong enough to take us back to 2600 meters so we could land on the mountain. Because of all this searching my flight lasted 40 minutes which was quite nice!

Overall a great day, except for the major face burn Shos and I have now... haha! We look like a couple of tomatoes! The flight including transportation costs only 380 kuai per person (about €35,-) which is almost for free compared to what you pay in Western countries. Where Mike works in Canada people pay 150,- Canadian dollars for a 20 minute flight and each additional 5 minutes is another 20 dollars! So we got a great day for a great price!

Now back to normal life with more preparations for the roadtrip, mailing parcels home, prepping classes and putting lotion on our faces ;-)

Tis hier fantastisch!
Ruud Laoshi

Shoshannah's Birthday

Japanese hotsprings in Anning!!!

Yesterday was Shoshannah's (and my dad's) birthday. The original plan was to go paragliding, but unfortunately the weather in Kunming has been somewhat bad lately. So no paragliding, but we did go to the hotsprings in Anning. And as usual it was great!! Doing absolutely nothing but soaking in hot water, having little fish eat your dead skin, eating birthday cake, getting a scrub and a massage and ending the day back in Kunming with pizza.


We also booked our flight back to Europe. On August 5th we'll fly from New York to Dublin with Air Lingus. From there we probably fly to Dusseldorf, but we haven't booked this last part of the trip yet. Maybe we decide that we want to spend a couple of days in Dublin or fly to Paris instead... time will tell!

Hopefully there will be a good day soon to go paragliding!!!

Groetjes uit Kunming!
Ruudje