Burkina Faso

2008-04-27T15:31:00.003Z

I just got back from my less-than-24-hour trip to Bobo yesterday to see my friend Caleb. So here's the story... He's a pilot for Missionary Aviation Fellowship and is based in Bamako, Mali (it borders the western part of Burkina Faso). He emailed me back in February telling me that he arrived in Mali, but that flights to Burkina Faso were extremely rare... so I figured/accepted that I wouldn't see him while I was here. But then last week, he emailed me to tell me that they had a flight to Ouagadougou and that he could stay for a night or two here to hang out. But when I got back this past Thursday, he told me that the trip was cancelled and that he was going to Bobo instead (the second largest city in Burkina Faso). The next morning, at 6:45 am, out of nowhere, I got a phone call from a pastor in Bobo and he asked me to go to Bobo that weekend...So, I felt like it was sign that God really wanted me to go as well... so the next morning, I took a 5 hr bus to go see him... and I'm so glad that I did. It was great to just catch up with him and talk. It was really encouraging to hear what's been going on in his life for the past year, and I shared with him my experiences being here for the past year.

This is the hotel we stayed at!

2008-04-25T16:28:00.008Z

Got back from my short 4 day trip on Thursday. The purpose of the trip was to visit a few of the different projects that SIM runs in the eastern/southeastern part of the country.

For the first two days, we visited three different cereal bank projects in three different villages. Our first stop was to Botou, about 7km away from the Niger border. The first picture is of our meeting with the people on the committee for the project (director, secretary, treasurer, etc.). The second picture is of the bed that I slept in. It's been really hot here - so hot that the Africans have been complaining more than I have! During the day it gets to be about 42-44 degrees Celsius. Everything is hot - chairs are hot, the water is hot... you're just always sweating. It's alright though because I think (I hope) that the rainy season is going to come soon.

This is a picture of the second village we visited - can't remember how to spell the name. The meeting didn't go well at all because the people here are doing a really bad job in managing the project. Probably going to try to find new people to run it in the future.

This is in Mahadaga. SIM has two really great projects here. The first is the Handicapped Centre, which helps kids with mental and physical handicaps. Francoise Pedeau is the director (first picture). She's an amazing person - there's about 130 kids in the centre and she knows every single one of them and their story of how they got there. She works 70 hour weeks and you can tell that she really cares about the children.

So, some of the children who are in the project are blind. The Center teaches these children how to read braille (second picture) and how to do mathematics (third picture). Plus, there is also a school at the Center for children who are deaf or have other physical and mental problems (fourth picture).

The project has a few ways of generating some income to help fund the project. They sell dried mangoes (first two pics), carve wood (3rd), make handbags, embroider, sew, etc. The kids all learn how to do some of these things as well (sewing, how to carve wood...)

This is David, a fellow short-termer who is from Switzerland. He came last September and is staying for a year. He's an orthopedist and helps to make fake limbs/motorized wheelchairs/leg braces for the kids. Pretty neat job...

Finally, our last visit was to a hospital that SIM runs in the village. It's a pretty big hospital but it's in need of a lot of financial help. They have a maternity ward, a center for malnourished children, a lab, an opthalmology clinic, etc...

So overall it was a great trip. The car ride was really long but I didn't mind it since it was air-conditioned. I really enjoyed staying in the villages - it's such a change from being in the Capital city. Things are so much more relaxed. We would have a meeting, then would just sit around, then eat, then sit around and talk, then eat some more... it was a nice change. Plus, the people were a lot nicer in the villages than in Ouagadougou. I still find that most of the people in Ouaga don't treat foreigners with a lot of respect, so I appreciated how the villagers kept trying to make sure we were fed and comfortable.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I'll be going to Bobo-Dioulasso until Sunday. A friend of mine from high school (Caleb) is working in Mali as a pilot and will be flying into there, so I'm going to take the 5 hour bus ride to meet him.

2008-04-19T00:31:00.009Z

Last Thursday, I helped run an all-nighter for the youth group's 30 hour famine with Ben (my roommate). Most in the group are missionary kids who go to the International School of Ouagadougou. Ben helps with the youth group every week, but I don't - I usually only go when they need help running special events. Soo... the all-nighter ran from 7pm Thursday until 7am Friday... so we had a 12 hour program planned for them. We played Cranium, had a dance competition, watched movies, etc. It was a really successful event because the youth group managed to raise more than $5,000. All of the money will be used to buy grain to distribute to the underprivileged in Ouagadougou.

I think about 40-45 kids were there... so it was a pretty exhausting night. These are pics 30 min before they broke the fast...

And this is the food that they broke the fast with...

From Monday-Thursday this week I'll be going to visit some village projects in the far eastern part of the country. It's gonna be a hot 4 days.........

2008-04-03T09:24:00.006Z

Last weekend, one of the local workers for SIM got married. It's a very elaborate procedure here. The couple had to get officially married at the city hall, then went to church for another 3 hour ceremony. at sibidi's wedding, there were about 300+ people! after that, they have a reception (basic food, mostly just providing drinks for everyone attending the wedding). after the reception, i was told that Adele had to go back to her family's home and beg them to leave (it's just a customary thing that they do). but it sounded pretty unpleasant because they were saying things to make her cry, like "you'll miss us so much when you leave". Sibidi had to do the same thing as well.

Here are some pictures that I got from our Spiritual Life Conference back in January. The first picture is of all the SIM missionaries in Burkina Faso. The second picture is of everyone who works in Ouagadougou.

2008-03-14T16:19:00.001Z

I started to volunteer once a week at a children’s program run by an organization called Compassion. Compassion runs a sponsorship program for the children, and each child in the program comes to this one-day camp/kid’s club every Thursday. It’s run at a youth centre close to my house (it’s actually the same program that Ben and I were at in December giving candies to). One of my friends in my English class is one of the leaders and he invited me a few weeks ago to come help.

So far it’s been great. There are 220 kids in the program, and a lot of them are orphans or come from tough situations. In this program, the kids play games, make crafts, take classes about hygiene, get help with their school work, etc… plus, they get a good breakfast and lunch.
The kids are really funny. The program is run by nationals, so I’m the only white person there. The first day I was there, we started off the day by playing games in the field. Literally, there were kids that just stood there and stared at me. By the time we got to the crafts though, they started to warm up to me. They started asking me a ton of questions and saying things like, “How come your skin is different from ours? I want white skin because all white people are rich”, “Is it true that all the white kids in school get their own desk? We have 6 kids sharing the same desk at our school”, “How come your hair is different from ours?” I just laughed. I know that I previously blogged about how there’s a gap between Africans and foreigners, but the way these kids were so blunt about it, I just couldn’t help but smile.

I haven’t taken any pictures in a while. I’ll bring my camera to Compassion next week to take some pictures.

2008-02-16T12:33:00.007Z

Last weekend, I wanted to take another look at Ouaga 2000, the district of Ouagadougou where many embassy workers and people high in the government live. Here’s some pictures that I took:

It’s incredible, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen houses like these, even in Toronto. It’s hard to imagine that people live at this scale of luxury when so many others around the city can’t even afford to buy a box of matches to cook their meals with.

Lately, I’ve really been thinking a lot about the huge gap between the rich and the poor. If you’re white (that includes anyone who is not African), people know that you have money. And for the most part, it’s true. Embassy workers, businessmen, teachers at the international school, missionaries, etc. in no way live meager lives. Think about this. During my last English class, we had a discussion on the subject of health care. One of my friends is in his third year at the University of Ouagadougou studying to become a doctor. He told us that doctors make 100,000 CFA (just a bit over $200 CAN) per month. And that’s the salary for doctors – people near the top of the food chain. Imagine studying medicine for 7 years and getting paid $2,400 per year – actually, less, when you deduct taxes.

So this “gap” between the Western world and the national people is still having a big effect on my life here. People still see me as a dollar sign, and that makes it really tough to make friendships, to know who your real friends are, and to try to integrate into the Burkinabe culture. For example, just yesterday morning, I was walking to go buy a bun from the bakery for breakfast. On the way there, two kids, I’d guess around 15-16 years old, came up to me and said “Hey, champion, I’m a tour guide and if you ever need to go anywhere, just let me know”. I just nodded and told them okay... After I bought my bun, I started to walk back to the office… and, as I anticipated, the two kids just started to follow me and whisper “can you give me 100 cfa to eat, it’s not a lot to you, or just 25 cfa…” over and over again. I just said no, and kept walking. After a while, one of the guys started to yell “that’s not nice, you have money and you shouldn’t just ignore us”. I just shook my head in disbelief and kept walking. Did I have the money? Of course, what they were asking for was equivalent to 25 cents and 5 cents… but if I did give it to them, it would have just perpetuated the stereotype of rich white people and in reality, giving them charity money wasn’t going to help them in any lasting way. A lot of people here are still really great – but there are definitely some sour grapes in the bowl...

The reason why I really enjoy teaching English here is because I believe it’s a great skill that opens up so many more opportunities for the people here. It makes me think of Roxane, a girl who was in my English class last term. After studying English for a few years and doing her TOEFL tests, she got a scholarship to study in the US in January. She’s now at Southern Illinois studying English until her proficiency gets up to the level for her to begin studying psychology. I think that’s just amazing, and in a way I think it shows that investing in developing people will eventually, a long way down the road, help develop a country.

2008-02-07T15:51:00.000Z

Wow it's been a while since my last post - sorry about that. Christmas at home was great...and because it was so great to spend time with family and friends, it took a little while for me to get readjusted back to life here in Burkina Faso. But now I'm back in the swing of things.

This term, I decided not to teach in the ESL program. It's a great program - really well organized and there's more students interested than we can accomodate - but I just found that I really didn't like teaching English grammar. The students would always ask questions that I didn't know the answer to - like, "why do you say two hundred instead of two hundreds?"

So instead, on Monday nights, a group of us get together (mostly those from my old class) to practice their English conversational skills through reading English newspaper articles, watching English movies, and doing Bible studies. So far the discussions have been great. Like last class, Lassane (a professor at the University of Ouagadougou) started to ask questions on predestination vs free will. Ya, it was tough, but we got through it. So I've found that this has been a really great way to build relationships with people and to keep in contact with my old class.

Other than that, it's starting to get hot again =/ The hot season starts in March and lasts until I leave...

2007-12-16T13:08:00.000Z

For the past couple of days, Ben (dressed up as Santa Clause) and I have been going around to different places around the city to hand out candy to kids.

Compassion runs a program at a youth center near our house for more than 200 kids every Thursday. We came at the end of the program, and the kids just went crazy.

All throughout the city, there are kids who beg on the streets. The ones who are sent to do this by Isl. leaders collect money/food in red tomato paste cans. There are a few that hang out at this one corner in our neighbourhood, so we stopped here as well.

The day after, we went to a primary school where our friend Magdalena teaches. These kids were great. They kept singing thank-you songs the whole time we were there. Something interesting that I noticed was that some of the kids were chewing through the wrappers of the candies (we obviously stopped them when we saw what was happening). I'm still not sure if it's because they don't usually get much candy or if it's just because their parents always unwrapped it for them. but wow, just imagine a childhood without candy!

2007-12-10T23:56:00.000Z

This past weekend, I went to Nazinga National Park with a few other short-termers - Ben, Magdalena and Hannah (as seen in the picture below) - along with a small mission's team from New Zealand. The Nazinga reserve is one of the best places in Burkina Faso to see wild animals like elephants, antelope, baboons, hyenas, crocodiles, etc...

We hired a chauffer to take us to the reserve... and UNsurprisingly, we had a few car troubles. On our way there, about an hour into our trip, we noticed smoke coming out of the steering column (which is never a really good sign)... so we pulled over and our driver worked his magic and soon we were back on the road. The next morning, the battery of our SUV died... so, reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine, we had to push the car to get it moving, start the car, and then jump in.

When we got there on Saturday, we went on a tour of the park around dusk to try to spot some animals. Ben and I rode on the back of the SUV... which was alright, except for the fact that we got incredibly, incredibly dirty from all the dust that our SUV left behind...

We took another tour at dawn the next day and we saw a lot of elephants, baboons, antelopes, deer-type of animals, tons of birds, etc... but the most amazing sight was right by our camp. As we were coming back that morning, herds of elephant were making their way through our camp towards the water hole that was nearby. We were literally 10m away from them! It was amazing!

2007-12-06T23:58:00.000Z

On Thursday, we had a big party for all of these ESL courses to celebrate the end of the winter term. The term went great and I'm probably going to help out again next year. Here, you can see my entire class holding up their certificates.

Today, we had a big Christmas party for all of the SIM missionaries and staff in Ouagadougou. Ben, my roommate, loves Christmas... so a few weeks ago, we planned on surprising everyone at the party by inviting Santa Clause :P As you can see, the costume was modeled after the Grinch (from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas). It was awesome - he handed out candies to the kids and everyone just loved it. What we're planning to do this week is to go all over the community on my motorbike and hand out candies to all the kids on the streets (with him in his Père Noël suit).

2007-11-26T22:35:00.000Z

Finally! It took 7 weeks, but the Birkenstocks that I ordered from eBay finally arrived in Burkina Faso! Yeah, 7 weeks may sound like a long time, but ... after the 6th week, I was seriously doubting that I would ever see them - so I was just glad that they arrived. My Nike sandals were already worn out after my first month, so I thought these would be a worthwhile investment since I wear sandals every day... and at $65 CAN I think they were almost a steal (considering that they were shipped to West Africa).

2007-11-23T10:55:00.001Z

Yesterday I was invited to celebrate American Thanksgiving with a bunch of other missionaries. Americans seem to take their Thanksgiving a lot more seriously than we Canadians do, which means that I ate amazingly well (easily the best meal I’ve had in 3 months). We had roasted chicken (turkeys cost about $60 here), stuffing, apricot salad, mashed potatoes, sweet carrots, a big vegetable platter… and for dessert, pecan pie and pumpkin pie. Mmmm. Again, the SIM family is really great in BF and that just makes things that much easier here.

2007-11-15T23:31:00.001Z

I just uploaded the second crocodile video onto Google Video and updated the link on that blog post.

2007-11-15T22:34:00.000Z

Last weekend I bought a used motto, or "mobilette", from SIM for about $200 CAN. It's got 110cc, 4 gears, and... it's fun to ride. It's good to have because now I can get around the city and go wherever I want to, and I won't have to depend on other people for rides.

2007-11-11T02:05:00.000Z

We had a really great time in Togo. The MK's were really fun and the other SIM missionaries are really great as well. Here are some pics. The first is a group shot of everyone at the conference, and the second one is a shot of Dave and I at the top of a mountain that we hiked.

Tomorrow I'm leaving to go to a village called Piela to visit a few of SIM's main projects in Burkina such as the widows project, the milk for the malnourished project, and one of SIM's main health centres.

2007-11-01T23:56:00.001Z

Going to Togo tomorrow to run some children's programs for SIM Togo-Benin's Spiritual Life Conference (a retreat for all the SIM missionaries in Togo and Benin).

2007-10-31T21:14:00.000Z

Click here to see the chicken run away from the hungry crocodiles.

Click here to see me feed the chicken to one of the crocodiles.

2007-10-31T20:22:00.000Z

I hope this isn't too hard to believe - there's a place about an hour away from Ouaga where you can get your picture taken sitting on a crocodile. Yep, This Is Africa. Obviously, when I was given the opportunity today, I couldn't pass it up.

So this afternoon, Robyn (a SIM missionary who is translating the New Testament into Fulfulde), Ben Steel (my roommate), Dave and I went to Bazoule, a village about an hour away from Ouaga, to get our pics taken with the crocs. The way it works is like this - you have to buy chickens to lure the crocs out of the water (you can see Dave holding the two chickens by their feet)... after that, you sit on it, take your picture, and then you feed the croc the chicken as its "reward". We ended up buying two chickens for 2000 CFA (~$4) and admission was 1000 CFA (~$2) each.

To lure the crocs out of the water, the guide would either throw the chicken on the ground and then quickly snatch them up when they came closer, or he would put the chicken on a stick and dangle it in front of the crocs. As you can see in the panoramic picture, it worked! We had about 10 crocs about 5 metres in front of us within 15-20 minutes! Click to enlarge the pics.

Alright, so here's the crowning moment....................................

I'll post some really amazing videos of our trip very soon.

2007-10-24T16:30:00.000Z

Recently, work has really started to pick up... which is good because I really want to be able to contribute something to the work that is being done here. I'm in the office from 7:30-12:30 and 3-5:30 working on reporting for projects to the international SIM office in the US.

Every Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6:30-8pm, I teach an advanced ESL class. At first, I was hesitant to do it because I really don't consider myself to be a good teacher (at anything, even basketball!) - I just know that I don't have that gift. But I decided to do it because I wanted to make the most of my time here in Burkina, and plus, I figured that this would be a great way to build relationships with people outside of the missionary community. During my first couple of classes, I used to get pretty nervous because I didn't know if the material I was teaching was really any good. But now, I really look forward to "English for Everyone"... not so much the teaching English part, but to the discussions that we have in class about our families, current events in the country and around the world, the Bible... At the end of every class, we do a 20 min Bible study. That's probably my favourite part of the class because everyone really gets into the discussion - they ask tons of questions and everyone is very comfortable sharing their thoughts (for the last couple of classes, we've gone overtime 20 mins!). I think that this is definitely one of the most meaningful things that I'm doing here.

Here's a picture of my class. From left to right - Edouard, Sambare, Roxane, Dieudonner and Lassan. Two other students, Alvine and Tiemoko, are missing. The classroom isn't actually that small, we just had to bunch together for the picture.

2007-10-15T22:04:00.000Z

I got some more pictures of my trip in early September to Djibo. The first two pictures are from the ride up to Djibo. The rainy season was just ending, but the roads were still flooded in a few places. Luckily, we were in a truck so we didn't have any problems.

We stopped by this village on our way up. I think I finally figured out why the ponds up there were like this. The main detergent that people use for cleaning clothes is called Omo, and it contains lots of phosphates... perfect for algal blooms. and yes, that is a sandal stuck to the top of the pond.

These pictures were taken from another village close to Djibo. Something I remember vividly was that when we first got there, the people from the village were very nice and hospitable. They put out mats for us under the shade and gave us water to drink....except the water was very murky. Galen just told us to press our lips very hard on the cups and pretend to take a few gulps. I heard it was called the Friendship Drink, also known to my director as instant diarrhea :P We sat there for about half an hour to an hour, and it seemed like the whole village just stopped what they were doing and just stared at us the whole time. I'm not really sure, it might have been their way of being polite... or maybe they just wanted to stare at the white people :)

Last picture. A lady invited us into her hut to sit and talk. After 30-45 min, it started to get really hot in there... so hot that sweat was dripping off my chin and forearms. A few of us had to leave, and I went to go sit in the truck. Soon, a couple kids came up and started to point and laugh at something in the distance. For the longest time, I couldn't figure out what they were so amused at. Finally, I figured out that they were just laughing at their reflections in the side mirror of the truck. That was a big reminder of how little these people have, as well as how much we take for granted at home.

2007-10-01T21:03:00.001Z

Here are some pictures of my neighbourhood. As you already know, Burkina Faso is a really poor country. All of residential roads and "side streets" are dirt roads, with the exception of a few newly-built paved main roads (imagine these as the equivalent of a highway in Canada). The neighbourhood I live in is pretty rustic. Most houses look like the few that you can see in the pictures - small brick buildings surrounded by a low fences... some have electricity, some don't. So it goes without saying, my house stands out a lot... and everyone in my neighbourhood knows where the chinese guy lives.

For a long time I felt like my house stuck out like a sore thumb, until I visited a district called Ouaga 2000. It's basically a suburb of Ouagadougou that is being heavily developed for residential purposes... But the houses are gigantic mansions - they're bigger than any house I've ever seen, two to three times bigger than any house on The Bridle Path at Bayview+Lawrence. It's CRAZY. I'll have to take pictures next time, because I just can't describe it in words. And it's not just 5 or 10 houses, it's an entire district full of these houses. The oddest part is that you come out of a very poor area of the city, and then all of a sudden you're hit with all of these mansions. So from what I've come to understand, the rich here are very rich. And if you're wondering whether they care about the rest of the country, well I haven't found that answer yet. I know that many rich people in the country are muslims, and they donate a lot for the development of the country... so maybe. I'm going to keep looking into this.

A view from outside my gate. The building on the left with the roof is like a convenience store that sells very random but useful things (there are many of these types of stores around the city).

This is the street I live on.

This is my house from the outside.

2007-09-29T17:59:00.000Z

A couple days ago, Sibidi asked me if I wanted to go to a wedding this weekend. I had no idea who the bride and groom were, but he said that it was OK because at Burkinabe weddings, anyone who's invited can invite anyone else. So this morning, I went to the church service for the wedding. I'd guess that there were probably about 250 people there. Dave and I didn't stay for the whole thing though. The electricity was out in the church, so the fans weren't working... and as you can imagine, with that many people in a room, it can get HOT. It was about 35 degrees outside, so I'm guessing it was about 40 C inside. And we had been waiting there for ~45 min for the service to start because the bride and groom were running a bit late. Later, I found out that the service went on for another ~2 hours after we left, so I'm kind of glad that we left when we did. If I had known the couple getting married, I would have stayed. I hope they don't get offended though.

Here's a picture I took of the SIM Guesthouse. On the left is the SIM Office, and on the right is the guesthouse.

2007-09-15T09:37:00.001Z

I've been fortunate to meet other short-termers here who are around my age. For the past three or four weekends, Dave, an American who just graduated from college, has been staying over at my place. He works at a place called the Village of Hope, a project designed for orphans and children who are in difficult situations. It's basically a little village (it's not really a village, they just call it one) that has a school, dorms, a health clinic, etc., which was started by a pastor of a church 4-5 years ago. It's a really great place and there's a big need for it. Since Dave works alone, it's understandable why he'd want to come into the city every weekend... and we get along really well. Another girl we hung out with a lot is Hannah, a young teacher from Australia. But last week, she left Ouagadougou to begin home-schooling the Ottosson's children in Fada N'gourma. She's incredibly nice and loves to cook and bake... which has been great for Dave and I :P

This is a picture of Dave, Sibidi, and I at a restaurant. Sibidi is 33 and he works in SIM office with me. We usually eat out a lot together, since he lives by himself right now and doesn't like to cook.

Culture

2007-09-12T19:32:00.000Z

Now that I've been here for about 3 weeks, I feel like I'm starting to settle in. I used to feel self-conscious when walking down the streets or going into the market because everyone used looked at me because I was a foreigner, but now it doesn't bother me as much. But there's a few things about the culture that are still a bit difficult for me.

For the past 2 weeks, a young man has been coming on the weekends to ask for work. He's 20 and from Mali. On the first Saturday that I moved into my house, he knocked on my door and we started to talk. He told me that he came to Burkina to try to find a job as a guard, but he didn't succeed. He was asking for any work he could do around the house, but I had to tell him that I didn't need anyone because I had just moved in and already had someone to work for me. But I did offer to give him some food instead, and he accepted. Then, he started to talk about how sick he was and how he couldn't afford medicine. I told him that I wouldn't give him money because I didn't know what he was going to do with it. Eventually, he told me that all he needed was 500 CFA (about $1 CAD) for a medicine prescription, because he could get medicine almost for free at a Christian clinic. So I said "OK, I'll give you 500 CFA, but you have to return and show me the prescription". A couple days later, I found the prescription in my door. So I thought to myself that he might actually be legit. The next Sunday, he came again and asked me if I had received the prescription, and then he proceeded to show me the medication that he received from the clinic. He then asked for work again, but I had to tell him that I still didn't have any work for him to do around the house. Then he started to tell me how he was trying to go back to Mali to go back to his family, but that he needed money for the bus back. Again, I told him that I wouldn't give him the money b/c I didn't know what he was going to do with it, but I did offer him some more food and he accepted. The next day, as I was leaving to go to work at 7am, he showed up at my door with another guy. He said that his friend was leaving to go towards Mali that day, and if I could give him 5,000 CFA, it would pay for his transportation costs. At this point, I was getting really skeptical about his whole situation. After about 20 mins of talking, I eventually told him that I would give him 1,000 CFA for gas, and that if the other guy was really his friend, he would take him along. After that, he kept talking and trying to convince me to give him more, but I was starting to get frustrated because I felt like he was just trying to get as much money from me as he could (even though in reality it's really not that much). So after that, I told him that that was the only time I would give him money, and I wished him a good trip and that was it. I guess I'm still half-expecting him to show up at my door this weekend, but we'll see what happens. It's tough because you want to help, but you don't want to get "had" either (b/c that happens a lot here).

Another thing that bothers me is how when people see me (or other foreigners), they immediately see dollar signs. So if I need to get my bike repaired, it'll cost me more money to repair it. Or if I go to the market to buy vegetables, I don't come out with as much as someone else would for the same amount of money. It's not a big difference, and in the end I know I'm helping them out a little bit more so I don't mind as much, but it's just the principle of it all. So it's a bit annoying, but I know it's just a part of life here in Africa that I will have to get used to.

Djibo

2007-09-06T16:27:00.000Z

I returned from Djibo last night and there's two things I'll mention in this post:

1) Djibo was a great experience because I got to meet Ken and Jocelyn Elliott, two Australians who came to BF in 1972 to create a hospital. Before I got there, Galen (the missionary who gave me a ride up to Djibo) told me that Ken and Jocelyn would be two of the most gracious and humble people that I could ever meet - and he was right. Throughout the 3 days I was there, both Ken and Jocelyn just wanted to serve us...they provided a great place for us to stay, Jocelyn cooked fantastic meals, and Ken would always try to entertain us if we were sitting in the living room... and in everything they did, they did it with a heart of servitude.

Ken is a surgeon, and he's the only doctor in the hospital. The hospital they started is pretty incredible - it's 300m by 250m (so it's a huge complex), they have 4 wards, plenty of beds, and it's also well-equiped (check out the "solar-powered" autoclave!). It's always busy there, and it's pretty incredible to see how much God has blessed them.

2) Galen also took us (there were 2 american girls who work at an orphanage in a small city named Yacko + one other missionary in the group) to the animal market, where they basically just sell off goats and cows. Here's a before and "day-after" picture:

I just thought it was neat.

Djibo

2007-09-02T19:30:00.000Z

For the last week, I've been doing a bit of work in the office. I found out that I'm going to be helping to do the admin work for all of the projects they have in Burkina Faso, not just the ones related to health. So various people have been taking me around the city to visit and learn more about the projects that SIM has established here.

I'm going up to Djibo from Monday to Wednesday. It's a small little village to the north of the city that I'm in. There's a medical surgeon who set up a clinic there. It's a pretty neat story and he was in the SIM video of BF that we watched during orientation, but I don't know all the details of the story yet... once I get back, I'll post something about it.

Week One

2007-08-31T23:07:00.000Z

So, it's been exactly one week since I've arrived in Burkina Faso... although it feels like I've been here much longer. The first thing people are probably wondering is what the living conditions are like, what the culture is like, etc. And I know my mom must be dying to see pictures of the place that I'm living in and what I'm eating... so here's some photos I took:

Until this morning, I was living in the SIM guesthouse, which was really convenient because it was attached to the SIM Office, where I work. But now I'm living about 1-2 km away, in a more rustic neighbourhood (I forgot to take a picture of what it looks like outside my gate... my house definitely sticks out among the rest of them, and you'll see what I mean in my next post). Well, it's definitely a lot nicer than I expected.

I had to wash/dry all the dishes....

And finally... I have a dog. His name is Buddy. He's supposed to be a guard dog, but all he does is lie down and sleep in the corner of my living room... occasionally he'll get up to eat food. He's really really mellow.... all that i know is that he's a cross between a lab and something else..

In terms of fitting in and adjusting to the culture, it's been going well. It's been helpful having all the SIM people around, because they've been bringing me around everywhere and introducing me to a lot of people around the city. The SIM family is great here... they're really caring, and they've really helped me settle in. But now that I've moved in to my new house, I'm going to have to go to a lot of places by myself (until my roommate arrives in October)... and it's kind of awkward because everyone stares at me. I expected that, but it's just a really weird feeling when everyone looks at you as you bike down the street. Half the people say "bonjour/salut", so it's definitely a lot more welcoming than I expected. Almost everyone here speaks French, so I can communicate fairly well with them... I can understand things really well, but my spoken French is definitely a pretty rusty.

Anyways, that's a long post. Keep checking every week for updates...

Burkina Faso

2007-08-23T15:42:00.001Z

2006-06-28T21:28:00.000Z

OK, so I just posted some pics of my last few days in Macau and China. I'm going to write about those few days a bit later, when I have some more free time.

Sunday and Monday in Hong Kong

2006-06-28T21:20:00.000Z

Saturday in Macau

2006-06-24T16:46:00.000Z

2006-06-16T18:28:00.000Z

whoah hong kong is so HUMID! when i got out of the plane, it just hit me like a wall. it felt like my skin immediately just soaked in all the moisture from the air... dang, and it was at night too. wonder what it'll be like tomorrow afternoon.

Well, while i'm in HK, i'm going to be staying with Auntie Cathy, a close family friend of Kat's. She's already been incredibly nice to me. She made sure i got to the place alright... made sure i knew where everything was in the apartment... she's letting me use one of her cell phones... and she even let me borrow some HK money so that i don't have to rush to the bank tmw morning.. she's so nice. I got her something from Lijiang... the locals sort of burn "paintings" onto wood... and they're actually really nice...so i got her one of those... and i gave her some green tea cake that we got yesterday whiel we were souvenir/gift shopping for tea.

so...When we got to Senzhen, we took a coach bus to a subway line that led us to HK (I came with Lawrence's family). We met Kat and Mike (Lau) at a subway station (Kowloon Tong) - she took a direct flight from kunming to HK... but she arrived at around the same time as us 'cause her plaen got delayed by 2 hours. we said our last goodbyes to lawrence's family there... and then kat and mike took me to auntie cathy's apartment. hmm... we went out for a snack at night.. and now it's really late.

tomorrow we're going to spend the day in Macau... mike says we don't need a visa to get there and back... he's been there before... but i'm kind of nervous about that. hope we odn't get stuck in macau :p

june 16, 2006

2006-06-16T04:28:00.000Z

leaving for hong kong in 20 minutes. i hear it's incredibly and uncomfortably hot there.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

2006-06-15T03:58:00.000Z

Today was the last day of school. It was pretty sad to leave everyone; they all asked us if we could stay a few extra days or if we could teach one last class for them.

Yesterday, Lawrence told us a bit of background about some of the kids at the school. I was commenting about this one boy in grade 4 who was huge...looked like he should have been in grade 6. I can't remember exactly what he said, but he told me that this boy left school for a while... and when he came back (to this city?) his father didn't want him anymore. so now he's living in a sort of youth hostel with 6 other boys and he's being sponsored by either World Vision or a woman from Hong Kong. He told us about another girl in grade 5 who was sent to this city by her parents (i think her parents live in another province). but her parents don't support her at all... she rents an apartment on her own, and to make money for food, she has to go through "rubbish" (i'm guessing she goes through trash cans to look for plastic bottles... a lot of people to that). but the thing is, when you look at and play with these kids, you would have no idea that this is the kind of life they're living. And there's probably way more stories like that. There's a teacher at the school who has really helped us with a lot of things... and she told us that she left her baby and her husband in her hometown (somewhere in the Hubei province) to come to this school because she needed work... and i think her kid isn't even 2 yet.

I wish we could have found out all of this earlier... then we could have at least visited some of these kids at their homes... and maybe even helped them out with clothes or food. we've been trying to do what we can... like buying food for those who live on the streets..but it's definitely not enough. wish we had more time here... but maybe it's a good thing that we're leaving with these things on ou rhearts..

More Pics of the Stone Forest

2006-06-14T12:16:00.000Z

- this kid was so cute. he always wanted to be ahead of us so that he could lead us in the "right" way... so he always had his map out and yeah, always at the front of the line. he was really funny...everything he said made me laugh.

- this is for all of you on the nicaragua team :) great memories...

June 13, 2006 (Stone Forest)

2006-06-13T14:28:00.000Z

*at the convenience store downstairs...*
kat: Hey cool, it's banana and chocolate flavored...oh gross, the wrapper says it's made of frozen milk!
will: ummm... kat, do you know what ice cream IS?????

Pictures at the Stone Forest...

- there's an elephant in the background...

- We went with a family (father, son, and grandparents) that knew Lawrence. They were really nice, and the little 3-year old boy (enoch) was so cute. they had an extra 2 seats...so it worked out perfectly for us to go with them. i don't think we would have gone if we had to bus it like our last attempt...

blog is uploading pics really slow... so i'll try to post up more pics later.

June 12, 2006

2006-06-12T14:32:00.000Z

Here's a picture of Lily wearing my flip flops and me wearing her sandals (i could only fit my first 3 toes into them).

Didn't really do much today. Went to school.. played games with the kids for a bit... lawrence wanted us to make a giant poster full of pictures of the kids, so we did that for a while...

i'm really going to miss how cheap the food is here. i mean, for every breakfast and lunch, we always get food that's 1 rmb (equivalent to about 15 cents?). so for breakfast, we'll get this fried dough wrap... or 10 dumplings... or a huge piece of bread filled with some paste. and then for lunch, sometimes we get these noodles off the street vendors that are kind of tasty. haven't ventured to try the street meat yet... still working up to that. oh ya, and at night, i played frisbee with lili and wei luk.. and then afterwards, i took lili to the convenience store nearby adn bought 2 ice creams and two popsicles for one dollar canadian.

oh ya, and we got pretty lucky. a family that lawrence knows is going to the stone forest tomorrow... they're taking a private van. they conveniently have two seats left, so kat and i are going to join them.

june 11, 2006 (Added pics)

2006-06-11T09:22:00.000Z

Saturday
On saturday, we decided to go downtown to go see Green Lake (a famous park in Kunming) and to do a bit of shopping. Lili came along as our tour guide. Green Lake was OK. it's just a really big park with lots of little pond-type areas..there were lots of people walking around, but I guess after going to Lijiang and Dali, Green Lake wasn't too impressive. After that, the three of us walked through downtown Kunming, looked into a few shops, but we didn't really buy anything.

For lunch, we went to a restaurant called Dico's, which was sort of like a chinese KFC. We introduced Lili to eating french fries with ice cream...reminded me of funnel cakes at Wonderland...

At night, we decided to cook dinner for Lawrence's family since they've been so nice to us. So, we bought a bunch of pasta, ground beef, soup, etc at Walmart and brought it home. We made soup, spaghetti, and garlic bread for dinner. and then kat made a cheese cake for dessert... mm.. we made 2 huge packs of fettucine though, so there's a ton of leftovers.

Sunday
This morning, we went to another three-self movement church. the building itself was massive and really modern. There were three floors dedicated for the main service... they had TV's everywhere. on our floor, they had a huge projection screen at the front and 3-4 tv's as well... anyways, the what was cool was that as we were going up to the third floor, we bumped into the storekeeper of the bookstore (the one who invited us to sit with her until the rain passed... i think it was thursday night). So she invited us to sit with her.. and we did. during the service, the choir sang, the children sang, and then a guest speaker (an american who spoke mandarin) gave the sermon. OH, and after the service... it was crazy. after i came out of the washroom, i was walking towards the stairs.. and i saw the pastor that we met from Dali! and then when we went downstairs to the main entrance, we saw his wife and the private driver that took us to lijiang!! CRAZY!! that was so much fun... it was cool to see everyone again.

- after church, kat and i were supposed to go to the Stone Forest, which is 2 to 2.5 hours away from kunming. We had to take 3 different buses to get there... so, we got on the first one.. and then got off at the first stop to transfer to another bus. But, when we asked around if anyone knew where the "east station" was, they had no idea...so we got back on the bus, went to the next stop.. got off... and yeah, we just couldn't find it. anyways, we didn't even really want to go to the stone forest, because everyone kept saying that it was just "ok".. and that by the end, all the stones would look the same. so we just walked around the area a bit, then came home.

friday, june 9, 2006

2006-06-09T13:58:00.000Z

thursday
- thursday was the first day i taught at the school. but we didn't teach for the whole day. we only helped out when there were english classes. So, we taught the grade 3's and the grade 5's, and we sat in a bunch of classes. it was pretty funny... because when we sat in with the preschoolers during their chinese lessons... i was actually learning it with them.

- there's a couple of distinct diferences between schools in north america and china... for example, this school starts at 7:50 am, and ends at 4:30 pm. super long days.. but to compensate, there's about 6 recesses during the day (varying from 5 mins to 20 mins), and a 2 hour lunch break. the recesses are really fun. during the 20 min one, i started dribbling a basketball around the court while some kids tried to steal it off of me... soon, about 30 of them started chasing me all over the basketball court.. it was fun. oh ya, and the kids here are super tough. this one kid (maybe 6 or 7 years old) fell 3 times in a row on the pavement while he was chasing after me... and he never cried.. he just got back up and kept running. as well, during some of the breaks, they have eye drills. a tape plays on the speakers, and in unison, all the students rub the same areas of the eyes (over the eyes, pinching the part b/w the eyes, under the eyes.... etc). they also have an exercise drill where they all line up outside and follow a tape.. and they do a 5 min "dance routine".. all in unison. it's actually really impressive. what else... oh ya, they all have kung fu lessons.. so all the kids know kung fu.
- in the middle of the afternoon, we got a call from a guy who is an E.M. here. he's the general manager of this organization.. and the reason why he called was because he's the uncle of a friend of kat's. he invited us for dinner, and we talke.d.. and it was pretty cool to hear his story. ummm.... and yeah i can elaborate more later. really tasty dinner though - i had fish and chips!
- after dinner, we went to the Canaan bookstore. the owner of the store was a C-------. she was super nice... kat met her the last time she went. we browsed around the store... and she invited us to stay with her in her store because it was pouring rain outside. so we talked for a long time with her.. yeah, just really nice. all the C---'s we've met hre have been so hospitable to us... kat and i both bought some pretty cool stuff from the shop.. and when we were leaving, she gave us these knitted bookmarks that look pretty neat.

friday
- today was fun. since it rained the whole day, all of the physical education classes were "cancelled"... and the students had to stay in their classes all day. so for those PE classes that were cancelled, we helped out. our first one was the preschoolers... lawrence just asked that we sing songs with them... we thought it would be easy, but the kids were so rowdy! we sang songs like "deep and wide", "london bridges", "row row row your boat", "twinkle twinkle", "head and shoulders", etc. we had to sing so loud... because if our voices didn't overpower theirs, they would all just start playingw ith each other. so.. by the end of it.. our voices were really scratchy. haha. but it was fun anyways. oh ya, and when they sang their chinese songs to us... i think i almost went deaf. they're just tiny little 4 year olds.. but when they all sing.. dang... it's crazy how loud they can get. they were piercing my ears!
- we also played 7-UP (i remembered it from our pca days!) with the grade 3's adn they loved it. we played it for the entire 40 mins..
- with the grade 5's, we did some conversation stuff with them... they showed us some of their kung fu moves, and at the end, we played sherades. during the conversations, they asked kat if she knew how to dance... she said yes, but all they had was the kungfu music they used for their kungfu presentation... soon, all of us were chanting "dance, dance, dance" (led by me, of course).. haha. err, i guess you just had to be there to find it funny :P.
- oh ya, and one other cool thing. whenever, the kids want to come into the teacher's staff room to talk to a teacher.. they have to salute.. and then when we nod or say ok, they say "b-uh-gao"... and then they come in

July 7, 2006 - Lijiang

2006-06-07T13:53:00.000Z

Once we arrived in Lijiang, we met Ruth, a friend of Lawrence's family. She's actually a native of Lijiang - a Naxi (i think it's pronounced na-shi). She brought along Beibei, a 4 -year old girl that she was taking care of. Beibei was adopted by her parents in Wyoming, and she moved here about a year ago because her parents were offered a job at a nearby university. She was sooooooo cute. she talked and talked and talked... Ruth said that because she doesn't speak mandarin, it's hard for her to make friends.. so when she actually does meet people who can speak english, she talks non-stop! she kept giving me candies, offered to share her fruit-in-a-cup with me, kept giving me her carrots at lunch.. hhaa. it was pretty sad to see her go. ruth had to take her back to her home, but you could tell that she wanted to stay.

for dinner, we went to a local restaurant. i'm pretty used to them right now, but i think this was the first one for kat. it probably wasn't the best way to introduce her to the local foods... because there were tons of flies, lots of dried meat hanging from the ceiling, a gigantic skull of maybe a yak in the corner... i could see on her face that she was a LITTLE nervous. Ruth ordered the food for us, and it ended up being really really good.

at night, kat and i went to hear the Naxi orchestra. it was pretty neat. the songs are really old... about 1000 years old. i read in another book that they lost a big portion of their songs because the older generation of naxi music players passed away. initially, we were put in the wrong seats... i was in a spot where there were 2 people in front of me and a column on the left... and the people in front kept moving their heads, so it was a bit irritating. after the first song or two, we ended up moving to two empty seats in the front row of our section, which was way better. the songs were great. the only down point of the night was that the "MC" was telling all these jokesin mandarin that we didn't understand... at one point, his comments were taking so long that it looked like some of the older members of the orchestra were falling asleep. haha.

the next day, ruth took us to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Ruth was so nice to us during our whole trip . she took us everywhere and always made sure that we were okay... we were really lucky to have her with us in lijiang. Anyways, we took a 2 hour bus to the gorge. pretty uncomfortablle ride... but we met this old scottish couple there. it's always cool to meet and talk to foreigners. they were just taking a little vacation - the husband has been working in beijing for more than a year... and i don't think his wife works. the bus took us close to the entrance of the gorge.. and then stopped. we had to pay another 120 rmb to take a mini van to the middle of the gorge... but that also included our ride back to lijiang and our ticket to get into the gorge. at first, we thought we were getting ripped off..but when we calculated it, it turned out to be a decent price.

the gorge was so amazing. i'll just post some pics. words can't describe it. it was a tough hike down though. it took about an hour to get down. but when we were down there... dang.. it was amazing. when we got down there, i hiked around a bit more while kat and ruth rested at a "cafe". i wanted to get onto this huge boulder that was just downstream on the yangtze river. there was this huge red flag on it...and i wanted a picture with it. but when i got there, the ladder leading to the boulder was caged off with metal wire. i was so mad... 'cause i really wanted to get on.. and it was really tough getting to that spot (it was just really steep). so when i had to climb all the way back up.. without the picture.... i got angry (not really, but just a little) :P. heh. but then when i got back, ruth told me that an italian guy died there last year 'cause he slipped ont he rock. after hearing that, i guess i was kind of relieved that i didn't go. actually, now that i mentioned that... on our way down to the gorge, ruth told us that just that morning (or the day before, i can't remember) someone died. at some parts, it was a bit dangerous (e.g. there were tons of "watch out for falling rocks", "go at your own risk" signs). our hike up from the bottom of the gorge was actually pretty tough. i felt so bad for kat... but she fought through it! i was really amazed/in a way proud that she did it. and she didn't complain or anything on the way up.. she just sucked it up and kept going.

oh ya, and here.. we wrote our names on the wall of the cafe:

ummm so when we got back, took a shower... ate dinner.. then walked around the old city of lijiang. we actually lived in the old city.. which was pretty neat. it's a really cool place.. just check out the pics. really cool place to be at night.

wish we could have stayed a few more days... 'cause there's tons more to see and do there. buttt, that's okay. i'm glad we're back in kunming... and i'm going to start working at the school tmw.

june 4, 2006 (updated pics)

2006-06-04T13:50:00.000Z

alight, at an internt cafe at dali riht now. it's been a really fun trip so far

- on saturday, we took the 12 o'clock bus to dali. cost about 120 rmb and took about 5 hrs. it was a really awesome bus ride because the scenery was amazing (there were mountains the whole way and everything was so green!. when we got here, lawrence told us to find a hcruhc (spelld backwards; i need to be careful w/ my words) in the ancient city of dali because he knew the rotsaP . we found the place, and we were taken to a seminary school... the people there were so nice. without even asking for our names, they told us to put all our stuff down in a room and they invited us for dinner. it was really good food too. we were supposed to stay in some rooms at this place, but it ended up that they only had one free room. so we checked in at a hotel just one minute down the street. it's actually a bit sketchy... lots of gigantic bugs... but it's only costing us 4-5 bucks to stay at this place. when we came back to the seminary, we attended a pihsroW service where ppl did different dances, songs, played violn, etc. it was really neat. in the middle of this service, one of the teachers asked us if we could sing a song. haha. so i picked up the guitar and kat and i sang "open the eyes". at night, we went to this bar... had smoe dessert... and just walked around the city..

- today was pretty amazing. we attended a sunday service in the morning. it was super long though - 3 hours. they had a choir who sang, danced.. it was cool. i couldn't understand anything though 'cause it was all in mandarin.. but it was a good experience nonetheless. after that, the wife of the rotsaP arranged a driver to brng us to Zhonghe Peak. it's this mountain that's 2100 m above sea level. the view was amazing!! ahhhhh. it was perfect weather... and it felt like we were so close to the clouds... yeah, and.. i don't even hav the words to describe it. it was just as cool as the three gorges. kat and i climbed this mini waterfalls, and it was soo much fun. we could have went higher, but we found this piece of poo on rocks... so we sort of stopped there. kat kept on saying "mike would be so proud of me!". haha. i forgot my wire that connects my camera to the pc, so i'll have to upload pics in a few days. we had dinner at a korean restaurant and then just walked arund again at night.

going to lijinag tmw morning..early.. at 7.

june 3, 2006

2006-06-03T02:01:00.000Z

well, i just found out that the school has a 2 day holiday (monday and tuesday). since we have 4 days free, Lawrence suggested that Kat and I go to Dali and Lijiang... so we're leaving in an hour! they're two really ancient cities...we're taking the bus everywhere, and it sounds like it should be a great trip! here's a pic of me at the great wall that i forgot to post before:

Lili is very happyhi

June 2, 2006

2006-06-02T15:10:00.000Z

Two nights ago, i got an e-mail from Liang saying that him, Amy, and Kathy were going to fly into Beijing on the next day. so they got in around 11 pm last night. it was AWESOME to see them again. after shanghai, they went to another city nearby... i believe it was on an island... initially, they were going to go to chongdu and some other places before beijing, but they surprised us and flew there first. it was great to catch up and talk... we stayed up till 3am talking in the bar at the hostel.

I arrived at the airport about 3 hours earlier than my flight. it got delayed by an hour, so i didn't end up leaving until about 5 pm. I arrived in Kunming at 8, and Kat was waiting for me outside of the baggage claim gates. it was great to see her again. i'm staying at the principal's house (Lawrence is his name... Sally is his wife... and they have a son and a daughter). It's a really nice place, and they're really nice too. I"m staying in a really small room on the top bunk of a bunk bed.. but it's fine by me. Sally wanted me to stay over at their friend's place because she thought it would be too small for me... i told her that i wanted to stay because i wanted to stay with Kat... at least until i get comfortable. so, yeah it's great. i played around with Lili, their daughter. she's so funny. she reminds me of Greg's youngest sister a bit..Janelle.. actually, in a lot of ways... she was showing me her yearbooks, her pictures, her awards, her projects.... played tag with her, she gave me a massage.. haha. it was fun. so tomorrow kat and I are going to explore downtown Kunming.

2006-06-02T15:07:00.000Z

Flat 301, Unit 3, Block 5
Sunshine Garden, Phase II
Kunming, Yunnan
Peoples Republic of China
650228

phone #: 86871 4635482

June 1, 2006

2006-06-01T14:40:00.000Z

That's a pic of me beside a statue at the Summer Palace. It was built by an Emperor a couple hundred of years ago, so there were a lot of nice buildings to walk around in. It's kind of like Edward's Garden (leslie and lawrence), except 10 times bigger and that much nicer. It was the type of place where you could just lie down on the grass and stay there for hours. It took us a heck of a long time to get there though. we took a bus straight from our hostel all the way to the Summer Palace and it took 2 hours. dang, it was bad... 'cause the bus was really hot and really crowded. towards the end of the bus ride (maybe 1.5 hrs), a guy at the front of the bus barfed... it was gross. then everyone left except us. on the way back, we just took a taxi to the nearest subway stop and then took the subway all the way back... it was way faster (approx 45 minutes) and only cost 13 RMB in total.

at night, we went to another fake clothing market. these shopkeepers were way more aggressive than in shanghai though. every time i tried walking away from a store, they would grab my hand and drag me back in. but, at the same time, it was good because they were really desperate to sell stuff before the mall closed (we got there an hour before closing time). so, i ended up buying a pair of nice shorts for 5 bucks and some polo's for 4 bucks.

heh, this is a pic of a giant banana i found at the grocery store. wasn't as sweet as a normal banana though =/

May 31, 2006 - The Great Wall of China

2006-05-31T13:37:00.000Z

Man, the Great Wall is amazing. last night, the girls wanted to be adventurous, so we decided to take the 10km hike on the great wall from Jinshanling to Simatai (just two different areas of the great wall). it was actually a really tough hike. you were basically just climbing enormous numbers of stairs, and then descending enormous amounts of stairs. and... that happened maybe 30 or so times ( i believe we hiked through 32 towers). yeah, and believe me, they weren't easy. there were many times when the climb would be at 70 degree angles - that's really steep! i'm somewhat surprised that the girls got through it all, but i'm actually really proud that they did! for myself, i really enjoy canoeing/portaging/hiking, so i had a really fun time doing it. the scenery was amazingly beautiful. i'll post pics when i get the chance. i just forgot the cable that connects my camera to the computer upstairs in my room, and i don't have enough time to get it before my hour ends at this internet cafe. we were lucky too 'cause it wasn't too hot and there were barely any other tourists on the wall with us, so it seemed like we had the whole wall to ourselves.

so, immediately once we entered the gates, we got swarmed with local mongolian people. this one woman just ran straight towards me and began following me... trying to talk to me in english (asking me where i was from, telling me about her...etc), and trying to help me up the stairs to the great wall. i was warned from another guy at the hostel in Shanghai that this would happen, so i knew she just wanted me to buy stuff from her. she literally followed me for 4 km's on the wall. i couldn't believe it. she looked about 40-something years old. at the end of the 4k's, she asked if i wanted to buy something from her. i bought some post cards just because i felt bad that she had to walk all this way. actually, it was more because i knew that she was only doing this to feed her family... it's crazy that these people have to work so hard just to earn 15-20 RMB (approx $2 USD). i'm guessing that they do the walk with the tourists maybe 3-4 times a day... which is honestly CRAZY. i can't even imagine what it would be like in july ... or what they do when it snows in the winter time.

so yeah, just got an e-mail from Liang, Amy, and Kathy.. and they'll be in Beijing tomorrow night. so it'll be cool to see them again before i leave on friday.

getting excited about teaching and going to kunming too.

updated pics

2006-05-30T14:33:00.000Z

ok, so at this internet cafe, i can upload pics onto this blog... i added a few for my old posts, so you can check them out if you want.

here's a pic of me and Dr. Chang from Zhejiang university. he's the head of the biology department at Zhejiang. he's a really REALLY funny guy... just the way he acts is hilarious. i'll have to explain more later 'cause it's just too hard to explain in words.

oh let me say a word about this university. it's the 3rd best university in china.. which is HUGE. i recently found out how the university system works here. since china really wants their universities to be top in the world, they pour all their money into the top 3 or 4 universities. So, Zhejiang, being #3, gets a ton of money.. that's why their campus is so incredibly new and beautiful. To get into these schools is crazy... before they apply to universities, each high schooler has to take a test which ranks them among all other chinese students in China (ie, ranked 5 out of 300,000). The #1 university gets to pick however many students first, and then the #2 university goes.. and then #3 (Zhejiang university gets to pick from what's left... etc. on top of that, these universities may sometimes only pick one person from each province in china. so, we had a few chinese partners in our group who were the only people from their respective provinces. that's insane to me, these guys are brilliant.

May 30, 2006 (updated)

2006-05-30T14:10:00.000Z

in beijing now. we almost missed the train at 7pm! lauren, christine and i ate dinner with luke and terrence... and when we finished, it was about 5:45 pm. we got on a taxi and were on our way to the train station, but we ran into some MAJOR traffic. by 6:15, we barely got anywhere. so i told the taxi driver to drop us off at the nearest subway station because i knew that it was only going to be a few stops away. this ordeal turned out to be harder than i thought, 'cause lauren's suitcsae was massively huge and heavy! i forgot that the subway stations here don't have escalators going down, so i had to carry my suitcase and lauren's suitcase everywhere! had to go down the stairs.. buy the subway tickets.. pass the luggage over the "entrance blockers"... go into the subway... go down another flight of stairs... it was definitely a memorable experience though. the girls were pretty stressed that we would miss our train. so we sprinted most of the time. luckily, the signs leading to the train station were pretty good.. and when we finally reached the train, we were actually 15 minutes early :P

the 12 hour train ride turned out to be amazing. we were in a luxury-class train and our room had 2 bunk beds in them (which were really clean and nice). there was one other lady in our room - her name was May. She was from Beijing and just went to Shanghai to get her passport. she was so nice... really fun to talk to and she gave us a bunch of places to visit in Beijing.

our hostel that we booked turned out to be right across the street from the shanghai train station. it's called the Beijing City Central International Youth Hostel. because they dont' allow co-ed dorms, i have to stay in a room with 3 other guys. i just met one, but haven't met the other two yet.

we went to the temple of heaven and it was pretty cool.. except the place is MASSIVELY HUGE. nearly 300 hectares big... so it was really tiring. after that, we just walked around in the city.. came back early 'cause we were really tired and i really needed to do laundry.

may 29, 2006

2006-05-29T06:49:00.000Z

i'm at the Shanghai Library right now. this place is huge - probably 4-5 times the size of Stauffer. it's so big that it's actually a tourist attraction :P anyways, i thought i could upload pics here at the library, but the security guard caught me with my mp3 plugged into the computer (apparently that's not allowed here), so, yeah..next time. i have tons of pics i gotta post up.

so the last 2 days have been really fun. yesterday, about half of our class left (some to go to beijing, some to go to an island near shanghai). so, the night before that (two nights ago), we all went to a party/club and we all had a really great time. they gave us a VIP room and yeah, just a really great way to end off.

last night was so much fun. we went to see a chinese acrobatics show called "Era: intersection of time". IT WAS AMAZING. AHHHHHHHHH!!! i can't even describe how incredible it was. it's almost like Circque du Soleil. They did some crazy things.. they had 7 motorcycles driving around super fast/in circles in an enclosed, cage-like metal ball... they did some crazy jumps through hoops... flew around on scarves that came down from the ceiling... yeah, i know my description is really bad, but there's no way i could ever describe it!! and it was all for only 80 RMB, translating into about 10 bucks american.

today, me and lauren went to a market that sells a ton of fake stuff.. but it looks so good. and yeah, i had to buy stuff. it was realy fun trying to bargain with them. for example, if you asked them how much a Polo t-shirt would cost, they would say something ridiculous like 200 RMB. this was my strategy: i would just tell them that i was willing to pay 30...right after, they would start yelling and telling me i'm crazy and that i'm "so joking". i would just say "ok, fine, i'll go to another store"... and then, EVERY TIME, as i'm walking out, they'll grab on to me and say "OK OK!" haha. it's pretty fun. sometimes i would just offer a price that was really ridiculous .. like offer 5% of what they're asking..a nd they would curse underneath their breath in chinese. heh.

yeah, so i'm heading on a 12 hour train ride to beijing tonight at 7pm. should be interesting. turns out that i'm not heading to beijing on my own anymore, because lauren and christine wanted to stay in shanghai for another day as well. i'm actually really glad that they're coming. originally, i was going to go with lauren, christine, and 3 other girls. and.. there was one girl in the group of 3 girls that i didn't really want to go with :P so.. yeah, turns out that everything worked out in the end. thanks to all of you who told me to stay in shanghai longer than beijing... 'cause if i hadn't stayed, i woudl have missed out on the chinese acrobats and the xianyan (sp?) market. gonna see tian an men square, the forbidden city, the temple of heaven... all that stuff tomorrow. the day after, probably going to take a whole day to go to the great wall and the ming tombs... and then on friday, i'm heading off to kunming.

ok, well, gotta go find luke. he was supposed to meet us here at the library, but we waited around for half an hour and didn't show up.

may 27, 2006

2006-05-27T09:28:00.000Z

ok, correction: the name of the hotel is the metropole hotel. it's pretty nice, we got this place for like half price. tomorrow we're going to have to move out and find a hostel though. partly because they're a bit cheaper, but mostly because we want to explore a different part of the city.

today, went to the Shanghai museum, and it was awesome. really great place. admissoin for students was only 5 RMB, translating into less than a dollar canadian. it's actually a really nice museum. they had this one gallery that displayed a collection of gems from this one guy named Michael Scott. he used to be the president of Apple like 30 years ago. anyways, they had some crazy gems there but unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of them.

then we went to the shanghai urban planning museum. nothing too special, but it was cool to see what shanghai will look like in 20 years.

all in all, shanghai is a really cool city. sort of reminds me of toronto because there's chinese people, french people, indian people, and well... no black people yet. but it's cool walking around and hearing some different languages around. but a lot of people can speak english.. so that's really helpful (e.g. in stores, restaurants). and we finally got to see the blue sky today. probably only see that like 3-4 times within the past 4 weeks. usually there's just a huge cloud of pollution above every city. so yeah, it was a good day. probably going to check out a cheap market tomorrow that my friend told me about to pick up some gifts for ppl.

may 26, 2006

2006-05-26T14:19:00.000Z

ok, so today was the last day of the trip, and right now we're in shanghai. a bunch of us were supposed to stay at this hostel here, but when we tried to book it, it was all full. so yuxiang, with all his connections (he's so popular here :P), hooked us up at an awesome hotel - the metropolis hotel. it's right next to the Bund here.. and very close to Nanjing road (really famous shopping street) and yeah, in the middle of downtown. haha, there was one catch though. we had to say we were interns for a software company in california named Futureway. OK, so, today, luke, lauren and i just walked around everywhere and just got to know the city a bit. tomorrow, we'll have a full day, but we havne't planned it all out yet.

and.. i think when i go to beijing, i'm going to go on my own.. 'cause after these past 3 and a half weeks, i need some alone time. it'll be an interesting 2-3 days :p

oh, btw, for those of you who are asking if i started to pick up chinese... well, my chinese friends here have really been trying to teach me chinese. and back in the first week of the course, one of my chinese friends - eunice - actually bought me a book to help me learn mandarin :P the book was kind of hard to learn from (had really random phrases such as "Hi, i'm part of the friendship tour to china"), so today, i bought a Lonely Planet phrase guide. ok, so that's it for now.

OH YEAH

2006-05-24T13:29:00.000Z

AND, today i finally got to watch an NBA playoff game! the heat vs the pistons!! i was so happy. these are the best playoffs ever in the history of me liking basketball since grade 5.... and i have to miss them :( they don't really have sports bars or anything here, so they're hard to catch on tv.

yeah, and actually, last night i had a dream that i was coming back to toronto the next day. and i was so happy 'cause i could finally catch up on Lost, 24, THe Office, and Prison Break. dang. then i woke up.

may 24, 2006

2006-05-24T12:45:00.000Z

today's our last day of the field course... well, our last day of doing work. we did a super long genetics/pcr lab today. i kind of like it, but it's just annoying 'cause there's times when you have 2 hour breaks in between (to wait for the reaction to happen), and our dorm is like 15 mins away. so today, in total, i walked 5 times back and forth. it's ok though. ya, so today's the last day of our field course. tomorrow, we're going to fly from here (Chongqing) back to Hangzhou (where Zhejiang university is). we're going to have a final dinner with all the profs and students from that university, and then the next day, we're off to shanghai!! so for the next week, i'm going to be touring in shanghai and beijing... then next friday, i'm flying to kunming to teach for a few weeks. pretty excited about that. my chinese friends here tell me how beautiful a city it is.. and that there's a rainforest there with lots of cool animals.... like elephants :p

ok, here's a funny story i forgot to mention last week. back when we were in Wuhan, Charles got up one morning and his stomach was really hurting him. at breakfast, he told Dr. Lougheed that he thought he had appendicitis (pfffft lifesci's). so they took him to a doctor, and he told them that he thought he had appendicitis... and so the doctor's thought he had appendicitis. so usually, with acute appendicitis, it hits you REALLY hard out of nowhere, and then you have to go to the hospital right away to get surgery. so Yuxiang had to take Charles all the way to beijing to a hospital there 'cause charles didn't want to get treated in Wuhan. So they went all the way to beijing, and when the doctor at the hospital did a check up, they found that all he had was a sore stomach. ok, not really a funny story for yuxiang, i think he was pretty pissed, but it's just funny that it happened to charles.. 'cause he's always the one driving the profs crazy. so yuxiang came back the day after, but charles didn't... he stayed in beijing ('cause his grandparents live there)... and last i heard, he was heading back to canada soon.

ok, so.. things have been going pretty great. can't believe the course is already over... and i can't believe my stay here isn't even half over yet. getting pretty home sick, but that's ok 'cause i keep reminding myself that i might not come back here for a really long time... so i should just make the time worth it.

may 22, 2006 (updated)

2006-05-22T11:23:00.000Z

WHOAH, ok, it's been a long time since i've had access to the internet or to a phone! sorry to any of you who have e-mailed me recently... i'll try to reply asap (probably not today though). i'm sitting in my chinese friend's friend's dorm room right now. it's crazy, they have 5 ppl living in this one room :P anyways, lots of stuff has happened in the past week.. so i'll try to sum it up real quick right now.

Wednesday may 17, 2006
ok, so we travel for 5 hours from Wuhan to Yichang. but i think i'm getting used to the long bus rides now.. it didn't feel long at all. We visited a sturgeon "zoo" which was amazing. these stugeons can get up to 3 metres long!!! just imagine fishes that are MASSIVE. wow. they live in the yangtze river. anyways we got to see a live one which was pretty cool. we got back to the hotel and i had to do my seminar. i was a bit nervous, but luckily, i had already learned about what i was going to talk about in my seminar in a lecture last term.. so it went pretty good. after the seminar, i felt so good. so me and a bunch of other ppl went out for a drink and a snack... and man this area was so sketchy. we walked down the street and there were all these "hair salons" still open... and these stores had bright pink fluorescent lights eminating from them... with lots of girls just waiting around... haha. it was pretty sketchy. we ended up going to a restaurant. amy and jerry ordered a turtle to eat. it was actually pretty gross looking, but they said it tasted like chicken. oh, and to add to that... we got back to our rooms, and then our room got a phone call with a woman on the other line... but we couldn't understand anything 'cause neither of us speak chinese. haha..um, ya, i'll leave it at that.

Thursday may 18
- we did some surveys in Yichang.. just around the city... asking ppl what they thought the benefits and negative effects were of the Three Gorges Dam. then we visited the 3 gorges dam, which was amazing! man it's huge. we got to go up to the top of the dam too.. so we got a really good view of everything. after that, we got on our cruise at around 8 pm.. had dinner, then went to the top deck and just chilled there for a while.

Friday, may 19
- we got on a cruise boat the night before. today, we went to the 2nd gorge along the yangtze river. after the 2nd gorge, we got off the boat and got on a smaller one... and we toured the mini gorges.. and those were BEAUTIFUL. i took like 50 pictures... and then we got off to see this temple. we climbed all the way to the top of the mountain to get to this temple, and there wasn't really anything special about it. but the cool thing was that we found a waterfall to the right of the temple. so me and some other ppl trecked thru the woods to get there .. and it was so amazing... we stood at the base of the waterfall, and i could have stayed there for hours..but we had to rush back 'cause we were already late for our boat.. ahh i gotta post pics..
- at night, the cruise boat stopped at another tourist site. i can't remember the name of this place.. but it was something like "the white temple"... nothing too special about it. we just walked up a ton of stairs and got to see a pretty good view of the gorges. the thing i don't like with all these temples is that they're all reconstructed (e.g. re-made) because they were all destroyed during the cultural revolution. so, they don't look or feel as real... and the environment just feels like it's a tourist attraction because everywhere you go, people are trying to sell you things. you can't walk 5 minutes without someone getting into your face and nagging you to buy their stuff. even in the temples, there's tons of souvenir stores.

Saturday
- went to Fengdu (or Fongdu) and we were supposed to do surveys there as well. but when we got there, we found out they were doing tons of construction on the roads to get ready for the rising of the water level of the yangtze river. um... just to explain that a bit, one of the reasons why they built the three gorges dam was to generate hydroelectricity... and to get more power, you need more water passing thru the turbines. so they're raising the water level in the upstream regions of the yangtze to accomodate this. and since the water level is rising, many cities have to relocate to higher regions int he mountains... and Fengdu was one of these cities. they've already reaised the water level by a lot. for example, at the surface of the river, you can see the tops of bridges that used to connect the mountains together... right now, they're destroying bridges and building higher ones because the water level is supposed to go up another 25-30 m by august.

Sunday

- finally done the 3night/4 day cruise and we got to Chongqing. this city is massive... 32 million ppl in this place. dang. bigger than the population of all of canada. anyways, today was fun. this place eats super spicy food. at lunch, we went to this pretty fancy restaurant. i sat with the profs, so we the restaurant gave us a better lunch than everyone else. we drank this white wine that yuxiang calls "jet fuel".
- at dinner, we had hotpot.. authentic hotpot. and ... when i saw the hot pot, i almost peed in my pants. It looked like super hot, red bubbling lava... with some hot peppers and peppercorns floating on it... seriously, it was crazy. we had a bunch of raw stuff on our table (brain, intestines, kidneys, beef, fish, etc), and it was funny.. luke was like, "will, i've eaten everything on this trip.. but i think this is the first time i won't be able to try it". he thought that we just dipped the raw food into the hot stuff and ate it raw.

Monday
- in the morning, we had a long lecture by one of the profs here at southwestern university. then we had lunch with the vice-principal of the university and some other university heads (which was pretty neat). after that, went to a water treatment plant, the national history museum here in CQ, and then we went to speak to some fishermen.
- at night, we had an iron chef competition. it was really fun. we used a real restaurant kitchen. the stoves are crazy! they're not like our stoves in canada.... they're just big holes in the counter with gas coming out of them.. so when they're lit on fire, they sound like a jet engine. and they literally look like the back of the batmobile... they put a massive wok on top of it .. and yeah, it was cool. i cooked on it!! hahah. it was scary though... i was scared i would burn my face off. yeah, so they gave us our special ingredients we needed to cook with.. and my group was against luke and jenna's group. it was actually really fun.. all of us had a really good time.

Tuesday
- went to see the Baoding rock carvings. that was pretty neat. it was basically this canyon where there's tons of rock carvings.. pretty neat. after that, visited a fish farm that used hot springs as their water source to harvest tropical fish.

may 16, 2006

2006-05-16T14:07:00.000Z

today, we met the president of the institute of hydrobiology... he gave us a talk on his research and what they do at the institute. it was pretty cool because he's a really really famous scientist - Ding Wang. anyways, that was cool.. and we checked out some museums and saw some live porpoises swimming in one of his research sites..
then we went out for dinner on our own.. so jerry, luke, and i went out with 3 chinese guys from our group.. and they took us to this local restaurant. it was pretty good food.. got 5 plates plus this awesome sticky/fried rice bowl.. for like.. $1.50. crazy. it's pretty cool 'cause each different region in china has different types of food.. and they prepare food differently.. so.. it was good to have some variety today.
- another thing i keep noticing but forget to post on this blog is how nearly every single piece of available land is used either for farming or for fish farming. it's pretty crazy... and you won't believe me until you see it yourself. just believe me when i say that it's rare to go on the highway for more than a kilometre without seeing a farm... or land being used for some type of agricultural purpose. even if it's just a little 5 foot wide by 10 m long strip of land beside the highway, they still grow stuff on it...

ok, tmw we have a long bus ride to another city.. then the day after, we're going on a cruise boat for a few days to get to another university... it'll be cool 'cause we're going to stop off and do fun things like dragonboating and having a cooking contest... seeing the three gorges dam.

-will

may 15

2006-05-15T22:57:00.000Z

yesterday, we took a really early flight to get to Wuhan... but the flight was pretty quick - only about one hour. we're now staying at this really nice 4 star hotel... our room is so nice.. and the lobby looks really fancy. we sort of had the day off yesterday 'cause the last couple days were really intense for us... so me and a few other ppl decided to go sight-seeing. the bus dropped us off in downtown Wuhan. we decided to go to this place called the yellow crane pavillion, so we took a ferry boat over the Yangtze river to get there. it was pretty neat. it's this really old chinese-looking temple/tower .. i can't really describe it, i have to show a pic. it had a really nice view of the city..then the girls wanted to go shopping, so we shopped for a few hours. after that, i was dead tired so we took a bus back to the hotel and that was my day.

May 14, 2006

2006-05-14T13:30:00.000Z

so, just finished a really really long day. we did a water quality analysis lab from 8:30 - 4:30 .. with a half hour break for lunch.. and then a bunch of us guys played 3 on 3 on the outdoor courts on campus. the courts are soo nice!! they have two main outdoor courts... with about 20 nets at each place. they're always really packed too... we were lucky to find an empty court. anyways, it was good times... and then we had to come back to the lab to hear 2 more seminars tonight..

it was funny.. after the seminars, Yuxiang was briefing us on what was going to happen tomorrow for our flight to Wuhan... and then he started to talk about returning our room keys and bke keys. then he started to get really serious and told us NOT to sell our bikes.. because apparently, Charles (for those of you who go to Queen's, you probably know this guy) sold his bike for 20 RMB, the equivalent of 3 dollars... we couldn't stop laughing, but yuxiang was pretty mad because Zhejiang university paid like 250 RMB for each bike... and he just sold it. anyways, charles is quite the character... there's just tons of stories i could say... like the other day when we did a habitat assessment, for no reason, he just started throwing rocks/small boulders straight into the lake beneath him... and he did this for like 15 minutes.. Dr. Lougheed was going crazy. and then during our labs, he keeps touching things he shouldn't be touching and taking things that he shouldn't be taking... I find it hilarious, but other ppl are getting a bit impatient :P haha, here's my last story about charles... so we've had two 2-hour shopping times so far.. and we always walk as a big group.. but charles ALWAYS runs ahead of the group (like until we can't see him anymore)... and he runs from store to store.. and always comes back with tons of stuff. anyways, the other day he bought this pink t-shirt .. witha huge "v-neck".. that went down to like the middle of his chest... lol.. it's great!! and he wears it all the time.. it's so funny. all the chinese students keep asking if it's a girl's shirt... anyways, it's funnier than it actually sounds..

ok, so for the next 10 days.. we're going to be in Wuhan.. and at SouthWestern University.... doing different things.. going on a cruise boat (where i have to give my seminar!).. i'll try to keep this blog updated...

oh i just thought of something i should add (to remind myself of my experiences here..).. the washrooms here are generally pretty nice.. in most places, you'll be able to find a toilet seat.. but sometimes when we have to make a washroom break during our trips on the bus, we have to stop off at gas stations to go to the washroom... and the toilets are literally just troughs that you pee and poo in... the other day, i walked in.. and there was a guy right there pooing in front of me... i idn't know what to do.. but.. i just went to pee beside him anywyas..
ok that's it for now.

May 13. 2006

2006-05-13T04:33:00.000Z

argh... internet still isn't letting me upload pictures onto this blog... i tried uploading them to yahoo photo, but that didn't work either.. i'll try imagestation...

gmail still isn't working.. and only today, i've been able to access my hotmail... so sorry to those who have e-mailed me and i haven't e-mailed them back. but qlink works.. so if you want to e-mail me, send it to 3wc3@qlink.queensu.ca

so, for the past 2 days, we've been on the other side of Hangzhou... Across the Thousand Island lakes. These islands were formed 50 years ago... originally, the land was just a bunch of mountains... and ppl lived in the areas below the mountains. but the government wanted to build a dam, so they evacuated all the villages in taht area... and built a dam.. because the dam was built, water just "accumulated" on one side of the dam... and the peaks of the mountains formed the "islands". to give you guys an idea of what a dam can do... one side of the dam is 70 metres higher than the other side... which is a huge difference.

ok, so 2 days ago we went inside this dam and got a tour. after that, we got on a boat to cruise over the thousand island lakes. we also had lunch on the boat. then, we got to hangzhou.. some of us dissected fish ... and then we had seminars at night. the funny thing was that we had to do the seminars in a karaoke bar... and so we could hear really bad chinese ppl singing in the room beside us the whole night.

After the semniars, we were just chilling in the karaoke bar... and then terrence and luke just picked up the mic and began singing "endless love"... haha.. then the song frm the titanic. soon, a bunch of us just stayed and sang backstreet boys ('get down', 'as long as you love me') and old school pop songs from M2M, etc... it was really funny and we ended up staying there for 2 and a half hours..

yesterday, we did a lot of habitat assessments and water sampling... so.. it was pretty boring. but at night, we went to a real tea house. it was cool because all you do is pay for your tea... and they give you a huge buffet of food/snacks (e.g. dumplings, french fries, dim sum stuff, candies, ice cream, fruits, vegetables).. and the place was really nice too..

ok that's it for now. for these next 2 days i'll be here on campus ... so hopefully i'll figure out a way to post pics!!

-will

Tuesday May 10, 2006

2006-05-09T14:59:00.000Z

Monday...May 9

2006-05-08T15:09:00.000Z

so now i'm in my friend's hotel room. he's got a computer with internet accesss... and it's so much better than the internet cafe i was in 15 minutes ago. ok, so here's some pics...

crap, the pics won't upload.. i'll have to try again later. ok here's just another update that i remembered after looking thru my pics..

- we had a sports night on saturday. me, jerry, and luke played 3 on 3 ... we lost our first game in like, 1 minute. it was up to 5. so ... that sucked, and i was mad. cause one of the chinese guys looked like he was laughing at me. so ... eventually, we got back on the court, and we won like 10 games in a row against different teams... it's not really something i can brag about though, 'cause everyone there is really skinny.. and we were taller than everyone there. and.. on top of that, luke's probably weighs twice as much as any of them. haha.
- we went to an aquaculture (a "farm" for alligators, turtles, fish.. crabs, shrimp) and it was CRAZY. they farm them in these rooms at like 45-50 degrees celsius... we went into these farms.. and i swear.. after 10 seconds, the sweat just starts pouring out... i could barely stand it in there for 5 minutes... and argh, wish i could show pics... anyways, it was cool! 'cause these animals are ectotherms.. so, by increasing the heat by that much.. it will increase their growth rate.. for example, alligators take 3 years to grow to adults..or reproduce.... but by doing it this way, they cut it down to 8 months..

anyways, that's it for now.

Monday May 8, 2006

2006-05-08T14:31:00.000Z

ok, well, i'm at an internet cafe right now, and it sucks because i can't check my e-mail! they have some kind of censorship over here. anyways... here's an upate on what i did. unfortunately, i can't put up any pics 'cause i can't get the USB thing to work on this computer.

Sunday
- Visited the Grand Canal and Tai Lake..
- At Tai Lake, we did a habitat assessment... meaning, we described the environment of where we sampled. it was pretty cool, but the only thing was that we spent soo long getting there. took about 4 hours to fnially get there, and then it took 3 hours to get back..
-
Monday
- on our way to Zhoushan Island...
- we stopped off at Shaoxing and took a boat ride in a canal, it was cool. i'll upload some pics soon. We ate lunch at a really expensive-looking restaurant... good food. tried their local wine .. they call it "cooking wine". I was sitting with the profs (Yuxiang and Steve) and some other chinese profs... so we had quite a few bottles of it. i ended up sitting beside steve, and he kept filling my glass.. the stuff tasted like soya sauce! he kept caling me "urbane"... still don't know what that means, even though he explained it to me. and now i call him "dapper/sartarian"... gotta look up those words too.
- so we had to stop in Ningbo for the night because we were having some bad weather... so the profs didn't want us taking the ferry to Zhoushan Island... the hotel is SO NICE and they have a real toilet! again, i'll post some pics later. we have all this food and free socks/underwear in there too..haha. what else... oh ya, tomorrow we might nto be able to go to the island again because there's supposed to be a thunderstorm... and the profs don't awnt us to go 'cause if ther is a storm... we might get stuck on the island for a few days... which is not what they want. but there's still a ton of stuff to see here in the city... we're going to check out some fish farms and take samplse by the ocean shore... sounsd cool.
- oh ya, and today we also went to this ancient chinese library... err, i'll post pics later.

so, that's my update. e-mail me and let me know what's up with you guys!

Saturday May 7, 2006

2006-05-06T10:18:00.000Z

so today, we were supposed to go on a boat and cruise along the Grand Canal to take some water samples, but unfortunately, a member of our group (Jenna), got into a little accident… She was sitting on the back of a bike… and she accidentally fell off, broke her tooth and got a few huge gashes in her upper and lower lips… so, Yuxiang and Steve (our profs) had to stay with her and get things sorted out at the hospital. She’s okay though, her lips are just really swollen. Instead of going to the Grand Canal, we had a lecture on conservation genetics… I think we’re going to go there tomorrow though…

So I included some more pics from yesterday. I hope this turns out ok.. I actually can’t go to the “will-chen.blogspot.com” website.. I can only access it thru my “blogspot manager” when I sign in… it’s weird. I think they have 2 types of internet here.. a domestic one and an international one.. and the domestic one blocks certain websites… anwyays, I hope everything works out.

Just to describe these pics…
- my roomie Luke with a coin.. if you put a coin on this globe and it sticks, it means you’ll be rich.
- Us taking samples from the Xi Xi Wetlands…it rained a lot that day…
- Ate this very famous dish in the Lo Wei Lo Restaurant… You take the fat off of this huge piece of meat, put it into a piece of dough, and eat it like a sandwhich… MmMMMmmm…
- My group that I toured with in Hangzhou… Yuxiang and Steve didn’t go with us though.

Thursday May ... 2006

2006-05-06T09:44:00.000Z

this is the first time i've been able to get onto a computer. and it's kind of hard to navitage 'cause everything's in chinese.. let me just try to do a quick update on what i've done so far.

- the plane ride wasn't so bad. slept most of it. when we got to shanghai, we took the bullet train, and it was CRAZY fast - 431 km/hour !! i attached a picture of it. first thing i noticed was that they're doing some serious construction everywhere (literally). where we would build one apartment, they build 10 replicas side by side.. it's crazy. here in hangzhou, on the university campus, they're building like 20 new residences (that look identical) right beside each other.. ya, so, we're here to see how china's rapidly development affects the environment.. and.. you can already see that.

- yesterday was pretty fun. they bought us these new bikes to ride around on campus. the campus is massive... probably as big as the York Campus.. but sooo much nicer. everything is so clean... there's always ppl sweepign the streets... -in the afternoon, each one of us went with our partners to downtown hangzhou by ourselves... 'cause they didn't want us to stay sheltered on campus. so it was cool 'cause there's all these stories that go with every building in china... and they know all of them. went to a botanical garden and had tea in the park... and then for dinner, we went to a restaurant called Lo Wei Lo for our welcome banquet. apparently, it's the most famous restaurant in the city

- today, we went to a wetland marsh and did some field work.. took samples from different sites..
anyways, bottom line is, it's really cool being here. can't believe i'm in china. i have way more to say, but i don't have much time 'caues this lab closes in 20 minutes! i want to upload my pics somewhere, but again, i can't really navigate in internet explorer 'cause eveyrthing's in chinese. so i just gotta get my partner here with me to show me what to do.