One, Two.....Get down

Not much to report this week. I haven't gotten around to a podcast, but I'll throw one up later this week for the 8 of you who are actually listening to them (thanks again for doing that). It's midterms week here at SPAS which means it's mostly a study week except for today (monday) and friday. Tue-thurs the kids have their exams and get to study during any class that doesn't have an exam that day. What this means for me is that this week I have very little to do, which I'm kind of looking forward to. I've got a pile of grading that's been growing the longer I ignore it (surprising, I know) that I'm hoping to tackle full on.

One of my co workers got in a car accident last week, hit his face on the windshield (he wasn't wearing his seat belt) and fractured a vertebrae in his neck. Apparently he's going to recover, but he's in the hospital, he's got one of those immobilizing halo's screwed into his skull and he'll be out of the office for a couple weeks. This was oddly surprising. I've seen more accidents here in the last 7 months than I probably have in my 22 years in the US, but I still haven't heard of any that involved anyone I know. Also, most of them are just minor fender benders with no injuries. So while it wasn't surprising to hear about another car crash, it WAS surprising to hear that the outcome was so severe.

I went for a pretty killer bike ride on saturday complete with over 2000 meters of climbing and a top elevation of 1200 meters. One climb was 20 kilometers long with the last 3k so steep that I had to be out of the saddle to pedal because even in my lightest gear I couldn't keep my pedals moving if I was sitting down. That said, the gearing on my bike is heavier than most (which means the mountains are harder for me because my easiest gear is harder than most others') and I made it to the top first with one other rider and a couple minutes ahead of the other 4 in our group. Another climb featured a section about 500 meters long at an 18% grade after already 5k of climbing. If you don't know gradients I'll just tell you that's pretty effing steep. All in all, it was a pretty brutal ride which made it all the more worthwhile, especially since I was supposed to be at an open house all morning and in to the afternoon on saturday for my school, but I managed to talk my way out of it. Apparently no more than 10 people showed up so I was much happier with my decision to go for a 100k bike ride instead of stand around my work on a saturday.

Speaking of bikes, I finally paid for mine which means I am now the proud owner of a 2008 Lemond 'tete de course' Triomph Ultimate. It is an all carbon frame with full Dura-Ace components. If you know anything about bikes, you'll understand that this is a REALLY sweet ride. If you don't know anything about bikes I'll make it easy for you: All put together the whole thing weighs 15 pounds and I can pick it up with just my pinky. The switch from a 20 year old steel frame with down tube shifters (which I still love and ride around town as my 'getting places' bike) to a almost brand new carbon racing bike was unbelievable. I'll stop being all bike nerdy and just say that I love it, I'm bringing it home for the summer and if anyone wants to go for a ride, let me know.

Since this post has been fairly bikecentric anyways, I'll close with this. I kind of dove head on into cycling this past year and it ahs been great. It's something I've really enjoyed and something I look forward to doing seriously for a long time. There are a lot of disciplines and one of my favorite is Cyclocross. It's something I want to pursue more and that part of me dreams of someday competing at a semi-pro level (I don't think I'll ever stop dreaming of competing at a pro level in a sport some day) Why? you may ask. Because if I ever won a race then this would be my trophy:

Photo ©: Bill McCarrick/www.buffalo2step.com


And like pale legs in the springtime, I'm out.

4 Mojitos is enough for a weeknight

Well a big hearty Ni Hao to the lot of ya.  It's been at least a week since last time and life continues to roll along at a rather lively pace.  Did I just say lively?  Apparently.  Deal with it.  It's been an odd week of sorts with one of our teachers gone, me with a bit of a head cold, nice weather, a short school week,  and I think that's about it.  I'm gonna try and keep this post not-so-wordy and just hit you with a few events of the last week.  

Also, here's a PODCAST

Tuesday I had my first REAL altercation with a student as a teacher.  After telling a student  politely to close a book she wasn't supposed to be reading in class 3 times, and then again two more times after she took it out again a couple minutes later,  I told her she would be getting a yellow card.  A yellow card is similar to what you would get in a soccer match.  It's a strong warning and isn't handled lightly.  I think I've given out one yellow card besides this one all year.  There is also an orange card, which is the same asa red card, but we changed it to orange because someone decided that the negative connotations that went along with a "red" card might not be appreciated in a communist country.  Later this student started cursing about me in Chinese under her breath and I told her she was working her way towards a yellow card if she kept it up.  Finally, as I was giving the rest of the class their assigment I said the sentence "what do you want to do?" to which she said under her breath in english "Kill teacher."  At this point I told her to leave the classroom.  When she didn't move I moved her backpack into the hall for her.  Still no movement, just glaring.  Now, this is an emotional girl.  She is very bright, and very passionate about learning, and some of us think she may be bi-polar.  At any rate, this was not the first time we've had a disagreement.  We usually get along well enough, but for some reason, tuesday was not a good day for either of us.  Eventually class ended with her not moving.  The rest of the students got up to leave and she didn't move.  Then she started yelling about how it was unfair for me to give her a card for swearing in Chinese when other students do it all the time.  She yelled about a lot of other things too.  She flung her books off the table and almost took out my keyboard and the school's amplifier.  In short, she threw one hell of a tantrum.  Crying and all.  While of course this wasn't fun at all, my favorite moment of the situation was when she yelled "SO JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE TEACHER I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU??!??!?!?" and I said, "Well, yes.  That's exactly how it works."  It all ended with her glaring at me and breathing really heavily, much like a small child would do, and telling me that she hated me and so did all of the students.  So that was tuesday. 

Sunday, I played basketball outside since it was about 78 degrees and sunny.  It was great.  I played with my friends from Cornell (side note: I realized recently that my core group of friends almost all went to Ivy league schools.  There are 4 from Cornell, two from Brown, and one from Yale.  Then there's a Korean American dude who went to some UC school.  Anyways, I every once in a while I think about it and it strikes me as odd.  Also, I'm the only one of us that hasn't studied any Chinese at all).  Highlights from basketball were playing against an all Chinese team who were pretty decent and had a guy on their team who was taller than me and at least 40 pounds heavier of all muscle.  This may be the biggest Chinese person I've ever seen.  Also, his Chinese name translates to english as Sea Breeze, so that's what we call him.  Anyways, the dude can post up like no bodies business, but I did manage to block the hell out of him a couple times, and it felt amazing.  Anyways, after playing, there was a really nerdy guy who had tried to join who honestly had no business being there.  I'm usually not one to judge to hard, and as a teacher part of me always wants to allow everyone to participate, but this guy was way out of his league.  He was terrible.  I felt bad for him......until we tried to leave.  As we were trying to leave he was holding my friend Hamm's ball and wouldn't give it back.  Apparently this other guy who had been playing with us took this Chinese guys ball, which of course had nothing to do with us because we hardly know the other guy, but since he's white like us this Chinese guy assumed we were in this theft together.  So, a conversation ensued along the lines of this:

Hamm: Give me my ball

Nerdy Chinese Dude: No, he took my ball

Hamm: I don't care, I did not steal your ball.  Give me MY ball.

NCD: No, he stole my ball

Hamm: Look, I'll give you Doug's number so you can call him and sort this out, but I havenothing to do with this so give me my ball

NCD: No, he took my ball

Hamm:  Give me my f****ng ball!

It went on like this for a while.  At some point Hamm took his ball from NCD and as we started to leave NCD threatened to call the police on us, so we told him to go right ahead.  He did.  As he was talking to the police and we kept walking her realized this wasn't going to turn out the way he wanted, so he finally had a rational thought and decided to take Doug's number.  In the end, he ended up going to Doug's apartment with a police officer to get his basketball back.  Fucking China.  

Ok, those were my couple hilarious/ridiculous/infuriating moments in China as of late.  I just loaded up some pictures taken over the last couple months from my sweet new camera.  So here's a few to give you an idea of what life is kind of like for me here in Beijing.  

Who can tell me the atomic weight of bolognium?

(Besides Ben Amel)
Yola Mi Amigos. I realize I am unscrupulously (that's a word, right?) late on the post front, but I'm not too worried about it. Most of you who are actually concerned with my more regular going-ons are hearing from me, and the rest of you don't seem to be too upset when I miss a week (or two) on this informational forum of my travels.

First things firstly, Download the PODCIZZAST (yuck). It's a pretty decent one if I do say so myself. Eclectic to the teeth.

Second things secondly, I've been in the news here lately. Check it out. If you look closely at the picture, might notice a not-Chinese dude in a St. Olaf jersey leading the pack. That dude just might be me. This, as far as I can tell, was the front page of the sports section on the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper's website. Dope? I sure think so.

I also managed to get a photograph from after the race put up on the popular (and quite funny) blog Bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com. Here's the picture on it's own:

To see it in it's published context click here and scroll to the bottom of the post. I can't tell you how many racers were puffin on cigs after the race waiting for the awards. It was actually a little hard to breath because of them, and we were outside. This guy though was outfitted in a full Rock Racing team kit, and for those who don't know (which is probably all of you) Rock Racing is this American professional cycling team that attempts to be the most badass team in the pro circuit, and do so by having skulls on their jerseys, showing up to races in team Cadillac Escalades, and signing riders who are known former dopers. They are also owned and run by Fancy-Jeans-Designer Michael Ball, CEO of Rock Denim Co. (or something like that). He's pretty much the Mark Cuban of the cycling world. So when I saw this dude in a complete team kit and skully suckin down a marb I grabbed my buddy Hiro's camera and snapped a couple pictures. Anyways, it got put up on the blog, and I'm pretty proud of myself.

As for the race itself, I think I got around 8th or 9th. It was a short race with about 7k of false flat (slight uphill that is kind of bitch to ride since you can never relax) and then a 6k climb up to 600m above sea level. It took about 31+ minutes. I helped set the pace with one other foriegn guy named Piers for the first 7k and then got dropped from the group when we hit the climb because I had over worked myself in the first half. Piers got beat out at the line by about 3 centimeters and took second. All in all though it was a lot of fun and I'm not too dissapointed with a top 10 finish in my first ever real bike race. Plus, I made the paper. If you're interested in seeing more pictures of me suffering up a mountain and looking pretty terrible and pasty in some spandexy biker clothes click through this album.

In other China news, youtube is down in the entire country because there's some video out there of Chinese police beating the shit out of bound, semi-consious/unconsious Tibetan monks from a few months ago. China says the video is edited to make it look worse than it is. I was able to watch the video on the BBC's website and, if you haven't seen it, I'll just say it's either WAY too real and really f-ed up, or it is indeed fake. Part of me wants it to be fake because of how terrible it is and makes me feel kind of dirty for living here and supporting a country in any way that is ok with stuff like that happening within its own borders. I'm not gonna try and post a link since if I do they might block me. Hell, they might block me just for writing that last bit. That's how China do. We'll just have to see.

Anyways, it's been a pretty busy last couple weeks for no reason in particular. Nothing too spectacular, just things going on, which is always a good thing because it means time is moving quickly from day to day and before I know it another week has passed and I'm smack dab in the middle of another weekend. Take this week for instance: it's already Thurday, and before I know it I'll be teaching my last lesson of the week and looking forward to my bike ride on saturday morning.

AH. Yes. I knew I had some big news to announce this week that I was forgetting. I know I told most of you that my plan was to spend a year teaching here and then move back to the Twin Cities (perhaps the greatest place on the planet (minus the cold)) and look for a teaching job there. Well, plans have changed. What with things the way they are (I hear there's some sort of trouble with the economy, or something) I've got myself a good job making good money here in China and I'll be staying another year. I know that makes me sound like a sell out, but while that is one big reason, perhaps the biggest reason I've decided to stay is because the music program I'm starting is just getting off the ground this semester and I'd hate to leave and have it come crashing down, so I've decided to stick around a little longer and see if I can't turn it into something bigger next year and hopefully help them hire someone else who will come in and do good things with it. Plus, while I do hear the Twin Cities calling my name daily, there's enough going on here to keep me entertained and when it gets down to it, that's good enough news for me to stay for the time being. I WILL be home this summer for July and most of August, and I do plan on making the most of my time at home. So those of you who I see on a regular basis in the land I call home, get ready for the most Radtarded Summer TM you've ever experienced. Expect hella bike rides, music shows, barbecues, and consumption of many sorts. Also, if any of you are at a loss for things to do next fall and after, there's always room for another person in Beijing. Think about it.

And like Mathew Mconeghey's shirt, I'm off

-B