*MY* Mongolia Map...

GLITCH! Dangit! The link below goes to a map of "A Day in My Life" in Beijing, which is the first map you'd see if you go into my maps. I can't seem to link specifically to the Mongolia map... it's there if you want to dig it up... I'm still going to try to work on it... :( Here is a picture of the map you'd ideally see.


http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=111434989748663524557.000438af347bdafdfb849&ll=39.936592,116.404266&spn=0.106614,0.233459&t=h&z=12

Ok, so it's Google's map, but I put dots & lines & descriptions all over it to show the places I went. The location of the story beneath this entry, "Recycling Kids" can be found on the map, it's the icon of the hikers. Perhaps I will use this map to refresh my memory and tell more stories.... and yes, I realize no one reads this blog. But I don't care. Writing the little stories down refreshes my memory. Maybe someday my kid or a grandkid (or strangers) will like reading these little things.
So there.

Or maybe someday I'll have Alzheimer's and this blog will be the only thing that makes me happy. Ya just never know. If I have it while you're reading this, you could also try giving me jigsaw puzzles; that oughta keep me busy for hours. Or put me on the computer with Google maps and tell me to find stuff.

Mongolia Memory: Recycling kids

No, not trading them in or anything gross. A girl around 6 years old and a boy around 4-5, after dark, collecting cans & bottles. They kicked them along their route, because their arms were full of plastic bags overflowing with recyclables. I first heard them behind us as we were about halfway down a LONG set of outdoor stairs that went partway down a mountain. We'd been sightseeing, to a small mountain you can climb to see some kind of historical monument. You can meander down the back of the mountain over the grass & rocks, past a giant Buddha who stands overlooking the capital city, Ulaan Baator, which I can proudly pronounce properly.
:-D
I forget what the historical monument was all about, but I remember the shabby, rickety bus ride there and the walk back. I still have some little rocks I picked up from an excavation site on the way. I wrote "I am from Mongolia" on one.

So on the way back from our dusk jaunt to this little mountain, halfway down that LONG flight of steps, my little rocks in pocket, water bottle in another... we start to hear clinks, clanks, & clunks falling down the stairs from the top. The kids were gently kicking, more like nudging, cans & bottles down the stairs with their feet... arms overflowing with shopping bags overflowing with recyclables.

They wanted EVERY can they could get. They were not only cute, and it made such a lovely yet sad scene, but the thing that stood out after seeing so many kids begging... not only begging but physically grabbing tourists' arms and saying their few English words, "Money, money, eat, eat"... was that these two kids were walking near us, two white people, and NOT begging. Not asking for a cent. They were working for their money, at that age - hip height. My sightseeing buddy had lived in Mongolia for a couple months and I'm assuming he handled it in a good way. He didn't hand them money. He dropped it in their path. He dropped a 500 note (about enough for one night's worth of vegetables for a family). He didn't say anything, and neither did they. The girl stopped and looked at us, unsure of what to do. I wondered if she was thinking of telling us we dropped something. I didn't want her to feel like she'd stolen, so I turned back and smiled and gave a look that said it was for her. She smiled back and stooped down, managing to pick it up without putting down her armfuls of cans & bottles.

someone stole my weather widget

I had a lovely red weather widget in the top right corner that told the weather in Beijing. It's gone. Just disappeared. That's what happens when you ignore your blogs. People pillage them.
Hmm.
I find myself missing the striking color of it more so than actually knowing the weather in Beijing. It looked good.
*sigh*...
Life has been quite turbulent lately.

On an unrelated note, when I got back to the US (2008) I was missing a picture disk of my entire trip to Mongolia. My pictures literally stop at the border, where I changed disks. I was thinking about Mongolia today, and when I gather my thoughts I'm going to write some of those memories being that I don't even have a photo and I don't want it to disappear... once I no longer remember it, it's gone.

Chinese New Year: my first firework and moving

I moved from my first apartment to my second during the week of Spring Festival (aka: Chinese New Year, sort of). I spent a few days in my old apartment watching neighbors set off fireworks and packing my things. It was a slightly lonely time, as my son was in the U.S. and I was leaving the 2 kids I'd been tutoring, moving to a new area with a new job, etc.
I was "in between"... nowhere.
Not even sure if I should stay in China or not.
All around me Chinese people were talking about family, and excited about going back to their hometowns to see their parents or brothers & sisters. One girl at work came in so excited about getting a train ticket after sleeping out for 2 days even though it was a "standing only" ticket for a 26 hour trip. Wow.
It made me miss my family and friends probably more so than at Christmas or other holidays of ours. I didn't hear any buildup or excitement about "our" holidays, but as Spring Festival approached, things got more & more sentimental. But it felt lonely because it wasn't "my holiday". It was a holiday I didn't grow up with, and I didn't fully understand. I felt the excitement and the love for family, but as an outsider I felt left out.

So here I was, all alone, putting my things into a taxi and moving across the big wide city. Within a few days I had all my things moved and was all alone in my tiny new 18th story Chinese apartment (as opposed to my larger, nicer, "western" one).
I looked out the window at night, hearing people yelling happily and laughing, and I got very sad. I may have even shed a tear. I went outside. I wanted to be a part of the festivities that were still going on about halfway through Spring Festival, and even though I was alone I figured I'd at least physically put myself out there in it and see if it would make me feel better or worse.

There was a middle aged man hanging an ENORMOUS string of fireworks from a tree. It was at least 3 feet long and a foot wide; ALL fireworks. I couldn't imagine the sound it would make, and I stood around to watch. I felt awkward standing among my new neighbors, whom I had only seen now for a minute in the dark of night, and wondered if they could even tell I was a foreigner. I had some leftover loneliness in me, but decided to stick around....
... the man made sure the huge firework was secure, and as he turned my way I saw a big grin on his face. Little children were nearby, anxiously waiting for him to light it off, as well as plenty of adults, too. I don't know what made him do it, but he walked over to me, smiling, and handed me the lighter.
He had no idea how warm that made me feel.
He probably also didn't know I had never set off even a tiny American firework before, let alone something that could blow my fingers off.
I almost declined due to inexperience and the feeling that it wasn't "my holiday", but I decided to go for it. I mean, he did give me the lighter. I smiled and walked over and lit it and ran to the radius everyone else was standing at, figuring anything more would make me look like an inexperienced chicken foreigner.
That thing was LOUD.

That was one of the nicest moments of my life.
I felt welcomed, like I belonged there, like that was now my neighborhood, and it was my neighborhood for a year and a half later. I walked it and rode my bike around it with groceries in my basket like I belonged there, partly thanks to that man who handed me the lighter, not having a clue it was my first night there and how lonely I felt and how warm and included that would make me feel.

The following New Year I set off fireworks from the roof of that building, as I was the only one who had access (by climbing out my window). Chinese New Year and Spring Festival were now my holidays too.
I was invited.
And if I went back to visit I'd still walk around that neighborhood like it's mine; it still is, and I miss it like it's mine.

Chinese New Year

Fifteen days of "anything goes". In Beijing, when I was there, the law was that fireworks were not allowed within the 2nd Ring Road, which means the most populated part of the city (or maybe it was the 3rd?) Either way.... HA! What a laugh!

If you look at my Picasa Photo Albums (top right of the blog) there's a folder called Chinese New Year. The first few pictures were taken at the Drum and Bell Towers, which are pretty much in the dead center of the city (so much for that law), and from where various events were sounded out from the towers way back when. We were able to go up into the Drum Tower (for a fee, it's a mild tourist attraction now) and get a view of the whole city. Fireworks in every direction, popping up here & there, dotted along the horizon as far as the eye could see. I had the awesome feeling that all over China, in every city, the same thing was happening at that moment. Over a billion people all celebrating the same thing at the same time. I wondered what it would look like flying over in a plane. You could see fireworks below for hours, covering this huge land mass, for 2 weeks. Awesome.
The streets are covered in red paper from any ol' people setting off any ol' fireworks they could get their hands on or afford. I regret not taking a picture of the 5yr old boy I passed on the street stuffing firecrackers into an empty soda can, surely with the intent of watching the whole thing explode. I decided I'd rather just keep walking and not hang around to see if he burns his little hands; as much as I'd have loved that picture, I'd rather not be any part of it when he actually lights the fuse.

At that time of year, I was actually among the most knowledgeable in the city as far as getting around on public transportation. Beijingers went to their hometowns for the vacation, and outsiders came into the city for fun. They didn't know where the buses went, but I rode them like an old hand, finding the newbies even slightly annoying in their giddy ignorance of which side of the subway tracks to stand on.
It felt good.

More another time...

Cyanide apples and a little girl...

Sounds like the ingredients of a fairy tale. But no, just an ordinary day in my life tutoring Tiffany and Paulo, ages 9 & 11. I'd ride with them to and from school (going home in between) and they'd always have a snack on the way home, usually fruit. Tiffany would eat the whole apple.
I mean the WHOLE apple, all but the stem.

I once saw a homeless guy do that, but Tiffany was far from homeless. She was a bright, friendly, positive girl from a home that gave her everything. Yet still she didn't waste even an apple seed, and had a heart that could hold all the world's poor children, and it did, as she wanted desperately to give a backpack of school supplies to a poor rural town's fellow 3rd graders but her mother said she could only give away her old things and she would not buy any new things to give. She cried after her mother and brother left the room.

I could write more about Tiffany and Paulo, and I just might, but I want to get back to the cyanide. It's in apricot pits, cherry pits, apple seeds, and some other nuts.

I was eating some apricots at my apartment in China with a friend over. He kept the pits aside and asked for something I didn't understand as he looked around. His eyes brightened when he found a hammer. He squatted down and proceeded to bang the pits with the hammer on my tile floor, missing most of the time, pits escaping the hammer head, shooting under furniture and into other rooms. He finally got one open and ate the nut inside, which looked like a fat almond.

The second one he broke open he gave to me, anxious to see my delight as he introduced me to the new exotic taste of... suntan lotion. My face cringed up and I wondered why on earth anyone would eat these things by choice. I assumed they must be healthy. Well, they are and they aren't....

They taste like bitter almond and contain a tiny bit of cyanide. This makes many people say we should not consume them, and the internet abounds with stories of people going to the hospital after swallowing cherry pits. Thing is, the cyanide doesn't really come out if you swallow the pits whole.
And two reasons for eating the seeds of apples at least (most people are still too afraid to eat apricot pits even though some cultures do it regularly):

1.) It's been said that the skin of the fruit contains the antidote for cyanide. So the idea is that if you eat the whole fruit, those few seeds will not hurt you, but if you eat a cupful of apple seeds crushed or chewed with no apple skin, you can die. Who the hell'd want to eat a cupful of crushed apple seeds anyway? They taste like miniature apricot pits, which taste like poison. Not something you want to add to your banana bread unless you're looking to off some- ... anyway...

2.) It's been discovered (don't ask me for my sources, I don't remember) that apparently cancer tumors are the only thing found in the human body that can bond with cyanide, counteracting it. So when they find each other in you, I guess they sort of... become friends and both get born again as mellow non-harmful-whatevers. No more cancer cell, no more cyanide molecule. They've fiddled with this as a potential cure for cancer but it's also been labeled as "quackery". Imagine if it's true that an apple a day can keep us out of Sloan and save billions of dollars in medication and doctor bills. No, really, IMAGINE it. Some cultures don't have cancer you know. They don't ever need to go to a doctor for it.

WHY am I bringing this up?
I looked it up after eating a WHOLE apple yesterday and wondering how much better it might be for me than leaving the core. I do tend toward the idea of eating as naturally as possible, so I think I'm going to eat the whole apple from now on, even though the middle tastes like slightly bitter almonds. Hey, if there's a chance it might go in there and smart-bomb a few cancer cells before they have a chance to reproduce, it's darn worth it to me. Too bad we can't know if it's working. But it's clear that 5 apple seeds can't hurt.

Red Hair Dye Job Disaster

I decided to visit the local hairdresser on my street, the one with the cute little baby... I had actually seen people getting their hair done there, and it wasn't an all-night "hairdresser" like the ones by the bus stop that men come out of at 11pm, so I figured it'd be safe...

(note: In the U.S. I had only been to a hairdresser once - when I was the maid of honor in my sister's wedding; she made us all go together. Now WHAT on earth possessed me to go to a hairdresser in CHINA?? Please don't ask... a friend talked me into covering some grey, which I don't normally care about, but I succumbed to the peer pressure and adventure of doing something new...)

I asked for my natural color, to cover a little bit of grey. I said everything right; it was VERY CLEAR what I wanted and they definitely understood. They said they can't just dye part, they have to do my whole head. They showed me a book of fake hair samples and I pointed to the color I wanted. But as they bleached out my color I wondered why they weren't putting any brown in... they thought I'd like it if they made me BLEACH BLONDE! They styled it all nice and I said "why didn't you put brown?" and he said, "but it's so pretty isn't it??" and I got mad saying I asked for brown, the brown in the book, and would you believe he said they were all out of that one?!? I said so why didn't you tell me, you just put no color?!? (knowing he just wanted to experiment on me) ...I was so mad.

They told me to pick a different brown and they'd put it in... ...they suggested a brown, and knowing my colors I could see it had a very tiny hint of reddish in it. I said no, it has a little red (knowing that the red would be pulled out on the bleach-blonde) but they insisted it wouldn't be noticeable, and I decided to believe them. As they were rinsing my hair (and I couldn't yet see it) they quietly muttered things I didn't understand, and I said in chinese, "too much red, right?" and they didn't want to say, but, well, you can see for yourself...

I had to call my boss from the chair, cape on shoulders, making them pause their blow-drying, in tears, explaining why I had to miss a class. I held the phone up to the hairdresser and angrily cried in Chinese, "YOU tell my boss why I'm late!" Of course she didn't, and I didn't expect her to. My boss said, "Well, just get here as soon as you can no matter what color your hair is."

I was there FOUR HOURS total!!! I really did cry for real, and they started to feel bad and said they'd fix it. I said in my bad chinese, "two times you did it wrong, you want to do it a third time?? You think I'm stupid?!?" and they just said sorry, sorry, come back tomorrow, and I said "Really? Tomorrow you'll know how to make brown??" and I left, running home, trying not to miss my next class. I was so embarrassed to go into work, but then some of the other teachers said I looked sexy that way. Even if it was a lie it made me laugh and feel better.

I let my hair rest 2-3 days then a Chinese friend took me to buy a box of brown from the supermarket and we did it at my house and it made it a tiny bit darker but not much.

After that, every 3-4 weeks I did another box of brown trying to make it darker and darker, but it would always fade back to red after a few weeks. This all happened TWO YEARS AGO this month (April 2007) and my hair still has light, dry ends.