I am grateful for ...

This morning: English class canceled because when I walk in the pipes have burst, a geyser of boiling water is spraying over the classroom, and there's already three inches of water on the floor. A cadre of boys is trying to tame the waterfall by throwing jackets at it, and one gets the bright idea to plug the hole with a candle (conveniently still in the classroom because we had no electricity yesterday, so evening class was conducted by candlelight). One student goes for help, and returns with a wrench. The school maintenance man is "too busy" right now. Once the hole is plugged, the girls use brooms, buckets and dust pans to scoop up the water and haul it downstairs (more effective than you would think).

This, I am told by a student named Terry, is likely the result of bad karma because I wouldn't let them play basketball yesterday instead of studying.

This afternoon: I attempt to explain why we still celebrate Thanksgiving, even though it pretty much marks the start of a full-scale genocide against Native Americans. We write Thanksgiving poems on paper cutouts of our hands and glue them to a turkey, a project that went swimmingly with our first years. My second years turn it into an incendiary political statement by giving thanks to the govt-in-exile, and drawing (obviously illegal) Tbtan flags. They also include a deeply unflattering portrait of me with a conversation balloon that says "Zip it!" as well as a poem that says: "Teacher you are my sun! Teacher you are my moon! You are my second mother. Thank you!"

This evening: Thanksgiving dinner consists of mulled wine leftover from yesterday, and a slice of bread with the last of the cheese that was brought from Xining for my birthday.

Five days without a computer

The first day, I cry. (Really. Wish I was exaggerating.)

The second day, I take the broken power cord to every electrician in town. They take one look at the foreign Apple product and declare it hopeless. Just glue the damn wires back together, I beg. This is a place where nothing is ever too broken to fix, and most electronics are held together by packing tape and prayers. But this, they won't even touch.

The third day, I wake up and reach over to turn on my computer, only to be crushed all over again by the realization that this cold analog world is my new reality. Am briefly buoyed by the inexplicable delusion that I can solder the wires back together myself, so I buy some soldering wire (which they are extremely reluctant to sell me, on the belief that I am somehow going to maim myself) and spend an increasingly expletive-filled hour trying to fuse the wires with the flame of a cigarette lighter. Am not successful. Go to bed early and angry.

On the third day, I discover that not having a computer leaves me with a lot of extra time on my hands. I read a book, study Tibetan, teach five classes, and spend lunch with the students. Begin to wonder if the reason I don't speak the language after living here two-and-a-half years is because I watch an indecent amount of Internet TV. Start to envision a bright, tech-free future in which I am soon chatting fluently with the gateman, never find myself standing in front of class without a lesson plan, and spend my evenings finally penning the novel that will make it all worthwhile.

On the fourth day, I realize that is ridiculous, bordering on blasphemy. The Internet represents all that is good and right in the world. Can actually feel my soul withering at the edges from the lack of it. (Rinchen Tso - who firmly believes all my little electronic gadgets are what cause my frequent bouts of illness, and not the shocking lack of sanitation in this town - comes home from boarding school, and laughs when she hears of my misfortune. Reminding me of my also recently defunct Kindle, she suggests that the gods are trying to put me on a healthier path.)

On the fifth day, the replacement power cord I rush-ordered from a fake Apple store unexpectedly arrives three days early. The gateman is confused and frightened by my reaction when he delivers the package, but I am unabashed. I immediately abandon my plans to go help the students with their homework, and load up the newest episode of "The New Girl."

All is once again right in this part of the world.

You can't believe everything you see on "House" (apparently)

 Took a little jaunt to the town hospital yesterday after a bout with food poisoning - damn the siren call of the delicious and dubiously sanitary street barbecue! - left me sort of unable to stand up without blacking out. I just wanted to go to one of the little back-alley "clinics" where they hook you up to a saline drip for the equivalent of 50 cents, and call it a day, but Jonas (the new fellow teacher here) was pretty unenthusiastic, and directed the cab to the hospital instead.

So they popped me right into a cot, and started coming at me with needles.


"On a scale of new-ish to fresh out of the vein of that Hep B patient in the corner, how would you rate this needle?" I asked the nurse. Or anyway, that's what I would have asked her if I could have remembered how to say Hep B in Chinese.

She went on searching for a vein, relying more on a vigorous stabbing method than any apparent personal knowledge of the circulatory system.

"The expression on your face right now is priceless," Jonas observed helpfully.

My neighbor was a young man with an apparently grievous head wound (judging from the bloody bandage around his head) who may or may not have also been missing an eye. He seemed to have been on the losing side of some kind of family blood feud rumble, from what we could gather as his myriad friends and relatives trooped in and out, followed by the police, who came to photograph his injuries. The extent of his medical care also appeared to be an IV drip, possibly because the town was having a blackout that day.

(Oh yeah, did I mention the town-wide blackout? I'm sure there was a generator somewhere in that hospital, but it was not located in the emergency room. Which consisted of three cots and a contraption helpfully titled in English: "Stomach Washing Machine".)

Eventually the fly-infested, bone-cold fun of watching the IV drip into my arm palled, and I inquired about heading home. (My kids come into class all the time toting IV bags that we then have to attach to a hook on the wall, so I know these things are portable). The taxi ride was a bit a tricky (did you know that if you don't keep the bag at the proper height, the tube actually starts sucking blood out of your body, instead of pushing medicine in?), but once home we hung it from the ceiling in my bedroom and all went swimmingly - until it was time to switch medicine bags.

So then, what seemed to me to be a whole bunch of air got into the tubes, and anyone who has ever seen a medical show on TV knows that air bubbles in an IV mean instant death. The electricity was still off, so I couldn't consult my usual medical expert (Google), and my phone was dead, so I couldn't call for help. All I could do was lay there and watch the bubbles inch down the tube and into my hand. My hand started to burn like a flock of bees had gotten loose in my arteries, and my lungs felt heavy like they were filling with water ...

Long story short, that seems to be somewhat of a TV myth. So I'm all good.

My only problem now is how to properly dispose of the IV bag, which is still hanging from my ceiling, given that the kids in this apartment complex have a tendency to dig such things out of the garbage and use them for play. (No really, I had to take one away from a six-year-old once. And the needle was still attached.)

Kisses to all who care!

The last 6 months or so ...

* The Chinese college entrance exam is evil. Bone-chillingly, soul-suckingly evil. Or, as one student told me as they dragged themselves out of the testing center at the end of the first day of the three-day exam -- looking more depressed than the day they stumbled across an Internet site claiming that Justin Bieber was actually a 70-year-old pedophile in disguise -- "That exam is not nice, teacher. Not nice at all."

* But of course, I've always maintained that my munchkins are geniuses, so: Every one of them passed. Many of them ranked with the highest scores in the prefecture. One of them was the second-highest scorer in Qinghai Province. (For context: The exam has about a 60 percent passage rate nationwide.)

* In other news: Two new additions to the family --

The disarmingly cute creature who
turned out to be the spawn of Satan.

The motorcycle, not the unscrupulous
mechanic who sold it to us.

**Note: Yep, that's my dad, reversing a lifelong ban on even the mere mention of me joining a motorcycle gang by helping me jump headlong into the perilous world of driving on the plateau.

**Note2: The cat has two interesting little quirks. One, she is perhaps the plateau's first transgender cat -- Initially billed as a female, she has since developed pretty compelling anatomical evidence to the contrary, but as both her Tibtn name (Dawatso) and her English name (Lady Gaga) are female, we have decided that in her heart she is a girl. And second, her diet of raw yak meat seems to have left her with a slight skew toward cannibalism which manifests itself on anything that moves -- namely, me.

* Visitors: I've been lucky to have a pretty steady stream of visitors this term, including my father, and my mother, Zach and Lauren. Huge love and thanks to them for helping keep me sane.

Planes, trains and automobiles

Why pandas deserve to die

In Chengdu for the umpteen-millionth time, savoring burgers and beer at Sim's Hostel, possibly one of the greatest places on earth. Finally gave in to the hype, and visited the world-renowned panda breeding center (which, in an extremely informative video accompanying the tour, compares its scientific achievements to building the Great Wall and launching rockets into space), where I learned two things: even real ones look oddly like people in panda suits; and the universe really, really wants to get rid of them.

Among the reasons that pandas are headed down the fast track to extinction:

• Despite their imperiled status, it is very difficult to convince a panda to take a little time out of its busy eating-and-sleeping schedule to mate. I think in theory they're not overtly opposed to the mating process, conceptually speaking, but when it comes to actually making the effort, it just seems easier to abstain.
• Pandas were at one time in the distant past ferocious, meat-eating creatures. At some point, the species apparently experienced an existential crisis of epic proportions, and instead embraced a passive, vegan lifestyle. As any vegetarian will tell you, this can create problems of nutritional balance. Pandas solve this dilemma by working very hard to never expend any energy at all. In fact, even while participating in their all-time favorite activity -- eating -- they like to lay down or prop themselves up on something, so as to avoid accidentally wasting unnecessary energy. 
• In the most telling sign of the universe's disdain for the panda species,  the male panda's genitalia is somewhat shorter than the female's, how shall we say, receptacle area. Even assuming one could persuade the pandas to embrace free love, this shortcoming makes the odds of conception somewhat steeply stacked against them.

On the other hand, the Chengdu panda is the proud bearer of one of the coolest mottos of all time:

Things I have learned from Rinchen Tso

Rinchen Tso is my sometimes-roommate, since I rent the flat from her father. She says she is 15, which means she is 14, because Tibs have a wonky way of calculating age. Every 10 days she comes home from boarding school (which is all of five minutes away) and stays for 5 days. In our time together, I have learned many things:

• Mold on food is an indicator of several things, chief among them that I am not eating enough, and none of which have any bearing on the future edibility of said foodstuffs.
   
• Taiwan has yet to produce a soap opera that is NOT worth watching repeatedly. The goings on are happily translated by Rinchen Tso as we watch: "She is love him very much. He is her brother, but not really, and not love her." Fortunately, the plotlines run pretty standard: A mashup of "Taming of the Shrew" and "Romeo and Juliet," with just a dash of "The Fast and the Furious" thrown in.
   
• Dish soap is for rich Americans and special occasions. 

• Yogurt, while delicious, is not a meal. Oatmeal is for infants, if consumed at all. Hence, the only appropriate breakfast involves a hearty fry of mutton, potatoes and peppers - preferably partaken of before 8 a.m. If the foreigner has not risen by that time, it is clearly a mistake, and should be rectified by bringing her a hefty portion in bed. 

• A knock on the door absolutely must be answered. Even if we know it is not someone we want to talk to. Even if we are still in our pajamas, and we can clearly hear that it is our students at the door. Even if we know it is the monk from upstairs, and we absolutely do not want to tutor his nephew anymore.
   
• "Maybe" is a word with broad applications, but very rarely means maybe. (Actually, this is a lesson I have learned repeatedly, from many people, with sometimes unfortunate consequences). Most often, it means "definitely." As in: "Did you do your homework, Duke?" "Maybe not, teacher." The exception to this is when discussing schedules. As in: "When does the holiday start?" "Maybe Tuesday." "So I can buy my train tickets, then?" "... Maybe not." (Ooops, here again, we've slipped into "definitely" territory).