Wasted Time

This is it. It's the day of the final in that big scary math class you've been going to every day this semester. You're nervous, but confident because you've studied all the material presented in class, gone over and over the homework problems, attended the study groups and know the lecture notes by heart. You even read a few sections out of the textbook.

If you were in America, I'd say you were a shoe-in for an A. Heck, with that kind of preparation overkill, you'd have a chance at the big 100% if you don't make any silly mistakes. Too bad this is China, where at least 60% of the material on the test will be above the level of anything covered in class or assigned in the homework. You should have taken note of the other students study habits, like reading more advanced sections of the textbook and getting ahold of extra practice books with more difficult problems. The textbooks just don't make 'em hard enough to meet the testing standards here. You also probably shouldn't have watched those Walker, Texas Ranger re-runs or gone exercising in your spare time. If you really wanted to do well, you should have restricted yourself to sleeping 4 hours a day and bought some tylenol to handle the back pain from studying the other 2o.

Welcome to China's high school's and colleges, where study habits and material covered are driven solely by tests and the need to distinguish the brightest and most diligent students from the rest of the pack. What's that? You say that you'll never need to take limits involving both arccos and the natural logarithm again in your life? Ah, but you forget...practicality and applicability aren't even considered here. If all the material were practical and applicable, every student would have be acing every test. Every student would be the same; there'd be no way to tell who to admit colleges, grad schools, and the big fish: a pass into a cushy American university where A's grow on trees if you study like you did in China.

The problem is supply and demand. The demand for a spot in a decent university is huge; take a look at the population. The spots available are not so numerous. Therefore, the price of one of these spots increases. The price is not measured in money, but time. Time not spent sleeping. Time not spent playing soccer, zoning out, going to the lake, riding your bike, reading a book...whatever. It's all spent studying. I'm a little wierd because I don't mind studying. Usually I feel like I'm learning something I might be able to use later. The other times, I grit my teeth and just do it. In China, there's a lot more teeth grinding going on, a lot more than I'd put up with. Practically speaking, nearly every test problem is unnecessarily complicated. That's not to say you'd never need to do it, just that there's no need to be able to do every single type of brain-melting problem there is.

For example: Say there are 50 kinds of very difficult math problems, the worst of the worst, the kind we don't ever have to worry about in American schools. In order to do well on the Chinese math final, the Chinese student had better know how to do every kind of problem. Say it takes 1 hour for each kind of problem; that's 50 hours studying. I, the American student, don' t do any of this studying; that's 0 hours.

These problems aren't useless. They do solve real world questions. Say I and this Chinese student get work as electrical engineers at the same place, same job. We might have to know how to solve 2 of those kinds of really tough problems. So when I first get this job, I'll be a little behind the Chinese guy. I spend those 2 hours to master the 2 kinds of problems I need to know. That means that practically speaking, the Chinese guy wasted 48 hours of his life.

It's too bad there's so much waste going on. It seems like there must be a better way. Of course the Chinese students realize their situation, but they have no alternative. If they're not willing to put in the 50 hours, then the next guy is, and he'll get the job because his test score was higher. It doesn't matter that in the end there's no difference between the two workers.

Maybe this is the solution: Reduce the test level down to where it is in America. Then, take all the 100%'s and just have a lottery to determine who gets what school. Seems like a good communist method, and if you ask me, China's too confusing right now. It says it's communist, acts capitalist, then the government just does whatever it wants. Better to just go all out one way or the other. At least that would take some of the pressure off the poor kids being forced to study their lives away.

Epitomizing Chinese Efficiency

Last night at about 10:30 I was walking by the tennis courts. In the darkness, a lone figure trotted through the darkness on the other side of the fence. As he came closer, I heard the sound of rhythmic chanting in time with his jogging. He was Chinese, but the chanting sounded suspiciously Russian. My jaw dropped at the utter efficiency of his time use: simultaneously studying and exercising when most of us are staring at a screen with a bowl of popcorn and a cold beverage. Just think how productive he must be during daylight hours if he has to study and exercise into the night.

That was the first studying exerciser I've seen here, but he epitomized the impression I had of the Chinese before I left for China; the über student, efficient and robotic in actions and results. I had my reasons for this assessment, and still do. When I was at the CTY camps, my unofficial scan of the population showed that it was at least 60% Asian. The first roommate I had was also Asian, and he told me stories about learning his times tables in first and second grade after school, his dad standing over him slapping his wrist for every error.

The story is the same here in China. The Gaokao is the dreaded college entrance exam, literally ruling kids lives from birth until the 'pencils down!' command. The problem is that unlike our poor unimportant SAT, if you do poorly on the Gaokao you're digging ditches or pulling the foul sewage that clogs pipes out of manholes for the rest of your life (both of which I've seen here). If you do anything but ace the Gaokao, your future is in serious jeopardy. Since the university I'm at, HIT, is one of the top 10 in China, every student here certainly aced the Gaokao. This means that every student I'm interacting with was studying for the first 18 years of their life, minus 4-5 hours a night for sleep. I see this, and I think wow; how can we as a country compete with this kind of work ethic? It seems inevitable that before long, these robotic producers will overtake us using their superpower: inhuman tolerance of mind-numbing activities.

But this must have some kind of effect on the personalities of these people. Every hour spent studying is an hour not spent doing something else. What is that "something else" that we do so much of in America? Watch TV? Play with our friends? Fight with our siblings? Do we get intangible benefits from these other activities? I don't have the answer, but that brings me to another point. Fighting, playing, and existing with siblings isn't something the Chinese are doing much of, at least since 1979. That's when Deng Xiaoping implemented the one-child policy, limiting most Chinese families to only one child. Everyone in college here was born after 1979, which means everyone my age and younger are the "only child".

What do we learn from our siblings? I have memories...tempers tested, shoes thrown, bodies pinned to the ground...don't judge me, I was little. Siblings can get under each other's skin like no one else. It may not be fun for the kids, or the parents for that matter, but doesn't that experience have some value? Sometimes adults can get under our skin too, and what if it happens for the first time when you're 20 years old...or 30...or 40? Are shoes going to be thrown, like it happens with kids the first time a temper really gets torqued? Or are the weapons going to be a little more age appropriate?

But it's ok, the Chinese can get the same lessons from playing with their friends, right? So friends aren't quite the same as siblings, as anyone with a big family can attest to, but lessons are still learned. And not all kids here spend their entire childhoods studying, just the one's that go to good colleges and are going to be successful...oops. I guess that means that when this generation comes of age, the college professors, doctors, and scariest of all politicians will be socially underdeveloped, but at least the ditch diggers and sewage muckers might have had a chance at a well-rounded childhood.

I'm no psychologist and I don't know what kind of long-term affects widespread solitary childhood might have on society. I do know it's not the same as back home, and it's not even the same as it was here 30 years ago. Whatever the affects are going to be, China and the world have yet to feel them in full swing. My gut tells me that it's not going to be obvious, but it might make things a little bit...unstable?...to have a president and entire cabinet of politicians who spent their childhoods chained to their desks. Say what you will about Bush, but this is a whole new can of worms.

Don't go getting all scared, because it's probably not going to be that bad. As far as I can tell, all the other students here are fairly normal. Honestly, there's too many cultural differences and the language barrier is still too tangible for me to discern which of the oddities I've encountered could be due to only-childness. For instance, yesterday I met with a Chinese student for lunch. It was the second time we'd met; the first time, he'd randomly approached me on campus hoping to talk to a foreigner and maybe practice his English. Undeterred by my insistence on speaking Chinese, he wanted to meet again so at noon yesterday I was waiting in the lobby to meet this guy. When he showed up, we talked briefly and he introduced me to a friend he had with him. Then, as we were about to head for the cafeteria, he noticed that I was wearing shorts.

"It's cold out. You should wear long pants today," he said. This wasn't too surprising. The Chinese often offer unwanted personal advice for the sake of your health.

"It's ok, I'm used to it. I like the wind, the weather's like this a lot at home," I replied.

"I insist," he said, and indicated his concern with a hand motion. His friend nodded in agreement. "You'll catch cold."

"I'm really not worried about it," I said, starting to get annoyed. I might understand the cultural difference, but it's still annoying to have a guy your age tell you what pants to wear.

"No, no, no...I can't let you do it," he said, and from the level of concern on the two chinese faces, you might have thought they were advising me not to get an abortion or to write my will before I died of cancer.

I changed my pants. What a feeling...the walk of shame. Back up the stairs to the third floor, swapping shorts for jeans so I wouldn't catch cold, and then I had to go back down and have lunch with these guys. Oh where, oh where has my dignity gone; oh where, oh where can it be....

I'm not chalking this episode up to the only child phenomenon. I'm just illustrating that there's a lot to understand about the Chinese, and it's going to be a while before I can categorize the oddities by the multitude of possible cultural/deveolpmental causes. Actually I take that back. There's no way I'll ever do that, and if I met the Ph.D. who said he did, I'd call bullshit before I read his thesis.

If I can't figure out why they are the way they are, I'll have settle for trying to figure out how the Chinese are, period. I guess we'll see how far I can get in the next 11 months.

Learning Chinese

Learning Chinese in China is like building a house. You're pretty much stuck until you learn to recognize the tools, and how to use them. Once you know how to swing the hammer, you're getting somewhere...then it's the saw, and all of a sudden you can cut a board and stick it to something. The problem with Chinese: there are thousands of tools they like to call characters and grammar patterns, and you're not going anywhere until you can use a lot of them. Maybe you know what a nail looks like, and how to drive the truck, but they're pretty much unrelated, and you aren't going to get the house built driving a truck and holding a nail.

The toughest part about learning Chinese is that there are so many tools. No matter how long you're building, every day you're going to have to learn how to use a new one. Using them really isn't that tough. Everything's nice and simple; it's just that it's...everything. With other languages, I imagine that the tools are a bit more complex. They have more facets, more gadgets and doo-dads. Maybe it takes a little longer to get familiar with each grammatical device. But then, once you've got it figured out, you're off and running. You can use the one tool to do all kinds of things. The grammatical devices of Chinese are a little...different. Aside: I'm not a linguistics expert, and I don't actually know the definition of a grammatical device. All of you up and coming publishers out there, be kind. They don't use verb conjugations, for instance. The phrase we hear is "grammar pattern". What that means is, if you want to say this, then you just put these characters together in this order and you're set. "If you want to say 'I haven't done [verb] for [amount of time]' then you just put these characters around the desired verb and amount of time". Simple right? It really is. But it just keeps coming, and the different patterns don't have a predictable relationship. They're related enough to help you remember them, but not related enough to help you predict new ones. Result: more exhausting blind memorization. Memorization is not that tough by itself, but then water won't hurt you either until you try to drink from Niagra Falls*.

Learning Chinese in China is also like hiking with the Perkins: exhausting and frustrating at first, but eventually rewarding and eye-opening. This analogy is a little confusing, so let me clarify: climbing the mountain is learning Chinese, and the Perkins are China, forcing you to do it at the most intense pace your body can handle. I remember the Mount Stuart hike well. The trail on the valley floor was nice and flat...America. Then, it veered sharply left into a steep vertical slope, and continued straight to the top of the mountain...China + language pledge. There was no way to stop and rest, because the sun was rising and we'd get too hot if we hiked in direct sunlight. Better to go nice and fast without stopping to be more comfortable. Or, in China, no rests because of the language pledge, never mind that my toilet's broken and I don't know how to tell the lady at the desk "it won't flush my turd!"

So I'm not very good at explaining what its like to learn Chinese. Maybe sinking into unusual, disjointed metaphor is not the best way to go about it. Maybe it's just not that easy to explain. Right now, I'm just relieved because I think the slope on the mountain is getting a little more reasonable. After a month plus here at HIT's Dorm 6, I'm starting to see a light. Even though I know it's not the end of the tunnel...it's something. The tools are finally starting to work together in a way that's not totally clumsy and useless.

Progress is a great motivator. Maybe I'm just imagining the light, but I do feel buoyed by the signs I see of how far I've come. I remember in Beijing that first night, we went out to eat at a kabob stand. One of the other students effortlessly asked the vendor how many kabobs would feed the four of us, what kind of meat they were, how much they would cost. I was in awe of the fluidity and confidence in the simple exchange. Last night I went alone to a restaraunt, asked the waiter for something vegetarian without too much oil (menus are another story), and was rewarded with a nice plate of fried vegetables and tasty light dressing. It's not the ultimate expression of language fluency, but that's progress I can taste.

*Thank you William for the firehose metaphor, which morphed and became Niagra Falls in my head before spilling out in this blog entry.

Changbai Shan

We left Harbin at about 7:30pm by train on Thursday night and arrived in Antu at 5:30am. From there, it was a 3 hour bus ride to Erdao Baihe and the Wangsong Hostel. Since theoretically we'd gotten a good night's sleep on the train, we had a full schedule Friday. We ate breakfast at the hostel, then left for the mountain. The first stop was Tian Chi, the lake in the crater at the top of Changbai Shan. This was the most striking scenery I've seen so far in China, from the waterfall we passed as we hiked up to the lake, to the very steep covered concrete staircase, to the amazing view from above the waterfall and overlooking the lake. For some reason I'm not able to load pictures to the blog right now, so you'll have to go to my album here to see them.

We paused in the grassy field above the waterfall so that Gu Mujun and Li Jiongzong could film part 2 of the kung fu epic that had begun on Maoer Shan. Maybe I forgot to mention that in other post, but it's not that complicated...when we got down from Maoer Shan, the creative energy was flowing. Out came the digital cameras and cheesy kung fu moves, followed by some good editing, superimposed chinese subtitles, and hey! it's a kung fu movie, roughly on a par with Jackie Chan's Police Story 2.

On the way down I paused to snap a photo of the hot springs. There were echoes of Yellowstone, but I don't remember seeing any eggs boiling in those springs...must be the Chinese touch. I asked the man why I should buy one, and he said there were health benefits. When I pressed for specifics, either my Chinese was bad or he was very, very vague.

After lunch it was off to another flatter hike, where we could see the "underground forest" or the waterfall. Unfortunately there was no time to see both, so I went for the waterfall. I know the underground forest sounds cooler, but actually it's not underground, just in a crater. Since we were already in the crater, I figured I wasn't missing too much. The waterfall was worth it. Check out the pictures, but it was sort of underground itself, plunging from ground level down to a lower tier of the forest, disappearing briefly under some rocks. Don't confuse it with the huge waterfall that went down from Tian Chi (the lake) to the valley floor.

After second hike, we went to a spot on the hot springs a little farther down the mountain. There was a building and pool system set up to take advantage of the hot water, so we peeled off our clothes and hopped in. Yes, it was gender segregated, and when I say peel off our clothes I mean all of them. There were showers as well as indoor and outdoor soaking pools. It was raining a little, and after the hike it felt pretty good soaking outside in the steaming water, raindrops hitting our faces punctuating the heat of the pool.

That night at the Wangsong Hostel, I was in a room with 6 guys and no beds. The situation was made slightly more interesting by the fact that we'd all been naked together earlier that day. Instead of beds, the floor was "kang", a sort of slightly soft raised platform that you can heat from underneath in the winter. It wasn't too bad, but I prefer a bed.

The next day we hit Yanji, northeast of Changbai Shan and very close to the North Korean border. The proximity was much more obvious than it had been at Changbai Shan. All the signs were in both Korean and Chinese, unlike Beijing where it's English and Chinese or Harbin where it's mostly just Chinese. I was happy just to walk around and look at stuff, but eventually I was defeated by Ren Feng, who said "All the cities in China are pretty much the same. Let's do something instead of just walking around." We ended up in the pool hall, which was fine because it started to rain anyway.

Dinner was at a Korean barbeque, which meant that they brought out raw meat and vegetables which we cooked ourselves on a sort of frying pan that was in the middle of the table. It was a pretty cool setup. A pan was set up over a bed of coals in a depression in the middle of the table. Overhead a fume hood took in the heat and smoke. Instead of cooking in that pan, some water went in and then a lid over that. I say lid, but it was the lid that we cooked on using the steam from the water in the pan. We wrapped pork, beef, squid, mushrooms, carrots, and cucumber up in big lettuce leaves and stuffed the whole mess down with whatever the sauce was...I can't describe it, except that it tasted Korean. It was tasty, but when all's said and done I prefer the cooks to do the cooking when I go out to eat.

The train left that night for Harbin, so we got back Sunday morning and had the day to recover before classes...hardly enough after that kind of nonstop action.

Hat Mountain

The third weekend's scheduled activity was going to a restaraunt with food from the province of Xinjiang. That's as far west as China gets, so the food's a mix of Chinese and Middle-eastern styles.

Food is fun, but for a little more excitement Gu Mujun arranged some mountin climbing. Saturday morning 10 of us hopped on a bus and went down to Mao er Shan, which I think means Hat Mountain. I'd say the mountain's height was comparable with the ridge, for those of you from Ellensburg. The defining characteristic of Mao er Shan was...no, not hats...stairs! I don' t have a picture, but trust me, they were there.

There are places where stairs are a good thing, and a mountain is not one of them. There were two defining characteristics of the stairs. 1) there were a lot of them and 2) they weren't quite tall enough. Each step was agonizingly small, but taking the stairs two at a time was also uncomfortable. The great thing about not having stairs is you can take bigger steps for a while, then take smaller ones. The stairs clearly define your stepping options, and it's exactly the same the whole way.





Here's Mao er Shan in all its glory...it's the one in the middle. That's Gu Mujun happily squatting on the rock. Those buildings are the little touristy village that pops out of nowhere...the other villiages nearby are all dirty and falling apart, but this one has a nice superficially bright, welcoming atmosphere. It says, yes, we will charge you three times what we should for this bottle of water, and you will pay because you are a tourist.



After the stairs, there was a steeper bit. You can also see it in the picture with Gu Mujun, it's where the mountain humps a little more sharply at the top. At that point, the climbing was more vertical. Things got more and more sketchy the higher we got...this picture shows the relatively safe ealy stages, but later we were on the same grade slope grabbing at roots and dirt chunks instead of nicely carved footholds and chains. That's HJ on the bottom, then Posey, then me if you squint a little.





Don't be fooled...what looks like a nice path actually leads nowhere. We paused briefly on this horizontal deception before resuming the vertical fun.



And here we are at the top, along with the popsicle vendor(top right) and the token random chinese group that wanted a picture with westerners (this happens a LOT). The popsicle vendor and picture guy said they see quite a few white people on the top, but most can't speak Chinese.

Sun Island Park Pictures

The second weekend we took a trip to Sun Island Park. That's the one with all the artificial nature and great music. Here's the photo record....


I just spent a few minutes trying to come up with a clever caption for these signs but failed...I guess they speak for themselves. I brought my frisbee to the park because I thought there might be a place for it but actually it wasn't that kind of park. I haven't seen a decent grass playing field since I've been here.



Me and one of the roommates on resting in the pagoda on top of the (fake) mountain.

Ah Ren Feng, the hat looks so good on you. If he weren't so Chinese, I'd probably think Indiana Jones took a vacation to China. The hat belongs to one of the American students and it's become his icon because he wears it on all occasions and has a spare...just in case.

The hill might have been artificial but the view wasn't bad. That's the Harbin skyline behind Bai Lin and myself. I keep bad mouthing the park because it's all fake, but as you can see it actually it looks really nice. Inside the city there's not so much greenery, so this was definitely a good change.

Four Russians and Shakira in the Beer Garden

Today I saw four Russian girls dancing to a Shakira tune in a Chinese beer garden under a big sign reading "Harbin Beer". Wish I'd had a camera, that's not something you see every day...

Old Harbin Pictures

Here's some more pictures of Old Harbin....

This is a more interesting view of the mosque in the last post. I should qualify by saying that I think it's a mosque, but I'm not entirely sure what the Chinese word for mosque is...imagine playing charades and drawing "muslim mosque"...

This picture was taken from the spot I was talking about on the Song Hua River...this is the view of the normal people enjoying thier benzene filled river, but the other direction has all kinds of tourist-driven activities.

And here I am at the riverside with my good old roommate Ren Feng, ever charismatic and often incomprehensible, at least for now.

The Basics

I guess I should cover the basic facts of life in China before I do too much else. My daily schedule and such isn't much different than it was back at WSU. Class starts at 8:00 four times a week, but on Thursdays I get to sleep in until class at 1:00 if I want to. Classes are 1 hour 45 minutes long and meet 3 times a week, except for the pronounciation drill class (2 students, 1 teacher) which is only 45 minutes and 4 times a week. Fridays are my longest day, class from 8 to 5, but Thursdays make up for it because I only have the one short class. I spend a ton of time studying. I think this is the first time in my life I've actually put in as much time as the people in charge recommend. It's about the same amount out of class as in, so average of 4 hours per day or so. It's intense, but I still feel like it's relaxing compared to before since 1) it's just Chinese, and I don't have many other responsibilities to worry about and 2) we get grades but I feel like they don't really matter...it's all about how good I want my Chinese to be in the end. That pure spirit of learning is there in the US too, but here it's not as polluted by grade pressure. And if I need a break, I can always go play ping pong or soccer with the excuse that I'm just working on my practical language skills.

I usually eat breakfast at the dorm. There's a little refrigerator and kitchen with the basics, and I keep yogurt and oats in there. I used to eat yogurt with granola, but since they don't have that here I just substitute plain oats, pretty much the same as come in the quaker cylinder, and it's not bad at all. The yogurt is not as solid here...it usually comes in a jug sort of like a small milk jug and you pour it instead of scoop. It tastes a little different too, but now that I've eaten it for a few weeks I don't even notice it. Lunch is at the cafeteria or the supermarket. The cafeteria has a pretty good selection. It's three stories tall, but we're only allowed to eat on the third story because apparently the other two have food that's less expensive, for the people who can't afford the gourmet third floor. You go in and there's a serving counter that runs the length of one wall. Behind the counter there's an assortment of dishes. You just go up, slide your card into the machine, and point at the dishes you want (because I can still barely say "chicken" much less "bony-chicken-leg-chunks-with-onions-and-leafy-stringy-green-stuff" in "that-one-tasty-brown-sauce"). They scoop up a big bowl of whatever it is with a bowl of rice and take about 30 cents off of your dining card. If you don't feel like the rice and whatever method, there's always bao zi or jiao zi which are both kind of stuffed dumplings, or a bowl of noodle soup. Dinner can be at the same cafeteria, but we generally feel like once a day is enough. There are tons of restaraunts near campus. I could probably eat at a different one every night this summer and never walk farther than 10 minutes from my dorm. Prices for a full dinner can range from maybe 80 cents with a street vendor to two or three dollars at a pretty nice restaraunt. There are even nicer ones around, but so far we've just been going to the ones that cater to the college students. I think the most I've payed for dinner so far was four dollars, and that was at Pizza Hut. That gives you an idea of where pizza hut falls in the price range around here. I'd say it's the equivalent of an upscale Olive Garden in the states. It's a chain restaraunt, but it's always in the best location in town and its kind of ritzy.

I think maybe I got distracted from the basics, but I should study now...whatever I forgot I can always throw in next time.

Old Harbin

This is us in front of the Muslim Mosque in Old Harbin. From left to right: Jesse's roommate, Jesse, me, Tamber, Tamber's roommate, and my roommate Ren Feng (Sorry to the other roommates, I don't have your Chinese names memorized).

Old Harbin was our first weekend day trip. We took the bus into the historic part of Harbin and checked out the old mosque, bakery, the Song Hua River, and ate at a muslim restaraunt for dinner. We definitely saw the Russian influence on architecture that everyone talks about, but not too many Russians. The river was low judging by the high water mark, and there was a long slope down to the water line. The river was about a half mile across and nice and brown. Standing at the crest of the slope down to the water, there was a wierd superposition of worlds. Down the bank, normal Chinese families were enjoying the day and fishing or swimming. Turn your head and the upper riverbank is stuffed with food vendors, junk hawkers, and begging children, all looking to get a buck from the river tourists - that was us. All three of the groups were benefitting from the river, but I felt a little bad because as a tourist I was ruining the river for the people who were just there to enjoy the water. I was the reason the bank was full of annoying vendors and beggars instead of just people looking to enjoy the water and day. At least in this place, it's not "I" as an American, just "I" as a tourist, because the other tourists we saw were Chinese. Besides, I definitely don't have to feel bad about being an outsider tourist wrecking the landscape here. They do that on their own, and build fake nature areas to replace them like the one we saw the next weekend.

Tunes p.s.

One thing I forgot to mention...you know that song that goes "numa numa-yay, numa numa numa-yay"? Yeah, it's popular in China too. I hear it all the time walking down the street, and they have a remix of it with higher pitched voices. That song is just universal.

Tunes

The Chinese love to play music whenever possible, especially for tourists. On the train, in the park, even in the classroom, these are places where you have no choice but to listen. As it turns out, the only class building on campus where they play music during breaks is the foreign students building. Lucky us! I think they'd play it everywhere, but most of the classes for Chinese students are four hours long (according to one of my teachers) with 2 possible five minute breaks if the professor feels charitable. The foreigners, on the other hand, are on a very strict schedule and predictable 10 minute breaks, so they strike up the band for us.

There are songs that play during every break. One I know from the Loony Tunes cartoons, the lullaby that always plays when someone suddenly falls asleep; very appropiate for the classroom. "da da daaaa, da da daaa, da da daaa daaaa, da daa daa." The other, my personal favorite, is a tune I knew but couldn't quite put my finger on until Mike said "I think that's the first song I learned on the violin." Indeed, it was Long, Long Ago of the Suzuki method. I guess they disguised it well by using a synthesizer to simulate a full orchestra lead by a harmonica. The tempo is the agonizingly slow pace my violin teacher once used to make me hit every note correctly.

At the enormous man-made nature park, our ears were assaulted by speakers in every telephone pole. I would say that The Kenny G style saxaphone definitely distracted from the illusion created by styrophoam boulders and pump driven waterfalls. The scale of the park was impressive. We walked around for a solid 2 hours and I don't think we saw even half of the landscape. But if I had designed the place, I would have done things a little differently. For one, I have a hard time figuring out why they didn't just leave some nature the way it was, maybe put some paths in to let people walk around, save a few million dollars and some authentic natural acreage. And at the very least I would have left out the speakers, or played some cricket and water noises for the people. That's just me though, and I have to say I enjoyed going there and chuckling about the ridiculous irony. I'll probably never understand why the music here doesn't stay in the elevator where it belongs.