long time no blog

Wow, it's been a while since I've given a real update...there's so much that's been going on there's just no way it's all getting up here. You'll all just have to hunt me down and pick my brain when I get back if you want to know more.

Currently: the semester's over, my computer's broken, tomorrow I'm leaving a tour of China's dongbei, I'm the only American left in the dorm, I got lost jogging today...and that's just what spills out without significant thought.

Testing went well...it was a blur as we realized that the summer was coming to an end and rushed to spend as much time as we could together when we should have been studying for finals. The language pledge cracked and then fell apart in the last few days as we made the decision to actually talk to each other a little before we were never going to see each other again. I think it was a good thing. It hurts a little to break the pledge, but there were some cool people here who I'd been dying to talk to all summer. Next semester will bring a mostly new crop of students who we can renew the pledge with and continue the march of language improvement and expression suppression. Most noteworthy testing moment: adding fractions on the blackboard in front of no less than four teachers, and fairly sure I was doing it wrong because explaining common denominators in Chinese adds a whole new level of difficulty to the process.

I haven't updated the blog in a long time first because I was busy, and then because my computer broke. It had been overheating and shutting down occasionally, as mom and dad know from our interrupted phone calls. Then, it began to shut down by itself a few minutes after I turned it on. Since the warranty just expired, I went online and found that the overheating is a fairly common problem with my laptop model, and some people had success with cleaning the fan. Choosing the optimistic path and ignoring the fact that the problem had moved beyond simple overheating, I chose to open the laptop and clean out the fan. Instead of fixing the problem, when it was back in one piece the screen wouldn't turn on at all, although I hadn't touched any of the connections in that area. I gave up my ambitions of fixing the computer myself and it's now with a buddy of one of the chinese roommates who is supposedly a whiz. He's going to let me know if he can fix it tomorrow, but I'm thinking the heat might have caused irreparable damage to expensive pieces. I know the buddy is legit because of the numerous, very cheap, certainly not legal, brand new computers for sale in his dingy apartment. I walked up the flight of filthy concrete stairs; passed the exposed pipes, unidentifiable odors, and empty living room; entered the office with surprisingly quality furnishings including sofa, desk, chair, and shelving packed with computers; saw the chair occupied by a young, shirtless chinese guy energetically pecking at the keyboard; thought wow, I've finally arrived. This is China, authentic and modern. I have to admit I'm a bit worried about the safety of my computer. I don't doubt the guy is fairly knowledgeable, but it like that's the kind of operation capable of moving suddenly and without notice. At least I know it's been in the same place for a month or so because a fellow CET student bought a computer there earlier this summer.

Tomorrow I leave for my solo tour of northeastern China, or the dongbei as they like to say. Actually I'm just planning on going to a couple places. The first is called Mohe. It's the northernmost city in China and also holds the record for coldest recorded temperature in the country at -52 point something degrees Celsius. I hear that in four or five months it's going to be seeing lot's of -40 degree days with 22 hours of darkness and some spectacular northern lights shows. Unfortunately I'm not hardcore enough to go there under those conditions but I still think it's cool and I want to check it out. Next I'm going to head over to Inner Mongolia, the province next door to Heilongjiang (where I'm at now, and also where Mohe sits). I'm starting at the city called Manzhouli, like Mohe right on the border of Russia. The Mongolian grasslands are supposed to be spectacular and still green at this time of year. I might have to hunt them down because I'm told that they're smaller every year. Supposedly livestock and civilization are imposing on the traditional stomping grounds of the roving Mongolian herders. I've got plenty of time to look around so maybe I'll get lucky and bump into some of them. If I get bored of that before my time's up I might go visit my new roommate Jin Chao in his hometown before I go back to Harbin.

I'm the only one from the program left in Harbin right now. Everyone else took off for Beijing so I went down to the train station and saw them off yesterday evening. The dorm's a lot more quiet without everyone but some of the roommates are still around. I'll probably hang out with them tonight, maybe watch a little chinese tv or read.

The story of getting lost jogging today will have to wait. The outer door of my dorm building is locked at midnight and it's 11:30 now. The guy who sleeps by the door is so grumpy when you have to wake him up...why can't they just be like America and give us keys? I'm still going to have to walk back from the internet cafe (dang computer) so to be continued...