The Last Day - Number Fifty-eight

The final day started at 740-ish.  I got up and gathered a few of my belongings and then headed out to the various stores to try to get David some unique bottles for his collection. On the way there, I met an older man who spoke very good English. I talked with him for a long time about America, agriculture and other assorted topics.  He had been in the Ministry of Agriculture for the Chinese government so he had been to many places outside of China to see the observe agriculture there. I have to say to it was one of the more fascinating conversations I had all summer - how fortunate I came upon him on my last day.

I got David a Coke bottle and got myself a package of yogurt to eat as I had not eaten since lunch the previous day. My appetite has been waning because of my lack of daily intense exercise (typically due to poor air quality constraints). I then walked to the bakery and got a fried dough puck and checked out the store there for bottles. I will have to get David some of the bottles from the Sesh Wan place tonight (if I can manage it...).  I checked with the store downstairs for bottles and then walked to Carrefour and continued my search there. I did pick up some more chrysanthemum tea to take home.

I went to the lab to say goodbye to everyone and to get the flash drives from Lili. I told Yulan that 630 would be the time for dinner and told her to tell Faith. I then reimbursed Lili for what I owed her on the lunch card and went and said goodbye to Dr. Cheng. I treated myself to some tofu and fried rice for lunch - at my Sesh Way place, naturally.

When I came back to my room, I got engrossed in what is happening in the Middle East, and the exterminations that are going on there. It is wrong and something should be done to prevent it.  There is some bad stuff going on there. ISIS or IS is going crazy and killing everybody that is contrary to their "beliefs" They are brainwashing the children, slaughtering innocents, and not seeming to worry about the repercussions as they are taping all of it. I feel bad that I have been so out of the news loop here. I spent the next 4 hours hanging around my room reading about the situation in the Middle East and working on my paper. I have nearly completed the first draft (yay). I reward myself with playing guitar and ukulele.

At 623 I left and knocked on both Albert and Vincent's doors before heading down alone as none of them were there. I waited at the door for Yulan and her boyfriend. There I ran into Samesh, Albert, and Vincent and told them about dinner. Yulan showed up late of course at 640 (keeping with tradition), and then we all headed over to the Sesh Wan place.  We had a good meal of fish, tofu, meat, and a very good tomato-type soup. There were large chunks of tomato and meat in the soup and it was kind of a sweet type soup. During the dinner, Yulan told me that the African guys all look the same to her. At this I burst out laughing. She really could not tell black people apart.

I paid for dinner and managed to get David some bottles. We then headed back to the dorm, and Samesh and Albert gave me some of their country's currency. I have yuan of every denomination here (except for First Baptist, that is...).

I finished up most of my packing and got ready to head back to my US of A in the morning. My flight leaves at 300 PM on August 12th and I arrive home at 350 PM on August 12th. Pretty cool that I get to relive 13 hours!  Can't wait to be home.

Good night and God bless!

P.S. For those who have been following my exploits in Beijing, I hope to have one or two follow-up posts regarding my return home and my Borlaug-Ruan internship presentation for the Global Youth Institute (which is to be held in October in Des Moines, Iowa).  Thank you for your readership and your support.

The clean shaven, swimmer hair version of me.

The Fifty-Seventh Day

Very lazy Sunday. I got up at 800ish and did some work on the paper. I am running into some trouble with the introduction part of the formal paper though - need to read some additional references on the subject matter so that I have some material to draw from.  I talked to Moo and am so ready to be home!

At 1020 I went out to the west gate and waited for Faith. I listened to "Hotel California" on my phone and got some definite stares from the locals who were passing by.  Faith finally arrived (she had tennis to go to prior to our appointment).  We headed to what was described as "the antique market". It was about a 50 minute subway ride, and we got there about 1140.  We went in, and I immediately saw that there was none of the stuff that I wanted to get for Dave (one of my brothers who is a collector). None of the items could be described as a real antique. I will work on getting him some bottles from the store tomorrow when I go in the morning.  We looked around for a bit longer but then decided to just head back.  I came back empty handed from that excursion. Faith does not like Mao and her family does not care for him either. We went and had a large lunch at the Sesh Wan place. It was very satisfying; we had lots of tofu which was even better. I love the tofu here and will miss it. After that it was about 330 so Faith left to go see her friend and take care of some errands she had to do.  I went up to my dorm room and did some packing, played on my guitar and wrote some more on my paper.

Albert stopped by to say hi, and I gave him a bunch of stuff that I no longer needed.

That's about it. This internship is winding up. Only one day left and one day of travel.

Good night and God bless.

The Fifty-Sixth Day

Saturday!! I got up at 800 this morning surprisingly well rested from my late night excursion. I talked to Madre and Padre and then worked on the paper for an hour or so. I got another 800 words before I had to leave to go meet the Scotts. I left here at 9:50 after playing the intro to "Stairway to Heaven" on my guitar (I know, pretty cliche guitar riff to learn). I got on the subway and made it there in good time. I watched so many of the cartoons with vegetables telling everyone what to do and not to do (on the subway).  I got to the Chungwemen station at about 1037, and they were supposed to pick me up from the south east exit. When I got there I went to the exit labeled south east exit. When I got up to the surface, I waited and looked at the map. I notice almost immediately that this was not the southeastern most exit to the station even though it was called the south east exit. I waited there until 1107 with little hope before walking over to the other exits in the south east and checking them. There was no one at those places so I went back to the south east exit and waited for another minute before pulling out what Mrs. Scott had written. Showing it to the officer on duty there, she pointed in different directions as if asking directions and finally pointed me to the south and so I went to the south. I ask another guy who thought that it was near here, and we back pedaled for a little while before he could read the large sign on the tall building. This was the correct building and so I followed the instructions and went to the fourth floor. There I found waitresses - a good sign.  I showed the paper to one of them and they took me to a room with two people in it. These people turned out to the the correct "personas".  I talked with them for a while as it turned out that everyone else was late due to traffic. For some reason, they drove instead of taking the subway.

The man was Mrs. Scott's uncle, I think, and the other was an aunt of hers. They asked me some of the normal questions but not many of them. The uncle was the ambassador for China to "somewhere in Europe" for many years, and the aunt was a pediatrician.  I told them how I knew Rachel and a few other things before the cousin of Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Scott's parents arrived. The aunt and uncle were the cousin's parents. We had quite a good meal - despite it being one of those very fancy places. They were surprised at how well I used chopsticks and equally surprised that Rachel could not use them very well. This was pretty funny.

The first courses were interesting: there was a fermented milk thing that was very strange along with some other unique dishes. I tried a duck foot. It was okay, but I would not go out of my way to eat it. Overall the food was very good. The tofu, of course, was excellent, and the Peking Duck was as well. Everything went well. The dessert was some of the red bean paste things that were also good. Mrs. Scott liked the ones that the name of them was something like "donkey rolling in mud".

After eating, the Scotts and I headed out to go to the Temple of Heaven. We were only two stations away from the temple so we walked the mile to it. We got there in a reasonable time and went in. On the walk over, I asked Mrs. Scott about the smoking when she was here 20 years ago. She said that it was worse then. On the question about cars, she said that there were no real cars around back then for people to drive. Everyone used bikes.

At the temple we walked about, me for the second time so I was kind of a tour guide. We all went in and saw the temple and stuff before going off where I had gone before and heading directly west of the temple area. This led us to some very nice pavilions and "natural" areas. We got some great photos there (I believe - I still have to look at them).

After that we went to the fasting palace which was directly south and saw everything in that. Then we walked east and got back onto the main way to see the echo wall and the marble plinth. After this, they made a potty stop, and I waited on a bench. Both Rachel and her mom have the life straw systems (water filters) which are very handy as they can just fill it up anywhere and get clean water. I ran out of water and got rather dehydrated. After we went through everything, we exited out of the same gate we had come in through and went over to the pearl markets (after I bought two frozen waters). At the markets I got David a shirt - I do not know how he will like it. There were no Mao shirts but there was an Obama one with him in the Guevara garb. I opted for the Chinese beer shirt. I haggled the price down from 120 to 40 yuan. I then went up a level and bought pearls. I walked about to see prices and look at different styles before buying them from one of the dealers. I haggled (all of this with Mrs. Scott help) the price of some stings from 30 yuan to 22 yuan and all of the fixings for them. I got 9 strands for 200 yuan (plus clasps and extra pearl string).

After this we all headed back to our respective places. The Scotts were on line five at the closest station, but I had to make another 2 transfers so after the first 2 stations I said goodbye to them and got back to the dorm.

There I did a few pull ups and then went to eat. The wind started blowing a ton as I left the dorm and when I finished eating at the Sesh Wan place, it was pouring. I ran for it and made it back alright, apart from a burning in my throat. I think that the pollution has gotten to me more then I thought it had as my lungs and throat do not feel great. I am very ready to work out and hope that this exposure to so much cigarette smoke and crap will not damage me permanently.

The Longhorn (Rachel) and The Aggie (Travis)

How to Train Your Dragon - very popular movie in China

The Fifty-Fifth Day

Friday! I was up this morning at 640 and talked to Will and Madre before heading out to meet Yulan at the West gate. I had my standard peach and yogurt for breakfast. Yulan was the normal 5 minutes late and then we set off. I got on the first doubledecker bus that I had ever been on and we headed off to Peking U. The bus drivers stop and start very quickly, and everything is jerked around a lot on the buses. We got to the University and ended up walking quite a ways because we had gotten off on the wrong stop (even though Yulan was told that it was the right stop). We got into the University and asked directions from a guy walking up some stairs into a building, He took us through a maze of hallways to the wrong place! When we asked the custodial worker, she managed to get us to the right place. We got there a little early, so Yulan and I sat and visited. She asked if I loved America. I said "yes".  She then started talking about writing assignments in her Chinese elementary school and that one of the assignments was to basically write a love poem to China. They were taught from a very early age to love China. I told her that in America we are not necessarily taught to love our country in school (though we should be). But we are taught to be thinkers and questioners (hopefully). She also did not get the quote "The principle of free government adheres to American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains" although that may have been due to language translation. But she has also never experienced a free government. I also tried to explain to her freedom of the press which I don't think she got either.

The lecture started 10 minutes late. It was in Chinese though...I had been told it was to be in English. I was the only American in the entire room. And my name was the only one in "alphabet" on the list while all the others were in Chinese characters. This meant that I was the first on the list.  I sat there and watched/played solitaire on my phone. I was definitely bummed that there was not a translator.

After that we headed back. I stopped and pick up my hard drive, and Yulan transferred some photos for me. We looked at the photos of Beaker (my pet turkey) and me. It was rather fun. I watered plants and packaged filled petri dishes to put in the fridge this morning. We went out to the other building to water the plants in it, but the lock would not open. The tumblers would not catch. I accidentally broke the lock trying to pull the key out (oops).

Lunch today consisted of some lotus root, celery and meat. Not bad. Lili told me that Dr. Cheng was getting me a gift to take back to America and that she needed my opinion on what to get. So this afternoon I get to pick out Chinese prints of characters to be taken back with me. I found another water well sign (small metal markers with Chinese characters; I think they pop off of their locations as I have found them on the ground). This brings my count up to four on those. I might be going to see the Scotts tonight. (My friends from the States are here. Mrs. Scott's dad lives in Beijing)

Back to work at 200 - did nothing this afternoon as Yulan was somewhere else. I talked to Faith about donuts, kolaches, pies, tarts, cinnamon rolls and other foods before I went through the photos on my phone with her. I played some solitaire and Faith said she thinks that the beard looks "A-Okay".   It was a very uneventful afternoon. I do not think that Faith has ever had a good fresh donut before. The ones she showed me that she had eaten all came prepackaged (yucky).

The Scotts are going to meet me at the west gate at 530. Can't wait to see them - it should be fun.

I met the up with Rachel and Mrs. Scott. We went the the Sesh Wan restaurant as I was very hungry. I ate some fried rice while they told me plans for tomorrow. Rachel was in Morocco for 6 weeks before coming here. While walking over to the place, we ran into Albert and said "howdy" to him. His soil samples are taking forever to weigh in as they need one gram each.  Once dinner was finished, we decide to go to the Olympic Green station to see the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. The Cube was under renovation but it was still lit up, and the Bird's Nest was very cool. All around the park there were very interesting models of dinosaurs. They really like "How to Train Your Dragon" in China - there were tons of posters and stuff and even a live action version of it. "Kind of like a Disney on ice," Rachel said. I bought some lasers from one of the street vendors. We bargained with the girl and got two of the large ones for 100 yuan which is a good deal. The lasers look like they are meant for American vendors based on the warning label. The park was pretty fanatastic. They had a wall with all of the names of the medalists on it for the Olympic and para-Olympic games. We got to see the Water Cube light up - it was a blue glowing cube just like you see in the photos. It was very cool.

We had taken the subway to the green, but we took the bus back to Mrs. Scott's parents' house. It was only about 1 km away from the park, and you could see the Bird's Nest from the window. They live on the 12th floor of a large apartment complex and their "home" was absolutely beautiful. They had some exquisite pieces of jade work and ceramics. When you went into their house, you took off you shoes and put on slippers. They made some more food and I had kind of a second dinner while the Scotts had their first dinner. There was a sweet sticky rice dish and some soup with some fishes and sweet potatoes. After that course, we moved on to the meat, flour, and carrot burger patties. That is the only way that I know how to describe them. They were awesome, but I have no idea what the actual name of them is supposed to be. It was about 1015 and I needed to go in order to get back to the dorm before they lock it up for the night (with the customary bike lock) and also before the subway closed.  I got onto line 15 which was above ground and then transferred to line 10. On the line 10, I did some pull-ups on the train. I got off of line 10 at the right spot to find that I had missed the last train that was heading to Weigongcun. I headed to the surface and managed to find a guy that could point to the direction of Renmin University. This was good. I kept calm in the situation and figured out what I needed to do. This made all of the difference.  I ran along the road until I got into the areas I was familiar with and got back to the dorm without incident. It was about a kilometer and half that I ran back to the dorm, in flip flops. But I made it before the gates were closed. Thank the Lord!

On the subway the recording that they have announcing stations says ghetto for get off, and right for left, left for right. when they made the tape they got it reversed. oops

The dorm was open as well as the store so I bought my last watermelon and headed up to my room - just in time to intercept my Moo call. I talked to her for a short time, and now that I am ready to head to bed,there is some heavy machinery operating outside and below my window. It is very annoying.

Signing off on my last Friday in Beijing. Good night and God bless.

The Fifty-Fourth Day

Thursday. I got up at 710 this morning, enjoyed some yogurt for breakfast, got called by Moo, did a bit of writing on my paper, and then headed to work. This morning I mixed soil for Wendy and heated medium for Yulan. Then ended up being Yulan's shadow while she prepared some stuff. I talked a lot with Lili, or a lot by my standards. She does not like Beijing but wants to be close to her boyfriend. She much prefers a smaller town and wants to teach, but her boyfriend thinks that there is more money to be made here. I hope she works it out.

Lunch was not bad except for fact that I ordered the same tofu dish twice instead of getting the alternative dish. But the Chinese know how to use tofu - so it was quite "delish" twice. I went to the bakery after lunch and got a tortilla. There were a ton of people in there, and it took forever to get what I wanted as the others would just shout out and the guy would get the stuff ready. The Chinese people do not respect the "rule of the line" (on dry land or in the water). It is most unpleasant to be "part of a line" because it is more like who can jostle the most instead of just chilling in the line.

This afternoon began with some more heating of medium followed by the making of PDA, or at least the start of making PDA. I left at about 520. When I got to the the lab after lunch, I heated the stuff up. Yulan forgot about it so the heating was in vain, but she was able to plate some in the morning (so it was fine). After heating, I headed out with Faith to buy potatoes. I showed her where the potato store is and then she got potatoes while I bought peaches. After buying what was needed, we headed back. When I went into pay for my peaches, I noticed that there was a very nice convenience store on the inside (or at least a comparatively nice one). Many stores are very sketchy on the whole.

When we got back to the lab, we started processing the potatoes. Yulan really wanted to eat the cooked potatoes so we were using all clean utensils. This meant that the only tool available for cutting and peeling was the cleaver. So I got to cut and peel potatoes with a cleaver. It was interesting to say the least. They do not seem to think that there are any other knives than a cleaver as I have only ever seen the use of typical knives in stores and restaurants. Someone brought some cucumbers for us to eat as well. They were some old cucumbers, the stuff that we normally throw out. They were not too bad but not something that I would go out of my way to eat.

There was an argument between Mister Chi and Yulan about space in the growing chambers and so I got to listen to an argument in Chinese. They speak very fast when they are arguing. At the end it turned out a compromise was reached, and Yulan got some more space. We moved all of the stuff from the sixth floor down, or at least most of the stuff. I said goodbye to the plants up there today as I will probably never see them again.

Tomorrow - there is something going on at Renmin universtiy that I am going to in the morning. I meet Yulan at the west gate at 730 in the morning. I also need to get photos from Yulan!

Tonight I did not do much: I wrote on the paper, went and had a new peanut dish with some lamb from the Sesh Wan place, and played guitar and uke.

Things are winding down.

Good night and God bless.

The Fifty-Third Day

Wednesday. I got up ten minutes earlier then normal at 710, and the hammering started at about 715 today. I cannot even imagine what they must hear on the second floor when I am on the fifth and it is insanely loud (my mom even commented how obnoxious the sound was when she was Skype-ing me today).   I had the mundane for breakfast, yogurt and milk, before heading out to work. This morning's job for me involved mixing up a bunch of soil to transplant the transgenic plants into. The results from the PCR yesterday were very, very good. Both Faith and I got the exact same results thus confirming each others tests. As a result, these are the plants that will be transplanted. I got a bunch of stuff ready for the autoclave as well, and when the first autoclave was done, I got to load it up again and unpack the first round into the oven to dry. I am very good at stacking the "claved" Erlenmeyer Flasks. I was pretty solo today for working and am going to have to get some actually staged shots (as the people who are taking my photos are not very good at focusing).

I went back to work at 200, and with the help of Yulan, transplanted some plants. Normally when transplanting from the smaller pots to the larger, there is more than one tobacco plant in the smaller pot and each plant must be put in different pots. We will separate them and then plant by digging them out of the soil. Today there was one plant in each smaller pot, and Yulan still started to dig it out of the soil as opposed to just planting the entire thing (that is, you can just pull the plant with the soil and plant in the larger pot). It was funny as she had never done this before I showed her. She thinks that I am very experienced in many different things, or at least more experienced then the kids coming out of high school in Beijing. She told me that, just by looking at me, she would have thought that I was much older the I actually am. We made a mess in the hallway transplanting. Again, why we don't do this outside I just do not get. We transferred the transplants to a green house in another building. On the way out, we forgot the card that would let us back in, and we were knocking and knocking to be let back in. We could see this guy standing out in the hallway smoking and he would not let us in. Kinda jerky...

After we were finally let back in, Yulan gave me some samples to do PCR with, and I had a huge screw-up. I set up each mix with the appropriate materials in each, but then centrifuged the tubes with the mix in them to make it easier to transfer to the other tubes. However, before doing this, I forgot to mark to label the tubes. Needless to say, they got mixed up, and now we have no idea which is which. We went ahead and did the PCR and the gel as if they all come up positive then we will be ok (or all negative).

  

After the screw-up, we went to buy more pots. On the walk over there, Yulan complimented me on my clothes and how I always seem to look nice (okay Mom, I can hear your laughter all the way from College Station).  She asked if I bought my own clothes. Actually, the first thing that she asked was if the shirt and shorts that I was wearing came together because the pieces coordinated really well then she asked me about whether I bought my own clothes. I told her I did not and that I was really not that particular about what I wear (as long as it's functional and comfortable). She said that she did care about fashion to which I replied, "we are different people". Yulan responded with "why different?" at which I kept walking kind of speechless until she clarified. If her parents only bought stuff for her sister, she would be angry, (I had previously mentioned the concept of hand-me-downs). I told her I just did not care about that stuff. Sorry. Granted, I do like to be well dressed when the occasion calls for it, but other than that, I have a very laid back "style".  

At the plant pot place, there are a bunch of other stores that sell a wide variety of goods. There is one store with some incredibly large and intricate wood carvings (don't reckon I will try to get home with one of those).

Upon completing our errand, we headed back to the lab, finished up our work, and then we went to play Frisbee (Faith, Yulan, Yulan's boyfriend and me). It was very fun today. The air was clear, and I did a tremendous amount of running to get the frisbee (although we only played for a short amount of time). While walking over, Yulan and her boyfriend were deep in conversation, and I asked Faith what they were talking about. She said that she could not understand them. To this I replied, "that make 5.6 billion of us".

  

Weird sidenote: Before we went to play frisbee, Yulan went to wash her hair for some reason. She said that it was dirty - which did not make sense to me as she was about to go play frisbee, sweat, and make it dirty again.

Faith said that she would go with me to the antique place on Sunday. Hopefully they will have some good items that will be interesting yet transportable.

Another weird sidenote: Yulan's boyfriend commented in Chinese to Yulan that I have pretty eyes. Yes, she told me what he said.  I don't know whether to be flattered or concerned.

Before I went to frisbee, I knocked on Silvio's door to see what he was up to. He was still working on his paper so I told him I would come see him after frisbee and we could go grab a bite to eat. After frisbee, he was free to go so we went to the Sesh Wan place and ate. He had another type of fried rice which he though was spicy. I did not think that it was very spicy at all, another time where the spices have failed me. I had a tofu soup (which I managed to burn the dickens out of my tongue). We both had soybeans, peanuts and lamb kabobs. While we were going inside ,we ran into another guy named Frederick from Kenya. He is doing a PhD in toxicology in food science. He knew TAMU and said he had a PhD friend in food science there. When I see him again, I will get him to write down the name of his friend. Hopefully I will see him again. I believe his name was something like Tom Reymer.

Silvio will leave tomorrow for a trip to Nanjing, I will hopefully see him tomorrow before he leaves, but if not, I gave him my email. Silvio came and sat with me for awhile and strummed on the guitar. He knows how to play. We visited for quite a bit - he showed me some music, I showed him some, and also shared some Weird Al musical spoofs.  It was good evening. 

Good night and God bless. 

Scary Trav