Thursday, October 19, 2006

   Out of Zhengzhou, into Guangzhou . . .
I'm lazy and I wanna do this quickly, so I'm just gonna copy and paste an e-mail I sent my mom earlier . . .





Hi mom again,


I had written a really long e-mail for about 15-20 minutes just now, and then at the last moment I accidentally clicked onto a different page and lost it all! Agh! This is gonna be less in-depth now, but I'll see if I can cover what's happened since I last messaged ya.


I've made some neat friends from other parts of Vancouver, Toronto, and Australia. I had also picked up the Australian accent and was speaking in it for most of our time in Zhengzhou ("Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi oi oi!"). We all got some e-mail contacts, so hopefully some good things come of it. We also got friendly with the guys on the American team, had some laughs with the French and South African teams, annnnd . . . yeah, it's been fun.

We've decided that China is not the land of honking cars. No, it's the land of cigarettes, where EVERYONE smokes . . . and, where everyone spits all over the ground. Of course they don't just spit on the ground, first they have to go "HWOOOOCK!" and then spit. Heh, funny enough, when we went to a McDonald's late at night one night (really bad service that night too), a fairly good looking girl walked in and a bunch of us took notice . . . . . then she started walking up some stairs and went "HWOOOOCK!". She seemed less attractive after that. The McDonald's here is good, though, as long as you get regular food and not the crazy asian stuff (I tried a "Korea Burger" in Shanghai if I forgot to mention that). They don't salt the fries, either, so if you're into that kind of thing then yay.

Opening ceremonies were fun. Y'know, it was the part where all the different countries walk into the stadium together while the announcer calls you out . . . SO fun! Heh, I think a bunch of us got on the local news channels (we sang "O Canada" into a camera before we went in . . . I added the "dun daduns" as well . . . . . wow, we must've looked insane . . .). Wilson from the club also did a news interview since he was one of the older guys who could speak Mandarin . . . he did well for us . . . . . very well . . .

Umm, what else, what else . . . oh yeah, I competed finally. I scored an 8.60, which I'm actually really happy with considering I haven't been practicing much in the past . . .well, half year. Nevertheless, I was still dead last in my group of 7 guys, aged 14-28 (and I didn't do better than them?! Shock but not really!). But yeah, those guys were good and they deserved everything they got. In any case, dead last still got me a "third place ranking", so I get to come home with a certificate and a bronze medal. It could definitely be worse . . . I mean, some people from the Australian team didn't even get ranked for things they did because of some really dumb mess-up their sifu did in the registration! This one girl, maybe 13-14, she competed the morning of the day I did . . . apparently right after she finished her form and stood to the side waiting for her score, the judges just waved her away. We were all so angry about it, especially since she was so crushed by it . . . . . yeah, there were a LOT of things about this competition that were just not done well at all . . . I'll tell you all about that when I get back, though.

Oh yeah, remind me to tell you about the "frothy" Zhengzhou accent. It makes me laugh thinking about it and I need to share it with you.

In other news, the trip to the Shaolin Temple was cool. As the hundred or so busses (with police escort) drove up the mountain, we saw all these martial arts schools with their hundreds of students . . . they were all "practicing" outside where we could see them as we drove by . . . . . there was one school, there must have been at least a thousand students all in uniform, all in unison in a huge courtyard! All of us in the bus just went insane when we saw that. Getting into the temple was about the same, but with "monks" lining the walkways and performing stuff. I took pictures with my dead battery camera, but the afore-mentioned friends and I are gonna do some photo-swapping, I'm sure. So yeah, the actual performances were kinda hokey and commercial, but they were still cool. Oh, and some reporter interviewed me with pen and paper . . . he spoke pretty good English, which made it easy. So that was fun . . .

Something interesting to note: the last night the Kin Fung guys were in town (we left before the whole event was over for some stupid reason or another [which REALLY bugs me now that I met all these people!]), a bunch of us went to some restaurant late at night where there was only one table of people eating in at the time: one martial arts guy from the Pacific US but living in China, one guy from Liverpool, and two girls from Manchester! This was also fun . . . but then that was more or less it and then the next morning we were gone . . . . . boo.


So now I'm in Guangzhou, where things seem . . . much cleaner. Heh, much cleaner, much classier . . . yeah, it should be good here. Actually, this city reminds me of Vancouver a lot: it's way bigger, but it's not "flashy", y'know? Heh . . . I haven't seen the babies with the slit pants yet, but we still have a few days here for me to find 'em.

So yeah, I'm still alive, I'm healthier than I was a few days ago (we were ALL getting sick at some point or another in Zhengzhou . . . either the greasy buffet food, the dusty air, or the general lack of things beneficial to sustaining life in the city), and I'm drinking a lot of bottled water. I need new batteries for the digicam, I have no clean laundry anymore, and today/yesterday I used my very first squat toilet (it was alright, but well . . . y'know . . .). Furthermore, I may need to buy another suitcase to bring back little souveniers I've picked up (I bought a sword too . . . a sword to practice with and a bullwhip because it was neat). I'm doing alright still, so you can tell everyone back home that I'm okay. And hey, now that we're in Guangzhou, I might actually be okay: people speak Cantonese again!


-James


(NOTE: the mother didn't get this info . . . I had two milestones that day. First squat toilet ever, AND first seriously serious hangover ever, though it went away after I nursed about half a dozen bottles of water for the whole morning and afternoon. Man . . . for the record, clubbing with French guys is freakin' fun . . . thrice so if they're French guys who know kung-fu . . .)
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