Zai Xian...

Our Xian Hostel. The nicest and helpful people ever. Met some interesting travelers too.

The street outside out hostel with lots of artisan carts.

And calligraphy materials.

The main gate of Xian's great mosque. No nails used. Not very Arab looking.

I seem some Arab script! Maybe this isn't just another Taoist temple.

This is a mosque?

The date on this inscription says this was made in 1365.

The main prayer room. Amazing that still mosque has been in use for centuries.

Mao watches! With severe chopping second hand! Get to work!

Artist man himself displaying his woodcut wares.

Ugh, just laying low in our new hostel in Xian, home of the start of the silk road and home of the terra cota warriors. The weather is way hotter here and my bowels have decided to rebel from a diet of spicy oil noodles and lamb kabobs. Oi. And the diet, heat, and sweating has reeked havoc on my face which is now sprouting a pimple that looks to be something of a third nostril on my nose. Oh, and now that we are not in Beijing where people were quite flattering of my broken Chinese, Xian-ers have made no bones about my crappy Chinese. Conversations have proceeded as thus:

- Oh, you speak Chinese!
-Yes!
- Wow, it really sucks. Your friend's Chinese is so much better. What's up with that?
- Oh, I was born in the US. My parent are Chinese. He grew up in China.
- Oh ok.

Then communication commences through my better-Chinese-speaking friend. I'm able to get around, but can understand about 60% of what people are saying. And then throw in some funky accents and it goes down to like 10%. But all told, Xian is really a nice change from Beijing. Not nearly so crowded and full of architecture that retains some character and continuity within the city.

We went to see the Great Mosque in the Muslim district. It was quite peaceful and is still actually used today since is it was built in steps centuries ago. The funny think is that al the buildings are very Chinese. If not for random Arabic script on signs, the ribbed roof tops and pagoda disguised minaret makes the place look like a Chinese Taoist temple park. Weird! But the food too in the shops were fantastic. And in the souvenir tents that swarmed the walkways outside the mosque we came across some beautiful woodcuts. The artist was there too and started to show us his exhibit books and articles that had been published about him. He was thoroughly proud of his work and excited to show it to us. It really was beautiful stuff and we ended up with our first mass souvenir purchases. I think I may need to upgrade the size of my apartment to accommodate my new woodblock scrolls. Pictures of the Chinese countryside and workers. We did a bit of bargaining but really the prices are amazing anyway with the exchange rate. Wee, i'll post pics as soon as I can.

Time to nurse my aching feet and roiling bowels!

Jiao tong le!

I see butt cheeks!

This dad looks like he's going to kill me. Get your baby to a real bathroom dude!

Scooter outside the temple.

Tai Ji Quan!

So many people...

Pretty roof tiles.

Peking duck! Greasy greasy...

Tiananmen Square. Mao is watching!

New performance hall glibly called "the egg." A bit spacey and out there. Characteristic of the dissonant look of Beijing.

Skewer of cicadas.

Skewer of scorpions and seahorse.

Outside of Forbidden Palace. March on young soldiers!

Palace in the center of Forbidden Palace.

Spiffed up new paint job.

Beihai Park. Look, the White Dagoba!

Sponge-brush calligraphy. He dude wrote my name for me, though he got one of the words wrong and also wrote that I was a Korean. Only way to explain how I can look Asian and have such miserable Mandarin.

The Great Wall rising in the mist.

The steepness and stairs would be enough to scare me off if I were a Mongol.

My feet hurt! So let's see... I don't think this post will be too detailed but I should mention some highlights.

- Butt pants. It seems like most kids up to the age of 2 wear crotchless pants sans underpants so that they can conveniently squat where they are to do their business. Seen way too many little kid butt cracks hanging out in Tiananmen Square and in and around temples. I know it saves on diapers but don't little kids sit in stuff?
- Man beaters. So the Chinese version of those unsightly wife beaters is a translucent white number where the neck and arm holes slope down a little too much, sometimes exposing man boob nipples. This is often tucked into shorts or pants that are pulled up very high on the waist.
- Demolition/construction. Beijing right now is mad about getting things ready for the Olympics. Everywhere there is the sound of jackhammers and cranes. Old historic neighborhoods, albeit all concrete and decrepit, are being razed and replaced with a cacophony of very slick but entirely mismatched condos, shopping malls, and hotels.
- People. Tai duo ren! I guess you could say that Beijing people have that New York kind of rudeness. Why? Because there are just too many damn people in the city. It is downright overwhelming. And it rubs off in the way ppl interact. With one restaurant hostess, she greeted every new customer with, "Kuai dianr!" Hurry up! To get anywhere you simply have to push. No pauses for niceness b/c if you stop you will lose your place or get smashed. Ppl have no qualms about getting up too close to you if it means they will get a space on the bus or get past you in line. Ah, so as if the city's heat and humidity doesn't make everyone smelly enough, you get to rub up against everyone else's bodies too. Nice!

So, mini observations aside, let's see about what sightseeing has already taken place.

- Temple of Heaven. Kinda turned into a local park with ppl doing taiqi, badminton, kicking a shuttlecock. Very calm and filled with trees.
- Forbidden City. Huge! There is no way to capture the size of this place. It is just enormous the area that is encompassed by the walls of the Forbidden City. It has a really gorgeous garden too. Overrun with Chinese tourist. One of those bodies pressing up against bodies experience at the entrance.
- Mao. The guy himself is kept in a glass enclosure that you can go see him at in the middle of Tiananmen Square. He is looking like he is now made of orange wax. Seeing him is free to the public but you do have to pay for packets of plastic flowers that you can lay at his statue. Which they simply sell over and over to people.
- Beihai. A lake park with an island in the center topped with a temple called the White Dagoba. Calm and lovely with paddle boats floating within.
- Wanfujing. A big shopping street with a street lined with regional food stalls. There are skewer shops that sell scorpions and sea horses on skewers!
- The Great Wall. We went to a less visited portion, apparently there are a few you can choose from. We had to take a bus and then hire a driver, who was our bus driver trying to make a few extra bucks. In any case, it was nice that we didn't hit the most tourist developed area of the wall so there weren't as many people there. Even so it had a road lined with souvenir stalls. "Hello, t-shirt. Many colors!" And then of course we took a cable car up to the wall. Which was amazing! What a sight to see! Battlements and wall snaking on the ridge of the mountains. Lots of steep climbing up steps. Lots of the battlements smelled like poop b/c that is probably what ppl do way up there. But really absolutely amazing. And than, which actually rivals the wall itself in coolness, we tobogganed down. Woohoo, zipping down a snaking toboggan slide was so so fun. At one point one of my friends got stuck and we had bottlenecking, but it all worked out and we didn't have to cash in our 1 Yuan insurance ticket. Nice!

In conclusion, my feet hurt. A lot. One more day of Beijing and then on the Xian where we will see the tombs of the terra cota warriors. Wee, vacations are excellent things. Hard on the feet, but good for the spirit.

Taxis don't stop in front of Tiananmen!

A very unhostel-like hostel.

The little courtyard in the hostel. Gorgeous!

Outside the entrance to our hostel.

The very hard to locate alley that led to our hostel.

Am finally safely ensconced in our hutong hostel. Man, you cannot get a taxi for nothing in Beijing!

So let me do some recap of the day. Went to work. Did home visit, rapped up work stuff, zipped out of there -- freedom! Caught a ride from my friend to SF airport. Got there super early as I am want to do at airports and settled in with Blink (I actually ended up finishing the book on the plane. So much that is applicable to how I have been feeling and raised questions for me around child welfare. Anyway). The flight was 12 hours long. So needless to say I felt like a dehydrated zombie once I disembarked in Beijing. (Watched The Golden Compass and Martian Child. Why do planes always play the cheesiest American movies? They were also playing a Korean movie about a woman with a brain tumor who falls in love with the brother of her deceased husband. Isn't that like every Korean movie?) But Beijing's airport was gorgeous. You can see all the work they are putting into everything for the Olympics. I still have doubts if transportation will truly be up to snuff, as evidenced by the lack of available taxis! But more about that.

So I stuck around in baggage claim to meet my 2 friends arriving from Seoul. Chatted with a diplomat from Egypt there to meet some people arriving from Cairo. I also saw a flight arriving from Pyong Yang, which I thought was a bit wild. The airport is absolutely swank. And filled with young employees, some cutting up a bit with luggage carts. I met my friends and we grabbed a bus into Beijing. The weather is humid and appeared foggy, which turns out to be smog. So thick it is like fog. After a few hours my nose is starting to burn a bit.

So we ended up getting dropped off in front of Tiananmen, which really made real that we are in Beijing. There it is. Huge plaza, inclined planes for millions of ppl to stand and gather. Mao's face, huge and looming over the square. The whole area was dark, but bathed in lights that shone off the wet pavement. Amazing. One minute in SF, the next in Beijing. Traveling always trips me like that.

So then was the 2 hour struggle to hail a taxi. Until we found out that taxis can't stop on the big main street. And once we were able to flag down 2 taxis, after streams of filled ones, the drivers said they didn't know where our hostel was and zipped off. Crap! It was 10pm and were walking the streets not knowing ourselves how to get where we needed to go! Technology saved the day. We busted out a laptop to figure out what buses we could take. The bus ticket lady thankfully knew where were headed and about a mile off from where we were we got down at a shady alley. These hutongs remind me of pueblo streets in Mexico. Narrow and badly paved. Little shops doting the gated dwellings. Dude, one things I have to comment on is that Chinese ppl are so unhelpful! Geez, they will throw you off just so that you will leave them alone! Cursed failing of Chinese culture... Anyway. Time to get clean and showered, reposing in my nice clean hostel bed. So far so good! Not robbed! Not injured! Wee!

Beijing on my mind...

So, I'm going to Beijing in two weeks. That is provided that the Chinese consulate grants me a visa. I've gone to the office twice and been turned away for insufficient documentation. Keep in mind that I have to drive from Oakland to San Francisco, leave on a work day and get a number and wait in line, only then to find out that I was supposed to bring my airline tickets or signature and id number for a relative in China. It's ridiculous! How am I going to get into this country! Argh!!! I chatted in the waiting area with a white girl from Stanford, going to the Beijing Olympics to watch her friend on the women's polo team. And she's also seeing Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Bali. Oh man. I won't have that kind of time to travel ever again... In truth though, long trips make me antsy and I tend not the enjoy them. This jaunt to China will include Beijing and Xian and will be a whirlwind of sightseeing. A perfect antidote to burnout with with my job. If I can just get my visa! So things that need to happen on this trip to make all this grief worth it:

- I get hugged by a panda baby that tells me, "Wo Ai Ni!"
- I eat original, served-to-the-emperors, recipe peking duck
- I discover a new tomb of terra cotta chickens at Chi Shi Wang's tomb

Every felt like you were falling out of an airplane?

Well, I have, and did! Last weekend I took the plunge out of an aeroplane. Something that I had planned with coworkers back in January, on a whim. I'm glad it took a few months to carry out though until the weather was better and I knew what I was getting into. It was astonishingly safe. I really did not feel that my life was in jeopardy at any point, but it was still absolutely terrifying. More so once I saw other ppl falling out the plane ahead of me and then it was me with my feet dangling out of the door of our itty bitty plane and then me falling face first to the earth. That was also really scary. A lot of Ahhh! Oh my god! And then the dangling with the parachute above was nice and still scary. Then my tandem instructor spun us around, which was very terrifying. But we made it safely to the ground. It was incredibly hot too out there in Davis that day so it was a sweat fest through our jumpsuits. The air did feel great up at 13,000 feet, though.

I'm starting to feel like I need escapes like that from my work though. Jumping out of a plane, taking trips, getting away from Oakland. My job is getting to be overwhelming. I got some new cases and while trying to get a grasp of what is going on with the parents on those cases I've still got court reports to wrap up and issues popping up on my other cases. It's hitting that wall where I feel like I'm losing my mind because I can't do what I need to do in the time I have. And then just the pure newness still of the work itself and having to learn for the first time how to make a placement change, set up therapeutic visitation, how to determine when a kid can safely return home. And what kills me is that I'm always thinking about my clients. I'm writing this from home in Houston. A kind of respite from Oakland, but a plunge back into being at home and reliving all the reasons I had left. But it's better strangely. I can handle things better. My dad telling me that my job is horrible and I should do acupuncture. My older sister rifling through my stuff and throwing away my collection of pens. And it's ok! I would normally have thrown a fit and stewed with anger and vitriol. Well, we still have a few more days. Let's hope the sanity hold out. Or I will need to jump out of another plane.

Oh, I'll post pics once I get them of the plunge into the stratosphere!

a room of one's own

So this is my third painting. The one above is my rendition of Elmer Bischoff's The Red Fireplace. Our assignment was to copy a painting with a style that we'd like to emulate. The photograph makes mine seem a bit light and washed out. More luscious I think. More thick on paint to make it substantial. Hmm. Anyway, time to think about the next one. A landscape.

out and about and around the house

Oakland Mormon Temple

Pathways through Muir Woods

A pretty funky building on Lake Merritt

A close up on some bonsai lichens at the Lake Merritt Bonsai Garden

Sakura!

Pretty little bonsai

buildings, duckies, and lake!

People are out walking their kids

a view of the new cathedral under construction amongst all the Kaiser buildings

The past few weekends I've been hosting friends and family and doing a lot of local sightseeing in the process. Here's some views from the traipsing. It's been lots of busy weekends and actually some easing up in business at work, or maybe more like just not taking work so seriously. Don't know that I've figured out yet the perfect balance of work and life or how to do my job well and not have it consume me. Still working on that. Still waking up with a jolt in the night thinking about referrals I need to make and worrying about my kids or parents. Oi. It's getting better though, I must report. I'm learning! And don't feel entirely incompetent anymore. That is a nice feeling.

in the city of angel

some weird man-made island off the coast of long beach

the coast of long beach. so pretty!

view of LA skyline from the getty museum cactus garden

LA skyline. pollution!

of course, the hollywood sign!

I spent the past weekend in Long Beach and LA visiting good friends. Just the antidote for a string of weekends when all I did was dream about my clients and agonize over the decisions I had made and anticipated making for the next week. Another week of work is just beginning! But let me dwell just a bit longer on my trip. The weather was sunny and despite being a little chilly was really nice. It was lovely to spend time with friends old and new and see new places like Griffith Park, the Queen Mary, Little Tokyo, and Alhambra. The final day I was there I spent in a Border's Bookstore on near Hollywood Blvd. reading comic books. Bliss! It made it very hard to leave and return to a rainy Oakland. Goodbye sunshine! Goodbye yummy dining! See you soon Angel!

b/c you want nothing more than to see what i'm seeing right now...

Julio, my baby juniper bonsai. Hmm, someone needs a trim.

The shelves that sit behind me

View from the window beside me

View from my main window. People are sailing on the lake!

So, here are some pics of my apartment. It is such a lovely day today. I went for a morning walk around the lake and cooked some bok choy for lunch. Loverly. A much needed reprieve from long week of nerve-wracking child welfare. I can't imagine that that will be my job for the next series of years. Wow. I can't help but feel like that is the next step, though, despite its craziness. Everything I've been learning in school for the past 2 years and in training over the past 3 months has been preparing for this job. And now I'm doing it. Sort of. I have so much to learn about how to talk to families and how to make good decisions for what to do for them. Wow. Ok, I'm not going to think about that right now. I promised myself that the weekend was going to be a break from that, so let me stick to that. I did some reading too, which really was a treat. One of the books, Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, ends with this:

"Finally, to all the readers who do not know me personally, who were kind enough to take the trouble to read my small effort, I know no greater happiness than that it may have cheered you, even a little. Surely we will meet someday, and until that day, I pray that you will live happily."

I wish you the same. Hmm, maybe at least the cute pictures of this post will lend you some of that cheer.

Where's the fire?

So it's Saturday morning, I just finished making myself some french toast, when I get a loud knock on the door. I peek in the window and see a firefighter! I let the firefighter lady in, and she was suited up in all the gear: the pants, the coat, the hat, and the heavy fire extinguisher. She asked if I knew of any fire and I told her that I had seen some smoke outside my window. She peeked out but it was gone at that point. Then she went on to the next apartment. I went outside on the outside balcony and saw 2 firetrucks parked outside, one with a ladder to the roof of my building. Wow! There were like 10 fire people inspecting for I guess a call about smoke. They all just took off; I don't think they found anything. But it was exciting for like 5 minutes anyway. Oakland Fire Department! They were in the news recently too b/c they were short fire people and were trying out forgoing the initial exam to encourage applications. Of course they got inundated with applicants and it got sketchy where it seemed like applications of people with relatives on the inside seemed to get through before the cutoff. Anyway.

Oh, I should also report on my holiday activities a bit. The Saturday before I got to be part of the wedding of a friend from high school. Lovely wedding! So heartfelt and sincere. Wore a big pink dress, the picture above. (I purposely picked a flattering picture, nice huh?) Kind of a whirlwind experience and a bit scary now to know that my friend is married. Ahh!

At the wedding, too, I got to be surfeit with girl talk. Sometimes you need that stuff. Another friend asked me if I would go out with a firefighter. I really didn't have too much of an opinion either way. But you know, hmm, firefighter. Hello Mr. Fireman!

Dive another day!

So this is my second painting, a painting of my dad from a photograph. I think it could actually still use a lot of work but I'm going to give myself a little break from painting and maybe contemplate it some more before charging ahead with touchups and revisions. Painting is so much harder than I thought!

Let's see, in other news...I signed up to do skydiving! One of my coworkers has been planning to go at a place in Davis and a few of us Alameda County peeps have signed up. The plan was to do it today, though I had decided that I wanted to delay until the new year when out health benefits kicked in. Turns out it wasn't going to happen because of the weather anyway. So we live to dive another day! Actually going to place and seeing the plane and learning about the whole experience really allayed a lot my fears about it all. I"m actually quite excited to do it, just not for a while! Woo!