北京 (Beijing) - Paralympic, Beijing University, Beijing cityscape

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It is much harder to be in "help your parents corps" than the Peace Corps, there I am with like-minded people of my age who immediately became good friends and we dove in intense training as soon as we got to Guinea. Here, I am with my aging parents who move at a snail pace, with no friends really. It was so great to speak to a couple of friends on Skype in English. I miss speaking English, I miss speaking French.

It is not easy to help your older parents, you want to do a lot of things for them but at the same time you cannot do too much for them, because they want to feel they are still independent and can take care of themselves. So you need to be careful not to hurt their confidence and feelings. A balance act.

So, going from having a lot of do in Peace Corps, having other teachers and students as friends, and feel very useful to - mostly hanging out for the moment and no friends here, it is quite difficult for me. I would trade my comfortable environment, electricity and running water for being busy and having friends. No joke. I hope that will change soon.
(anyone up for fried ??? how do you call it in English?)

Beijing University has such a beautiful campus, a great mix of water and mountain (more like hills) that are essential in any Chinese gardens. Lots of great corners to reculate oneself into the nature to read and think. I spent so much of my childhood here because my grandparents lived on campus. It is truly my childhood playground. I saw a lot more foreigners this time on campus and also in the streets of Beijing. Many on bikes, more at ease moving in and out of traffic than me.

Speak of traffic, it is very chaotic. Too many vehicles, too many motos, too many bicycles, too many tricycles, too many pedestrians, too many people/vehicles who don't follow traffic rules and traffic lights, because if you do, you will never get anywhere. Or maybe if everyone does, we might be able to get to where we are going faster? I don't know. Maybe I am just too new, and there is a orderly chaos that I am not used to, just like things are chaotic in Guinea, but there is certain order under the surface. I need to keep remind myself always watch out for turning vehicle, they rarely yield to you like we do in NYC even when I have the right of way crossing the street.

I wonder if Beijing has the most skywalks (built for pedestrian to cross streets) than any other cities in the world. An essential structure for the city, otherwise all the pedestrians who need to cross the streets will totally paralyze the vehicular traffic.

I was at awe of many new and very modern roads and highways, and spanking new buses with fully automatic card swiping system, much like buses I saw in Norway. Haven't checked out the metro yet. Okay, there is still at least one cashier on each bus, the reason being, one, there are too many Chinese who needs to work; two, to catch dishonest riders?

Very annoyed by too many salespersons at each store, who really don't know much of the stuff the store are selling or help you with stuff (ex. bath towels) that you really don't need help with. Again, we are too populated and everyone needs to do something to make ends meet. I still remember a few years ago when I was in Shanghai, having 3 waitstaff waiting at our table while we were eating.

Overwhelmed with uncountable skyscrapers and towers that can probablly make NYC pale in comparison. In NYC, it is a lot more compact (all the builidngs are next to each other, streets are narrow), here in Beijing it is a lot more spread out between the buildings, the roads are mostly 3 lanes in each direction plus a lane dedicated to bicycles.

How is ...?

How was Africa ?

I don’t know really. I was only in Guinea. I can tell you my take on that particular country but I can’t really say much about the rest of continent. Us PCVs always can't get over how funny this question seems to us. You wouldn’t ask someone who spent sometime say in Bulgaria, how was Eastern Europe? or someone who was in Uruguay for 2 years, and ask how was South America? N’est-ce pas? (right?)

How is China?

I don’t know. I am only in Beijing.

How is Asia?

I hope and I don’t think that I will get that question. Because I am finally in a more well recognized country. China is not all that is in Asia. People won’t lump Vietnam or Indonesia to China.

明月几时有？中秋节 - Mid-Autumn Festival

明月几时有？把酒问清天。
不知天上宫阙，今夕是何年。
我欲乘风归去。惟恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒，起舞弄清影，何似在人间。

转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠。

不应有恨，何事长向别时圆？
人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。

但愿人长久，千里共婵娟。

This is one of my favorite chinese poems written by Su Dong Puo from the northern Song dynasty in the 11th century and one of the few that I can still recite by heart.

The Mid-Autumn Festial also known as Moon Festival is rather a big holiday here in China (it fell on a Sunday this year and workers get Monday off) always falls on the 15th day of 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, where the whole family gather together to celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season and admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, have a feast and eat moon cakes. I kind see it like the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA where everyone in the family try to be together to celebrate and eat a lot.

We don't always have our loved ones by our side at the holidays, and this poem was written to express the sentiment of missing our loved ones.

I will attempt to translate the essentiels of the poem in English.

When I would I see the full moon? Holding up a glass of wine, I ask the heaven.
Not knowing up there in the heavenly palace, what year it is for them.

I want to ride the wind up to the heaven, but afraid of chill and loneliness up there, what heavenly palace can compare to the life on earth with my loved ones.

The moonlight is flooding into the window, which makes me very sad.

The shining moon should not have any loathing, but why it is always full when my loved ones have gone away.

People come and people go, we cannot always be together, just like there is the crescent moon and there is the full moon and there is even no moon sometimes; it has been like this since the beginning of the days, nothing we can do about.

I only wish that although we cannot always be together, my loved ones are always healthy and out of harms way; we might be thousands of miles and always apart, but we can always admire the same shining full moon.

So I wish for all my families and friends at the distant land, this holiday season and all other days - happy, safe and healthy (幸福平安).

Aloha de Hawaii

Click on the title above "Aloha de Hawaii", which will take you to my Picasa wed album for Oahu, after finishing looking at these photos, click on "my photo", and it will take you back to my public gallery and you can look at pictures from other 2 islands - Maui and Big Island.

Mahalo