Welcome to the Good Life

On the itinerary was to get rural one more time. Less time was spent checking out schools and much more just experiencing the life of a rural resident…although it wasn’t authentic, because during the 3 days we were there they took off from work. Nonetheless, we still got a pretty good taste.

Rather than staying in a cushy hotel like before, we stayed at Mrs. Wang’s relative’s (Mrs. Yang) sister’s house, which was about an hour away from Kunming. It was rural. You can see our bathroom, which was basically a hole in the ground. Our hosts advised me, that should I have to go late at night, don’t bother going to this bathroom, which was outside the gate…just use the drain on the patio. While I had no such experience, my friend Jes, who is one of our volunteers and is staying with me until the camp, had someone squat down next to her…there were two holes with no divider. Chinese people are very good at doing the “China squat”, as Jes calls it. It’s basically where you sit like a baseball catcher, with your butt above the ground and your heals touching the ground. Try it sometime, kind of difficult. You’ll see people all over the city, not sitting on the curb, but doing the China squat—I thought they learned it because the ground was so dirty and dusty (everything’s dusty in China), but Jes hypothesizes that they do it because they are used to doing it from the toilets (which are set in the ground). Anyway, the old lady sat down next to Jes, made some comment about her skin color, and then pinched her butt, I guess to see if it was real. Kind of awkward with your pants down.

Anyway, the whole trip seemed to be focused around food (by the way, check out Mrs. Yang’s dad’s slaughter room…from what I took in, they slaughter and smoke the meat right there...that's a real countryside house). With no work, and without a booming entertainment industry, it seemed like all we did was eat. During an afternoon over some ice cream, apples, and grapes, they asked me how I was liking the rural life. I said I liked it, even though I wasn’t getting the real deal, and noted how it seemed like everything was food oriented. One day’s schedule:

7:30: I wake up to run, the ladies have just gotten up to start cooking.
9:00: Breakfast is on the table after I get back from the run
9:30: After breakfast, I learn to make dumplings (see pic) and fail miserably at first, but then get the hang of it. That lasts until about 10:30. The women continue cooking other dishes for lunch.
11:30: Lunch is served, even though breakfast was just a couple hours ago
12:30: We head out to the woods to look for mushrooms for dinner (see Mrs. Yang and Jes in the picture)
2:00: We come back empty handed and have the aforementioned chat over ice cream, apples, and grapes…they were throwing all kinds of stuff at us
3:30: Rain starts coming, so we pack it in. The women begin preparing dinner soon after…I hit up a nap after some work
6:00: Dinner is served, minus our mushrooms…but plus a lot of other good stuff in what’s called Hot Pot. Basically, it’s a hodgepodge of meat and veggies in a boiling broth.
7:00: Another hungry relative arrives, so we chat with him while he eats dinner. He tries to get me to eat the chicken head, and says that in the countryside, if you eat the chicken head, you will be a very well-respected guest. I told him that they could respect Jes.

Mrs. Yang’s daughter, Xing Yu (pictured), is about the cutest Chinese kid I’ve ever seen. She’s the type of Chinese kid you’d steal. Okay, too far. I’ve gotten to know her pretty well—she calls me big brother Rob, and I call her little sister Xing Yu. Anyway, throughout the trip, her and her cousin watched this Japanese show that looked like the precursor to Power Rangers. It was Japanese and terrible. It was one of those shows where it was so dumb and ridiculous that you just couldn’t look away. We put up with it though, and the trip ended up being really cool and educational, even if I got deathly sick for the second time just a couple days later.