rlulich's Xanga

Well, He Did It

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:25:28 GMT

That's right. Steven got married to Meredith McCoy (now Lulich!) yesterday afternoon in a truly lovely ceremony at First Baptist Church in Charlestown, Indianna. There were hymns, scripture readings by Mom and Dad, special music by Alex Barsamian, a message by pastor Don Willeman, and of course the vows and exchanging of rings. It was really the nicest wedding ceremony I've seen, and not just because it was my brother's.

Afterwards, the bridal party piled into a stretch suv limo and drove down to a little park nearby for some more pictures of the bride and groom (we did most of the wedding pictures prior to the actual ceremony), then on to the Wooded Glen for a charming reception. There was food, really good sparkling cider for the toasts (Ben, as best man, gave a brilliant toast - charming, witty, sentimental...), and dancing, making this the first wedding I'd been to with dancing at the reception. First was the bride and groom's dance, then the father/daughter dance, led by Meredith and her dad, Mark. That was a fun one, because he chose a song with lyrics like "I loved her first" and "don't you forget it", at which points he sang along, pointing to Steven. Really funny. :) The next dance was a monther/son dance, led by Mom and Steven, then there was a couples dance, and then it opened up to whoever. At one point the DJ did another couples dance, during which couples gradually left the floor until the only one left was the couple that had been married the longest. It turned out to be Melvin and Margarite Nice of Vernonia, Oregon, at 46 years of marriage.

I danced with Grandpa a bit, and Mom taught the Budges how to do a simple jitterbug. Once I'm in the Air Force and done with training and therefore have a bit of free time, I swear I'm taking ballroom dance lessons - it's really fun. I've taken a group one before, and a group swing lesson, but that's it.

Anyway, after the party was over I went with the Budges to their hotel where we talked college and career for a while (Jessica's going into her junior year of high school this fall). We had a lot of fun, of course, and then Dad and Mom and Ben came over to chat a minute and pick me up. We went back to our hotel and re-hashed the wedding, Ben and I staying up until 2:30 doing so. Needless to say we had to sleep in a bit and then take a long nap after breakfast. :)

So today's been a lazy day. Tomorrow we're having dinner with Meredith's parents, and Tuesday we're heading back to Portland.

I'm Back!

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:15:51 GMT

Hi everyone! I'm back from China (have been since June 22). As such, I'm taking over publication of my Xanga again. I see that none of my updates since March have been posted, so I guess I'll have to find them and put them up. So you can be expecting a backlog of posts coming up in the near-ish future.

In the meantime, here's what's happening right now/this summer:

Right now I'm in SoCal visiting my brother Ben in Anaheim. More details on this trip will be coming in a few days, but suffice it to say we're having a good time. Two days ago was Ben's symphony's fourth of July concert, which was a lot a fun, and last night we went up to LA to see Wicked, which was fantastic as well. We also checked out the Hollywood walk of fame and found some cool hand and foot print in front of Graumen's Chinese Theater, including Deanna Durbin's. Today it's off to Disneyland and California Adventure, etc. Also yesterday Ben and I ate at a Northern Chinese Restaurant in the Monterey Park area. It was great, and I got to order some of my favorite dishes - in Chinese! :)

I'm heading back to Oregon on Tuesday morning, then on the 16th, I believe, I'm flying with the family to Indiana for Steven and Meredith's wedding. A couple weeks after that, it's off to Texas for Air Force Basic Military Training. :)

So, all in all, I have a busy summer ahead of me, and I'll be updating this page much more in the coming weeks.

Early Sainthood

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:50:58 GMT

Doctor Bethune was a stalwart Canadian who moved to China ages ago, lived here, worked here, died here, and was practically sainted. Everyone who’s anyone who talks to my Canadian colleague, Janice, asks if she knows of Dr. Bethune. Of course, she does, being a Sino-loving Canadian.

Mrs. Liu is one of the English Department leaders here. Commonly known as the “teacher in charge of the students’ lives”, she’s somewhere between a counselor and good-intentioned watch-dog. She knows everything that’s going on in the English Department. Everything.

Last semester Mrs. Liu and Janice got to know each other a bit, through various circumstances, aided by the fact that Mrs. Liu was generally more available and approachable than the department dean, which makes sense. Mrs. Liu happened to be trying an experiment to help the kids whose English is a little lower than average in the sophomore class, and she asked if Janice would help. They pooled their ideas and ran with them, Janice spending a good deal of quality time with those students. This prompted Mrs. Liu to really like Janice and how she was teaching. She wrote up a little article on Janice for the school paper (no, we didn’t know at the time that they had one…and have still yet to actually see one ourselves). Janice read the article and was mortified – they practically sainted her, making a “Norma Bethune” out of her.

Add to this general good feeling between Mrs. Liu and Janice the fact that Janice has organized a Newsletter club for any interested students, teaching them how to hold meetings, take minutes, plan a newsletter, etc., and she can do no wrong in Mrs. Liu’s eyes. Janice’s two nicknames among us teachers are now, and evermore shall be, “Norma Bethune” and “Saint Janice”.

During vacation, I ruminated long and hard on how to teach my classes with the best possible results. I came up with the plans I have already detailed in previous Xangas, and already altered slightly to fit reality. One of those plans was the Clubs. I’ve got three clubs: The Advanced Club, The Glee Club, and The Drama Club. The Advanced Club started last week. I winged a speech about how the club would operate, why I felt it was important, and why the 20-some-odd dedicated students who showed up could expect to put in a lot of work each week. Then I introduced the first week’s reading: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. A four-page poem. Perfect for weeding out the not quite that dedicated students, or those who really don’t have time for the class. This club meets Wednesdays at 7:00pm in the Freshman Oral Classroom, otherwise known as the Cold Classroom. This week’s meeting went pretty well. I managed to get them talking a fair amount, but not as much as I’d like. We’ll have to continue to work on that. We discussed the poem and at the end they got their next reading assignment: The Tell-Tale Heart. They cheered that it wasn’t poetry. Which means I’ll give them another poem later. :)

The Glee Club had its first meeting tonight. I was afraid I’d have upwards of a hundred kids, but I only had fifty-eight. That’s not too bad. They all fit nicely into five rows of ten and nine. Shortest people up front, of course. I had five guys, so I put them on the end of each row. At fifty-eight, the group’s really more a choir than a Glee Club, but who cares? I like the name. Anyway, I stood on a chair in front of the room so they could all see me easily, after I got them in their rows looking between pairs of people. I taught them how to stand properly for singing, got them to loosen up a bit, took them through some warm-ups, tried to get them to sing instead of belt. Belting is all very fine and good (and fun), but first I want them to learn to sing as a choir, which required listening, which makes belting rather impractical. Then I passed out the lyrics to My Favorite Things, which I had started teaching to three of my classes last week. We went through it some, and I had select rows sing the first verse while the others were quiet. Then I split them into three sections and gave each section a note to sing (thirds). We practiced a bit and then I started combining sections so that they could hear themselves singing harmony. We had some attacks of the giggles and some losing of the pitch, but all in all it went pretty well, and they improved noticeably even in that short period of time.

A few kids stayed behind to help me fix up the room – we moved the desks out, shoved the red carpety-thing in a closet, stuck the broken TV on top of the closet and got all the garbage out. It’s now a perfectly adequate space for my clubs and for film screenings. I’m excessively excited, though I know my diction does not reflect my feelings at present. Or perhaps it does – I’m apparently feeling rather British.

Tomorrow is the first meeting of the drama club. If it’s also a reasonable amount of people, I will be happy. If it’s not a reasonable amount of people, I will have to audition them. Gah.

I told the students during the first week about the clubs, and although it has taken a few weeks to get them all up and running, their enthusiasm has not waned. I guess they’ve all been talking about it, because the other day Mrs. Liu asked one of my students to get the details of the clubs from me. I wasn’t sure if it was to make sure I wasn’t doing subversive stuff, or just idle curiosity, but it turns out Mrs. Liu was writing some report on the English Department and just wanted the basics: Club name, meeting time and place, number of students, content and purpose. I gave the relevant information to my student, who gave it to Mrs. Liu. Today, Mrs. Liu was going on and on about it to Janice. Apparently I’ve been sainted in her eyes now, too. She kept marveling at how much we were both doing.

At the beginning of the year, I had said at one point to Candis, our Foreign Affairs Office liason, that we came here to teach, and that was what we were putting our efforts into. This was important because last year’s teachers didn’t do much compared to us, and I think the school was expecting that again. We were trying to differentiate ourselves to help them understand why we were making certain requests and (polite) demands. As Mrs. Liu marveled at our dedication, Janice repeated my words. We came here to teach, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re working hard, not unlike Mrs. Liu herself. To which Mrs. Liu replied that she and the others were doing what they should, but we’re doing what we should and more!

Anyway, the response of the students in the clubs is reward in itself – they’re so excited, and they’re actually on-task – it’s amazing – and focused and not bored the whole time, listening avidly when they should and participating enthusiastically when they should, especially in the choir. It is, however, nice to know that at least someone with the school administration sees what we’re doing as recognizes it as going it little above and beyond. If I wasn’t making other plans, I think I’d probably come back for a second year. And I get a kick out of the fact that I’ve finagled myself into being not just an oral English teacher, but a choir and drama teacher as well! Gah! :) Back home I’d be woefully unqualified for all three, but I’ve got just enough training in all three to (I hope) really do these kids here some good.

So, if any of you are interested in global community service, forget the Peace Corps – come be a strong, adventurous, dedicated teacher in Baicheng, China next year – they’re looking for people to replace us, and the kids certainly need someone who really cares about them.

Quick note

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:33:40 GMT

In case any of you following the news are wondering about me over here in China, here's a quick note. We're quite far from the unrest, so it's not effecting us on a safety level at this time. It is causing us a bit of unease, but it's also just fascinating to be here during this time. I don't really want to say much on the subject, so this note will be very short indeed. At any rate, updates about our vacation before Spring Festival will be on hold for the foreseeable future. I will move on to Harbin in the meantime, starting very soon.

Rachel

Tardy entries...

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:39:49 GMT

[Editor's note: Due to many circumstances, Rachel's xanga entries have not been posted in a while. Sorry for the wait-- be sure to read all of the new posts! Enjoy.]

Rachel Lulich Living, vol. 1, iss. 4

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:37:30 GMT

MARCH 14, 2008:

Welcome to the forth installment of the popular new magazine, Rachel Lulich Living. Today is Friday, March 14, 2008. The sky is rather brown this afternoon - there’s a big wind, to quote one of my students, and it’s kicking up a lot of dust. Rather unpleasant.

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m done teaching for the week. It was an interesting week. Most of my students did their homework and did it decently, though they also took a lot of obvious shortcuts (not so obvious to their minds, I’m sure). I’ve decided not to count their quizzes, but I won’t tell them that. If I tell them, they won’t care, and if I count them it’s unfair – I’m basically teaching them how to take quizzes without cheating (in other words, how to study and, ultimately, learn) – they don’t know how because they’ve never had to do anything like this before, so it’s a learning process and I don’t want to penalize them for something they don’t understand. I’ve also decided to keep the weekly vocabulary lists to a more manageable size; 5-10 words each week instead of 10-15. Also, for my four once-a-week classes, every third week there will be no homework and the class that week will be a mostly fun class. In my three twice-a-week classes, half of their time is more fun, so this kind of evens things out.

Today I had two classes for the second time. I brought some stuff in to show them, including the book Mom made me (they love the pictures of me as a tiny kid). Then we played some games (hangman, two truths and a lie, and 20 questions again). Then I taught them some tongue twisters. We did Toy Boat, Red Leather Yellow Leather, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood, and she sells sea shells by the sea shore. I would write one on the board, I’d say it for them once or twice, and then they’d all try it over and over in a wonderful and hilarious cacophony of sound. Listening to them all doing Red Leather, Yellow Leather over and over at their own paces especially made me crack up – have 30 people do it (not synchronized) and you’ll laugh, too. It sounds fantastic. Then some of the kids were laughing because I was cracking up. It was great. Fridays are my favorite days. I have two pretty good groups of students on Fridays, both for the second time of the week, so it’s a more relaxed day. Thank goodness.

Let me take you through my work week. Mondays are fine. I have classes one and two. Tuesdays are a bit of a trial, starting the day with my second to worst class (seven), and following it up with one of my slightly better classes (four). Both of these meet only once a week. Wednesday I only have one class, but it’s class one again, so I do my second class of the week with them, only to go back to my first class agenda on Thursday when I have two more once-a-week classes. Thursday is a mixed bag, beginning with my best class (five), followed by my worst class (eight). I doubt there will ever be a question of whether or not I’ll let them go early for lunch. The question, rather, will be ‘how early is too early’? ;)

I’ve figured some things out this week, though, as mentioned two paragraphs previously. I have also decided that my two not so great classes will get slightly less work each week, at least in class. For example, I removed the toughest discussion question from their small groups because my other classes were grappling with it as it is – this group would’ve gotten so hung up on it and not been able to handle it. Discussing things based on their opinions or reading between the lines or any kind of analysis is also totally new to the students. We read a synopsis of Peter Pan for homework and then I put them in small groups of three or four to discuss several simple questions designed to help them start thinking this way. Remember when Peter is stuck on the rock in the ocean and he thinks he’s going to die? He decides that dying will be a big adventure, remember? The tough (for them) discussion question in question (pardon the wordplay) was as follows: “Why do you think Peter decides dying will be a great adventure?” They didn’t know what to do with it, on the most basic level. They would raise their hand (I’ve finally got some of them doing that when they need help), I’d go to their group and ask what they were having trouble with, and they’d ask me why. And ask what they thought. They’d either look blankly at me or read that sentence of text aloud. If they did the latter, I’d counter with, “yes, but why do you think he says that?” Then I’d get blank looks from them too. And let the prompting begin. Very interesting.

It’s going to be a bit trying at first, but I’m confident, even based on what I’ve seen this week, that they will learn these basic reasoning and study skills by the time the semester is over. They will also have learned some good vocabulary, had lots of practice reading, speaking and listening, and so on. It will be interesting to see how they do on next week’s quiz – most of it will be on the lecture I gave early this week. I told them many times it would be on the quiz and they all took notes. The quiz results should demonstrate how well they took notes and/or studied their notes, and I’ll know what to work on in that area. These are all such basic school skills that these kids have never acquired because they’ve never had to the way they’ve been “taught”. Teaching them English while teaching them these things will, I think, prove effective, and then I can be satisfied that I did a good job, and that I truly helped some of these kids here at Last Chance U. And that will make all the paper grading worth the trouble.

And now for the Daily Double. I’m starting a new feature to my updates called “Made in China”. I just can’t resist. Today’s item is the DVD player the school gave me for my classes. Last semester I used it several times to show movies (How the Grinch Stole Christmas, for example). This semester I’ve already used it to good effect to show pictures from Tibet. Next week I will begin showing each of my classes the movie Finding Neverland. I’m going to spread it over a few weeks, showing roughly a half-hour segment each week until it’s done. Last weekend I went to show Miss Potter to Janice and Naomi, and it wouldn’t play on my DVD player. I had played it on that player last semester, but quirky things like this have happened before so I didn’t think much of it. Until Janice decided to show it her students and found that it worked on her DVD player (same brand as mine, bought at the same time). Last night I watched Mary Poppins with Panda (I’m also going to show that movie to my classes), and I had to borrow Naomi’s DVD player because mine, again, wouldn’t play the disc. So, something is wrong with my four-month old, barely used DVD player. I believe the title of this feature says it all. ;)

In other, more school-related news, I’m getting ready to start my clubs. In exchange for proofreading her students’ Newsletter when it comes out, Janice will find me a nice big room with a piano, and a pianist, and will help me run the Glee Club. I had somewhere around a hundred students sign up and, since it’s singing, I didn’t want to turn any of them down, which I’ll have to if I don’t have a larger enough room. Because I am not having more than one meeting a week for each club. The drama club has too many people, though, so I’m going to make them audition next week. I’d like to limit that group to thirty, if I can. Forty at the absolute most.

And then there’s the advanced class. I required students who wished to be in the group to write me a 3-4 page essay, typed, on why they wanted to be in the group, due this week. I received several submissions – perhaps 25 in all. I want the class no larger than 15. Several of the submissions were hand-written, but if they’re well-done, I’ll count them – the typed ones aren’t necessarily anything special, let me tell you. None of them are of appropriate length, content, etc. These kids haven’t ever had to write anything so they don’t know how to do that, either. However, some of them are worthy of consideration – so sincere and so desperate. Some of them are stock phrases about the importance of learning English cut and pasted into an “essay”. Two of my papers were almost identical, from students in different classes.

I will give all seriously plagiarizing (yes, I had to modify that – they all plagiarized a little) students the chance to write an original paper next week, but barring their completion of that, they won’t be in the club. Why give them a second chance? Because cheating and plagiarizing is a way of life here. Actually, it’s more than a way of life. It just is. There are no consequences. Until now, with me. Part of this whole thing is teaching them that if you constantly cheat, sooner or later someone will care. So, I’ve got a one-warning system. First, you get a warning. After that, it’s zero tolerance, and they’ve been told that, too. I informed my classes that next week, anyone caught cheating on a quiz will get zero points, as will the person helping them. I can’t wait to see their faces when I follow through on this. And remember, they don’t know I’m not counting the quiz grades! (*Evil smile.*) This is going to be so much fun. But hopefully, they’ll learn through this experience that when you don’t cheat but instead do the work, you learn a lot and it stays with you longer than the test, and then the decent students will hopefully apply this to their future studies. And I shall encourage them to do so before I leave here.

Whew. I think that is quite enough for one xanga entry, so let me close with these two tidbits: First, we foreign teachers have been invited to a concert at the music school here tomorrow evening. I can’t wait! Second, I’m taking my video camera out and about this weekend. It’s a good thing.

My Life Right Now

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:27:19 GMT

MARCH 10, 2008:

I have the best Mom ever. Really. No joke. She’s fantastic. I have the best Dad, too. He’s awesome.

I just got a package today from said parents, which they sent to me before taking off for Hawaii. In it were sundry items, including more mac and cheese, apple cider mix, and lots of granola bars (yum!). Also included was a surprise – a lovely little photo scrapbook Mom made for me, her “baby girl” as she likes to say. :) Filled with great pictures of me and the family from my babyhood to Mom’s and my visit to Big Sur in California a few years ago, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy and I just had to go show Janice right away. :) Thanks Mom!

Dad is also the best, because he can cram more stuff into a little priority mail box than anyone I know. Thanks for the maps, too! :)

In other news, it’s now the second week of the semester, and I finally feel like a teacher! :) I’m giving weekly reading and vocabulary assignments, weekly quizzes, weekly lectures, weekly small-group discussions … it’s awesome. Today (Monday) was the first quiz for classes 2 and 1. I couldn’t help grinning while giving it, for two reasons. First, the lack of cheating. Desks were cleared of all but a single sheet of blank paper and a pen, silence reigned (I could hear every attempted whisper), and students who ignored warnings about glancing at their neighbors’ papers were moved to a different seat. Marvelous. Second, I was giving a quiz! I gave it orally – I read the questions out loud and the students wrote their answers on a piece of paper. I’m not sadistic, I’m really not – I wasn’t grinning because the students were taking a quiz. I was grinning because, in giving a quiz to a silent, nearly cheat-free class, I felt very much a teacher, and that’s what I’m supposed to be over here. Sigh. Finally.

In yet other news, I had a good workout today. Sit ups were a little harder than they should have been (in my opinion), but I did several more (girl) push-ups than last time (I can do guy push-ups, but not enough just yet to fill the four minutes I devote to them at the gym). I wasn’t even winded after two sets of seven minutes of jogging on the treadmill, and thanks to the volleyball game on TV those seven minutes felt more like four, time-wise. I like to watch sports when I’m on the treadmill. It passes the time more quickly and makes me feel like I’m just relaxing – compared to those athletes, I’m not doing anything! The seven minutes are up from six last week. Next week will be eight, I think – I have to check my schedule.

Anyway, the gym was a little more crowded than I like so I didn’t use one of the workout machines that I usually do, but I did increase the weight on the other two (one works the same muscles as push-ups, the other works pull-up muscles), so that was good. This semester I’ve started doing leg lifts and scissor kicks at the end of the workout, so I did those, too. Scissor kicks. Not fun.

I still get some stares at the gym, but only when I go to the unofficial men’s zone (the workout machines) and put the weights on more than 25 pounds, what the average female does because they’re not trying to build muscle – just lose weight. But, most of the guys are two focused on their own biceps to take the time to stare at me for longer than it takes to realize that I do, indeed, know how to use whatever machine I’ve sat down at.

Back to teaching, the weekly homework, quizzes, discussions and lectures mean more work for my students every week, but they seem to be coping so far, and a lot more work for me. I have to chose readings, pick vocab, create quiz and discussion questions, and research and write lectures. And, I have to grade the quizzes and vocabulary homework. I’m leaving brief comments and smiley faces on vocab sheets – I remember this really encouraged me to do a good job on them when my teacher did that in middle school English – good old Mrs. Green-something. Greenfield? Greenland? I can’t remember. Wow. I guess that was a long time ago.

Anyway, I’m also offering three clubs this semester: A choir (and I will be teaching both English songs and how to read music); a drama club; a small advanced academic class. Each club will meet once a week for one hour.

Sound like I’ve got too much on my plate? I’ve thought about that myself, but I do tend to thrive on a challenge, so … I’m not worried about it. Yet.

;)

Signing off! (And I’ll get back to Tibet and Harbin and Spring Festival updates soon, I promise!)

-Rachel

Next Tibet Xanga

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:25:37 GMT

MARCH 1, 2008:

Tibet Part Three

Tuesday, January 22

In the late morning we went to an old old old Buddhist temple in Lhasa. Taka wasn’t feeling well still and opted to stay behind so it was just me, Janice, Naomi and our guide. This place was amazing, mostly because it was amazingly crowded. There was a long line of worshipers waiting to get in to go through the different stations of Buddha and Lama statues. Also, in front of the temple were blocks of people doing this prostration thing – they’d stand, bring their hands together (some of them had pieces of wood strapped to their hands for a loud clapping sound), then they’d slide down onto the ground, face down, lying full out, then they’d get up and do it again. Our guide told us that in the summer the temple is crowded with tourists, and in the winter all the farmers have nothing to do so a lot of them take a pilgrimage to Lhasa to visit the temple. So, it was crowded with all these farm families. Amazing. Some of them apparently walk the whole way (some from remote mountain villages), prostrating the whole way. We saw this a couple days later – a small group of men walking down the road lying on their faces every few feet.

Anyway, most of the worshipers came bearing small amounts of cash to leave behind and little urns filled with yak butter. They’d swipe some of the butter out of their urn with a flat little piece of wood and slab it onto a round tub full of yak butter brought by other peasants and containing several lit candle wicks, nestled in the butter. Some of the butter was solid, some was melted. When I saw it and learned what it was, I was afraid it would set off my stomach again, but it didn’t. It had an interesting, muted but pungent, bitter-sweet smell. Fascinating.

Our guide explained the presence of the candles to us. Apparently, if you die and were a good person, you can find your way to ‘heaven’, but if you were not a good person, it’s all dark. So, relatives bring yak butter to keep the candles burning to light the way to ‘heaven’ for you.

The temple was very old. I think our guide said it was from the 7^th century, but he was saying that about a lot of things and that didn’t seem likely….at any rate, it was really something. In the old days there were a couple thousand monks living there. Now there are only a few hundred.

As tourists, we didn’t have to go through the line – we paid an admission fee (which the worshipers don’t have to do) and got free roaming privileges, as it were. There were some areas, though, were everyone was mixed together and it took a few moments just to be able to move. It reminded me of the B line around BU at a busy time of day – packed like sardines.

We had lunch after the visit to the temple, at this place called the Mandala Restaurant with Roof Top Garden. :) They had all sorts of kinds of food. We opted for something traditionally Tibeten, but that was not too heavy or anything. They gave us carrot and ginger soup with flat bread stuff. The carrot and ginger are ground into a pulp together. There was a lot of ginger in the soup.

After lunch we went to the Potala Palace, the winter palace of the Dali Lama. Taka joined us this time. Potala basically means “high up”, so the palace was on top of a big hill, which means we had to climb lots and lots of stairs. Without the altitude, this would have been fine. With the altitude, however, it was almost impossible. It was our first day in Tibet, so we all still had altitude sickness (shortness of breath, dizziness if not getting enough air, fatigue, big headache…). We dawdled up those stairs, stopping for a brief rest at each landing, and we were still out of breath! At one point our guide urged us to “hurry now”, because if we didn’t they’d be closing the doors to the chapels before we got to them. We hurried for about 15 minutes (at which point we had made it inside), but we were still going slower than we would have normally climbed the stairs at a lower altitude! Pretty funny, especially for someone like me who enjoys taking steps two at a time or even jogging up stairs. Altitude sickness basically turns you into a slow-moving wimp for two days. :)

Anyway, the chapel system was worth the “rush”. Like at the temple, no pictures were allowed inside, but we saw some interesting stuff. Lots of Lama statues and stubas, lots of Buddha statues, pictures and statues of “protective gods” – the creepy, scary, devilish-looking ones. Some of the rooms were lined with cubby holes containing cloth-covered containers. In the containers were Buddhist texts. One of these rooms had the cubbies covered with heavy-duty glass and a visible alarm system. Our guide informed us that the texts in this room were very very old, written in Sanskrit…in gold. My goodness.

Like the temple, Potala Palace used to house thousands of monks, and now only hundreds. Also, some of the Chinese army currently lives at the palace. Quite a statement.

We passed one big open room where, in the old days, the Dali Lama would sit with the monks and teach. Since the Lama can’t be there in these days, they had this mountain-shaped gold cloth set on his seat to represent him, and the guide said they “revere” it as if it were really him. All quite interesting.

After Potala Palace, we went back to the Mandala Restaurant for dinner. Taka ordered vegetable curry, which came with a little bowl of yogurt and a little bowl of some thick, green soup. I ordered Tibeten Home Style Beef, Chicken and Vegetables, served in a tomato-based sauce. Naomi ordered jia zi, and Janice got homemade yogurt with honey and loved it.

China Videos

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:23:22 GMT

FEBRUARY 23, 2008:

Hi y'all!

Check out the short short short little videos I put up on my youtube page. Three are of people shelling corn in a village outside of Changchun, and one is from the Tiger park in Harbin.

http://www.youtube.com/user/rlulich

Tibet 2

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:22:20 GMT

FEBRUARY 21, 2008:

Here's the second Tibet update:

Part Two

The first day on the train was pleasant enough. I had some roll thing for breakfast, instant soup for lunch, and we all shared dinner in the dining car. I read all day. I started and finished Rocket Boys, the brilliant memoirs of Homer Hickam, Jr., which October Sky was based on. I closed the book a little after midnight, changed into my pjs and settled in for the night. I had trouble sleeping and noticed that I had developed a bit of a headache. I also noticed that I had gotten rather thirsty. So, I slowly drank some water, felt much better, and fell asleep.

[A word about the train to Lhasa. It takes two full days (just about 48 hours). It also goes up to an altitude of 5000 meters (that’s about 16,400 feet, folks). Because of this, many people experience altitude sickness during the trip, and oxygen is available from a plug-in at the head of every bed – they pass around little tubes to connect to the outlet and you insert the ends into your nose. Charming.]

Anyway, back to the story. I slept on and off for some time, but I woke up thirsty again a little before 5:00 am. I was reluctant to drink this time, however, because I also felt rather nauseous. I just stayed still for a while, concentrating on breathing and trying to get back my equilibrium.

That didn’t work, so I decided to get up and try a visit to the bathroom, just in case my stomach decided I needed to throw up. As soon as I sat up and went for my shoes, it was clear I wasn’t going to make it to the bathroom. I’ll spare you all the lovely details, but suffice it to say that I proceeded to throw up seven times in the next eight and a half hours. Naomi finally thought to see if there was a train doctor, which there was. She determined I had picked up some stomach bug and gave me some pills to take and told me to drink hot water and nothing else, and she said to use the oxygen (which we all had been for a while, just in case) to help me feel better.

The second day on the train, in short, was not so pleasant as the first. Also, a few hours after I stopped throwing up, Taka started feeling ill (no stomach bug, just plain old altitude sickness). We were all glad to arrive in Lhasa after 8:00 that night.

We were met in the train station by our guide (a Tibeten man who spoke English) and driver (a Chinese man who did not speak English) holding a sign that said “Lulich”. They presented each of us with these long, silky white scarf things that stand for good luck, and I felt like I’d arrived in Hawaii. They helped us with our luggage and took off for the parking lot and their SUV. Janice took off after them, and I scuffled along at my own pace, followed closely by Naomi and Taka. Naomi had read about a woman who visited Tibet and ran to get a picture, and promptly fainted. We all had read enough about altitude sickness to know to walk slowly. Not to mention I hadn’t had a thing to eat and hardly anything to drink in the previous 24 hours and was also still feeling rather queasy and exhausted from being ill. As it happened, Janice soon had to slow down and ask the men to let us dawdle, as she found herself very quickly out of breath. Lhasa is at about 3600 meters (11,800 feet), which is obviously still high altitude. Thankfully our driver was very kind and drove slowly and carefully for my and Taka’s sakes. We collapsed into our hotel rooms quite, quite gratefully.