This week is a holiday in China. We are the only people in the country who are currently going to school. On Tuesday we got the day off and for most people that meant watching pirated DVD’s and procrastinating on doing homework. We then met after dinner at Zhao Laoshi’s house and watched his interview that was being played on the English speaking channel before the National Holiday celebration coverage. It was very interesting. He was being interviewed with an advisor to British Embassy on how China’s status in the world had changed in 2008.
The interviewer was infuriating. He was some little Chinese man that was trying to William F. Buckley and only succeeding in being both insulting, condescending, and inarticulate. The British guy took hours to say nothing and Zhao Laoshi was only asked the most idiotic questions. His answers were, I think, significantly better than the other guy’s but he would be cut off frequently by both his aggressive and annoying companions. Oh well.
Yesterday, (Thursday) was very cool. We were supposed to meet outside of one of the classrooms at 6am. We took this to mean the bus would leave 7am and so planned on waking up at 6:45am. Instead we were woken with a knock on the door and a shouted “We were supposed to leave 15min ago.” Some of us (a little more than half) signed up to participate in Dragon Boat races. Over the last two weeks we have had 3 practices on the Tianjin River The river is about 20 degrees warmer than the air outside, which we’ve decided is due to nuclear waste dumped into it. It has a similar color and consistency to sewage, (perhaps a little bit more watery) and I
heard a body was discovered in it fairly recently. The practices themselves were exhausting. The boat is filled 2/3 with Carleton students and the 1/3 with a German, a couple Chinese, a Korean, a Spaniard, and another American. Practice was 2:30 to 5:30 of sprints. Dragon boats work sort of like an outrigger canoe except that there are 22 people in the boat. The paddles are similar as is the technique. There is a person at the front who beats the drum and a person in back who steers. These practices were training us for yesterday’s race that was humbling. We planned our excuse if we didn’t win to be because the Chinese have been doing this since birth. We were not
expecting to be competing exclusively against foreigners and being demolished by the Russian and Italian teams that flew to China exclusively for this race. We went to the coast for the races which was nice and we were given matching track suits. It was a lot of fun and we only came in last place once.
This week is a holiday in China. We are the only people in the country who are currently going to school. On Tuesday we got the day off and for most people that meant watching pirated DVD’s and procrastinating on doing homework. We then met after dinner at Zhao Laoshi’s house and watched his interview that was being played on the English speaking channel before the National Holiday celebration coverage. It was very interesting. He was being interviewed with an advisor to British Embassy on how China’s status in the world had changed in 2008. 
The interviewer was infuriating. He was some little Chinese man that was trying to William F. Buckley and only succeeding in being both insulting, condescending, and inarticulate. The British guy took hours to say nothing and Zhao Laoshi was only asked the most idiotic questions. His answers were, I think, significantly better than the other guy’s but he would be cut off frequently by both his aggressive and annoying companions. Oh well.
Yesterday, (Thursday) was very cool. We were supposed to meet outside of one of the classrooms at 6am. We took this to mean the bus would leave 7am and so planned on waking up at 6:45am. Instead we were woken with a knock on the door and a shouted “We were supposed to leave 15min ago.” Some of us (a little more than half) signed up to participate in Dragon Boat races. Over the last two weeks we have had 3 practices on the Tianjin River The river is about 20 degrees warmer than the air outside, which we’ve decided is due to nuclear waste dumped into it. It has a similar color and consistency to sewage, (perhaps a little bit more watery) and I 
heard a body was discovered in it fairly recently. The practices themselves were exhausting. The boat is filled 2/3 with Carleton students and the 1/3 with a German, a couple Chinese, a Korean, a Spaniard, and another American. Practice was 2:30 to 5:30 of sprints. Dragon boats work sort of like an outrigger canoe except that there are 22 people in the boat. The paddles are similar as is the technique. There is a person at the front who beats the drum and a person in back who steers. These practices were training us for yesterday’s race that was humbling. We planned our excuse if we didn’t win to be because the Chinese have been doing this since birth. We were not 
expecting to be competing exclusively against foreigners and being demolished by the Russian and Italian teams that flew to China exclusively for this race. We went to the coast for the races which was nice and we were given matching track suits. It was a lot of fun and we only came in last place once.
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