Ice, Carrot, and Ultrasound.

The ice field is done! Or maybe as done as it is going to get. There are still some big holes, ridges and ditches here and there. But it is mostly smooth and getting a thorough work over by masses of Chinese students. Some gliding smoothly carelessly weaving in and amongst their classmates and others awkwardly stumbling and painfully failing. We have one pair of ice skates…still need one more. There is a slight problem finding skates for larger feet.

The other night we went out with street shoes from some carrot ice soccer and freeze tag. It was a great 2 hours of fun. There were five of us, and aside from my brother the rest shall remain unidentified for their sake. One of the unknowns was ridiculous. Granted running on ice and making quick turns to avoid pursuers or score carrot goals is not easy business. However this one person evoked jolly laughter in casey and I frequently. It was mostly due to their manner of running, but sometimes also due to various noise emitted whilst being pursued. Their body above the knees was kept perfectly still and erect. Only the knees ankles and feet moved. Their heels never touched the ice. So it looked like a warner bros style cartoon character, speedily tiptoeing hither and thither. On top of that their arms were kept tight at their sides, with their hands pointing at 90 degree angles straight out to the sides. I thought they looked like a penguin.

Yesterday I went for a physical for my new visa. $60 later I guess I had been checked, but in a way very different from anything I had had before. Everything that I thought should go into a physical was included in this one..but not actually checked, just stamped and signed off. Each portion of the physical was performed by a different doctor in a different room. For example the for the external check, I was asked to stand hold my hands out in front of me and turn them over. Check, stamp, sign. The internal check involved a stethoscope on my nipples. The eye, mouth, ear check was just a check, stamp, sign. I did get some blood taken, as well as an ultrasound, ekg, and a chest xray. So I guess they will know if I am pregnant, have a heart condition or TB. I get to go back tomorrow to pick up the results.

More cold

It actually warmed up the past few days. Things even got close to melting. The weather report still forecasts "bitter cold" "frigid" and "extremely cold."

The ice skating rink is getting closer to resembling something useful rather than the sad mixture of frozen mud and ice it started out as. It is enormous. Not just a single rink, but more like 8 put together with some trees added for challenges and visual appeal. Currently the ice field is mostly ice covered, but with numerous imperfections. Ridges, lumps, cracks, holes and the such. They have about ten sleds mounted with 200gal water barrels and a nifty water spraying deal on the back. I think they will start physically pulling them around in the next few days to smooth out the ice.

In anticipation of its completion we are going to buy ice skates today. We are anticipating on spending a very small amount of money on a couple of used pairs. Any guesses on how much new or use skates go for?

new address

Jason Clark #601
PO Box 228
Northeast Forestry University
Ha'erbin, Heilongjiang Province 150040
People's Republic of China

Cell
086 13796 033047

Winter

Last Friday night outside a Russian bar full of Russians two Russians refused to believe that I wasn’t Russian and insisted on talking Russian to me interspersed with bits of English and very bad Chinese and trying to convince me that I was indeed Russian. This went on for several minutes, no exaggeration. I tried to talk to them and get a Russian insight into life in Haerbin, but failed to get any response other than “Rusky!” I think they were genuinely dumb or drunk and dumb.

This last week it got cold. Not as cold as it will get but cold enough for now. We are seeing highs of -13C and lows of -20C. Or in more familiar terms 7F to -4F. It’s still November. January and February are supposed to be the cold ones. I wonder how much more the temperature can drop. We are still losing 3minutes of daylight each day. Right now the sun makes a very fast long low arc across the southern sky. The solstice is only 4 weeks off from now and then each day will be longer…but not quite warmer.

I know it’s cold now by the instantaneous freezing of nose hairs I experience immediately upon exiting any building. It’s not that cold, it can get colder. Casey and I have a bet going about at what temperature water will freeze when poured out our 6^th story window but before hitting the ground. -20C is not cold enough.

leaves
some snow
boiler

In other news I haven't really started my research or at least not like I had in mind. I am currently reading Chinese articles about China's forest management policy, which is good. I have hopes to get started on some other thing this week, but we will wait and see if they play out.

week one and counting

First week at the forestry university.

I started off the week with lots of introductions to people in the engineering college. I got to see the human factor lab, which i am still not sure what is used for. The lab is full of machines to test reflexes, muscle memory, reaction times, multi-tasking abilities, estimation abilities and so on. Apparently the machines are useful to determine human abilities as they might relate to future machines and our abilities to operate them.

I also got to see the the provincial forest model. It is a comprehensive model of all of the provinces forests combined into one model and by combined i mean the model is divided into 4 parts with red lines and there is a fifth part on separate table. the thing is huge, probably 20ftX30ft. This last year several foreign forest experts came to admire the model, even western countries dont have a model as good as this one. dont get me wrong, other countries have forest models, but none are complete animated.... the whole thing is filled with little electric motors and wired up to a computer. every single tree can be 'cut down(fall over)' through the click of a mouse. even the little trucks and tree cranes move it really exciting. although this week it wasnt fully operational. i need to go back next week and see it in full action.

I started taking classes here as well. Right now I have two. One called environmental science, which is very uninteresting, and one called forest ecology which is actually pretty good. Environmental science consists of powerpoint slides copied directly from a poor quality american environmental science book from the 1980's. The professor has calls on students from the roster to read the english slides and then translate them into chinese. This might be a good idea if the students could read english or even if after stumbling through the slide they had any idea what they just read. That would make translating a bit easier. My motive for being in the class is not to learn anything new, but rather to help improve my chinese. This class does not help. The forest ecology class is good because the professor knows what he is doing and gives good lectures.

Forestry Uni here we come

It’s been something of a big week. Last weekend I packed up my stuff and moved out of the international student dorm. I wasn’t too sad to be leaving the dorm, but leaving my roommate, Song Lailong, was tough. I really liked living with him, and will definitely miss talking to him everyday. We will have to make a point to meet up for dinner weekly to catch up.

I put my bags in a cab and took the 15min drive to my new university. The Northeast Forestry University. 东北林业大学. My new apartment is part of the graduate student housing and on the 6^th floor. I arrived and placed my bags in the middle of a large stark room wrapped in bright white walls. The bright white walls have just been re-plastered/white washed and were a stark contrast to the visible deposit of dust on all horizontal surfaces. After some sweeping and mopping, the place was a bit nicer. Although the supplied mop consisting only of a stick with a shredded tee shirt attached really only got the floor wet.

There wasn’t much in the apartment even though it is furnished. There are two single beds, two chairs, three desks, two wardrobes, a tv, washer, fridge, and a single burner gas stove. After cleaning, I went to get some dishes, pots, and food. I got an amazing amount of veggies for $3 and spices for another $3.

On Monday I presented myself at the engineering college to arrange classes, register and meet the relevant officials. It was really interesting and everyone was very nice. I start class this next Monday. Casey arrived Tuesday morning.

We spent most of the week touring around Ha’erbin. We also made the decision to buy a second single burner stove and splice the gas line to hook it up. Now we are cooking in style with two burners. We also outfitted ourselves with an iron wok for all our stir frying needs and a cast iron griddle for griddle cakes and omelets.

After a rather awkward introduction in which building manager tried out his English, I was handed to phone to talk to one of the American English teachers on campus. Thursday night, Casey and I went out to dinner with 3 of the 4 other Americans on campus. We talked for about 3 hours about Ha’erbin.

Friday was Halloween and not much of a big deal in china. Casey, I and two other guys went wearing blue and yellow factory worker uniforms. After dinner at a traditional Chinese dinner and some homemade mead, we went to the one western bar in town to meet a bunch of foreigners ‘celebrating’ Halloween at the bar. Celebrating didn’t consist of anything more than a bit of drink and chat wrapped in costumes.

On Sunday I met the three Sudanese guys living in our building. They are all here studying civil engineering. Two speak some English and the third speaks some Chinese. Their first language is Arabic, but that doesn’t help them very much in China or at the university. They take one semester of Chinese and then 4 years of civil engineering. The only catch is the civil engineering courses are all in Chinese and one semester of Chinese doesn’t get them anywhere near able to understand. So instead they learn mostly in English from the internet. I have not found out yet why they are here or how their Ph.D. here is a good idea, but I will keep it in mind to ask.

Today there were snow flurries, but everything just melted on the ground. The forecast has a week more of mild weather and then a dive into 6 months of sub-zero temps.

Tomorrow on the menu: griddle cakes and hawthorn berry compote.