wce.80d.org

a few lessons learned from the trip to hell's canyon. another indescribable trip for many reasons.

- being cynical is not a flattering way of avoiding things of which you're afraid, especially when you're at a wedding, drunk, and showing your breasts to every man who will look at them (she did have nice breasts, though).

- i'm afraid of death. and marriage. and having kids. and falling in love.

- fear is fueled by uncertainty and is most intense when you have something valuable to lose.

- there's really not too much to lose by falling in love and uncertainty isn't a very encouraging way to live an inspired life.

- there is a lot to lose by dying, getting married, and having kids but i guess you get to a point when you're ready to exchange those things with what you'll lose. danielle was clearly ready to trade it all in - but she didn't have much to lose but mountains of despair.

- when you're sitting in a tent with visions of being the next set of names in the news that was never recovered from an Oregon blizzard, the claim that "we've got plenty of food to wait this thing out for several days" isn't the most comforting thing to hear.

- geology is confusing.

- scrabble is a great conversational stunt.

in a related note, i just ran across a quote that i captured back in 1997 from catcher in the rye (i think) that sums up my most recent experiences with nature and spirituality and death and love (of which there have been so many!)

"but most of all, above everything else, who in the bible besides jesus knew that we're carrying the kingdom of heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddamn stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look...jesus realized there is no separation from god."

jd salinger is brilliant.

so today is earth day, which i'm mostly opposed to celebrating in the same way that i resent going to church on sundays. filter out appreciation of nature and your relationship with god from the rest of your weekly routine and we all end up a bunch of hypocrits.

02.22.07

oh boy. it has been another indescribable day. we left at 8am to head to the rangitata river. it felt a little contrived when we were picked up in a bus that said “river from the sky” on the side. i later came to learn why; in maui, rangi means river and tata means sky. the rangitata river was not actually the color of the sky but something so much more brilliant - much more intense than the grey, dull clouds and sheets of rain that blew across our faces all day. despite the rain and the cold and the lack of sun, i couldn’t unhook the smile from my ears. we began in a flat, braided river as jimmie warned us of what we was ahead. my boat, largely composed of river engineers, arrogantly joked that we knew where eddies and secondary currents would take us. and maybe we did. the boat only lost one person and he was an englishman and a drama major. i felt my confidence swell as our river guide warned us of the 300m of class 5 rapids ahead- i knew we wouldn't flip. even as cully floated up over me after our raft submerged under ‘tsunami’, i somehow still knew that we’d conquer that reach. i feel a little ashamed now that i wanted so much to be in control of nature in that setting; knowing what i do about river mechanics, i should know better than to assume that we’d have any control, even in an enormous, inflatable bumper car. and really, it was more luck than cumulative knowledge of river mechanics in the raft.

in those moments as we paddled, floated, and screamed our way through each set of class five rapids, even leopold himself would have forgotten his years of hydraulics. there is something really invigorating about being so connected and aware of a moment. as i jumped off of the first set of cliffs (only 10m this time), i thought of a conversation with nicolas a few months ago; those moments as you fall, then sinking like a bullet into 10C water, then emerging with empty lungs...that makes you feel pretty alive and aware of time. i’ve spent a lot of days on rivers and it usually brings me on some level to that awareness, but never as intensely as the trip today did.

i meant to be better about keeping up with this blog, but i really haven’t had regular access to email or time to spend writing at the computer. it is actually more of a blessing than a curse, though the backlog on my email accounts is going to be tough to tackle when i do get back. i leave Christchurch early Saturday morning and am leaving my laptop here. there’ll be no email, no cell phone, no computer screen for an entire week and i couldn’t be more excited.

i’ll try to briefly recount the past few days, though it will be hard to do that briefly. my talk on tuesday was well attended and it went very well. it is nice to have gotten it over with early in the week and to have gotten such a good response from so many people. i’ve been exploring the city in my running shoes, getting lost and finding my way (literally and figuratively) through cemeteries, city parks, and the botanical garden. i took the bus out to the beach where I met bernard, a 80-90 year old woman with only three toes and not a bit of sense about how to use a digital camera. i’ve been spending a lot of time with rick, dave, and greg and i was surprised to be so comforted by their familiar faces.

i’ve also met loads of new people who are as indescribable as the nature here is. there’s the old belgian guy who gifted me with numerous bugs (dead and alive) and who, despite his complete inability to hear a melody or a bass line, kept pulling me out to the dance floor at the conference dinner. there’s ross, the ‘technologist’ who might be the loneliest and yet most arrogant person I’ve ever met. there’s ‘kitty’, who looks just like a skinny version of arthur but who puts on a more elaborate stretching routine than bikram himself every time I pass en route to and from downtown from my hostel. there’s jess and jess, two ladies from virgina tech who are fun but who embarrassingly remind me of myself when i was a masters student. no lack of strange and mostly friendly encounters here, and i feel like i didn’t even have to try.

i arrived in christchurch yesterday after traveling for 29 hours. the trip was mostly uneventful, aside from some interesting conversations with my row companions on the 14 hours flight from san francisco to sydney. i rode downtown with some strangers from the airport and my first impression of this place is how friendly everyone is. my second impression is that if i don’t get hit by a car while i’m here, it will be damned miracle. i need to memorize a mantra to remind myself to look in the opposite direction before stepping out, but i’m so confused about which direction the cars are coming in that i can’t figure out what an appropriate mantra would be. the other problem is that this place is so beautiful; it is hard to focus on moving vehicles when there is so much else to see.

i am staying at folley towers, an amazingly well-kept backpackers hostel. it is a short walk from downtown, gratefully, and across the street from an organic grocery and the herb shop, both of which i intend to explore this afternoon. the people, again, are super friendly and super rigorous. i saw a young lady leaving this morning with a quads bigger than the meatheads at dixon. quite randomly during my first walking tour of the city last night, i ran into someone from EPA who i met last year at NABS in alaska and we went to dinner along the river. we caught up over dinner and he, because he’s been here several days already, had stories of hitchhiking, hiking, and camping along the tracks that made my mouth water. despite the lack of jet lag and no sleep for three days, i wasn’t tired but decided against heading over to the battle of the bands with him for an honest attempt to catch up on some sleep. i shouldn’t have bothered. my mind was racing as i layed in bed listening to the kiwis outside my window talking about american culture. i’m so pleased to spend the first week in town and the second in the woods and really wish i had more time to legitimately explore this place.

http://www.bravia-advert.com/commercial/braviaextcommhigh.html

for the first time since i arrived in oregon, i saw lightening yesterday evening. 6 seconds later, a 30 second long aleatoric cacophony followed the burst of static electricity. standing at the top of dimple hill in the rain, looking over the willamette valley, it was one of the most beautiful things i've seen in some time.

i hope you folks back in n. carolina appreciate what you have there with the intense, dynamic storms. i really miss that about the east coast. the storms there are beautiful.

I’ve been waiting for this day to arrive for some time. 04.05.06. I thought it would be more exciting; such a sequence occurs only once per 100 years!

I dropped my i-pod in the toilet. I was reaching down to grab my bag from the floor and it slipped out of the chest pocket in my fleece. I quickly fetched it out, but it immediately shut off. After 30 minutes, it came on but would not lower the volume beyond max. then it quit working entirely. It was sad to realize how attached I’ve become to hearing energizing music as I move through my day; I feel like I’ve succumbed to materialism. Fortunately though, I’m weaned from this addiction in Vienna where the sites and sounds are interesting and exciting enough.

Walking through the conference lounge today, I observed somewhere around 100 scientists glued to their computers which were wired to the internet at units set up through the common area. It struck me as ironic that such sophisticated scientists could look so much like babies suckling the bottle that is the internet. Then I sat down myself and checked my email.

I keep meeting the most fantastic people at restaurants, probably when I should be interacting with conference people, talking about my research and about collaborating. At lunch every day, I leave the conference center and walk out into the less commercial district where I am greeted by the same woman each day with a big smile and several german words that I do not understand. She always makes sure that I have the best seat and speaks to me in german while I try to interpret; aber, sie spreche sehr schnell und ich verstehe nicht. She is so cute; a bit overweight, around 35 years of age, entirely too much makeup and cheap jewelry, and perhaps the biggest smile and kindest hear that I’ve encountered since I arrived in Europe. She allows me to sit in the best seat in the back for long after I’ve finished my tea, reading my book and watching people eating and chatting. Yesterday she misunderstood my poor german and brought me a coffee. It was a cappuccino in a tiny mug and I was too embarrassed to send it back. So for the first time in my life, I drank a cup of coffee. The first taste was incredibly bitter and reminded me why I never drink it. But after I dumped the entire packet of sugar into the tiny mug, it tasted considerably better and I was able to finish it over the two hour period I was there. I’m struggling to put down the book that I’m reading, but after only one cup of cappuccino, I became incredibly restless and had to leave to go for a walk. The rest of the afternoon was spent unsuccessfully trying to focus on presentation after presentation. I left early and went for a long run at a park I discovered near my hotel. Maybe it was the weather, maybe the coffee, but I felt great running and spent quite a while watching people at the park as my legs moved forward in laps around the perimeter. The weather was warm, sunny, and breezy and there were masses of people out. The playground was my favorite part of each lap and the playground equipment was really fantastic – things I had never seen before but looked like so much fun.

I set out with a deliberate agenda tonight. I need to write and having skipped lunch, I wanted a good dinner. I found a restaurant around the corner that serves the three things I’m craving: leafy green vegetables, pasta, and beer. The waitress was super cute – she wore all black but with bright pink hair and a smile that would melt the most bitter heart. She is the type of person that you want to befriend. And I realize the logic (not irony, derek) of it – that I should find such women so far from my home.

There is a couple arguing in the corner. The man says very little but drinks his beer and smokes his cigarette without interruption. The other corner couple haven’t spoken to each other since they sat down. Two men sit alone at the bar. It has occurred to me more than once since I landed on this continent that I should spend a substantial period of my life here. Fortunately, I get sabbatical every 7 years. Only 6.5 years to go.

I really do fit in well here, in the other corner of the restaurant and in the city. Unnoticed and anonymous, I appreciate the general perspective of this part of the world. ‘Alive’ by Pearl Jam just came on the radio and I’m suddenly drawn back to middle and high school. I wish Mind was here with me. I realize how much, despite my intense desire to be alone, I miss having her in my life. She’s rare because she lives what she believes and never apologizes for any of it. Like an ArcGIS layer, if you lay that on top of her unwavering passion, you produce a map of uncertainty, trouble, and true love. She’s such an inspiration and I hope everyone has someone in their lives like her.

Somehow now I run across a song by jem (‘remember’?)and it reminds me of Kris. This flood of memories and of irreplaceable people!

I’m reading an incredible book that I picked up here in Vienna before I left. It is called ‘of human bondage’ and covers everything from art and literature to personal philosophies and travel and love. I cannot put it down and it effectively expresses my own struggle between the joy of independence and the desire to be loved and to love. It is a great book. If you have a long airplane ride or time for 650 pages, you should read this book. I’ll loan it to you; it is very good.

Very little could have improved my morning. It is Sunday and for the first time in a very long while, I completely felt like I was on vacation. I slept in and skipped my morning run. I went to breakfast without showering. Michael and I smoked and walked down to a café for tea in the sun before he left for the airport. I sat in the hotel window for nearly an hour, enjoying the time alone watching the neighborhood and reading my book. It occurred to me while I was getting into the shower that I am thoroughly satisfied with my life. What a funny thing to realize; it is not that I have been unhappy, but rather just the epiphytic realization that I am happy and that it should even occur to think of it as something to realize. Traveling is funny; it really exposes your strengths and weaknesses. I’m reminded of how much I love Oregon and have found completely renewed enthusiasm for my job. It is amazing what a single day off can do to your perspective. I’m leaving Sofia with a lightness of step and persistent smirk that recognizes and appreciates the lack of burden I suffer.

I regret that I haven’t written more, but haven’t had any time to myself in days. I really miss my time alone here; seeing the city without the constant chatter of companions. I want to sit outside and read my book. I haven’t been doing any real “work” on manuscripts or proposals or meeting preparation and I feel a little guilty about that, but am building new and fun models about dam removal that are definitely relevant to work. This might be my favorite part of my job; I am certain to never get bored because there are always new and exciting projects to take on. Still, I feel disconnected from everyday work things and it makes me just a bit uncomfortable. I need to leave here with a manuscript outline and a model developed to feel like this wasn’t a waste for work, but culturally and personally, it has already been an enormous gain.

We’ve been incredibly busy with work and play here in Sophia. I went last night with 3 of the meeting participants to see Dee Dee Bridgewater sing down at the Bulgarian Cultural Hall. It was an enormous auditorium in the city center. Very few Bulgarians speak English so it took us a few minutes climbing in and out of taxis before finding someone who could take us there. The Cultural Hall was a bizarre place; this grand and enormous auditorium, the hallways of which were lined with home improvement stands. It looked like a home improvement flea market, with everything from windows to garage doors to mini blinds to kitchen faucets. When we entered, we were certain the cab driver didn’t understand that we wanted to find the opera hall, but nestled behind the exterior door section was the entrance to the auditorium and behind this door was the largest and most elaborate performance hall that I’ve seen. It was beautiful! And just outside in the hall, the home improvement flea market was closing down for the day. Dee Dee Bridgewater was a fantastic singer. A confident, modest, and endearing singer from Flint, Michigan, she sang in French with her thick, black tongue that was both contradictory and stunning. Her last song was La Vie en Rose and while it was a shade different from Edith Piaf’s version, it was beautiful nonetheless. After 15 minutes of standing ovation, she sang Amazing Grace a cappella and it literally brought tears to my eyes. It made me think that this woman has known real love, be it from her man (or men, three husbands) or from her God. Only recently have I been able to relate to her passion and openness, finally convinced that real love does exist for people, even under completely irrational and undesirable circumstances. Consequently, I’ve decided that there is only so much rationality that people should allow to guide life and decisions. Jennie first introduced me to this idea, it was reinforced by derek, and now it appears everywhere, like coincidences that certainly existed before but of which you were never aware. Sometimes I regret being a woman, because we are so silly, easily and deeply affected by things as unsophisticated as ‘true’ love.

Somewhere between the beauty of Europe and poverty of China lies Sophia, Bulgaria. I’ve spent one night here and already have seen some of the most beautiful buildings in Europe and some dirtier slums than I observed in Beijing. I went with anders and another Amsterdam student, whose name I cannot pronounce and certainly not spell, to see all of the loveliest parts of this city. After my run through the slums this morning, it was quite a welcomed change. I won’t go into detail about my arrival, dinner, or drinks last night as it wasn’t particularly interesting, aside from the reunion with tim, bert, and paulo. I felt like such a kid with those guys, completely humbled by their intelligence and modesty.

I requested a wake up call at 7:30am and really struggled to get out of bed this morning. I don’t understand why I’m having such a hard time recovering from jet lag this time. But I figured that resuming a morning run routine might help my body adapt, so I put on my running shoes and headed down the stairs. I asked the desk clerk if there was a park where I might run, and she directed me to a dilapidated mud track down the street, with garbage piled at each turn and potholes the sizes of buses filled with filthy water in the center of the track. This wasn’t my idea of exploring, so I decided to head down a street, without making any turns so I wouldn’t get lost. I ran across a few major roads and made somewhat a spectacle of myself. Apparently running is a frivolous and ridiculous activity here; so in addition to my blond hair and blue eyes, which stand out in this Mediterranean area, seeing someone jogging was evidently an unusual sight as several people laughed or mocked me as I ran towards the only park I could find on a map. It looked a little like the NC piedmont, with deciduous trees dominating the vegetation and no undergrowth except for English ivy, which covered the trees and forest floor in patches. There were countless paths through this park, with no trail markers, and after running there for only a few minutes, I was hopelessly lost in this forested island in a sea of concrete. Somehow, I ran across an isolated wetland pool that I recognized from the park entrance, and returned back to the hotel. After a long shower, I met the group for breakfast and headed downtown with the boys to see the churches. I took lots of pictures and hope that the disposable camera will not lose them. The churches were amazing, one of which was built in 200 AD. The paintings and fixtures were incredible and it was very difficult to understand how much history exists in those buildings (or how much they cost at the time of construction). The sun was out, the temperature was around 65 degrees, and I couldn’t have been happier.

It is around 7pm here and it has hard to believe that another day has passed so quickly. I went to bed early last night and awoke (apparently) around 7am. The sun was bright so I decided to get up and start exploring Vienna. I promised myself I would take it easy today, having 6 days to explore this city next week, so that I could catch up on rest and figure out my plans to travel to Sophia tomorrow. I showered and went down for breakfast in the hostel. There is something exciting about traveling in a city alone, sitting by myself at breakfast to watch people and wandering through town, with the ipod on or packed, depending on how much of the city I want to hear.

I left breakfast at 8:30 and headed through the main shopping district. Apparently this city sleeps in. NOTHING was open before 9:30, but it was lovely to walk through countless streets, admiring the architecture and the appreciation of history that Austrians have to preserve these old buildings. I really admire how European cities manage to combine the old with the new. Beautiful old buildings line every street, mostly with apartments upstairs and shops of all kinds downstairs. There is something both marvelous and ironic about a United Colors of Benneton or Esprit in a several hundred year old building.

I found the museum district around 9:30am but it was still closed, so I saw it from the outside before heading back toward the shopping district to search for gifts and whatever I might want to add to my already-bulging closet, as someone recently observed. I also picked up a couple of books, and started reading one of them over lunch at a fabulous little café. I’ve found it very easy to practice my german here, so lunch was fun as I tried to order some pasta with ‘fungi’. Even derek would have enjoyed the food.

Finding myself near the hostel, I returned to check my email and take a quick nap. Or so I thought. Apparently I slept for nearly 3 hours; I was exhausted. And upon waking up, it was dark and raining, so I forewent the running shoes and decided to find an internet café so that I could send out some files for work and download the information about where I’m going tomorrow. One of the loveliest things about this place is the lack of work-related infrastructure. Stores close promptly at 5pm. Train travel drops dramatically around 6pm. And you have to really search to find a wireless connection. So I endeavored to spend the evening at the only coffee shop with a wireless connection (café latte) in the heart of the tourist district. I should have known better. Leaving the hostel at 6pm with a map and my laptop, I headed east, thinking I’d run into this street or that. As history would have it, I became hopelessly lost. I’m sure I passed the same Indisch restaurant 4 times. The gratifying part of this was that I was seeing parts of the city that I wouldn’t otherwise get to, and I really didn’t mind pulling out my map to see if I could find myself since the number of tourists in this city likely outnumber the residents. I dropped my map, which didn’t much matter because I had wandered outside of its extent. I asked at least 6 people, “Bitte, wo ist der Westbahnhof?” They would point me in some direction and I hoped to slowly spiral my way closer to a section that I recognized. It didn’t happen though, and finally, someone advised that I take the train. One stop later, I was at the Westbahnhof and decided to try abandon the Café Latte plan and have dinner at the pub just down from my hostel, which is where I’m writing now. The bartender has been very kind, and we had a long conversation in English, which was a relief to hear something familiar. I think he invited me to stay at his flat when I come back to Wien next week, but I’m not sure as his English isn’t fantastic, so I just smiled and nodded. I ordered Wien goulosh (being vegetarian is a European country is not desirable) and a couple of Gosser beers, yum! The bartended put on a radio station that is playing all American music, all of which is terrible except “ground control to major tom.” The 3 other men in the pub, all older, overweight, and drunk, are talking about me, the only other patron in this neighborhood spot, and making typing gestures to me about typing away at my computer. I am generally clueless about what they are saying, so I just smile and laugh whenever they catch me eavesdropping.

I had a 10-hr layover in Amsterdam. Having arrived in this wonderful city with 3 hrs of sleep for the past three days, I should have guessed that it was going to be quite a morning.

I should start by saying that I love this city. It is a place that I’d like to explore with leslie. It seems like she would fit in so well here. I stashed my laptop in a locker and took the train downtown at 7:30am. It was cold this morning (2 degrees Celcius) and my coat was in my packed luggage. But I felt good. God, I love this city. The train was clean and on time. I jumped off at the central station and started walking through town watching people en route to work. It was a great time of the day to people watch. Everyone frantically moving towards the train station. On bike. On foot. By light rail. No one in cars. I’m in heaven here.

There are tons of canals through this amazing city and I spent several hours walking up and down them, absorbing all of the beautiful features of this place. Like new york, every time you turn a corner, there is another and very different street. Different businesses, different architecture, different people. i found myself in the red light district, just before entering a lovely little smoke shop. He handed me a menu and I ordered 2g of ‘thai’ smoke. They sold mushrooms and hash as well, but having very little sleep or smoke in my history, I wasn’t in any shape to take on something any more intense than just good weed. So I rolled a pathetic joint and smoked it there at the coffee shop and drank my tea. It didn’t’ burn very well and I had to keep relighting it. I felt like such an amateur, but I kept the other gram that I didn’t roll. Michael and I will put that to good use in Sophia, in between manuscript writing and his complaining about how hard his job is. Damn Europeans have it so easy.

People filed into the hash shop to have their morning coffee or smoke. There was an older man next to me arguing in dutch with a younger man beside him. In my mind, the elder man was a professor, and he was discussing politics with the younger man. Superman (lois and lane) was on tv and it was a really serious one about superman incriminating lois lane for some murder (but it wasn’t really her; it was her hologram!). It was way too intense for me because I was stoned having smoked only half of the loose joint that I rolled, so after listening to the men’s conversation for a few minutes, I had to leave to go walk around. There is something disturbing about seeing superman on the witness stand and a dramatic terri hatcher; it made me very restless.

i'm headed east. through minneapolis where i expect to see snow on the ground. through amsterdam where i expect to venture out to find a smoke shop. through vienna where i expect to sleep as soon as i arrive. through bratislava where i expect to be unable to communicate with anyone. finally into sophia where i will meet michael and the rest of the Nature-Net group. sitting here in PDX, i'm finally starting to get excited about the trip. i don't need a vacation right now, but i'm certainly happy to take one anyway.

i've got two bags with me. one is full of work and new cds, courtesy of mr. derek powers. the other is full of food (pizza, salad and annie's dressing, blue corn chips, bread, cheese, stinky pasta, apples, banannas, odwallas). i cleaned out my refridgerator last night and i'm certainly not going to starve or need to purchase airport food over the next 24 hours.

with badly drawn boy playing from my lap, i've been watching the ground crew preparing the boeing 737 to leaving portland. i always wanted to work as part of a ground crew. maybe when i retire they'll hire to me to push the airplanes back with the tug cars and signal the airplanes into the gate with the orange rods. it is exciting to think about what kind of training those people receive. do they learn about the gear ratio of the tug cars that makes them capable of pushing a 200,000 lb aircraft? do they take classes in nose gear and strut assembly? i wonder if they lose the excitement of being around those enormous machines after spending countless days underneath them in the cold and rain.

i got your message last night, cyrus, and i apologize for not returning your call. it was a struggle to get my act together to leave this morning at 4am. i'll call you when i get back and will leave you lots of notes via wce.80d until then.

One more quote for you, Cyrus.

It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth. ~Werner Heisenberg

amen.

crap, so I just lost everything I had written. I hope i'm not too short or terse this time.

*********
The past few days have been pretty nutty. In addition to a few events that are not worth mentioning, there was the night with the hashers, Larry, and Scott (dancing at Yancy’s and drunkenly arguing with some pretentious bigot), and the night with Richard, Kelly, Gill, and Ryan (Richard’s secret call, flaming dr. pepper, wine from the pickle jar, texas hold ‘em, muddy dogs, naked people). And that was all before I even left Raleigh.

I drove the first day to Knoxville, meeting Becky Nichols at the Great Smoky Mountains on route. It was a beautiful drive and as I passed the exits for many of my research sites, I felt pretty nostalgic. That first night in Knoxville was fun enough. We meet Reid for dinner at the Tomato Head. Hobbs was our server and I couldn’t remember how I knew this person, but I immediately knew that I had felt something really strong for him. Apparently we dated at one point, and why I don’t remember it is a little concerning, but I find it strange that the feelings were still there even though I had no idea that I had even dated the guy. I guess two hours of sleep can put a little stress on brain function. We went home afterwards and I immediately passed out. (Sorry, Mind.) It was interesting to be back in Knoxville. It didn’t feel like ‘home’ anymore. I got lost every time I got into the car, I didn’t know what to say to Reid, and I couldn’t even keep my eyes open long enough to catch up with Mind on all of the insanity by which both of our lives have lately been consumed. I’m not sure if that was reassuring or disappointing. I was ready to go when I did. But luckily, or not, I got pretty lost on my way out of Knoxville, so I got to see several more parts of the city before I left.

7:45 am on my last day in beijing. i can't believe this day has actually arrived. the word bittersweet is not strong enough to express my sadness and excitement about getting on the airplane today. haha. getting to their airport is going to be an adventure. my bags are rediculously overstuffed with gifts (for me and from me). the graduate students here sent me away with four bags of beautiful things for me to remember them with. they are really some of the kindest people i have ever met. and despite their lack of experience with the scientific method and statistical analyses, i find myself admiring them.

and the other students from the program here; i am so impressed by all of them. the dinners. the hip hop clubs. the punk rock shows. the nights at the hotel. the heated dicussions of chinese culture and academia. our tony bitch sessions. these seem like such sterile and impersonal activities, but instead our friendships are deceptively sincere. i'm not naive enough to think that i'll continue to keep in touch with all of them, but it doesn't matter. i tried to dedicate my speech last night to them because more than my appreciation to the institutes for supporting this opportunity is my gratitude to relationships that i formed here. nelson. lee. abby. jimmie. kat. mike. mari-vaughn. di. ellen. jenn. steve. nikola. bryan. what a group.

oh lord, i'm drunk at 1:42pm.

i gave a presentation this morning on the scientific method and writing scientific papers. afterwards, we went to lunch. there is a good chance that i'll misspell some words. i had a lot of beers.

and now i'm at the threshold. i want more beer. i want to sleep. i definitely don't want to work. everyone else is at the afternoon nap. 'here, have a rest'. a few more gambes (bottom up, lu hai ming) and i'll be resting for days.

i am so sad to be leaving china. these people, despite their bizarre networks of trust and communication, are so incredibly kind. i want prof. shan to come to visit me in corvallis. he likes to drink beer and i know he would like some darker microbrews. besides, he is a bright and thoughtful reseacher. then there's honglei. i've had a crush on that man since i met him. he's so innocent and sweet. his story is like a fairy tale; coming from a peasant family up through the university by working hard. who couldn't admire a man like that? finally, there is professor Yin. he is the old and wise one of the group; he gives me advice, helps motivate me along, and talks a lot about his daughter. she must be pretty remarkable to get so much of his effusive praise.

I went with Steve and Honglei to visit Mao’s tomb this morning and it was certainly an interesting experience. Apparently China built Mao an enormous building right in the most prominent part of town. Right in the middle of Tianenmen Square, across from the Forbidden City and adjacent to the Congressional Building and the National Museum stand’s an enormous building dedicated solely to preserving the remains of a man that was responsible for killing 35-40 million of his citizens, single-handedly destroyed the intelligent pursuit in China for at least a century, and created the world’s worst overpopulation problem in history. So this shrine to one of the world’s worst leaders is only open on Saturdays and Sundays in the mornings. We arrived by subway around 10 and the line was wrapped around the building in about a mile long circle, though it moved pretty quickly. As we neared the entrance, people began getting anxious. I was shoved several times by an older lady behind me. People led their children ahead of us in line several times, leaping places in line until one of the guards with the loudspeakers would call them out. I wasn’t sure what they were in such a hurry for. When we finally got into the building, we had about 10 seconds to view Mao’s body as we moved through the room without stopping. His body was encased in glass, of course, and there was a bright light shining on his face. He was wearing his army uniform, but was mostly covered in a Communist flag. There were poinsettias surrounding this vacuum-sealed tomb, and he looked about 20 years younger than he did in photographs taken before his death. It was a bizarre thing to see; why the hell do people worship this guy so much? Of course, he did bring the country together at a very valuable time, but lord, i couldn’t help but wonder why all of this grandeur was necessary or even desirable. Mao led China into the very worst conditions one could possibly imagine, but there he was, preserved forever just like the pope, only younger.

a long lunch today with a german scientist here started out this way:

you know, working in a foreign country like this on your own, it really highlights your strengths and weaknesses.

i said that i couldn't agree more.

we then went on, over two hours and several beers, to discuss chinese academia. what a topic.

he has been here for 4 years, working under a grant from the german government. our discussion of the funding, the communication, and the ethics of chinese academia was both revealing and comforting. i couldn't believe some of the stories he told me, but at the same time, i was relieved to hear someone else experiencing much of the same thing that i have.

he told me a story about a male graduate student at Tsinghua University (where I went swimming this week) who literally went onto another graduate student's computer (a female), stole a paper off of it, put his name on it, and published it. when the department was confronted about it, half sided with him, and half sided with her. there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he had stolen the paper, but there was some sort of bizarre committment to saving face. therefore, the student was not even reprimanded for something that most western cultures would think absolutely unethical. it makes sense now why everyone here is so tight with their data and with their information. there is really no sense of research or scientific ethics here.

as the chinese are so very fond of trite sayings and propoganda, i am always amused by the t-shirts the younger people wear. they invariably have a logo of some kind, often centered around this theme of 'color yourself up!'. one of my favorite is the series of shirts that has the name of the color of the shirt and then below it 'life in bright color!' what is so funny is that i've only ever seen these shirts in gray and black. i've never really considered gray a bright color, especially compared to chinese red, but i'm learning something new every day here. maybe gray is a bright color.

i visited a 'restoration' site yesterday. this one was really good. kris, i know you'll appreciate this story. so here's what they are doing. in the large, very wide channels (WDR>20), they are removing the concrete from the banks in order to create a more natural area with some trees and grasses and sidewalks at the top. the professor here that i've been working with was on the design team, and what he was most excited about what the use of porous concrete along these banks. first, they layed out blocks of the concrete along the banks, then covered it with 30cm of sandy and clayey soil, then planted grass on top of it. immediately i thought of a million reasons not to do this, and i argued with the graduate student about the concept of 'porous' and how the fines would affect the porosity, about how the concrete sublayer would actually increase the potential for mass wasting, about how this was an extremely expensive solution that wasn't actually doing much to improve the water quality, etc. but after actually visiting the site, i saw that it wasn't necessary for me to argue with him. the grass wasn't growing on the sites with the porous concrete. there were rills transforming into gulleys. exposed concrete was everywhere. oops. the side without the concrete underneath was covered in vegetation. it hadn't even been seeded last winter, and already all of the invasive plants that exist in this urban ecosystem had quickly moved to stabilize the bank. it was in this area that i saw two children with their pants down. they both wiped themselves with long trails of toilet paper, which were tossed into the river before they ran back up to their house.

last night we threw an impromptu welcome home party for matt, one of the scholars who has been on the road for the last six weeks. apparently he couldn't remember our hotel name in chinese when his flight landed at midnight the previous night, so he ended up taking a taxi to the wrong university, and spent the night sleeping on a stone wall just off of the sidewalk. i love this story because it describes how safe this city really is. the only thing someone would do is take your wallet. this is something i really like about the chinese. not that they are passive; i definitely do not agree that the chinese do not show emotion. but that they will generally leave you alone, except to take your money. i wonder if that seems like an odd thing to say or if it makes sense. i'd be afraid someone would try to harm me if i slept on a park bench in the US. but here, i'd feel perfectly safe doing it.

anyway, the party involved a lot of beer, closing down the restaurant, a late night biking adventure, then moving the party to my room so we could continue to passionately argue about chinese culture and smoke cigarettes. i was honestly convinced that they were helping my bronchitus because i FINALLY quit coughing after i shared one with matt. so i had another with dianne. perfect logic that i regretted this morning. i felt like shit and i looked like i had two black eyes. then i tried to run tonight to burn off some of the caffiene from dinner tea, but i could only go about 2 miles. my lungs were burning. i guess the bronchitus has made them more sensitive to the dense pollution. i'm sure the cigarettes had nothing to do with it. yuck. hehe.

It has been quite a day in Chinese Culture Appreciation. I started the morning in great spirits after having taken a heavy dose of ibuprofen before bed last night (thank you, steve!). the air was cooler than usual on the ride in this morning, the humidity was low, and I was really happy to be who and where I was. That lasted through the morning: I booked my flights to Kunming and Laos, wrote numerous emails, and solved (so I thought) the question that was hanging over my head about Mr. Lui’s project. But it was the afternoon that really defined the day. Lunch was more tasteless than usual because my tastebuds seem to have lost functionality since I lost the ability to breathe through my nose. As we exited the dining hall, I suddenly lost my voice. Entirely. I tried for about 5 minutes to regain my voice; drinking water, coughing politely, sniffling, clearing my through, etc. It didn’t help. And then I had this terribly painful coughing fit. the kind the burns somewhere half-way between your throat and your belly button. The kind that sort of actually feels good as it hurts, like massaging a sore muscle. I imagine the students were both disgusted and amazed. I was anyway. I had been having these kinds of fits for two days now, but never to the length and uncontrollable extent of this one. Walking down a crowded street was the perfect time for this to occur. I could see the waves of people parting around me as I hacked my way through. This was instinctive for them, as they see people every day coughing and spitting up pieces of their lungs in the street. Anyway, the point is that at the end of it, I regained my voice, by means of removing the large volume of material that had blocked the sound organ in my throat (what is that called anyway?). I tried to be discrete about this ‘material’ suddenly on my hand (at least I covered my mouth), but by the end of it all, it was really just such a relief that I was shameless about discarding it on the road. It felt so good to have a clear esophagus, and I quietly admitted to myself that I could no longer criticize or look disdainfully at the people coughing out their lungs on the side of the street. It felt wonderful and under these circumstances that Chinese people exist every day (mostly the terrible air pollution, and also despite the fact that much of it is self-induced by chain smoking), I would not deny anyone that feeling.

still laying in bed at 9:30am, the album leaf playing, the internet incredibly slow and unstable. and all i really want to do is sleep so my head will quit hurting. i went to the pharmacy this morning, as i had taken the last of my western medicine this morning around 2-3 am when i woke up with a fever and completely unable to breath. thank god for niquil.

i bought two boxes of pills after signing to the pharmacist that i have a cough and runny nose. the young woman at the front desk of my hotel was kind enough to read me the directions: take 4-6 of each 3 times per day (that is a total of around 36 pills in one day). it is a little shady, taking 4-6 of anything at once, but i'm willing to try anything at this point. this is the first real homesickness that i've had; wanting to be in my own bed, with esri at my side, and some heavy decongestants at my disposal. hell, i'm too old to admit this, but i also really want my mom to be around. the other scholars here have been super kind and concerned about my well-being, but still there is nothing like your mom to coo over you when you want some sympathy or hot turkey soup. hmm.

upper respiratory 'thing'. it isn't really a cold. i don't know what to call it. though my immune system has put up a valiant effort the last 5 weeks, the germ warfare that is China finally defeated it. i feel like shit today.

however, i am starting to develop a warmer image of the chinese people. the more i learn about their current and historical affairs, the clearer it becomes of how and why they are who they are. another lesson that things are never as superficial as they seem. it amazes me that it took 5 weeks to realize there really is more to this 2500 year old culture than i see at the surface. i haven't given up being annoyed at the passive aggressive approach of theirs, but it is at least making sense now. and knowing that i'll never fit into their image of a model citizen, i wonder what it is about american culture that they resent. apparently, it isn't capitalism or consumerism. two days in shanghai was more than enough to make my stomach turn with disgust at all of the myrtle beach-style shops and lights. hehe. but i will admit that the ritz-carlton was really nice. :)

so i really lost my temper today with one of the graduate students that i've been working with here. i've been really frustrated with him about his project but i really shouldn't have yelled at him and i feel really bad now. i don't want to be that person. my greatest fear is that i turn out like dr. overton and it seems like i'm well on my way.

but if he asks me another question like he did today, - 'are you going to have my experiment designed by the end of this morning? - i don't know how i'm going respond. i know he thought that it wasn't a big deal to design a tracer experiment (though i could probably spend the next 6 months working on this as i know absolutely nothing about designing something like this), but the attitude is really what pissed me off, and even thinking about it now gets my blood pressure up.

otherwise, things here are going really well. the other scholars here are super fun and i'm really excited about getting to shanghai this weekend to visit some of the ones who left after the first week. i also am in the process of booking my flight into lao, with a long layover in kunming to see nelson's posh place, so there's lots of fun traveling coming up soon. i'm really hoping to make it to a hash here in beijing too, and it looks like i might have one weekend in town, so perhaps i'll get a chance to drink some cheap beer (as it all is) and run here too.

Listening to Solex (athens ohio), on the night train back to beijing. As i head out of wuhan now, i’m really kind of sad to be leaving, despite all of the griping that i’ve done. The people that i’ve spent the last 10 days with are some of the kindest that i’ve ever met, and though the bathrooms aren’t my idea of clean and they make more noise eating than my vacuum cleaner with a string stuck in it when they eat, i can’t help but feel sad about leaving. I must admit that it will be nice to be in the same bed for 3 days in a row before i go to shanghai on Thursday.

Oh gosh, where to start. I’ll have to condense this as much as possible, else it could take several pages. The situation in Wuhan is a very promising one for collaboration. They are likely the most progressive in protecting their water quality, which really isn’t saying much compared to US standards, but is a start. I’m really excited about having gotten the chance to meet so many of them, and my seminars on the bugs seemed well received. I think so anyway. The first one was 3 hours long and really felt like a scene out of lost in translation. I would talk for about 10 seconds on a slide, then my translator would talk for about 5 minutes. I have no idea what he was saying, but they all smiled and nodded, so it couldn’t have been too bad. At the end though, there was a 30 minute discussion, of which the entire thing was in Chinese. There was fist banging and yelling, and still, no word from my translator about what was going on. Afterwards, we all went out to eat at this super nice restaurant. Luckily, my guide this week (the sweet Honglei), informed someone that I didn’t eat meat because they brought out some of the craziest stuff I have ever seen, and not a single vegetable on the table. One of the animals was still alive when it was brought to the table in a plastic bag. I turned my head but heard it hit the floor and I don’t know exactly what happened, but a few minutes later, it (a sea eel apparently) came back to the table, it’s mouth gaping from the position it had taken as it was been cooked alive. I ate a lot of ferns for lunch that day, which were actually really tasty, but also against my moral obligation to reduce my imprint on the environment. Also a delicatessen of some kind, these ferns were harvested from a streambank ‘in the wild’. One of the city officials laughed as he commented about how it was also useful for streambank stabilization. Duh. I had spent the morning trying to convince them of the usefulness of vegetation (rather than concrete) in stabilizing streambanks, as well as the ecological functions of this vegetation, and suddenly i am eating the very thing i was trying to convince them should be protected.

i just picked up dinner at the quick-E-mart next to my 4-star hotel, where there were chickens in the street and the clerk winked at me as he handed me my dinner (3 tsingtao, peanuts, and oreos). okay, so i already had 3 tsingtao, but they were the appetizers. when i left the quick-E-mart, the clerk said (in perfect english) "see you tomorrow". is it that obvious that i'm living the lost in translation script? lord, the meetings today were rediculous. my translator said 3 words for every 50 the engineer spoke. tomorrow should be fun. i am explaining (to the funding agency and city officials who speak no english) why aquatic ecology should be considered in stream restoration designs. no kidding; they are on such a different page regarding ecology here. i won't go into details on this (though kris, you've heard the short version), but damn, what is it about the word 'restoration' that they don't understand? hydrology, hydrology, hydrology.

my hotel is a holiday inn. i hate to admit it, but this place is super nice, and i really like having an american toilet and bed.

i've spent this week in beijing entertaining simone and working. it has been relatively unproductive but pretty enjoyable. we went to hou hai last night which was really touristy but really fun. we hired a boat and had a ride across the lake, drinking beer and argueing about chinese politics, etc. but details like this don't seem very interesting; maybe because there are a lot of them.

i'm still picking up small pieces of the larger puzzle of the chinese culture. broad generalizations are unfair but don't seem to be contradicted. for example, the philosophy to push forward and resolve consequences afterwards appears to be a cultural mandate. in research, development, and even mundane daily activities. i don't get it; dog bites you twice, shame on you, right??

i am really feeling the influence of this city on my health. the air is so bad that my breathing is shallow even indoors (also necessary to avoid the smell of sewage which is inescapable). i haven't eaten a fresh vegetable since i left (i did find a salad on july 4th, but it was iceberg lettuce so i'm not counting it as a nutritional source). no one drinks water around here, apparently, so i'm not doing a very good job at keeping myself hydrated. how do the chinese spend their entire life here and not notice these things? i can't wait to get to oregon and reset my immune system. i hope that i never take that place for granted.

'i don't have mosquitos in my house' was my response, to which oh's of astonishment were made by the 3 chinese in my field crew. their question was the perfect compliment to mine - how do you keep the mosquitos out of your house in America? vs. how the hell are these mosquitos getting in here? see details below from my 3 day excursion to the rural countryside of China.

The ride out to the site was loads of fun. A great storm developed, with really intense winds blowing the trees horizontally. There were herders moving sheep out of the street so our bus could pass, children shielding their face from the massive dust storm, then rivers full of trash filling with water as the monsoon like rain poured down. it was great to witness from the bus, though the muddy roads were no jewel to navigate on a bike. The emergency exit on the bus began to leak profusely and one of the students with us opened his umbrella inside to shield himself. It was hilarious; everyone was laughing and why not? There were so many fantastic pictures that I didn't get to take on that ride.