She has safely arrived in Kunming, Yunnan province, and here is her first email:

Hi mom and dadda,

I’m here! The Internet is really dodgy in my apartment and I have to write an email and then walk around the room before I can send it. I’m going to go to a cafe today, but we think because it’s a mac the system isn’t that comparable.

I had a very interesting flight. I cried as soon as I reached my gate and tried to hide it, but couldn’t. I had so many Chinese people staring at me. I loaded on the plane and slept almost the entire flight. The tiny Chinese man sitting next to me fell asleep on my shoulder and I was too lazy to tell him to move. It was pretty cute, except his breathe was STANKY.

In Hong Kong I met an Aussie fellow who was coming to Yunnan to film and document a ten-day charity bike ride through rural China, run by non other than the Jane Goddall Roots and Shoots Beijing. I helped edit some of the pamphlets for this charity bike ride last year during my intern. I really want to go on it, but I have class starting in a few days. Anyways, he was very nice and taught me all sorts of stuff about my camera. Small world.

I arrived and got picked up by Josh’s wife Naoko who is Japanese and lived in China for at least ten years. She is fluent in mandarin and English. Very nice. She moved me into my apartment which is two bedrooms and Naoko’s office where she treats patients during the week. I live with a 40-ish German lady who has been a TCM doctor for years. Everyone here is already a doctor, practiced for years, and is now brushing up on some skills. For example, the man who moved out of my room just before I arrived is name Brody. He’s a crazy Canadian, huge beard, strange necklaces, big round glasses, and a loud distinct laugh. He’s dyslexic and told me about how hard it is to study, well anything, being that way-but in particular TCM. He is here learning emergency acupuncture. What to do if someone is bleeding severely, or going into shock etc. It’s quite amazing the people here. And most of all they are all so excited to have me just starting. Brody just went on and on about how this is really going to change my view of well being and life. I told Bridget (my housemate) that my back was hurting and she starting rubbing acupuncture points in my leg and hand. About five minutes later my lower back felt much more relaxed. I could get used to this.

My room is really nice. Big, wooden floors, little nook to read next to my large glass window. The view is of many other apartment buildings and the mountains that surround Yunnan. I always hear traffic, but it doesn’t bother me. The air is clean, the sky blue, and people seem much happier than in Beijing.

I met up with my friend, Tai, who was my RA in Beijing. He’s living with two other friends from the States and they are all teaching English. They live about 15min bike ride from me, right next to the green lake. The green lake is what I remember most of Kunming. It’s a decent sized lake, the color of jade, that has many different islands, walkways, and platforms. Basically it’s a haven for all Chinese past times. Tai and I after getting delicious jiaozi (dumplings) and a one hour massage for five dollars, walked around the lake. Everyone was there. Grandmas and Grandpas were gathered around in every corner playing cards, Chinese checkers (different from the star shaped board we know), playing instruments (a lot of reed flutes), dancing (country, unusual line dancing, and some sort of hand dance), loudly debating about something, and of course staring shamelessly at my blond locks. It was extremely crowded. Some of the gatherings were no less than 100 people, but they all were just sitting, listening, relaxing.

The pace of life is much more layed back, and even though there are high rises and many people, there is still a village feeling. There are very few foreigners and the ex pat community is not an isolated bubble like in Beijing. Most foreigners speak mandarin, and are here because they WANT to be part of the community. They are not condescending to the locals the way so many butt heads in Beijing were. I’m already getting to know the woman who sells roses outside of our complex, and the guard who watches the bikes.

The diversity among the people is amazing. Most people are dressed in comfortable clothes, a t shirt and jeans. Very few are all dolled up and wearing heals the way Beijingers were. The people themselves all look so different, and in my opinion are much more beautiful than Han Chinese. South Asian is very exotic. Some have freckles, some really dark skin, and they are on average much shorter than Han Chinese. There are quite a few Tibetans around, and they are not hard to miss. They are dressed the same, but there faces are so distinct. Darker skin usually and wider faces. Of course I’m not sure, they could be a mix of other bordering countries as well. Some people are wearing traditional minority clothing and it’s beautiful. I believe they are some sort of Tibetan group. I’ll let you know once I do.

Yunnan is the best place to be in China if you want to travel. You can take a bus for thirty US dollars to Vietnam and probably cheaper to Burma. Tibet is just above me, and I’m just itching to get up there. Sichuan is practically free. I’m going to have some good weekend trips. Tai and I are already scheming, and I’m trying to get Dana to come visit.

My first Tai Qi class starts Sunday morning, and my full schedule starts Monday. I have a few days now to buy groceries, explore, read, do college apps, try to fix my Internet, and get a couple more massages:)

I hope everything at home is good. You guys are so beautiful. I’m such a lucky girl. My last dinner was amazing-I’m still nibbling on the brownies. Take care of Phoebe, and I hope Snakey had a smooth ascension to her next life.

Lots of Love,
Rach

Read it and enjoy…

Hey fam,
Sounds like there’s a lot of action in the dog sector of the Edwards home. That’s her way of saying she loves you. Or her way of trying to kill you. Hard to say. One way or another, maybe it’s time to think about doing a little training, now that I am out of the country and it cannot physically be my responsibility.

Well I am settling in nicely. Two nights ago I moved in with my home-stay family, which is basically composed of a fourteen-year-old boy, because his mother is in the US and his father works very late each night. It’s great though. The kid is really nice (this morning he drew me a detailed map of the area and the bus stops so I could find my way to work). Something really funny happened yesterday morning, my first morning at the house. Actually, at the time, it was not funny. It was terrible, an act of desperation. But in retrospect it is very funny. To give you some background, the night before, I crashed early, and Stephen (the kid) mentioned that the door to my room was kind of broken. This posed something of a problem when I woke up the next morning with an urgent desire to urinate. I tried the door, and it was stuck. I pulled hard; I tried force and finnese, and still it would not budge. I really had to piss. I had consumed a lot of water the night before because staying hydrated is important for staying healthy, and it came back to bite me in the ass, or peehole. Anyways, I looked around the room and had no option but to pee in my water bottle. Ten minutes later, I had to pee just as bad, but the water bottle was full, and the only recepticle in sight was a nice ornamental Chinese vase. I pissed in it, and then ten minutes later I pissed in the other vase. I feel really bad about pissing in their vases, but I had no choice. Once I figured out how to open the door (with adroit implementation of credit card), I rinsed them out and returned them to their previous locations.

I am really doing great here. I scored big time with the homestay family. I don’t have to pay them anything. The kid is a really smart overachiever, and his father thinks my teaching him a little English is more than sufficient compensation for my stay. Tonight I finally met the father and he took me and Stephen out to a nice meal, and then to a high class bathouse, or as I like to call it, “house full of small asian penises”. It was really nice. I soaked for a while and then some dude scrubbed off my dead skin with a towel and in the process was-shall we say- less than careful about avoiding my genitalia. He skimmed my balls like a hundred times. Made me a little uncomfortable, but the experience was overall very relaxing. The three of us will go every Saturday.

At dinner I offered to pay the check, and the father nearly killed me. He was like, no no no no! The family is really great. Tomorrow they’re taking me to a big festival at the nearby Olympic park, where there will be music and a fashion show. Apparently the tickets are very expensive and hard to come by, but they won’t allow me to pay for myself.

I’ve figured out how to take buses to work, with the help of Stephen. It is about a fifteen minute bus ride, which costs a whopping sum of one yuan (about fifteen cents). At this rate (buying meals for 12 yuan, buses for one yuan, etc.) I think I’ll be broke pretty soon.

I’ve worked for two days now. I’m slowly getting the hang of it. It is all one-on-one tutoring, which is nice because you can tailor the lesson to the ability level of the student, which ranges from primitive in the cute little five-year-olds to damn-near fluent in the ultra-overachieving eighteen-year-olds. I was wrong; I won’t really be teaching adults. It’s mainly middle school and highschool students. Each student has a different textbook (arranged by difficulty level, from 1 to 6) that he or she is learning from, and I teach according to his or her desire, whether it be reading comprehension, pronunciation, writing, or “free talk”. With some students, mostly boys, teaching is a breeze, because they are eager to talk and I don’t have to rack my brains for topics of basic conversation, but with the shy students, who are mostly girls, it becomes rather difficult to keep a conversation going at their level of fluency.

I am learning a few tricks of the trade, and I have begun a teacher’s notebook to jot down ideas and the like.

The other teachers are really cool. I’d say about a third of them are American, and the others are English, Irish, Scottish, and African, but the school thinks they are American (to comply with the “American Language School” theme) and I honestly don’t think they can differentiate between the accents. It’s funny, throughout the school there are maps of America and American flags. It makes me feel at home.

I have to work quite a bit, and weekends are far from a respite. Weekends are when you work long hours, becasue that’s when the students are not in school and have time to further cram their schedules with structured learning and avoid enjoying their fleeting childhood or adolescence. These kids work like dogs. Like working dogs. Like the hardest workers of the working dogs.

So on the weekends, because I am “full time”, I will work between nine and eleven classes ( the maximum), so from 8:30 in the morning until 6:30 in the evening, roughly. During the week, no classes start before 2:30, and I will have four or five each weekday.I will be working 20-25 hours Monday-Friday and about 20 hours over the weekend, so forty hour weeks, maybe even forty five.  My free time is every weekday morning, and nights, if I want to go out and party it up with, say, the crazy Zimbabwean guy named Walter with whom I am becoming acquainted. He swears an enormous amount, and most of the Chinese people, even at the school, either don’t know the swear words or don’t care. The result is very funny. He’ll go up to one of the chinese guys who works there, (Golden Bridge, for example) and say “Bridge, fix my computer, you chinese f**k! What the f**k do you think you’re doing, you asian a*hole?”

Anyways, I am getting carried away with this email. There is internet here at my house, and sometimes at school (when the network is not down, which it often is). Next time I go online I will try to skype you guys. Love you all very very much

Dana

His first email:

Hey guys my laptop is about to run out of battery so I have to make this quick. My charger is in my main luggage which I will get today or tomorrow.
I’m in Dalian, survived the train trip. I guy named “Golden Bridge”- no jokes- who works at ALS picked me up at the station and brought me to a hotel, where I spent the night last night. Today- get this- I have to teach my first class in two hours. No training, no advice, just go, teach. We’ll see how it turns out. Dalian is very nice. Big city, I don’t care what anyone says, bigggg city. I ate chinese food, bao zi and shuar, wandering around the streets yesterday. Very yummy and incredibly cheap. I had basically a full meal for ten yuan, about a dollar fifty.

“Bridge” took me to buy a chinese cell phone, but I have no idea how to use it, because it’s only in characters and I think it’s locked or somethign. I’ll figure it out and send you the number in case of an emergency. But only for an emergency, because it’s expensive to call the US. stick with skype.
okay almost no more battery just letting you guys know that I’m okay. There is internet here at the school -which is very nice- so even if I don’t have it at home I can bring my laptop in every day and use it here.

Very excited but overwhelmed and I’m really not sure how I made it here from Los Angeles.

love

Dana

Hey guys my laptop is about to run out of battery so I have to make this quick. My charger is in my main luggage which I will get today or tomorrow.
I’m in Dalian, survived the train trip. I guy named “Golden Bridge”- no jokes- who works at ALS picked me up at the station and brought me to a hotel, where I spent the night last night. Today- get this- I have to teach my first class in two hours. No training, no advice, just go, teach. We’ll see how it turns out. Dalian is very nice. Big city, I don’t care what anyone says, bigggg city. I ate chinese food, bao zi and shuar, wandering around the streets yesterday. Very yummy and incredibly cheap. I had basically a full meal for ten yuan, about a dollar fifty.

“Bridge” took me to buy a chinese cell phone, but I have no idea how to use it, because it’s only in characters and I think it’s locked or somethign. I’ll figure it out and send you the number in case of an emergency. But only for an emergency, because it’s expensive to call the US. stick with skype.
okay almost no more battery just letting you guys know that I’m okay. There is internet here at the school -which is very nice- so even if I don’t have it at home I can bring my laptop in every day and use it here.

Very excited but overwhelmed and I’m really not sure how I made it here from Los Angeles.

love

Dana

Hi Dana-boy,

Great to talk to you – you sound in fine fettle.  Keep up the good attitude.

I (finally) had time to read your epic email, and I thought it was simply wonderful.  Your follow-up email suggested that you worried that you had made too-sweeping generalizations about the Chinese people.  Don’t worry!  It is much, much better to put down your feelings/impressions/convictions/beliefs at the time.  That’s what writing in the present tense is all about.  If you worry about “getting it right” before you put it down, you will lose spontaneity and truth.  Go for the moment (which you are very good at anyway).

You might want to include Sue Kelman (SueAKelman@yahoo.com) on your emailings – I forwarded your epic to her, and will let you do all further mailings.

Life continues unabated in the land of Less Than 100% Chinese.  I am participating (as an employee of ValueClick) in another “HeartWalk” thing, where I track my walks every day down to the last footstep.  To this end, I have been giving Phoebe lots more walks than she is accustomed to (twice a day, at least 2 miles each), and she is getting more excited by my presence with each passing day.  But it also means: less running, and less swimming.  So I may be shooting myself in the foot, health-wise.  Never mind – Phoebe is such good company, and it is great fun to position her poops at random neighbor’s lawns as we work our way through the neighborhoods (rule #1: never more than 1 poop per lawn).

Read my way through another Elmore Leonard novel yesterday evening – boy, they are fast reads.  I still love them, but wonder if their sameness will get to me after a while.  Of course, there’s a certain sameness to Shakespeare’s sonnets, too.

Saw a really old Netflix film, The Fallen Idol (1948), last night, based on a novel by Graham Greene.  Wonderful stuff.  Momma still makes fun of my choices, but now and then I get one right.

Caren and I spent last Sunday on the catamaran of this family that she has hooked up with and persuaded to go cruising a la family Edwards.  Two kids, older daughter and younger son, 2 1/2 years apart, about your ages when we left.  They bought the boat two months ago, and hope to leave in a month (!)  It felt strange sitting in the cockpit, imagining what was in store for them.

What is your snail mail address?  Send it to me, and I’ll give it a test drive with a letter.  If that works, you may even get something better, like a book.

Love to you, Dana,

Your Dadda

This fire destroyed 80 homes and burned over 8,000 acres.  It caused the evacuation of Sycamore Canyon, where we had been living until last  November, when we were evacuated because of the Tea Fire.  This time we were safe in Carpinteria.

View from the Santa Barbara Pier

The foothills behind Santa Barbara

Homes on the side of San Roque Canyon

After the fire

Tea Fire, November 2008

This fire broke out less than a mile from where we were living.  I was at home when I received a phone call from a friend.  He was exercising at the Santa Barbara Athletic Club when he chanced to look up at the hills and saw some smoke in the general vicinity of our rental.  He phoned me, I went outside, and there it was.  I in turn phoned Dana at Cate, who for once in his young life answered his cell phone.  He drove back and we filled our two cars with as much stuff as we could and drove out of there, with flames extremely close to the road.  Had we taken any longer, we would have been forced to leave our cars and evacuate on foot, down the side of the mountain and away from the road.

The fire eventually burned almost 2,000 acres and destroyed about 200 homes.  It got in the national headlines mainly because it caused the evacuation of some Hollywood notables living in Montecito (Rob Lowe, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges, and Kirk Douglas, to name a few).

Tea Fire, Nov 2008

We spent the next several weeks in a room at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort, right on the water, within walking distance of Commission Junction, and paid for by our insurance.  Best of all, they allowed dogs.  Worst of all was the quality of the room service food.  We kept ordering different menu items, hoping to find something to our liking, but no luck.

During the time we were at the Doubletree, we would periodically try to visit our rental on Canon View, but the fire and smoke remained for weeks, making visits impossible.  When we were finally about to return, we discovered smoke damage to most of our belongs, the back porch partially burned, and the vegetation gone around most of the house, and across the street as well. We were lucky – the two homes next to ours were burned to the ground.

Meanwhile, Caren was looking for another place to rent, as were many of the people who had lost their homes.  She would get the names of rentals from the Internet each morning, but by the time she contacted the realtors, they were rented.  Finally, as she was returning from another unsuccessful day’s search, she saw a woman leaving her front door carrying a box.  On a hunch, Caren asked the woman if she was moving, and she was.  So Caren called up the woman’s realtor, who was surprised that someone was interested in the home before it even went on the market.  Long story short, we got the house, at 5031 Pacific Village Drive in Carpinteria, a short walk to the beach, lovely neighborhood, our best rental yet.

Hi Everyone!

The last few weeks have been wonderful. Last weekend we went hiking along the great wall, slept in a village along the wall, and woke up at four in the morning to hike (in the dark) to the highest guard post and watch the sunrise. It was one of the most breathtaking views I’ve ever seen. There were already two Chinese photographers that had slept the night on the wall and were taking pictures of the slow transition from red to orange then purple to blue. The sky was extremely clear and I could easily see hundreds of miles of the wall, the surrounding mountains, and the endless rolling hills below.

Unfortunately IES has some learning to do in terms of organizing trips. Besides for the scenery and the few moments I had on my own, the hike was quite miserable. I ended up carrying a girl’s duffel bag and fur jacket, and lent my shoes to a girl that had shown up in stylish flats. The program gave no list, warning, or any sort of preparation. Most of these kids had never hiked in their lives. I even pointed out to one of the “leaders” before we left campus that someone showed up with a duffel bag and fur coat and has never hiked before. He simply replied, “We’ll figure it out”. That’s the last I heard from him. I’ve never seen such incompetence in leaders and so much whining from kids. Grrr…

However this weekend I decided to do my own thing. Katherine, my good friend from California, and I went hiking on a different portion of the great wall. I found a hiking group called Beijing Hikers in my Lonely Planet that goes on hikes in the surrounding areas around Beijing. It’s mainly ex-pats from the ages of 30-60 on the hike, which meant an easy pace and interesting conversation. I met a really nice lady, Edie, who just moved to Beijing and works for the UN agriculture and food organization. Although she’s at least ten years older then me, I really can relate to her and enjoy her company. We’re having dinner in Nan Luo Gu Xiang-a nice local boutique area tomorrow. I also met a journalist who helped Katherine and I figure out our Tibet plans. We can’t go in, but she told us of surrounding areas that are equally as wild with zero tourists. The hike itself was fun with gorgeous scenery. I think I’ll be doing more hikes with these guys.

On a different note, life here is starting to shift from that of a long-term tourist, to short term resident. I’ve become less awkward at using my mandarin to communicate and I’m also starting to really get the hang of moving around this city. I have my (not so reliable) bike that I use to go to class, bike to the Chaoshifa (supermarket), and bike to different local places for meals. Of course I’m still scared to death of crossing the roads and try to avoid it at all cost.  I’ve also become dependent on the subway and bus system here, which is so convenient. I now feel confident getting around the city on my own-it only took two months!

I’ve also made some cool Chinese friends, which is actually very hard. On campus I have many “friends” but they are just people eager to learn English and are very pushy when it comes to our friendship-constantly calling me to meet because they have presents for me etc. I’ve learned my lesson and don’t meet with these people anymore. I do have a legitimate friend and her English name is Nikki. She is very open to talk about anything. Tibet, press freedom, propaganda, communism, lack of sexual education, and women’s rights are all topics that she doesn’t mind discussing. She is in fact very open-minded. I’m really enjoying her company, and she lets me speak in Chinese (when I can).

Classes here are good, but extremely challenging and take up all of my time. The first block (Chinese Media) just ended so I had a four-day weekend! Woohoo. Chinese class is still wonderful; my teacher is the cutest person in the world and really cares about us on a personal level. We are about to start our next block, which is Chinese History. It’s mobile learning so we have classes while traveling. We are gone for two weeks and visit Xian, Ya’nan, and Nanjing (which I have already briefly visited). I’m really excited to leave Beijing again and see some more of the country. We leave on Friday.

Last week we visited Sina.com and the People’s Daily (a huge newspaper, it was the main newspaper during the Cultural Revolution). As usual we got a tour of the place and an interview, but didn’t learn anything new. Most of the employees are Party members, the interview was basically him telling us how free Chinese media is (vomit) and how western newspapers have a lot to learn. There is so much Propaganda scattered throughout these visits.

I miss you all, you’re always crossing my mind, and I can’t wait to see you in December! Cheers!

Lots of Love,
Rachael