Ok… I think that might be the back cover to a short story. Unfortunately, this is nowhere near as interesting… to you. So I’ll only address a few of the things mentioned above.
I walked into school and checked my email, finding one from my school’s tour guide; they were inviting me to go with them to the Gugong… in twenty minutes. I politely declined and went on with my day. I scheduled a dinner date over working on the Yearbook with Lauren for Tuesday, so we could work, talk and spend time with each other before she went on the five day immersion into a high school on the outskirts of Beijing. I was in high spirits despite the Chinese test and got home when my phone received a text in the kind of English that when you see, you know isn’t from an American. It was inviting me to go to Tiananmen tomorrow and then dinner. I responded in Chinese that I couldn’t go to Tiananmen. The response back was extremely happy that she could now use Chinese, and invited me to dinner. As if some sort of suppressed loyalty arose from the depths of my soul, I said yes. My heart was torn now between my school and my “interest.” I cursed the timing of the whole situation as my pendulous brain swung back and forth between Lauren and school, school and Lauren, but there was nothing to do but to forsake dinner. I went to sleep upset. We had a quiz and then I bolted early during a free period to go and meet my teachers and classmates at Qianmen. They told me to go to Tiananmen riding bus 22 but I rode the subway and got off at Tiananmen and they were actually at Qianmen which was a bit aggravating because I could’ve just rode to Qianmen, but I digress, I got lost and found my way eventually. Ran into Matt, Kevin, Mrs. Weelinberg, (sorry if I butchered that,) and Mr. Costello, and they asked me questions and such and I had an answer for everything. It felt like I hadn’t really learned as much as I could have before talking with them and then I realized that living here has been like a stream of knowledge flowing to my brain without me knowing it. They weren’t taking me to dinner right away and we went to Xiushui Jie, Silk Street and the guide taught the kids how to bargain. I didn’t mean to scoff at the advice but I had my own methods. I walked through there with Matt and bargained for him, and talked in general with the people in the stalls. I ran into one that remembered me from the last time and wanted to say hi to my dad. According to Matt I sounded fluent, but I felt nowhere near it. There’s so much more to the language. Afterwards we went to dinner and I talked some more. I felt bad for not letting others talk as much and I saw some of the girls on the trip look at me like they hated me. Of course I probably looked at them like they were babied princesses. But I digress, I left at eight with one hour left before curfew. I got up to leave and so did everyone else. I was a bit quicker getting out the door than everyone else and I was in a cab and on my way home as they all exited. I imagined it like a movie, sort of like how batman disappears on a moment’s notice. I went home, beaming at the improvement of my Chinese… comparatively.
The next day was even more of a sauna than before. Gavin began spreading his own secret around. I’ve promised him I won’t tell anyone. I said goodbye to Lauren and Jamie as they went to immerse themselves and then went with Ian and Annie to go finish our project on Qianmen. We rode our bikes from school to Qianmen. It was simply suffocating. Not only have I not visited a gym in about 3 months, my bike doesn’t go very fast. It hits its top speed at the time where everyone else is just casually gliding along. We arrived and went into the Hutong’s and found places forgotten by the map. An ancient 5-star Brewery, old famous musicians houses, the China Club Beijing, as well as finding places being torn down and rebuilt, both of which I went over and helped do. From shoveling torn down bricks for a 60 year old migrant worker and almost using the saw for rebuilding the ancient style hutongs, I did it all. We talked with them about how they felt about tearing down the history and they said as long as they get paid it doesn’t matter. Most of the migrant workers were from Hebei province. I went into a courtyard home with Ian and talked with the lady there. She was 83 years old, originally from Hebei, but couldn't lose her accent over the forty years she's lived in her house. She also had bound feet that she tried to hide in shoes that were too big for her. She was extremely nice and enjoyed talking with us, inviting us back whenever we wanted to drop by.
Ian got pulled into an art gallery and we ended up going with the owner to find an apartment to rent for his parents. The place was not suitable for parents and we left. I threw together the PowerPoint and went to sleep after being on the road biking for five hours.
Our presentation apparently went well and a bit too long. Had another quiz. I went home with no plans for the first time all week, and ended up talking with Chris about girls. He was not sure about what to do with his relationship issue. It felt like it was slowly dying, and that wasn’t good for him. So we came to the conclusion it should end. For both their sakes. That only took two hours of discussion. Tomorrow looked like it was going to be a tad messy.
I had another test, and was officially done with my Chinese midterms. Also had a math quiz. After school Chris did it. Breaking up is never pleasant. She walked away before he had a chance to explain why and he walked over to me and looked a tad upset saying I’m single. I told him we’re not going to let his mind dwell on the breakup and try and get his mind off of it, so Ian, Warren and I were going to take him out. We were about to head out when Dan walked up the stairs asking Chris if everything was alright because he saw Sophie crying. So far we were off to a bad start. But we went back to Chris’ place and made videos to cheer him up, and then Ian decided we were going to go swimming… at the Hyatt… in Wangfujing. The pool was amazing according to him. So we got all our stuff, our suits, towels and shoved them into our bags as we walked out of the house into the unfathomable haze of Beijing. We stood there feeling like this could be the start of a movie and or TV show. Oceans 4 or maybe 3 ½ Honkies. But we got in a cab and arrived in Wangfujing. We wandered around trying to find the hotel and we did. It was high class. The four of us walked in, single file carrying our bags over our shoulders and descended to the mall underneath the hotel to plan out our mission. The whole place was marbled with fountains and it began to make me feel a bit nervous. We found a deserted elevator landing and hit the down button to get to “the oasis.” We stepped out of the elevator and saw a counter manned by two clerks and we tried walking into the pool when they stopped us. “What is your room number?” Ian spat out 713, and they started checking it while Chris and I snuck back to the elevators and hit the up button and watched the numbers go down slowly, like a will o’ the wisp leading us to our death as the clerks began to question Ian. They began to get suspicious when the doors opened and Chris and I bolted in, the doors closed and we were about to head up when the elevator stopped and the doors opened on the same floor. Our hearts were in our throats. It was only Ian and Warren being pissed off at us for bolting at the first sign of trouble. The guards at the doors we came in were looking at us and talking on a walkie talkie so we went out a different exit into the crowds of Wangfujing. We ended up going to the giant bookstore and buying some books. Warren left and the remaining three of us went to Grandma’s Kitchen and got milkshakes and lemonade… which don’t mix too well, but were both delicious. We left the restaurant at 10:20 and realized that we had forty minutes to get home before curfew. We ran back to the populated section of Wangfujing and tried to hail a cab, but none of them would stop. We ran to the regent hotel and I asked if they could help me get a cab, but the employees told me that they all went home. So it was now 10:40 and we began to run home, when we found the mysterious line 5 subway line, hopped on, got off at Jishuitan and hired a xiao che with five minutes left. We told him to stop in front of the school because he was driving too slowly. We got out and ran with one minute to spare home. We ran into our compound and split, running up separate staircases making it home as the clock turned 11. This was our second time we almost didn’t make curfew by a minute.
Saturday had finally rolled around and I invited Karina to go out. We had plans to go to Beihai. We hopped on a bus and rode to Qianmen. We walked through Tiananmen and through the western exterior of Tiananmen along the lakes and through some hutongs. We saw an interesting looking temple and went inside. It was beautiful, then we heard the sound of voices chattering and it turned out it was a house. We talked with them about the place, their past, how it was turned from the temple of thunder into a house after liberation, etc. Some Taiwanese people came in who were exploring the neighborhood and explained to us that they were looking for all the eight temples around Tiananmen and that this was one of them. We had stumbled into the ancient thunder temple. Our hosts invited us inside their designated room and we talked and sat and it was just incredible. Try and find an ancient thunder temple in Cleveland. Good luck. This is why I love China. We exited after they invited us to come back another time. Karina and I continued to wander around until we got to Beihai. We walked into the park and saw a man doing water calligraphy on the ground. I asked him if I could give it a shot and I wrote my name in water on the ground. It turned out pretty well and drew a crowd. The two of us left after impressing them with our Chinese and went to rent a boat. We got on our little paddle boat and began to pedal away into the middle of Beihai. The two of us just enjoyed ourselves as we sat in the middle of the lake in the Forbidden City. These are the kinds of things that I wish I could do back home. Chinese people stared at us but we’d just address them and ask them how their day was, and they’d just smile and row away. We tried heading back to the dock, but our boat was broken and no matter how fast we pedaled, it wouldn’t go any faster. All the drifting we did made us pedal forever to get back. Her legs got tired and I trudged away at it for ages. The two of us walked out of the boat barely able to walk. Chris texted and the two of us agreed we should try and cheer him up, (just in case he was feeling down,) so we invited him to come to dinner with us at a Xinjiang restaurant. We feasted on an assortment of foods, all delicious. When we finished up, we walked to a subway that was at least a mile away and chatted the whole time. “It’s days like these that make me want to stay here forever,” were the parting words from Karina as we went our separate ways that evening. I went home and watched Pulp Fiction, and tried to console Sophie over the whole ordeal. They’re both my friends. I went to sleep to wake up in front of a mound of homework.
Chris and I went for a walk the next day and discussed girls, and the problems that are going to arise among our friends from this weekend.
I was nothing but a lonely boy, looking for something new…
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