Further West

The ice is melting, here in Tblisi, and so I write my first blog post from the aptly named "casa de los Fulbrights". I waited too long to write this and now i'm going to have the damnedest time keeping this in order.

Lets start from the beginning.

I depart from Xi'an, after two weeks of much wailing/rending of garments/gnashing of teeth. Whumpa Whumpa Whumpa goes my luggage, because I packed way too much, down 5 flights of stairs. Zhu Ting, my everhelpful chinese language teacher informs me her cousin is going to drive me to the train station which was very neighborly of him. She points out I've packed too much, and that if I don't come back she's going to break up with Grant and he will cry. Her words, not mine. I tell her she can break up with him for whatever reason she wants, but that's just silly. I give a box to marcel with instructions to maybe send it home or maybe send it to georgia depending or to just keep it if i want to come back to china whatever. This works out OK. I do not tell mike much of anything. Ha.

So I go to the train station. Zhu Ting's cousin (Uncle?) is very nice/helpful. I get on the train, sleep on one bag while watching the other, get about 6 hours of good ol' fashioned shut-eye before i arrive in Beijing at 7 AM. I breathe in the air, and then retch. I hate beijing's air so much. It tastes fucking foul. It has a taste, for god's sakes. Bleagh! The taxi to the airport costs like 100 kuai. Also Bleagh!

So i go to the airport with my too much luggage and wait and wait and wait and wait until 10:30 to check in for my flight. LO AND BEHOLD I put one of my bags on and lufthansa [sic] air informs me I have like a million billion kilos too much weight. We go back and forth on this for what must have been hours. It was kind of embarassing. I end up leaving a bagfull of collared shirts with them, and my name, in the hopes that I can get them back when I arrive maybe. OK! Through customs. This part is easy. I stand behind the yellow line, i throw away my toothpaste, i don't even get hassled for all the personal electronics.

Aaaaand i wait in Beijing. The flight to munich was pretty decent actually, for a 10 hour stint. They had 3 movies: Stardust, The December Boys, and Harry Potter and the Bad Man with No Nose. Stardust is generic schlock, trying much too hard to be the new Laberenth or something. It just doesn't work. Robert DeNiro could have had an interesting sky-pirate character but it just didn't work out. Lots of acting talent, but not a lot of quality writing. The 7 murderous princes, for instance, were interesting and funny and cool so of course the silly 3 witches get more screen time. Also, the protagonist is neigh unlikeable for most of the movie. The December Boys was pretty watchable and interesting as far as heart-wrenching orphans stickin' together type movies are concerned. Fairly unremarkable but it passed the time alright. And HPatBMwNN was further proof that Gary Oldman is a rockin' dude.

So, i arrive in munich airport and must have paid like 50 dollars for a bottle of water, which i downed in one fell swoop lest i just die on the spot. I slept in the airport like a homeless person, then searched high and low in pursuit of a bathroom. The flight to Georgia was a trip because according to China Time i got on at like 2 am, so when i was woken up two hours later with dinner, again, it was a kind of hallucinagenic [sic] delightful surprise. Mmm food. So i eat again and sleep again, and wake up to see Tblisi at night and fall back to sleep and then wake up when we land and fall back to sleep and then wake up and half the people are off the plane.

So I see lexi after showing off my rad passport and getting my bag, and she immediatly goes to the Lufsthansa people who are MUCH more helpful in georgia than they were in China and promises to hook a brother up. If i have to buy anything they'll front me the money and so on and so on. So it sounds like i'm either getting my stuff back or a check. Hard to tell which I prefer.

I've been here 3 days. Day 1 was sleep and Georgian Food which was reminiscent of chinese dumpings but different, and also gerogian beer which is dang fine. Also seeing downtown but everything's covered in ice so i spend a lot of time looking at the ground. Also I met 3 dutch girls and a writer for the New Yorker, and we played a kind of variation of Taboo. Also it was Brigita's birthday who is one of the other Fulbrighters and i'll detail them and their exploits another day. Day 2 I went to the bazaar but the dry air and stuff must have gotten to me so i started feeling sick. The Bazaar is insane, but i kind of liked it. It's driving me crazy not being able to speak chinese to people and be understood. Today we went to a cafe and talked about the Radio program reminiscent of Fresh Air that Pam the New Yorker Writer is trying to set up. Also I learned 9 out of 33 russian characters in said cafe. I feel goddamn ACCOMPLISHED.

That was a lot.

In closing, i've gotten a lot of questions about this so just to be clear, I have no idea if i'm going back to china. There's not a lot ot go back to except finish my contract which just seems lame. I am resolved not to figure this out for two weeks. That said, I am actively looking for work here. I know where to get Toefl textbooks and will be able to tutor people, this radio thing, all kinds of stuff. Whether I'll stay or not, well, we shall see.

Oh, and Its totally safe here, except for the ice. I haven't seen molotov cocktail one since i came. Kind of disappointing, if you ask me.

I promise to update this tommorow with more random details about the scene here!

Yours,
Dan