Harbin : Day 1

Owing to the fact that Nanjing was altogether not Christmasy enough, but also because the window of opportunity just happened to fall over Christmas, I decided to take my "reading days" and go see China's northeasternmost province and only extant winter wonderland. For those uninitiated into the world of Chinese geography that would be Heilongjiang province (literally "black dragon river") and the city is called Harbin. It is nestled in between North Korea and Eastern Siberia. Our merry company consisted of myself, Ian, Maryia, and my roommate, who was recently re-christened Gatsby (would-be detractors of my choice of names take note, his old English name was 'Govad' so even if you don't like Gatsby you have to admit it's a big improvement). We originally planned on purchasing the cheapest train tickets available, partly to save money and partly because I felt that, unpleasant as it may be, it is a quintessential part of the China experience. However, due to Maryia being accustomed to a certain level of Luxury* we instead bought four tickets in the sleeper car so we could keep her company during the 30 hour train ride.

We arrived bright and early at the Harbin railway station on Christmas Day. My first sensation stepping off the train was not the most pleasant, that of having all my snot freeze in my nose. It was after all between -20°C and -30°C practically the whole time we were there. Our first object when we arrived was to find a church service to attend. Sadly, Harbin does not have an LDS branch, but nevertheless due to the Russian influence it is a city replete with churches, possibly more than any other city in China. I've never been to Mass before so I thought it would be good to find a Catholic church to go to. Unfortunately searching the Chinese interweb is like going on a scavenger hunt in a million-acre field of stinging nettle, oh and the field is also full of landmines, and Nazis, and a plethora of other kinds of unpleasantness. So we never did find a Catholic church, but we did eventually find a Christian church that was putting on a large Christmas program. We stopped in for the last hour. It was pretty good though. There were a lot of people there. When we got there there were actually no seats left in the auditorium but this Chinese lady made sure that we got some anyway because we were foreigners and she didn't want us to "go back home with a bad impression of Chinese Christians" as she put it.

After Church and lunch we went ice skating at a college which had converted their outdoor track into a skating rink. There were these guys there doing this really cool thing I had never seen before. They had these large metal tops that they got spinning on the ice and then they would keep them going by whipping them. It was pretty spiffy. At some point someone had remarked that ice cream in Harbin ought to be really cheap because they wouldn't have to pay for refrigeration, well after ice skating we confirmed that indeed this was the case, at the bus stop we found that they had cases of ice cream laying out on the street. And it was really cheap. And it was also delicious!

We finished off Christmas Day by visiting Harbin's most famous cathedral, St. Sofia's. The church was badly damaged but not quite destroyed during the Cultural Revolution but has since been restored. Or at least, the exterior has been restored, the interior has been reformed and is now a museum/gift shop. Well, I've written enough for one day, I'll write the rest later.

* Apparently she only flies Emerates and Lufthswasa (spelling on both of those?)

Head... is... freezing.

So the weeks following the events described in my last post have been eventful. After my dad's surgery it was decided that he should do 6 rounds of chemotherapy. About two weeks after the first round his hair was starting to falling off whenever he touched it so he decided to just get it over with and shave it off. Mike, Spencer, and I also shaved our heads as a sign of solidarity. Then when the rest of his hair fell out a few days later I decided I might as well bic mine just this once since I'll never have as good an opportunity again (hopefully). So, now I've got no hair and that's why my head is cold. Picture follows. No laughing.

P.S. That is my genetic engineering final report in the background.

Ok... So, the thing I was referencing actually happened almost a month ago I've just been really bad about getting around to writing about it. I wanted to do something special for 11/11/11 something that I would probably never do again in my life. So the decision that was eventually come to was to put on a public performance of Romeo and Juliet. And because 11/11 is Single's Awareness Day in China we decided to limit the cast to single men, which also had the advantage of being very Shakespearean. Knowing that we would undoubtedly attract a lot of attention we decided to take advantage of the publicity and make the production a fundraiser. I went to a local service center and asked if there was anyone in the community who we could help out financially. They suggested a 50-year old woman who after being laid off two months ago was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had already been through surgery and they were able to completely resect the tumor, but she still had to go through 10 rounds of chemotherapy and on her husband's salary of 1000 RMB a month there was no way they were going to be able to afford it. So at 11:11 am we had 11 single guys from the Flagship Program perform Romeo and Juliet from start to finish. We even had a wig for our Juliet which was apparently pretty convincing (we had some Chinese guy come up to us afterwards and say "hey, what happened to the leading lady I was hoping to talk to her"). We probably had about 4000 people stop and watch us. But most importantly, we were able to raise over 5500 RMB to help out someone in need. Here is the link to the clip that was on the evening news: http://youtu.be/kA7xKIsMjZ8?t=1m49s

It's Coming...

Soon.

Singles Awareness Day

...no, I am not talking about Valentine's Day. In China there is really such a holiday. Sure it isn't an official, government sanctioned one, but it is probably the best known holiday that's not a true holiday. Celebrated on 11/11 because of all those lonely numeral 1s, this year it is going to be especially significant because it's 11/11/11 which only happens once every thousand years. So, I'm trying to decide how best to celebrate? Obviously the very best way to celebrate singles awareness day would be to be as alone as possible, perhaps in a remote corner of Siberia or the Sahara desert. But since that is far from fun I'm trying to figure out the second best way to celebrate. I'm thinking I need a day long party that then gets a little crazier at 11 am and has one really action packed minute at 11:11 and one second in that minute that is really just... I don't know, something that only happens once in your life. Like jumping off a building or robbing a bank or something. So yeah...

Birthday

Being 25 today and therefore old by some standards (my standards) I will share some wisdom that I have accumulated over the last twenty five years. 1.) Crab (and all crustaceans really) are disgusting and are clearly more fit for a dissection lab than a dinner plate.

2.) Häagen Dazs is delicious and fit for eating 24/7 if you are lucky enough to have that kind of uninterrupted access to the stuff.

3.) Eating Haagen Daas and playing a good old fashioned game of Stack the Crabs™ is a great way to celebrate a birthday. :)

Thank You!

Thank you to all those who have been praying for my dad over the past days and weeks. The outcome of his surgery yesterday at Mayo Clinic was nothing short of miraculous. Even though the tumor was much larger than the doctors previously thought the whole thing was encapsulated and therefore came out much easier than they expected. They were able to take a lot less of the jaw bone than they had planned and still get clean margins. Also, we were told that he would lose the V3 branch of the trigeminal nerve on the right side which would cause him to lose feeling in a large part of his face, taste sensation from half his tongue, and also the function of the jaw muscles on that side of his face. When they opened him up however they found that the tumor had pushed the nerve to the side and they didn't have to remove it after all. They took the lymph nodes from his jaw and neck and found no signs of metastasis. Yeah!!! As planned they rebuilt the jaw with a portion of his right fibula. All in all the surgery went better than we could've thought possible, I know this is because of the many prayers that were being offered in his behalf. Thank you again for your faith, thoughts, and support during this difficult time, my dad tells us that he has felt uplifted and strengthened because of it. I'm happy to report that he is doing well and recovering quickly. The physical therapist came by today to get him back on his feet and maybe have him walk two or three steps. He walked thirty! Right now he's just here resting. We are hopeful that he can be discharged on Saturday or Sunday. For those who would like to stay updated on how he is doing his blog is vogelzoo.blogspot.com.