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I've gotten fairly good at dealing with livejournal info pages in different languages . . .
And I keep forgetting that I have icons now, and then I have to go back and add them. Because if you have them, you might as well use them.
On Emei Shan, because apparently that's the name of the whole mountain, not just the place I'm in. In Baguo village, just down the street from the lovely, rambling Baguo Monastary, where I'll be staying tonight. Tomorrow a swim, a stop at the supermarket, and then the overnight train to Xi'an.
I do love the internet, by the way. There's nothing like sitting in a room full of Chinese teenagers/young adults all playing online games. Now I know why I never see them kicking around on the streets. And internet cafes are gloriously, gloriously cheap. 2 yuan for an hour? I'd spend all my time in internet cafes, too.
In a strange humour today, though I'm not quite sure why. There are several possibilities, though. For one thing, time seems to have stopped for me. I can't seem to keep track of the day or the date, and continuously have to ask people whenever I want to write a journal entry. Barely a few days into my trip, my watch stopped for no good reason. No problem, thought I, I shall use my cel phone. Except apparently my cel phone is a big Japanese snob, because it refuses to accept Chinese electricity despite my fancy converter. I borrowed the tour leader's watch, because she's just been using her cel phone, and that one stopped this afternoon. I bought myself a wind-up alarm clock, but it has a tendancy to run out of winding at the most hugely inconvenient times.
Travel by it's very nature encompasses a certain sense of displacement, but this just seems a little extreme to me.
Randomly, and fascinatingly, our guide for the last two days was in his youth a Red Gaurd. He was 18 or 19 at the time, he told us today. Listening to his story was tremendously interesting. I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask, but that's a delicate thing to be asking questions about, and so I decided to hold off and eavesdrop on other people's questions instead. If I want to ask mine, I have his email. And I should review a bit of my recent Chinese history to make sure my questions aren't stupid ones. I did ask him when he learned English-- in school before the Cultural Revolution, he said, but at the time he was no good at speaking. Only in the past few years has he been studying spoken English. His speech is certainly understandable, but very fast, which seems to be characteristic of our guides so far. Listening to them switch to Chinese quickly shows you why, because it goes even faster.
I've learned to count to 99, to say hello, good bye, and ask how are you, to say I do and don't want something, and to say please and thank you and you're welcome and I'm sorry. The idea of ever being fast enough in Chinese to actually keep up with what people are saying, though, boggles my mind.
I should go find something to eat, but I don't really want anything to eat. It's too hot, and I'm too tired, and all by myself . . . maybe I'll just head back to the monastary and wander about with my camera, and write, and spend a lot of time sitting still. Sitting still is nice. And I'll take a shower, and I'll go to bed early, that would be nice, too.
I miss talking to people I know, rather. Here I exist as a singular entity, and the people I'm with have no call or need to care about me, beyond the fact that we're on this trip together. Not to say that they're bad people-- actually, I rather like them. Not a one of them is an unpleasant companion on this strange road we're wandering. They're just not mine, and I am not theirs. Sometimes I feel like a burden to the group, and there are few things that I dislike more.
My imagination is working overtime to fill in the gap in companionship and duty. I'm thankful, because it's good to have a distraction when you've spent the past four hours looking just in front of your feet for the next step, and the next step, and the next step, as sweat slides down your face like tears. I never fully understood descriptions of sweat "stinging in his/her eyes" until this trip.
I should head back to the monastary. It closes its gates quite early, and if you arrive late, you're pretty much out of luck.
And I keep forgetting that I have icons now, and then I have to go back and add them. Because if you have them, you might as well use them.
On Emei Shan, because apparently that's the name of the whole mountain, not just the place I'm in. In Baguo village, just down the street from the lovely, rambling Baguo Monastary, where I'll be staying tonight. Tomorrow a swim, a stop at the supermarket, and then the overnight train to Xi'an.
I do love the internet, by the way. There's nothing like sitting in a room full of Chinese teenagers/young adults all playing online games. Now I know why I never see them kicking around on the streets. And internet cafes are gloriously, gloriously cheap. 2 yuan for an hour? I'd spend all my time in internet cafes, too.
In a strange humour today, though I'm not quite sure why. There are several possibilities, though. For one thing, time seems to have stopped for me. I can't seem to keep track of the day or the date, and continuously have to ask people whenever I want to write a journal entry. Barely a few days into my trip, my watch stopped for no good reason. No problem, thought I, I shall use my cel phone. Except apparently my cel phone is a big Japanese snob, because it refuses to accept Chinese electricity despite my fancy converter. I borrowed the tour leader's watch, because she's just been using her cel phone, and that one stopped this afternoon. I bought myself a wind-up alarm clock, but it has a tendancy to run out of winding at the most hugely inconvenient times.
Travel by it's very nature encompasses a certain sense of displacement, but this just seems a little extreme to me.
Randomly, and fascinatingly, our guide for the last two days was in his youth a Red Gaurd. He was 18 or 19 at the time, he told us today. Listening to his story was tremendously interesting. I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask, but that's a delicate thing to be asking questions about, and so I decided to hold off and eavesdrop on other people's questions instead. If I want to ask mine, I have his email. And I should review a bit of my recent Chinese history to make sure my questions aren't stupid ones. I did ask him when he learned English-- in school before the Cultural Revolution, he said, but at the time he was no good at speaking. Only in the past few years has he been studying spoken English. His speech is certainly understandable, but very fast, which seems to be characteristic of our guides so far. Listening to them switch to Chinese quickly shows you why, because it goes even faster.
I've learned to count to 99, to say hello, good bye, and ask how are you, to say I do and don't want something, and to say please and thank you and you're welcome and I'm sorry. The idea of ever being fast enough in Chinese to actually keep up with what people are saying, though, boggles my mind.
I should go find something to eat, but I don't really want anything to eat. It's too hot, and I'm too tired, and all by myself . . . maybe I'll just head back to the monastary and wander about with my camera, and write, and spend a lot of time sitting still. Sitting still is nice. And I'll take a shower, and I'll go to bed early, that would be nice, too.
I miss talking to people I know, rather. Here I exist as a singular entity, and the people I'm with have no call or need to care about me, beyond the fact that we're on this trip together. Not to say that they're bad people-- actually, I rather like them. Not a one of them is an unpleasant companion on this strange road we're wandering. They're just not mine, and I am not theirs. Sometimes I feel like a burden to the group, and there are few things that I dislike more.
My imagination is working overtime to fill in the gap in companionship and duty. I'm thankful, because it's good to have a distraction when you've spent the past four hours looking just in front of your feet for the next step, and the next step, and the next step, as sweat slides down your face like tears. I never fully understood descriptions of sweat "stinging in his/her eyes" until this trip.
I should head back to the monastary. It closes its gates quite early, and if you arrive late, you're pretty much out of luck.
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