Accents, or, There is no "W" in "dog"

For some bizarre reason, I have a bit of a southern accent. Never mind that I grew up far, far away from the south; everyone in the small town I lived in has this same accent. I figure the town must've been populated by a clump of southerners at some point. Anyway, when I got to college, I got made fun of for my accent...a lot.

It turns out there is not "w" in dog (dawg), nor is there a "u" in roof (ruff) or in root beer (rut bir). I spent a LOT of time and energy sounding like a person living in the northwest, and I got laughed at during the difficult period of learning to say "root beer." It's seriously difficult! "Rut bir" is a billion times easier. And for the most part I succeed in sounding like other people talk. Although, whenever I'm back in town, I instantly and unconsiously revert to my accent (since everyone else is talking that way).

I was talking and thinking about my accent this week. And then I listened to some "They Might Be Giants." And as I was singing along badly loud with "Birdhouse in your soul," I realized my accent popped up on a few words. I suspect accents are much like rabies. Wait, no. Bad analogy. Rabies don't go dormant. Hmm. One of those things that are dormant and then pop up when you least expect it....like bear. Accents are like bear.

And it turns out singing (or even saying) the line "though I admire the lot / I'd be fired if that were my job" makes me sound like a southener. It turns out that there is no "A" in fired (farred) nor no "u" in were (wur). Dammit.

An Erinku:
finally: groceries!!!
Woo-hoo
for bannanannananas
and cabbage (not together, blech)

China Adventures, Part 3 (Finale)

On my last full day in Beijing, I got an Erhu (two-stringed Chinese violin) for an early birthday present. While the tuning, sitting posture, bridge and bow are similar to a cello, the front of erhus are covered with python skin, which is kinda gross and kinda cool at the same time. Cellos would be much more bad-ass if the front was snake skin. I'm just saying. Anyway, there is an entire district in Beijing where the music stores live, just like there are bar districts and mall districts. The shop owner was VERY excited that I played cello and gave me a lesson on my new instrument. He spoke much better English that I spoke Chinese and he is an incredible, though very humble, player.

The next morning, I headed for the airport bright and early to start my long voyage home. The line at the check-in counter was pretty epic long. After two hours of waiting, I realized the flight was delayed. After three hours, it was finally my turn at the counter. I checked in and had an eight hour wait until my new flight time. This called for lunch, naps, and sudoku to fill my time.

A mere nine hours later, I was on a plane! The boarding process was an incredible event to watch. I've learned the cultural differences regarding organization: while in the U.S. it is considered incredibly rude to cut in line, the Chinese do it all the time. So. Instead of boarding the plane by rows or by section, the Chinese gate crew sounded an air horn. A loud cheer went up and everyone surged forward. It was awesome! On the way down the ramp, all bags were hand-checked (again) and everyone had a complete pat-down (again). We all sat down surprisingly fast, given the chaotic order folks entered the plane, and the the shortest night ever began. While my flight to Beijing had an eight-hour sunset, my flight back had darkness for about three and half hours.

During the flight, the American-only flight crew just about went mad. The same cultural norms that don't worry about standing in line showed up when it came to waiting for bathrooms, wanting to watch the brilliantly bright sunrise in the completely darkened cabin, and standing right in front of the movie screen when you get tired of sitting. The one translator was kept busy all night between complaining Americans and curious Chinese.

My flight out to Beijing had been about 90% Americans due to an enormous tour group taking up most the seats. However, my flight back was probably 40% American, which was much more amusing for me to watch. Once upon a time, I was in Greece and our tour guide there said Americans are the second-most whiny/complainy tourists, and this flight back from Beijing really demonstrated that. (French are the most whiny, according to the Greek guide. She also said that Americans usually calmed right down if they were promised air conditioning and shopping opportunities.)

My second favorite part of this airport adventure (after the airhorn boarding call) was a conversation I overhead in the waiting area. An American husband and wife were recording their experiences in China as YouTube movies; which I'm pretty sure were incredibly boring, based on the episode they recorded right behind me. They were bitching about the nine hour delay (of course) and their airport adventures trying to use their meal vouchers.

While I ended up having some awesome, noodly Chinese dish with my meal voucher, no problem, they had decided they wanted hamburgers and chocolate milkshakes. After they each took time to tell YouTube ALL the ingredients they ordered on their hamburgers (they seriously started off their list with, "two buns, meat..." They discovered, to their great surprise, that a Chinese chocolate milkshake and hamburger taste VERY much worse than the American versions. And this lead to great anger and indignation on their part. People are very silly it turns out. And thankfully, YouTube is now able to well-document that silliness.

Anyway, by the time the flight arrived in Seattle, all the connecting flights had already left for the day. The airline had re-booked everyone and we all had rooms at various hotels throughout the city. My body's unique way of coping with jet lag has been to sleep for three hours and then be awake for 10 hours. I have cycled through various times of day and was very grateful for the 24-hour Denny's next to the hotel that accepted meal vouchers.

I'll be very glad to be home again. Big, big adventures require some recharging time. I will hopefully return to a more regular life schedule quickly, since the world is eerily quiet at 3:30 in the morning. And on that note, I've been awake for six hours and want to use my final meal voucher on a delicious Seattle latte...

An Erinku:
despite
what restaurants think
melons aren't a
"tasty side of fruit"

China Adventures, Part 2 (or, NOT Prince!)

Adventures round two had me visiting a variety of palaces, the Yonghe Buddhist Temple, and navigating the trickiness of buying things at the local markets (super- and otherwise). I quickly learned the written symbol for "meat" (since being a vegetarian is a bit tricky there), the symbol for "spicy" (since some of the peppers are brutal hot), and the symbol for noodles (since noodles are delicious).

And after a week, I was finally forced to use one of the scary squatting floor toilets. I'd already had a bit of wine and I absolutely didn't want to be the girl who fell into the toilet. I summoned all my balancing and focusing abilities and managed to remain adventure-free despite the incredibly awkward positions. Hole in the floor toilets are generally easier for guys to navigate. Anyway.

I learned that folks who complain about air pollution here in the states should really spend some time in Beijing to compare how good we currently have it here, even though there still is room for improvement. I never saw a clear day or night and the visability was often like a very heavy fog. After a few days, your nose is running constantly and your throat burns. Since it'd be bad publicity to how it really is, almost every day is declared a "green" or maybe a "yellow" level air quality day.

I suspect this intense level of pollution is a contributing reason that everyone spits there. All the time. In the subway, in the airport, in the elevator, and even in restaurants. Luckily (or perhaps in response to this) very few places are carpeted.

In this same vein, I routinely saw toddlers in ass-less chaps. Diapers seem to come off at an earlier age and if a toddler has to go potty, they do. Sometimes on the sidewalk. And if you think U.S. dog owners are bad about cleaning up "left-overs," this is worse. It's too bad really. I'd always assumed my first real-life encounter with ass-less chaps would be in the sexy 1980's-MTV-Prince fashion. Alas. Overall, I really wouldn't advise walking barefoot, anywhere, in Beijing.

And these were a few more of my adventures on the other side of the world...

An Erinku:
little dumpling
on my chopstick
dipped in
some unknown sauce
yummy

China Adventures, Part 1

One of the big good things about travelling is that you get to learn new things about the world and new things about yourself. While visiting the other side of the planet, I’ve learned that once you navigate around New York and Athens, Beijing is pretty easy to figure out…other than everything being written in Chinese characters. Luckily, there is a lot of written English in the subways and on many signs around town. Sometimes the translations are a bit unique (such as the slogan of my new local coffee shop, “More Sweet, More Smile!”) but it’s enough to figure out where you are going.

I have discovered that when left to my own devices, I am fully capable of living on noodles and dumplings for all my meals. I have also discovered that I know how to ask for beer, wine, and coffee in about five different languages now, which suggests what type of traveler I really am. I also realize that I am still completely terrified of the “hole in the floor” toilets, which are all over the place in public. And with stalls being optional, I am grateful for my bladder of steel to help me reach a “Western toilet” every so often.

In the past five days, I’ve visited the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace, and the Temple of Heaven. I’ve already filled up the memory on my dinky, little camera so getting a memory card will be my next adventure in gesturing and pointing at what I’d like to buy. I’ve pretty much worn out my trusty sneakers, and I’ve still got trips planned in the next few days, which means I’ll need to decide how badly I need new shoes.

Overall, I’m very grateful for my sushi addiction, because it prepared me to handle my chopsticks pretty well (slippery noodle dishes are tricky, but I’m figuring it out because slippery noodle dishes are my current favorite). Speaking of which, it’s dinner-time and I’m thinking…dumplings.

The time change wasn’t so bad. My flight left Seattle around 5:00 pm, which meant that from my window seat, I got to watch an impressive 8 hour sunset. By watching back-to-back movies and reading for a while, I managed to stay up for 24 hours straight and sleep as soon as I arrived (around 10 pm) which put me right on my new time, no problem. My trip back will involve magic time-travelling capabilities, as I’ll arrive in Seattle four hours before I leave Beijing. We’ll see how that goes.

Right. Dumplings. And maybe a beer. And that’s the story so far…

An Erinku:
my favorite
purchase so far
a fuzzy, warm
panda hat

An average day in my life

In the span of one hour, I found out my passport had been delivered to some random business elsewhere in Denver and I was in the music building elevator when it decided to break. I did the emergency call button thing that I've always wondered about. The operator dude who answered seemed awfully surprised that I wasn't completely freaked out by being stuck in an elevator. I assured him that if I'd been plummeting down towards the basement, it would have been a completely different story. Since the elevator and I were just chilling between the third and fourth floors, it was a very calm adventure.

While he paged an officer and kept me on the line (in case things changed or I needed to remember that there was an outside world), I hung out in the elevator. In a way, it was a nice change from my frantic life pace of the past how-ever many days. After a bunch of minutes in a row, the elevator woke up from its nap and decided it was time to move up a floor and spit me out. I thanked the operator dude and dashed out the doors before I could get stuck again. I saw the officer had arrived and was doing magic elevator things, so I let him be.

Once I got back to the day job, I got flagged down because FedEx had picked up my passport package from where they mistakenly delivered it and brought it to where it was addressed. My adventures today were on the mild side, but they were bizarre enough to be adventurous. After working a bunch of extra time today, and having finished 95% of finals' stuff, I'm planning on a night in and plan on avoiding metal boxes that travel between floors for the rest of the day. Irony does power the universe, after all.

An Erinku:
somehow a bit of
worky-work made it
into my home
I am not feeling worky

A hodgepodge. Hodgepodge sounds like a type of soup, actually.

While I stare at an empty page, waiting to start my last paper for the quarter, I am reminded that of all my procrastination tools, I haven't resorted to blog in a while. I have, however, submitted to the complete evil that is Groupon. I was doing all right, snubbing their bikini wax ads and managing to resist good spaghetti deals, but when they were selling adventures at the local microbrewery, my mouse refused to do the automatic delete action. It also didn't help that they hadn't noticed my lack of buying anything and offered me a coupon, which means that my upcoming microbrewery adventure cost about $3. The next thing you know, I'll run out to buy and SUV, move to the suburbs and have a fish named "Bubbles." Wait...

Speaking of Bubbles, I've (at some point in the past) read that fish are smarter than we give them credit for and that they can actually recognize their humans. I do know that he hangs out in whatever corner of the tank is closest to me when I'm home and is very excited for breakfast each morning. And I feel like I love this fact enough that I've probably talked about it at least ten times. It may actually turn out that my fish is smarter than I am; he hasn't repeated himself to me, as far as I know.

I have few silly stories about my fellow humans. I'm sure the stories are tucked away in my brain, since I'm usually thinking of one and snickering to myself in the corner, but none are coming up. I suspect it's because I'm dealing with end-of-quarter drama. There has been a movement to change the name of "The Vault" to "The Aquarium" due to a very high number of fish-y references: my apartment complex is actually called "The Dolphin Apartments" for some bizarre reason, I have a long-running nickname of "Fishy," I am convinced I was a sea otter in my past life (explaining my inability to walk on two feet confidently), and I share the space with my 11-year-old companion Bubbles. The argument was made that my wall decorations even look like sea weed...except for the butterflies.

Anyway, this is hodgepodge of random moments from my days in Denver. This quarter has been rough: since I was so sick for so long, I was basically four weeks behind all term. Next quarter will have me taking a lighter course-load (although day-job overtime will probably make up any spare time I thought I might have) and I'm sure I'll be making fun of various things as they come up. For instance, I will be taking carillon lessons, because it's loud, it's in the bell tower in the athlete's building at DU, and I LOVE the idea of making the lacrosse team being forced to listen to me practice while they run laps. I have an evil streak that has only gotten larger as I've advanced through my 30's. I suspect I'll be one of those bitchy old ladies by the time I'm 40. I feel I've earned it.

Alas, I thought I had inspiration for the start of my class paper, but I realized it was along the lines of "this book made my eyeballs bleed from too much information from 1976 and would taste best marinated in garlic and roasted at 375 for an hour." I suspect that won't be a strong start. One of my previous jobs counted on folks relying on information from the 1970's to sustain it. I am a fan of evolution and living in the now that is about 40 years later than the 1970's. I'm just saying. And on that note, I should probably try to be a student (rather than a grown-up) and start on my paper. I should have it done in an hour or so, once I get going.

An Erinku!
oh little laptop
your blinky light is red
I'll plug you in soon,
be happy