A new apartment

Well, I officially have my own apartment in the Tianhe District of Guangzhou. It's a one-bedroom and it is costing me $250USD per month. It is not fancy but neither is anything wrong with it. It is a sublet which I found through a friend of a friend who wanted to get out of her lease early. I signed a handwritten Chinese contract with the landlady probably giving her power of attorney but I have the keys at least and will keep my fingers crossed about getting my security deposit back. The new neighborhood is far more interesting and there are a few internet cafes nearby so I have regular access for the first time in a few weeks really. I have been trying to work on a program idea I had for helping memorize new Chinese characters and eventually I will start to add information to Morethansalad for all these new restaurants I have visited on my journey. There's a few grocery stores nearby and more restaurants so in general it'll be a much more convenient place to dwell for the next few weeks. I technically have the apartment until 3/8 though I don't really know exactly how long I'm going to stay yet. I have classes for another few weeks so after that is over I will see how I feel.

The internet has been kind of hosed since the Taiwan earthquake so reaching websites based outside of Asia has been pretty tough. Hopefully that'll be fixed soon but from what I read it may take until mid-February for them to finish repairs on the underwater cables that were damaged. In the meantime, uploading pictures isn't going to happen, things are way too slow. Anyway, hope everyone out there is well.

I'm still alive

and living in Guangzhou, sort of. I have a temporary apartment in a 'serviced residence' which means it's like a hotel but with apartments in it where I can live for short lengths of time, in this case about 12 days in total before the sublet I found becomes vacant. That will happen on 1/25. Both of these places are within a stone's throw of the Chinese language school at which I began classes this past Monday. The classes are all in Chinese and it's at least good that I understand most of what the teacher says. Some of my old aversions to classroom study have arisen however, in particular reading vocabulary or sentences in unison with the class. I just feel like I'm in The Wall. That being said, I will probably learn a lot there. I've been working on the vocabulary from the book they gave us and there's a lot of new words in there that are useful, and plenty that are useless as well. I try to prioritize the words I learn so that I spend time and effort memorizing ones I will actually need sometime in the reasonably non-distant future since they're hard enough to remember and brain space is limited. I'm sure someone out there can use that to have a joke at my expense. There are 5 other people in my class at the moment. Four Korean ladies and one girl from Mexico. They all seem to read and write better than me but speak maybe a bit more tentatively at times. They've all been studying for longer and in universities or schools so I guess that makes sense.

Anyway, so I'm living in the Tianhe district of Guangzhou which is the business center as far as I can tell. Lots of skyscrapers, many of unusual and interesting design, wide streets, lots of stores and a few malls. There is a bit of park space here and there surrounding a large nearby stadium so it isn't too urban but it does feel quite a bit at times like midtown New York though I mean that not in a pejorative way. Certainly if there was a Village I'd be living there instead though in this case I figured as close to the school as possible is good since I know myself and avoiding class would be that much easier if I had a long commute. I have been cooking and preparing my own meals again which has been nice after 3 months or so of eating out every single day. Actually now that I think about it, it'll be 4 months very soon since I left New York. I'm going to take the classes for 3 more weeks and I have the sublet until 3/9. Everyone wants to know when I'm coming back and what I'm doing next. I don't even know what I'm doing today. I went to one music store to try to buy a guitar. I figured now that I'm sitting still and not running around on trains if I can hook up a cheap guitar to keep in my apartment it would go a long way towards my peace of mind. The first store I went to only had electrics so I'm going to try another I just found online which perhaps has acoustics. I figured I'd try to get one of those small ones. I saw one in another city in China once for something like $20USD. Doesn't have to be fancy, just needs to make sound. In an unrelated note about how cheap things are, last night I bought a large bottle of water, a pack of like 10 or so oreos, and a pack of cigarettes for $1.50USD. So cheap, and all the food groups represented.

I've been reading more lately ever since going through a novel this guy gave me in Yangshuo. That was The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Then Anne Frank's Diary which I'd never read before. Now I'm reading Made in America by Bill Bryson who everybody seems to love. There is a giant book store with a large English sub-section and many books are reasonably priced, particularly in the 'literature' section so I was thinking about going through a few of those since they're only like $2-3USD each. If only I'd had the same interest back in high school when these books were assigned to us. It only took me 15 years more plus traveling to a country 6000 miles away before I decided to read a few of them.

Alright, I'm off to hit this other store and hopefully they'll have a guitar for me, otherwise I'm going to end up with an Erhu or a Guqin or something more unusual. I wonder if my neighbors would mind if I got a drumset. Take care all of you, see you one day soon.

back in Guangzhou

I suppose there have been quite a few changes in the last week or so. I'll have to sum up in a stream of consciousness sort of way. I had some really good vegetarian fried chicken at this restaurant in Taipei right near the hostel. My stomach said "no" but the rest of me said "ohhh yeahhh" and thus as they say, it was on. Good dumpling soup too. My last few days in Taipei were generally uneventful. My stomach hadn't been feeling so good and that is an ongoing battle. Most people reading this know I have had chronic digestive problems since sometime in college which run in my family really, so that isn't too new. I'm gradually getting a handle on it but Taiwan in general was not smooth sailing. Could've certainly been worse and I didn't let it slow me down, but I'm hoping some time in one place will help that. I am taking Chinese medicine which is supposed to be good for the gut. The type I bought is apparently a more traditional packaging which consists of a box in which reside 8 yellow orbs which are slightly smaller than golf balls. The yellow orbs are made of wax. What I have been doing to open the sphere is crease it a bit with my fingermail and then squeeze in such a manner as to reveal the inner medicine, which is a smaller ball apparently made of dirt but actually made of herbs of some sort. For the curious, this medicine is called Bao He Wan. I then eat the herbs which don't taste as bad as I expected and I don't mind. Without jinxing it, it definitely seems to be doing something good, or it is a coincidence that things are improving. I'll keep taking it and see what happens. It has been used for thousands of years and according to the doctor in Hong Kong, worst case is that it tastes horrible but if it kills me I'd be the first.

Spent a bit of time in Hong Kong after Taipei, my transitional city between destinations but this time kept it to only 2-3 nights while I contemplated my next move. I had been considering southeast Asia for some time but decided given my gut being not completely functional and being kind of fatigued of moving around constantly for 3 months it would be a good time to stay in one place for a while. I stopped in Shenzhen for a few days, a border town just near Hong Kong and visited my friend Grace there for a few nights before coming here to Guangzhou where I've been for two nights I believe. Today I think I located a language school that I like and tomorrow I hope to locate somewhere I can rent for a monthly fee that will have a kitchen where I could actually prepare my own food again, something I really miss and would probably go a long way to improving my health. Once I settle in somewhere I plan to resume working on my website a little bit. I just want to take some time where waking up doesn't mean some kind of feeling like I need to go out and visit a museum or a park or rent a bike and go to some village or whatever it is. I can just live here for a while and soak in a real Chinese city.

Today I saw a guy walking three monkeys down the street. I was too startled to take out my camera. I made a mental note to identify what kind of primate they actually were later but I haven't done so. It's the kind that has a red butt.